Passan: MLB Must Act Now on Pitching Injuries

[Jagwar]

Jeff Passan at ESPN has an article on all of the current injuries MLB pitchers are experiencing. Bradish and Means aren't mentioned but they certainly could be lumped in to the topic.  

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It's all so ugly. Every day, it seems, another ulnar collateral ligament falls prey to the mere act of throwing a baseball. In a recent 48-hour period, Eury Perez, Shane Bieber and Spencer Strider -- the best young pitcher in baseball, the 2020 American League Cy Young winner and the game's current strikeout king, respectively -- all went down with damaged elbows. A game already too thin on starting pitching continues to lose its greatest talent at an alarming rate.

  Passan seems to focus on the pitch clock, but also discusses the games obsession with velocity and spin rates.

Quote

Pitchers have always gotten hurt -- and will always get hurt -- but at the highest levels the causes have morphed from longer-term overuse injuries to shorter-burst, higher-intensity, muscles-and-ligaments-can't-handle-it ones. Teams incentivize pitchers to throw in a way that many experts believe is the root cause of the game's injury issues. As much as velocity correlates with injuries, it does so similarly with productivity. Throw harder, perform better. It's a fact. It's also bad for the health of pitchers -- and the game.

 

[wse120372]

Smart teams have already figured this out and chalk it up to the cost of doing business. Also, this might be a low key way to keep the price of pitching down. Pitching is slowly becoming the running back position of MLB

[sportsfan8703]

We’ll probably see them tinker with the pitch clock and add another reliever spot for the MLB roster.  

[owknows]

The problem is the push for velocity and the mechanics required to achieve that velocity. The conventional coaching "wisdom" has driven the mechanics of pitching to a compound overhand release with a definitive whip action of the forearm during extension placing stresses on the elbow beyond it's mechanical ability to cope.

A 3/4 or even sidearm release reduces those stresses to manageable levels for the elbow, transferring the dominant force vectors to the elbow at the cost of a little velocity. I would guess that there may be a migration away from high stress release mechanics as TJS becomes so universal as to almost an expectation for every pitcher. TJS seems to have become in essence a bio-hack to improve the factory equipment, when successful. But is it reasonable to expect this to be the nature of the game? And if so, will pitchers begin proactively augmenting in this way, timing their surgeries to minimize career disruption?

These are all generalized observations of course, offered with the recognition that there are anecdotal observations that do not conform.

[Safelykept]

1 hour ago, wse120372 said:

Smart teams have already figured this out and chalk it up to the cost of doing business. Also, this might be a low key way to keep the price of pitching down. Pitching is slowly becoming the running back position of MLB

Not slowly becoming it already is MLB is a slaughterhouse for picthers

 

[Sports Guy]

They can’t do anything. The body isn’t meant to do what you ask pitchers to do.

James Andrews:

https://x.com/hgomez27/status/1776881796832956462?s=46&t=G3On-_LleGmZce-r3ClVZA

Edited April 9 by Sports Guy

[Sports Guy]

 

[DirtyBird]

More like Jeff Pussan

[casadeozo]

I’m sure there are many examples, but how to explain a player like Aroldis Chapman who has been consistently the hardest thrower in MLB the past 15 years seemingly never having a serious arm injury?

[.500_OR_BETTER]

This has nothing to do with the pitch clock and everything to do with velocity / spin rate.

[jabba72]

4 minutes ago, .500_OR_BETTER said:

This has nothing to do with the pitch clock and everything to do with velocity / spin rate.

HD camaras have really been influential on improving spin rates but pitchers elbows cant handle the torque. The only solution I see is to go back to pre HD analysis of spin and grip. Not sure when or if MLB clubs will do this.

[Rbiggs2525]

Passan has actually changed his viewpoint on this which is a good thing to see in this day and age of media. As previously stated the reward is still higher than the risk of pitching with the new mechanics. If you are a high school sophomore looking to make Varsity, 87-88 is much better than 84. When you are a college junior a few MPH could be the difference in 100’s of thousands of dollars. Strider was close to signing a 200 million dollar contract. The person I listened to yesterday was using Verlander as example. He said there was a reason he went to ODU, not to bash the school. He was pitching with good mechanics and building healthy velocity. The interviewer asked specifically about Grayson and he is one of 95% of pitchers with bad mechanics. He also noted that Skenes looks like Mark Prior 2.0, which will be interesting to track.

 

One extra thing he noted was looking into pre-tacking balls to take off pressure in forearm. I personally think they could do something with the seams instead but interesting.

Edited April 9 by Rbiggs2525

[casadeozo]

4 minutes ago, Rbiggs2525 said:

Passan has actually changed his viewpoint on this which is a good thing to see in this day and age of media. As previously stated the reward is still higher than the risk of pitching with the new mechanics. If you are a high school sophomore looking to make Varsity, 87-88 is much better than 84. When you are a college junior a few MPH could be the difference in 100’s of thousands of dollars. Strider was close to signing a 200 million dollar contract. The person I listened to yesterday was using Verlander as example. He said there was a reason he went to ODU, not to bash the school. He was pitching with good mechanics and building healthy velocity. The interviewer asked specifically about Grayson and he is one of 95% of pitchers with bad mechanics. He also noted that Skenes looks like Mark Prior 2.0, which will be interesting to track.

 

One extra thing he noted was looking into pre-tacking balls to take off pressure in forearm. I personally think they could do something with the seams instead but interesting.

Who was this speaking?

[TommyPickles]

The players certainly believe the pitch clock is part of the problem. 

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/04/mlb-mlbpa-in-dispute-over-pitch-clocks-impact-on-injuries.html

“Despite unanimous player opposition and significant concerns regarding health and safety, the commissioner’s office reduced the length of the pitch clock last December, just one season removed from imposing the most significant rule change in decades,” MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said. “Since then, our concerns about the health impacts of reduced recovery time have only intensified. The league’s unwillingness thus far to acknowledge or study the effects of these profound changes is an unprecedented threat to our game and its most valuable asset — the players.”

Edited April 9 by TommyPickles

[Rbiggs2525]

2 minutes ago, casadeozo said:

Who was this speaking?

Chris O’Leary. He did an interview yesterday on the sports junkies I randomly came across.