The MLB Pitching Epidemic Gets Worse By The Day With Elbows Falling Off Left And Right - So What's The Actual Problem And Can We Fix It?
Baseball has entered a very scary time when it comes to pitchers and their arms. We can't go 24 hours without a pitcher going down with an elbow injury. While we all know that the human arm is not meant to physically throw a baseball, this latest avalanche of injuries has been eye-opening. Literally as I started this blog Nick Pivetta went on the IL.
Advertisement
Framber Valdez yesterday. Spencer Strider over the weekend. Shane Bieber last week. Ohtani, Eury Perez, Walker Buehler, Shane McClannahan, Giolito, Jacob deGrom, and even Yankees reliever Jonathan Loaisiga. All of them cooked. Gerrit Cole at the moment appears to have avoided disaster, but we'll see as he ramps up his rehab.
So what the hell is going on?
Everyone wants to blame the pitch clock because that's the latest thing to be implemented that impacts pitching. Tony Clark issued this statement on behalf of the Players Association in defense of the clock.
Gerrit Cole, a huge advocate for his fellow players, punched back yesterday furious at how MLB quickly dismissed that as being a potential culprit.
(The Athletic) “When I read the response from MLB — I didn’t think it was very thorough…To be able to say you implement something in one year and it has no effect is shortsighted. We are really going to understand the effects of what the pitch clock is maybe five years down the road, but to dismiss it out of hand, I didn’t think it was helpful for the situation.”
“Two seconds,” Cole said, “I don’t know what advertising money you’re getting for two seconds that makes it logical to move it up for two seconds. I know the games got longer as the season went on, but you’re not going to change the curve of that direction. You’re always going to start off with shorter games at the beginning of the year and finish with longer games. The games become more important at the end. I asked someone high up who doesn’t work there anymore what exactly the reason was for it, and he couldn’t really give me a good answer.”
“Well, we can start by having more helpful conversations and not pointing fingers and not saying that it’s absolutely this or it’s absolutely not that and we can make it feel that players aren’t necessarily caught in the middle of all of it,” Cole said. “But those aren’t going to have a direct correlation to better performance. I don’t have the answers. I’m just frustrated by the fact that I don’t feel like taking care of the players is the main focus of it.”
Some of you may hate Cole because of the sticky substance scandal and simply the fact that he's the Yankees' ace, but he knows what he's talking about. Dude won the Cy Young last season and is out here blasting the people in charge for how little they care about the player. And really all he's saying here is that we don't know that the clock is or isn't a problem, but MLB discarding that whole idea right now is fucking stupid.
I don't think the clock is the end all be all answer to the alarming amount of elbow injuries right now, but it's definitely part of the problem. Along with that, you have this growing emphasis on velocity and spin rate. It's everything these days. When I was a kid throwing 95mph in a big league game was a big deal. When Joba Chamberlain came up through the system throwing 100mph it was like when they broke out the alley oop in Semi Pro for the first time. No one knew what the fuck to do with that because we'd never seen it.
Nowadays everyone is trying to push their arms to the limit and it starts at an early age. By the time guys get to the big leagues their elbows are ticking time bombs. Pitchers do whatever they can to avoid getting MRIs because almost always you're going to find damage in there. It's about determining what's a red flag in there and what can be managed. The reason for that is how much harm throwing a baseball consistently 95+ can do to you. When max effort begins at a young age you are fucked when you reach your 20s.
Verlander went on a good rant yesterday where he dove into the problem with kids at 10 years old feeling required to throw as hard as they can. The trickle down effect has been detrimental.
Advertisement
Another issue at play here is how Manfred fucked with the baseball over the last seven or so years. The juiced balls were a disaster. Swing and miss become essential instead of giving up soft contact on well located pitches. Why? Because everything left the park. Velo and spin rate became paramount. Now we're back to a de-juiced ball, but the constant manipulation of the ball has created a ton of carnage. Along with that you allowed pitchers to use all sort of sticky substances to enhance grip, spin, and velo before laying the hammer down mid-season in 2022 and stopping all of that. Tyler Glasnow was very vocal that his major arm injury came because he was forced to grip the ball harder and as a result apply added stress on his elbow to then cause the tear.
I think it's a sprinkling of all those reasons. When you start to change all these things and factor in the max effort mentality it dooms your arm.
So what do you do? Is it taking a closer look at the ball the NPB uses over in Japan? Do you add seconds to the clock as the season grows on? Is it attempting to dial back max effort emphasis? You want guys throwing less hard all of a sudden? Yes the way Greg Maddux did it was awesome, but you can't just ask guys to do that overnight. We're just gonna have guys throw 92 mph now? Hitters will destroy that slop. You're gonna throw more breaking balls? That will destroy your arm too. More changeups? Are we about to be a changeup heavy league? Come on.
No one has the answer, but I think right now everyone has their eyes wide open as they realize there's a major issue right now in the league. Sure injuries are a major part of all sports, but we are entering a very scary time in baseball. At this rate the Cy Young will just be last man standing and not even close to the best pitcher in the game. The worst part is as I map it all out here I don't know when or how this can be resolved. We may just be fucked and it's not even mid-April.