Are we seeing similar health issues in non-US markets where the max-effort and training programs may not exist (Japan) or even the minors where they are starting to be implemented?
The Tommy John Epidemic
- Thread starter BigSoxFan
- Start date
Strider avoids TJ, but gets a UCL brace and he's done for the year: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/04/spencer-strider-undergoes-season-ending-internal-brace-surgery.html
"We work under the assumption that ever pitcher is one pitch away from blowing his arm out."
~Mets GM, the day after they signed Petey.
View: https://twitter.com/mlbtraderumors/status/1783864502653497517?s=46&t=-M7K07aV9oTvsCKHtZkfZQ[/URL
Marlins gotta be doing something wrong
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Marlins gotta be doing something wrong
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Red Sox offseason looking ... maybe not better but whatever you call the intersection of disappointment and schadenfreude.
I had dinner with an MLB insider friend last night, and in his view, one piece of the TJ epidemic puzzle is the grip, which I hadn't heard before. Growing up the old adage was that pitchers held the ball like it was an egg. Now, to generate higher spin, they grip it very firmly. That means that when you perform the unnatural act of throwing, all those muscles and tissues in the forearm and elbow are pulled tighter than they would otherwise have been, making the stress on them much worse than what pitchers experienced in "the old days".
I had dinner with an MLB insider friend last night, and in his view, one piece of the TJ epidemic puzzle is the grip, which I hadn't heard before. Growing up the old adage was that pitchers held the ball like it was an egg. Now, to generate higher spin, they grip it very firmly. That means that when you perform the unnatural act of throwing, all those muscles and tissues in the forearm and elbow are pulled tighter than they would otherwise have been, making the stress on them much worse than what pitchers experienced in "the old days".
One thing I was wondering about regarding this was if we’d start seeing teams be more aggressive in promoting their high-upside pitching prospects. Why have them waste bullets in the minors?
That's what Tyler Glasnow said in his interview from a couple years ago. Pitchers got used to the sticky stuff and when it was banned, they compensated by gripping the ball harder. Once they got used to having unhittable spin on the ball, they didn't want to give it up even if it means tearing up their elbows.
The solution that would help pitchers stay healthy is letting them load up on Spider Tack again. But that's not fair to the hitters and contributes to the poor product on the field. I'm not sure how you get everyone involved to value health over performance.
How much better does Spider Tack let pitchers pitch than the harder grip they're using to compensate now? And now much harder does that make it for hitters? I want to see baseball's best players (pitchers included) perform at high levels and not get devastating injuries. If the tradeoff is a few fewer dingers, I make that trade.
When you compare the numbers of pitchers used per season in 2003 to 2023 it is a huge difference. Checking the top ten teams by fWAR in 2003, 26 pitchers used during the season was the most among the top 10 teams. The least number of pitchers used among those teams was 17. In 2023, the most was 41 pitchers and the least was 26. I didn't average all 30 teams but it looks to be about 12 more pitchers were used per team in 2023 vs 2003.
There needs to be an incentive for the team to keep pitchers healthy. Currently teams don't care because the risk of blowing out a guys arm is worth the value of having guys max out on every pitch. Teams clearly feel they can just bring up another guy.
It is probably not doable but limiting the number of pitchers a team can use during a season would incentivise teams to keep pitchers healthy. If a team continues to push players to their max on every pitch they will run out of pitchers to use during the season. Pitchers, rightfully so, feel the only way to make and stay in the majors is to go all out on every pitch. Maybe if teams knew they would run out of guys they would be more active in teaching players how to go deeper into games and learn to pitch at 85-90% max instead of pitching at nearly 100% on every pitch.
Of course, this is my belief that the majority of these injuries are because pitchers are throwing harder and max effort all the time.
There needs to be an incentive for the team to keep pitchers healthy. Currently teams don't care because the risk of blowing out a guys arm is worth the value of having guys max out on every pitch. Teams clearly feel they can just bring up another guy.
It is probably not doable but limiting the number of pitchers a team can use during a season would incentivise teams to keep pitchers healthy. If a team continues to push players to their max on every pitch they will run out of pitchers to use during the season. Pitchers, rightfully so, feel the only way to make and stay in the majors is to go all out on every pitch. Maybe if teams knew they would run out of guys they would be more active in teaching players how to go deeper into games and learn to pitch at 85-90% max instead of pitching at nearly 100% on every pitch.
Of course, this is my belief that the majority of these injuries are because pitchers are throwing harder and max effort all the time.
I've come around to this being the best solution, as well. Earlier in the thread (or maybe a different one?), this article was posted https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2024/4/2/24118963/pitcher-injuries-crisis-mlb-study-tommy-john-ucl from Ben Lindbergh.
If pitchers don't pitch max effort, they will almost certainly get hammered. A good example was Kevin Gausman, one of the best pitchers in baseball, who got a slow start this spring and decided to ramp up in real games. When he faced NY in his second start of the season, his average velocity was down 2-3 MPH from normal, and he got knocked out in the second inning (after dominating NY the previous handful of times he'd faced them).
Limiting the number of pitchers isn't the answer, paying younger guys more will help this and so many other problems in MLB.
Limiting the number of pitchers isn't the answer, paying younger guys more will help this and so many other problems in MLB.
Then there will be more pitchers throwing harder and for fewer innings, which I don't want. Pitchers are too good (per batter), which is why there aren't enough balls in play. And pitchers don't throw enough innings, which I don't like aesthetically. Pitchers throwing this hard and being this good is also (I believe the best explanation) why they're losing their UCLs.
I don't think it's clear that there actually are more injuries this year, I think it could be more that the injuries this season have been to higher profile pitchers on average.
Also these discussions have solidified in my mind that I actually dislike watching most starting pitchers, I prefer the second half of baseball games to the first half almost always. In 2020, when they did seven inning games for doubleheaders, the worst thing about that for me was that it was so much easier for a SP to cover an entire game. It's a team sport, on the hitting and the pitching side.
This is where I'm at, too. Try and regulate it as much as you can, but the alternative we're seeing now sucks. Can they pre-stick the balls?
Signed, Kaleb Ort's Mother
Agreed. Add the sticky stuff, then move the mound back a foot or whatever relevels the playing field. Oh! You could do that, too, just flatten the mound and LITERALLY level the playing field!
Yeah, I mean...the current path for injuries is horrible for the game. The days of the pitching duel are over, and it's a terrible thing for the game.
But the hitters are not performing at high levels because the pitchers with their unsustainable spin rates and velocity are too good. Balls in play are at the lowest point in history. League batting averages are barely better than 1968. Hitters have recognized that they're not going to be able to string together enough base hits in a row to score someone, so they try to hit it over the wall on every swing. That results in pitchers trying to allow even less contact, generating even more strikeouts and even more incentive to try to hit home runs. It's not an enjoyable product to anyone except psychos like Jon Abbey.
There need to be incentives for pitching to contact. Deadening the ball would be a way to start and it seems like they may have actually done that this year. But MLB needs to be loud and intentional about it so everyone knows how things are going to go from the start of Spring Training. No sneaking changes in to see how everything works out.