A major issue around Major League Baseball this season, and the last few, is the number of pitchers who are getting injured.  Pitching injuries have always been a thing in baseball but it seems the rate at which pitchers are going down has increased over the past several seasons.  Of course, people are trying to figure out what is causing all of these pitchers to head to the Injured List.  As usual though, most people want a simple answer.  An easy fix.  However, as in the cause of most things, I believe it isn’t one thing that has led us to this place of hoping your guy isn’t the next to go down for the season, but a handful of factors that are causing this rash of injuries.

One of the biggest factors I think plays into the fragility of pitching arms is that starting in little league, pitchers are babied.  I can’t come up with a better way of saying that.  Americans limit the pitches a kid can throw from his first time climbing the hill right up until retires from the Majors.  The problem with this is that by limiting the pitches thrown all the time, it forces the pitcher to max out his arm every time he takes the mound.  If a pitcher has a 100-pitch limit, every time he gets to 100 pitches, he has maxed out his arm.  If you keep pushing something to its limit, eventually it’s going to break. 

Think of a car.  You probably own a car.  Your car probably has a speedometer that goes well over 100 miles per hour.  Maybe somewhere between 120 and 160 or whatever.  However, assuming you are not a maniac, you probably only get your speed up to 80 to 85 miles per hour on the highway.  So, your car can do 150 but you only drive it about half that speed.  Now think about how many miles your car has on it.  Think about how many miles an average car can get.  100,000 to 200,000 is the average for a gas fueled car before it breaks down.  Now, think about race cars.  NASCAR drivers start out with brand new, state of the art engines and they are expected to last about 2 races.  Barely 1,000 miles.  How many drivers see their weekend come to an end because their engine has crapped out on them?  They didn’t even last the 400 or 500 miles of the race. 

So how can your average, everyday, run of the mill car last so many more miles than a brand new, state of the art, fine-tuned NASCAR engine?  It’s because the NASCAR drivers are pushing their engine to it’s limit the entire time they are on the track.  If they were out there driving the speed limit, their cars would last a lot longer.  But their cars are made to go 200 miles per hour and they push them to that mark or as close to it as they can get (depending on the track) for as long as they can until it blows.  This is what baseball coaches and leagues are doing to pitches when they have a hard limit to their pitch count.  If you train to throw 100 pitches and every time out, you throw 100 pitches, well, that is maxing out your arm.  And just like a NASCAR engine, if you keep maxing it out, it’s eventually going to blow. 

Now, this may not have come out right.  I am not saying pitchers should go out and throw 150 to 200 pitches in a game or anything like that.  What I am saying is they should train to throw a good 150 pitches.  That way, when they go out there and throw 100 to 120, they are not maxing out their arm.  Their arm will actually have more to give before breaking down.  Thus, it will be less likely to break down. 

Pitch count isn’t the only way pitchers are maxing out their arms every time they pitch.  The style of pitching nowadays is focused on velocity and spin rate.  Throwing hard and throwing good breaking balls obviously has always been what pitchers stived for.  In today’s game, however, it’s become the end all be all of pitching.  With the new technology they have to track pitches, they can tell you the exact spin rate of every pitch.  Something that was not possible just a decade or so ago.  The higher the spin rate, the better.  Organizations will judge pitchers on these stats rather than whether or not the other team scores runs when they pitch.  A minor leaguer could go out and not give up a run for 10 straight outings but if his spin rate isn’t high, teams will chalk it up to luck and not think much of him.  The other side of that coin is the guy who has those great spin rates and velo but gives up 5 runs every time he starts.  Teams will chalk that up to bad luck and think he’s great.  How many times have you heard the expression “he has the best stuff on the staff” used to describe the guy with the worst stats on a staff.  It’s been a running joke with me and my friends for years now.  There is a lot more to pitching than how hard you can throw and how much you can spin a ball but I am getting off track now.  The point of this is to demonstrate how far teams take the love of spin rate and velo and how much they stress it.  Pitchers have no choice but to focus on it and try to max it out every time.            

One of the ways some pitchers tried to max out their spin rate was by using sticky stuff on their hands to better grip the ball and really spin it.  The league outlawed this in 2021.  Though technically putting a foreign substance on the ball was outlawed 100 years earlier, the new policy included after inning inspections to crack down on users.  So now pitchers who used the stuff have to try to create the same spin rates without it.  That puts a lot more stress on their arms.     

One of the reasons players are not afraid to max their arm out on every pitch is because Tommy John surgery has become so common and has such a high success rate that pitchers don’t fear it.  There is a 90% chance a player will return to the field and play at the same level he was at before the injury.  No one wants to go under the knife if they don’t have to and missing 9 months is definitely not what anyone is looking to do.  However, TJ surgery has become routine at all levels of play, high school, college, the minors and in the Show.  There has been a running joke for years if not decades that pitchers should just have the surgery when they are young to get it out of the way.  It’s just no big deal nowadays. 

Don’t get me wrong.  This is a good thing.  The fact that guys can have what should be a devastating injury fixed pretty easily is great.  It’s just a side effect that pitchers are now more than willing to sell out for velocity and spin rate on every pitch because they have nothing to fear but 9 months off.   And with the type of money the top pitchers in the league make, possibly having to go under the knife is worth the risk. 

Roger Clemons and Nolan Ryan were the two hardest throwers when I was growing up.  There is a report out there that says if you measured it the way they do today, Ryan could hit 106 on the gun.  One of the things that they did, that guys today just don’t do is use their legs.  Both guys had huge legs and they both pitched with their legs.  That’s a big part of it.  Getting all their power from their lower bodies, not just relying on their arms, Today’s pictures don’t do at all.  Sure, they push off the mound like everybody else, but it’s just not the same.  Like, if you saw Nolan pitch, if you saw Roger pitch, it was all legs.  And generating the power, the speed from your legs and using your whole body takes pressure off the arm and the elbow.  And thus, less likely to hurt it. Again, this goes back to the thing about maxing out your arm every pitch and every game, Today’s pitches just put too much pressure on their arms, not using their legs is yet another way in which they do it.

Ok I know Nolan Ryan eventually blew out his elbow.  But he did it when he was 39 years old.  He didn’t have Tommy John and just let it heal on its own.  Oh, then he pitched 7 more seasons without it breaking down again.  And in the first 4 of those seasons, he threw over 200 innings.  You can’t avoid all injuries in sports, baseball included. But there’s a big difference between a 39-year-old breaking down and a 24-year-old.    

Another sign that guys don’t use their legs like they used to is that pitchers don’t run anymore.  From what I have been able to gather, it’s just not a part of their routine nowadays.  If you are at least as old as I am you can remember watching spring training games where there would be a group of pitchers running the outfield warning track from foul line to foul line during the game.  While the ball was in play.  There would just be 4 or 5 guys running along the wall in the outfield.  The pitchers wanted to get their running in so they didn’t have to do it after the game.  You never see that anymore.  Now, teams these days have huge spring training facilities and it could be that the pitchers are running, just somewhere else.  But from hearing guys talk during the game broadcast, this isn’t the case.  Pitchers just are not preparing themselves to pitch for a long time.  They are not building up their stamina and they are not building up their lower bodies.  They just are not built to pitch more than 100 pitches, or 5 innings.  Long toss is something else that seems to have disappeared from pitchers’ routines.  Roger Clemons was a big proponent of long toss and would hold his toss partner to a very high standard as he took it so seriously.  I believe some pitchers still do long toss but it is clearly not used as much as it used to be.  There is just so much that pitchers used to do to stay healthy and get their bodies ready to pitch full games that is just not done today. 

Now you may be thinking that pitchers are no longer expected to throw 9 innings so they stopped training to.  The numbers say they should not face a line up a third time through so teams are going to go to their bullpens early anyways.  But that’s the point.  It’s not about what they are going to do, it’s about what they train to do.  As I said, if you only throw 100 pitches every time out and you only train to throw 100 pitches then you are maxing out your arm every time out and that is leading to injuries.  If they prepared like old school pitchers, their bodies would handle 100 pitches no problem and they would not break down as often.  And it’s not just their arms, guys are going out with back problems and oblique issues.  These too can be avoided if they prepared their bodies better.   With the lack of going deep into games like the old days, pitchers should be getting hurt less, not more.           

Here is something else that I feel could be a contributing factor that was brought up on a Yankee game by Joe Girardi.  Pitchers do not use wind ups anymore.  Going all the way back to the 1800’s pitchers used to wind up before throwing each pitch.  In the very early days, they were exaggerated wind ups.  Somewhere in the 60’s or 70’s I would say, the wind ups started becoming more compact.  Basically, guys would just lift their arms over their heads and then swing their pitching arm around and let loose.  Nowadays, very few pitchers have any type of a wind up.  They all basically come set, pull the ball out of the glove, rear back and throw as hard as they can.  It may not seem like much but maybe the wind ups would loosen the arm up just a little, get the blood flowing in the arm, before they exert the force needed to throw a Major League pitch.  Flexing their elbows two or three times as the moved the ball around their heads, or even behind their backs, could be just enough to take some of the stress off. Moving their shoulders around as they wind up would also loosen that up preparing the arm to fire away.  I have no proof that this matters and wouldn’t begin to know how to get any.  However, is it just a coincidence that since guys have stopped winding up, they started getting hurt more often?  Maybe.  But maybe not.  Again, I think it has to be considered a contributing factor.  And it is something teams and players should start to think about bringing back.  They don’t need to be big long exaggerated wind ups like the days of yore, but just bringing the ball over their head like Clemons, Ryan, and others of the last generation, could be helpful in keeping their arms healthy. 

Now for the culprit the pitchers want to blame, the pitch clock.  Like everything else I have mentioned, the pitch clock is a contributor but not the main reason for the injuries.  What it has done is exasperate everything else.  It takes the concept of pitchers maxing out their arms on every pitch to the next level.  A level where we are learning pitchers can’t survive.  If the pitch clock was around back in the last century it would not have been an issue (aside from the stupidity of it) because most pitcher threw at a quicker pace anyways and they were not maxing out their arm consistently.  But since pitcher have starting taking the modern approach they need to take as much time as they can in-between pitches to let their arm recover from the last pitch and to allow them to hit their max velo and spin rate on the next pitch.  By forcing pitchers to throw a lot quicker than they are used to, it does not allow for their arms to recover and they are actually maxing their arms out even more than they want to.  Is it the pitch clock’s fault or the pitchers fault?  Well, I guess that’s up to debate.  But when you make major rule changes you have to take into consideration all the unintended effects the new rules will have.  Clearly no one in MLB even considered the effects the clock would have on the modern-day pitcher.  They just knew that back in the day guys threw with a quicker pace so it must be OK.  Changing the parameters in which someone has to pitch but not changing the philosophy of pitching doesn’t make sense and clearly leads to disaster.  Will guys adjust over time?  Sure.  But what happens until then?  Players’ and teams’ seasons are destroyed.  Maybe MLB should have started with a longer pitch clock and slowly lowered it year after year until it got to this point.  But then they were looking for a quick fix and couldn’t take the long view of things.  Even better would have been to just keep the clock in the minors and let the next generation of pitchers who would be used to pitching at the quicker pace eventually take over the game.  But then when they got to the Majors the idiots, I mean Analytical departments, would have made them slow down.  And there it is, the biggest problem in all of baseball, analytics.  The whole max velo and spin rate comes from analytics.  The 100 pitches and you’re done?  Analytics.  MLB let analytics take over and change the whole philosophy of baseball and now they are paying the price.  I started this by saying there was not one factor that is leading to the rash on pitcher injuries in baseball.  As I laid out here, that is true.  But the underlying issue is analytics.  But they are not going anywhere so the players are going to have to adjust.  Until they do, you can expect the injuries to just keep piling up.