John Smoltz on why pitchers are "breaking" and what we should do about it..

[Roy Firestone]

"I wouldn't say a word if injuries were getting better in this philosophy of analytics towards pitching, but they're getting worse. That's why they don't talk about it .

We've  screamed at the mountaintop for years about these players careers getting shortened and they don't frankly care.. because they're just going to get another Paul Skenes in their mind.

That's what they think.

The next man up.

It is possible we're brainwashed to think 100 pitches and a guy breaks.

Everything we're doing is opposite of successful long term careers.

We limit, we baby, we don't let them do the things they're naturally gifted to do.

We've turned them into robots, and we've asked them to just go as “fast and as hard as you can.”

There is nothing wrong with pitching at 97 miles an hour if you have the capacity to grow it 101.

There's nothing wrong with having a 3.4 era if it gives you 230 innings.

You know it's impossible to have a bad year and pitch 220 innings.

It's statistically impossible.

But yet we're asking guys to go 180(innings) And we're going to compartmentalize the rest of those innings through other guys.

So, the answer is we have to prepare these guys differently and ask them to do things that are more long term than short term.

But until we do that, we're going to have the same type of thinking of “ when is his Tommy John coming?”

You're going to find an outlier out of every 50 pitchers, but you're not going to find 10.

And I think that's the problem in our game."

[Tryptamine]

I can't stand this mentality.  There's plenty of reasons for all the arm issues. #1, kids now play baseball year round and their arms never get a rest. Even when I grew up as a kid in the late 80's and early 90's the extremely talented kids would play baseball in the summer, another sport in the fall and another in the winter. Now kids are playing traveling ball whenever they aren't playing school ball.  #2, pitchers are throwing harder than ever. Just a few decades ago a guy touching 98/99 was rare, now every bullpen has a couple.  #3, pitches have more rotation and movement than ever before and breaking pitches are notoriously hard on the arm.   It has nothing to do with "babying" anyone. The fact is that by the time kids reach the age they can be drafted, they've put far more mileage on their arms than pros of yesteryear ever had. It's also a fact that if pitchers decided to ease up on the velocity so they could go more innings, they'd get teed off on. People need to stop looking at the Nolan Ryans of the world and expecting that to be normal. His arm durability was a just about unparalleled. Unfortunately at this point I'm not sure there's much that can be done to help prevent injuries. Pitchers aren't going to throw softer and they're not going to stop throwing breaking pitches at the cost of their performance and their careers. We're getting closer and closer to the point that pitchers are becoming like the running backs of the NFL. Use them up while they're cheap and only the elite of the elite are going to get big 2nd contracts. 

[sportsfan8703]

If only there were a magical vitamin that all the players could take like when Smoltz pitched…  

[Winning_Season]

36 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

Unfortunately at this point I'm not sure there's much that can be done to help prevent injuries. Pitchers aren't going to throw softer and they're not going to stop throwing breaking pitches at the cost of their performance and their careers. 

I disagree, if you reduced the number of pitchers on major league rosters, it strongly incentivize pitchers to make it later in games, and thus need to pace themselves more (i.e. throw softer)

I find nothing compelling about and endless stream on anonymous starters and relievers throwing 100 mph (with the resulting increase in 3 true outcome baseball) just to have Tommy John surgery and get replaced by the next guy.

[baltfan]

57 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

I can't stand this mentality.  There's plenty of reasons for all the arm issues. #1, kids now play baseball year round and their arms never get a rest. Even when I grew up as a kid in the late 80's and early 90's the extremely talented kids would play baseball in the summer, another sport in the fall and another in the winter. Now kids are playing traveling ball whenever they aren't playing school ball.  #2, pitchers are throwing harder than ever. Just a few decades ago a guy touching 98/99 was rare, now every bullpen has a couple.  #3, pitches have more rotation and movement than ever before and breaking pitches are notoriously hard on the arm.   It has nothing to do with "babying" anyone. The fact is that by the time kids reach the age they can be drafted, they've put far more mileage on their arms than pros of yesteryear ever had. It's also a fact that if pitchers decided to ease up on the velocity so they could go more innings, they'd get teed off on. People need to stop looking at the Nolan Ryans of the world and expecting that to be normal. His arm durability was a just about unparalleled. Unfortunately at this point I'm not sure there's much that can be done to help prevent injuries. Pitchers aren't going to throw softer and they're not going to stop throwing breaking pitches at the cost of their performance and their careers. We're getting closer and closer to the point that pitchers are becoming like the running backs of the NFL. Use them up while they're cheap and only the elite of the elite are going to get big 2nd contracts. 

I completely agree with this.  Most of this damage has already been done.  Travel teams have ruined many kids and have left others far more susceptible to injury in the minors and majors.  

[oriolediehard]

I keep hearing that pitchers throwing everything they got and the pitch clock. People here disagree about the pitch clock, then why is it mentioned numerous times on radio sports shows?  Why has there been more TJ injuries since the pitch clock?  Does the pitch clock really speed the game that much?  There are other things that can speed the game up, like eliminate the batter stepping out of the box? Allow less times managers, pitching coaches and catchers to go to the mound? 

[Gentile4]

13 minutes ago, oriolediehard said:

I keep hearing that pitchers throwing everything they got and the pitch clock. People here disagree about the pitch clock, then why is it mentioned numerous times on radio sports shows?  Why has there been more TJ injuries since the pitch clock?  Does the pitch clock really speed the game that much?  There are other things that can speed the game up, like eliminate the batter stepping out of the box? Allow less times managers, pitching coaches and catchers to go to the mound? 

In 2023, game times were reduced by 24 minutes.

[Say O!]

The same John Smoltz who had TJ surgery himself?  They all break…

[ChosenOne21]

25 minutes ago, oriolediehard said:

Why has there been more TJ injuries since the pitch clock?

Probably some combination of all the things that were leading to increased TJ before the pitch clock being taken even further and year to year variability.

Edited July 2 by ChosenOne21

[Aristotelian]

1 hour ago, Winning_Season said:

I disagree, if you reduced the number of pitchers on major league rosters, it strongly incentivize pitchers to make it later in games, and thus need to pace themselves more (i.e. throw softer)

I find nothing compelling about and endless stream on anonymous starters and relievers throwing 100 mph (with the resulting increase in 3 true outcome baseball) just to have Tommy John surgery and get replaced by the next guy.

I'd rather increase the number of pitchers to spread innings around more and account for modern pitch counts. 

[bpilktree67]

The same thing is happening in all sports.  What does travel ball and AAU have in common?  They just play games & they don't practice, they don't learn the proper mechanics, they don't learn fundamentals, and rarely practice at all it is just a group of kids that play games and tournaments.  That is whey the United States is falling behind in players being drafted in the NBA from the United States.   Both AAU you dont do those little things then you go to some tournament and play countless games in a short period and then a few weeks later you do the same thing.  Even in high school and college sports they are playing more and more games.  If you have to play more games that means you are practicing less and less.  

[LookitsPuck]

Oh god, I can't stand John Smoltz. This alone is so beyond idiotic and completely unfounded, "We limit, we baby, we don't let them do the things they're naturally gifted to do."

No, the problem is because they're not limited, because they're not babied, because they're pushed for maximum exertion on every pitch and everybody in the league is bigger/faster/stronger. That's the issue here.

Everybody wants to throw the hardest. Everybody wants to go deeper in games. And let's be frank, here. John Smoltz pitched during the steroid era. There's no guarantee that he didn't use. But so many starters did. There's established testing now. But you have guys still throwing more and harder. Something has to give here. 

[Moose Milligan]

2 hours ago, Tryptamine said:

 The fact is that by the time kids reach the age they can be drafted, they've put far more mileage on their arms than pros of yesteryear ever had.  

I don't believe this.  Pitch counts have started at the high school level and they vary by state.  There are typically rules that dictate how often you can throw a pitcher at the youth levels.  

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/high-school-pitch-count-rules-by-state/

There are pitch limits/usage limits in the NCAA, too.

Maybe there's something to the fact that they play more than they used to, but I don't believe kids have put more mileage on their arms than the old days when there was nothing in place to keep them from pitching on a Friday and a Saturday when no one batted an eye.

 

[Sports Guy]

I think the evidence shows there isn’t more TJ surgery than before 

[Malike]

TJS by year. (MiL/MLB)

2016 - 144

2017 - 144

2018 - 134

2019 - 123

2020 - 76

2021 - 151

2022 - 96

2023 - 88

2024 - 46 (and counting)

Tommy John Surgery List (@MLBPlayerAnalys) - Google Sheets