Kyle Bradish Has Sprained UCL, Will Start Season On IL (4/9 Update: Assigned rehab assignment w/Aberdeen)

[Tony-OH]

On 3/1/2024 at 11:06 AM, bpilktree said:

Did those teams really have 6-8 starters that were good or were they just plugging guys in and hoping just like we would be doing.  The Rays started 51-22 then the pitching injuries started to mount up and they finished 48-43.  We have a really strong 1-7 imo with guys that have had good success recently as starters in MLB. If you have to go 8-9 deep you’re not going to be able to do it unless you get contributions from young minor leaguers that come up that just a fact.  

Well, it does make some sense if they are. It never made any sense that he got behind because of being shut down last season. If they can get 20 starts out of Means this year and he's still strong for the playoffs that's a win.

[emmett16]

7 hours ago, MurphDogg said:

Just circling back on this one. You think Gunnar is going to be off crutches by Opening Day?

Haha.  I’ve been waiting for this.  Well played.

 

Edited March 13 by emmett16

[Malike]

There will come a time when guys are going to have to learn to pitch at 90% effort, not max effort every pitch. I know the spin rates and velo are all the rage, but eventually, teams will run out of pitchers with guys throwing max effort every pitch of every start. Doesn't seem sustainable and something will have to give. 

[emmett16]

11 hours ago, Malike said:

There will come a time when guys are going to have to learn to pitch at 90% effort, not max effort every pitch. I know the spin rates and velo are all the rage, but eventually, teams will run out of pitchers with guys throwing max effort every pitch of every start. Doesn't seem sustainable and something will have to give. 

Read “The Arm” it’s very good and I think you’ll like it.  It covers a lot on this topic.  Few things at play:

1. Guys aren’t preparing correctly.  Or at least haven’t  been preparing correctly from a young enough age. 
2. In the modern PG (Perfect Game) world of youth baseball, kids are pitching to the radar gun to get noticed and overzealous coaches are over using kids, who are not preparing correctly, to win.  This is starting as early as 10 & 9U.

3. Even players, parents, coaches, who have the best intention can get caught up in the moment and overdo it.

4. Players have to have velocity to get noticed.  Doesn’t matter if you’re the craftiest pitcher with insane success, if you don’t throw hard you don’t have a job. 

5. Pitchers aren’t going through the order 3x so even starters are essentially 100% effort at all times.

6. Baseball training is old and antiquated.  There are 3rd party disrupters that have started to make noise, but they were at first ignored, and now the progressive teams are hiring those trainers, and their training methods are now proprietary trade secrets.  There aren’t a lot of people out there pushing proper arm care.

7. For the few folks out there teaching the proper way to prepare and train, A. It’s costly B. It goes against the grain and old school baseball heads still don’t agree C. There isn’t a ton of info and finally, there is more research to be done.

 
9. The guys in the league now are the last generation to not have had the current progressive info on arm care.  Hopefully word gets out soon and the new your generation has more success with avoiding injury and have fewer UCL injuries. 

10.  And lastly, MLB doesn’t care.  It’s the cost of doing business in their eyes. 

Edited March 13 by emmett16

[Aglets]

Have we heard any news on Bradish and his throwing progressions in the past several days?

[Can_of_corn]

7 hours ago, Malike said:

There will come a time when guys are going to have to learn to pitch at 90% effort, not max effort every pitch. I know the spin rates and velo are all the rage, but eventually, teams will run out of pitchers with guys throwing max effort every pitch of every start. Doesn't seem sustainable and something will have to give. 

How about they deaden the balls so those 90% effort pitches don't end up over the fence?

 

[yark14]

12 minutes ago, emmett16 said:

Read “The Arm” it’s very good and I think you’ll like it.  It covers a lot on this topic.  Few things at play:

1. Guys aren’t preparing correctly.  Or at least haven’t  been preparing correctly from a young enough age. 
2. In the modern PG (Perfect Game) world of youth baseball, kids are pitching to the radar gun to get noticed and overzealous coaches are over using kids, who are not preparing correctly, to win.  This is starting early as 10 & 9U.

3. Even players, parents, coaches, who have the best intention can get caught up in the moment and over do it.

4. Players have to have velocity to get noticed.  Doesn’t matter if you’re craftiest pitcher with insane success, if you don’t throw hard you don’t have a job. 
5. Pitchers aren’t going through the order 3x so even starters are essentially 100% effort at all times.

6. Baseball training is old and antiquated.  There are 3rd party disrupters that have started to make noise but they were at first ignored, and now the progressive teams are hiring those trainers and their training methods are trad secrets.  There aren’t a lot of person out there pushing proper arm care.

7. For the few folks out there teaching the proper way to prepare and train, A. It’s costly B. It goes against the grain and old school baseball heads still don’t agree C. There isn’t a tone of info and Finally, there is more research to be done.  
9. The guys in the league now are the last generation to not have had the current progressive info on arm care.  Hopefully word gets out and the new your generation has more success with avoid injury and fewer UCL injuries. 
10.  And lastly, MLB doesn’t care.  It’s the cost of doing business in their eyes. 

So basically Dylan Bundy's story in a nutshell.

[Just Regular]

15 minutes ago, emmett16 said:

6. Baseball training is old and antiquated.  There are 3rd party disrupters that have started to make noise but they were at first ignored, and now the progressive teams are hiring those trainers and their training methods are trad secrets.  There aren’t a lot of person out there pushing proper arm care

How would you guess the Orioles are doing with Grayson Rodriguez?

Better than Forrest Whitley and Brady Aiken so far, at least!     Its almost impossible to parse whether his IMO light use before-during-after COVID was/is the cutting edge of taking care of one Arm that can fire 99mph fastballs for 15 years, or asset management.

I feel like I might only need hundreds rather than thousands of multiverses to get to one in which the 2022-23 Orioles are 2-time World Series champions, and nobody thinks Spencer Strider is baseball's greatest pitcher today.

[emmett16]

3 hours ago, Just Regular said:

How would you guess the Orioles are doing with Grayson Rodriguez?

Better than Forrest Whitley and Brady Aiken so far, at least!     Its almost impossible to parse whether his IMO light use before-during-after COVID was/is the cutting edge of taking care of one Arm that can fire 99mph fastballs for 15 years, or asset management.

I feel like I might only need hundreds rather than thousands of multiverses to get to one in which the 2022-23 Orioles are 2-time World Series champions, and nobody thinks Spencer Strider is baseball's greatest pitcher today.

I imagine they are building him up slowly in a very progressive “with the times” approach that is dialed into his specific physiology and biomechanics.  And like you said, doing so in an asset management approach so that he can healthily pitch when it matters most. A couple things to consider though 1. We don’t know what he’s doing in side work, what we see as a light workload is just a small sample of a much large workload that is slowly and systematically getting dialed up. 2. He had 8+ years (10u-18u) before being drafted and going under Elias FO management to contend with.  The O’s have his medical and know exactly the mileage on the arm and how it reacts/deals with various stressors.  
 

Bauer might get the last laugh on Cole. 

Edited March 13 by emmett16

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, emmett16 said:

I imagine they are building him up slowly in a very progressive “with the times” approach that is dialed into his specific physiology and biomechanics.  And like you said, doing so in an asset management approach so that he can healthily pitch when it matters most. A couple things to consider though 1. We don’t know what he’s doing in side work, what we see as a light workload is just a small sample of a much large workload that is slowly and systematically getting dialed up. 2. He had 8+ years (10u-18u) before being drafted and going under Elias FO management to contend with.  The O’s have his medical and know exactly the mileage on the arm and how it reacts/deals with various stressors.  
 

Bauer might get the last laugh on Cole. 

And he still got hurt.

Didn't Elias admit that they don't know if all the load management stuff works to prevent injuries?

[Just Regular]

24 minutes ago, emmett16 said:

And like you said, doing so in an asset management approach so that he can healthily pitch when it matters most.

The rest of this decade, Commissioner Manfred and his successor to be named later (Theo Epstein?) are going to have some thinking to do about fashioning the starting pitcher's traditional role in the game of baseball.

I think the Dodgers are the Roki Sasaki favorites, and Friedman is basically already there turning over his season-long pitching model to like what is used in the Japanese leagues - it is part of the Sasaki recruitment.    Dodgers October pitching in the coming years is basically going to I think resemble the 2022 Japan WBC team.    I wouldn't be surprised if Yoshinobu Yamamoto never starts 30 regular season games.

It was Club-inefficient for the Yankees to let Gerrit carry that heavy load when they were out of it last summer, and now that's rippling into their (for now) single 2024 season with Soto.

[emmett16]

1 hour ago, Can_of_corn said:

And he still got hurt.

Didn't Elias admit that they don't know if all the load management stuff works to prevent injuries?

He didn't tear his UCL.  All of the new stuff are still theories and what they think are best practices. A lot of data points to it working but pitching still inherently carries a risk.  But, it's also hard to do the scientific work without willing guinea pigs, and MLB arms aren't always excited to be test subjects.  A lot of people were preaching throw all the time to build up strength, without rest, but now folks are backing down from that a little bit.    Load management in a sense, isn't having a guy throw X amount of pitches.  It's managing the AC ratio (acute to chronic) so that the two are similar and there are no spikes.  The main principal in play, in addition to biomechanics, are building up a guys 'brake' muscles in shoulders and back (lat included) so that that the arm can handle the high performance 'engine' without snapping a UCL.  Seems GRod had some faulty breaks that needed to be adjusted/repair to handle his high velo arm capabilities. 

 

MLB needs to have a system that inputs data from all systems that accounts for workload, biomechanics, training regimes, etc. so that they can parse through every workout, every throw, from every body type/arm angle so that they can start to decipher some patterns and make adjustments.  Issue is, all those data points are spread out and most are proprietary information.  

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, emmett16 said:

He didn't tear his UCL.  All of the new stuff are still theories and what they think are best practices. A lot of data points to it working but pitching still inherently carries a risk.  But, it's also hard to do the scientific work without willing guinea pigs, and MLB arms aren't always excited to be test subjects.  A lot of people were preaching throw all the time to build up strength, without rest, but now folks are backing down from that a little bit.    Load management in a sense, isn't having a guy throw X amount of pitches.  It's managing the AC ratio (acute to chronic) so that the two are similar and there are no spikes.  The main principal in play, in addition to biomechanics, are building up a guys 'brake' muscles in shoulders and back (lat included) so that that the arm can handle the high performance 'engine' without snapping a UCL.  Seems GRod had some faulty breaks that needed to be adjusted/repair to handle his high velo arm capabilities. 

 

MLB needs to have a system that inputs data from all systems that accounts for workload, biomechanics, training regimes, etc. so that they can parse through every workout, every throw, from every body type/arm angle so that they can start to decipher some patterns and make adjustments.  Issue is, all those data points are spread out and most are proprietary information.  

It's been years since I read the Arm but didn't they have a part in it about how trying to prevent UCL injuries might be causing an increase in other injuries (shoulder in particular)?  Are did I read that somewhere else?  All that stress on the body from pitching is going to settle in somewhere. 

On the common sense level it makes sense, it all makes sense.

And then a 20 year outfielder blows his UCL.

I'd like for these kids to not get hurt, we all would, but they've always gotten hurt.  Smoky Joe Wood got hurt.

So far they haven't been able to show any real evidence that any of this works.

[emmett16]

1 hour ago, yark14 said:

So basically Dylan Bundy's story in a nutshell.

He was an anecdote in 'The Arm'.  But more as a cautionary tale of taking a guy that was used to throwing hundreds of pitches daily and working his tail off, dialing him back in his workload (which he wasn't used to and significantly changed his chronic workload) and then having him go full bore in games at an arbitrary time (dangerous spike in acute workload).  The new thought is it's a happy medium of AC ratio of doing the same workload consistently w/o spikes.    The more you build up long term, the more you can go in one sitting and your AC ratio remains constant, but not too much into the danger zone.  Injuries typically happen in the danger zone when a pitcher is fatigued.  Not so much as 100+ pitches in a game, but more so 20+ max intent pitches in an inning.  One guy could throw 9 innings of 15 per for a total of 135 and be perfectly fine, where a guy who goes 3 @25 for 75 is really pushing the limits.  Guys in minors that don't have good control, are working on pitches, or are recipients of errors in the field are susceptible to high pitch count innings that can put them in the danger zone.    

[emmett16]

1 hour ago, Can_of_corn said:

It's been years since I read the Arm but didn't they have a part in it about how trying to prevent UCL injuries might be causing an increase in other injuries (shoulder in particular)?  Are did I read that somewhere else?  All that stress on the body from pitching is going to settle in somewhere. 

On the common sense level it makes sense, it all makes sense.

And then a 20 year outfielder blows his UCL.

I'd like for these kids to not get hurt, we all would, but they've always gotten hurt.  Smoky Joe Wood got hurt.

So far they haven't been able to show any real evidence that any of this works.

It was the other way around.  MLB used to have a rash of shoulder injuries, but in doing all the work to strengthen the shoulder, those injuries have come down and UCLs have started to increase coupled with guys throwing harder now.  The shoulders can take the increased velo but the UCLS have struggled to keep up. 

I agree.  It's a risk, and when you are thrwoing hard like that you risk injury.  I think it's more like playing poker or playing the odds.  Try and do things that minimize the injuries from happening.  They've at least started to see patterns and scenarios that are causing the injuries and have started to minimize some of the UCL injuries.  But I think we have another decade plus before we see a real drop.  All this stuff is new and hasn't filtered down to the lower levels yet.   I don't see them every going away completely.  

Edited March 13 by emmett16