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

[drjohnnyfever1]

1 hour ago, Three Run Homer said:

I agree that they need to overturn the ban on sticky stuff.  If the concern is that offense will decline too much, shrink the strike zone.  

The question is--will sticky stuff just encourage pitchers to throw even harder?  Would it really lead to less stress on pitchers' arms?  

The better grip with the tackiness of pine tar or sticky stuff allows for less grip pressure.  All you need do is act as tho you're holding a ball loosely or tightly to feel how the forearm tightens near the elbow with a harder grip.  And where the worry comes for teams and fans is when a pitcher leaves with a forearm strain.  We've heard that at least twice this year with our own guys.

[AlbNYfan]

If they allow sticky stuff on the bat for a better grip (faster, harder swing) why not give pitchers the same advantage? Remember the old wide receivers in football that had soooo much sticky stuff on their hands/gloves it was almost impossible to drop the ball?

[Chavez Ravine]

12 hours ago, LookitsPuck said:

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. 

Smoltz is generally a putz, but you summarized all the things he said after the “baby” comment. By “baby” I think he means treating every pitcher as an FI machine that can only go two times through the order in one direction at max effort. He wants more mediocre dudes that are naturally gifted to eat innings.

[DrungoHazewood]

17 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

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.

 

I'm going to guess that in the olden days there was a weeding out that happened before most kids played an organized baseball game. Many, many kids played baseball all day long in the summer, and many, many of them tore up their elbow or shoulder at 11 or 13 or whatever and never pitched on a high school or other team. And nobody was Drivelining anyone. Part of the philosophy of pitching was you don't throw as hard as you possibly can because it hurts and you'll ruin your arm. A few people got away with throwing near max effort, but most couldn't. And there was a very stong stigma to coming out of a game, so pitchers knew they'd be shamed and mocked if they threw until it really hurt and had to come out.

In the 1910's Christy Mathewson (or a ghostwriter) wrote Pitching in a Pinch, where he explicitly said that using your best stuff except when you really needed to was stupid. 

Smoltz is a guy who idiotically venerates the past, making the era where he came up into some kind of golden nirvana. But, he is right that the driving factor in injuries today is that everyone throws at 110% of rated capacity all the time. It's just a matter of time until something tears. 

The problem is that there is no simple solution, since throwing at 110% is simply more effective than throwing at 90%. 90% gets you (essentially) limitless innings. But 110% makes your ERA half a run or a run lower (numbers made up for illustration). And it couldn't be more clear that when $millions and wins are on the line, essentially everyone picks the lower ERA over the more innings. An average MLB pitcher has an ERA in the mid-4s. If he backs it off to 90% so he can pitch into the 8th or 9th, he'll likely have an ERA in the mid-5s, which puts him in AAA. The difference between pacing and pitching until it breaks is often the difference between $7M a year and $70k a year.

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I'm going to guess that in the olden days there was a weeding out that happened before most kids played an organized baseball game. Many, many kids played baseball all day long in the summer, and many, many of them tore up their elbow or shoulder at 11 or 13 or whatever and never pitched on a high school or other team. And nobody was Drivelining anyone. Part of the philosophy of pitching was you don't throw as hard as you possibly can because it hurts and you'll ruin your arm. A few people got away with throwing near max effort, but most couldn't. And there was a very stong stigma to coming out of a game, so pitchers knew they'd be shamed and mocked if they threw until it really hurt and had to come out.

In the 1910's Christy Mathewson (or a ghostwriter) wrote Pitching in a Pinch, where he explicitly said that using your best stuff except when you really needed to was stupid. 

Smoltz is a guy who idiotically venerates the past, making the era where he came up into some kind of golden nirvana. But, he is right that the driving factor in injuries today is that everyone throws at 110% of rated capacity all the time. It's just a matter of time until something tears. 

The problem is that there is no simple solution, since throwing at 110% is simply more effective than throwing at 90%. 90% gets you (essentially) limitless innings. But 110% makes your ERA half a run or a run lower (numbers made up for illustration). And it couldn't be more clear that when $millions and wins are on the line, essentially everyone picks the lower ERA over the more innings. An average MLB pitcher has an ERA in the mid-4s. If he backs it off to 90% so he can pitch into the 8th or 9th, he'll likely have an ERA in the mid-5s, which puts him in AAA. The difference between pacing and pitching until it breaks is often the difference between $7M a year and $70k a year.

I guarantee you that if Christy could only get guys out by using his best stuff he would have.

 

[DrungoHazewood]

5 hours ago, AlbNYfan said:

If they allow sticky stuff on the bat for a better grip (faster, harder swing) why not give pitchers the same advantage? Remember the old wide receivers in football that had soooo much sticky stuff on their hands/gloves it was almost impossible to drop the ball?

Let's say you allow the sticky stuff. The guys whose sweeper breaks 10" might now see it break 12". You think they're going to grip the ball more loosely, throw with a little less effort, get hurt less, and be content with a 10" sweeper? 

No! They're going to grip the hell out of the ball and use the sticky stuff and try to get a 15" sweeper. And they'll keep getting hurt just as much.

It couldn't be more clear that almost every pitcher and every coach and every team chooses the high-risk, high-reward path. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

[DrungoHazewood]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I guarantee you that if Christy could only get guys out by using his best stuff he would have.

Sure. And his ligaments would have likely snapped, and he'd have put that college degree to good use instead of being a ballplayer.

Or he would have thrown at 90% like most everyone else and topped out with Cedar Rapids in the Three-I League.

[DrungoHazewood]

18 hours 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? 

1. From the beginning of time until roughly 1980 an average MLB game was somewhere between 1:50 and 2:30, all shorter than today's games with the pitch clock. It's not primarily the pitch clock.

2. Even if the pitch clock were to be shown to increase injuries by some some amount, do we really want to go back to a game where the average time is 3+ hours and increasing every year? The glacial pace of pre-clock baseball was killing interest in the sport. MLB had become a recurring meme online because it was sooooo slloooooowwww. I'll take 10% or 20% more injuries if it means we get a game that's played at a reasonable pace and gametimes in line with the other major sports that play multiple times a week.

[Malike]

I don't find the example that was used - throwing 97 instead of 101 controversial.  97 puts you in the 90+ percentile in fastball velocity.

[LookitsPuck]

On 7/3/2024 at 2:40 AM, Chavez Ravine said:

Smoltz is generally a putz, but you summarized all the things he said after the “baby” comment. By “baby” I think he means treating every pitcher as an FI machine that can only go two times through the order in one direction at max effort. He wants more mediocre dudes that are naturally gifted to eat innings.

Those guys would get shelled. There’s too much incentive for teams and players to be as effective as possible…number of times through order be damned. Unless MLB put an innings floor on pitchers, this problem will continue to exist. The issue isn’t with MLB. It’s the incentive structure through every level.

These guys aren’t babied. If anything, they have less available to them than during the Smoltz era where both hitters and pitchers were roided up (including test). 

Edited 23 hours ago by LookitsPuck

[drjohnnyfever1]

On 7/3/2024 at 1:53 AM, AlbNYfan said:

If they allow sticky stuff on the bat for a better grip (faster, harder swing) why not give pitchers the same advantage? Remember the old wide receivers in football that had soooo much sticky stuff on their hands/gloves it was almost impossible to drop the ball?

Fred Biletnikoff!  King of Stick.  Lol.  The refs hated him because every time he touched the ball it got the gook all over it and then the refs got it all over themselves.  Lol 

And I agree that it should be allowed in a modest way in MLB.

On 7/3/2024 at 7:51 AM, DrungoHazewood said:

Let's say you allow the sticky stuff. The guys whose sweeper breaks 10" might now see it break 12". You think they're going to grip the ball more loosely, throw with a little less effort, get hurt less, and be content with a 10" sweeper? 

No! They're going to grip the hell out of the ball and use the sticky stuff and try to get a 15" sweeper. And they'll keep getting hurt just as much.

It couldn't be more clear that almost every pitcher and every coach and every team chooses the high-risk, high-reward path. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

Just because you say it, doesn't make it so.

What year was it before they started checking Pitchers after every half inning for sticky substances?  There was a year where it was pretty clear that pitchers were using something... tacki-goo?  I forget what year that was.  Were arm injuries up that year?  It might sway me a little if they were, but otherwise I don't think the the firmness of the grip is indicative of the spin.  The firmness of the grip is the control of the ball itself.  A harder grip would diminish spin.  Think of it as "english" in tennis.  The racquet glances the ball, but its the speed of the racquet that determines the spin.