NEWSLETTER
Although they’re certainly not all related or tied to the same root cause, there’s no denying the rash of pitching injuries across Major League Baseball so far this season.
And although it’s REALLY not related to the reason the league and the players union are fighting (we’ll get there in a second), there’s also just a ton of big injuries going on around baseball all at once: Garrett Mitchell, Dylan Carlson, Eloy Jimenez, DJ LeMahieu, Sean Murphy, Josh Jung, Nick Senzel, Trevor Story, and just yesterday, Luis Robert.
(And, I mean, there’s a billion other injuries on both sides of the ball, I just picked some names I thought you’d care about).
MLB Players Union — Statement
In any case, it’s the pitching injuries that has everyone’s attention, with the MLB Players association coming out with an impromptu statement scolding MLB and the way they handled instituting (last season) and accelerating (this season) the pitch clock over the last year and a half.
Despite unanimous Player opposition and significant concerns regarding health and safety, the Commissioner’s Office reduced the length of the Pitch Clock last December, just one season removed from imposing the most significant rule change in decades.
Since then, our concerns about the health impacts of reduced recovery time have only intensified.
The league’s unwillingness thus far to acknowledger or study the effects of these profound changes is an unprecedented threat to our game and its most valuable asset — the Players.
MLB — Response
In response, someone at MLB (opened their notes app and) typed up the following:
This statement ignores the empiracle evidence and much more significant long-term trend, over multiple decades, of velocity and spin increases that are highly correlated with arm injuries. Nobody wants to see pitchers get hurt in this game, which is why MLB is currently undergoing a significant comprehensive research study into the causes of this long-term increase, interviewing prominent medical experts across baseball which to date has been consistent with an independent analysis by John Hopkins University that found no evidence to support that the introduction of the pitch clock has increased injuries. In fact, JHU found no evidence that pitchers who worked quickly in 2023 were more likely to sustain an injury than those who worked less quickly on average. JHU also found no evidence that pitchers who sped up their pace were more likely to sustant an injury than those who did not.
Reaction and Breakdown
First and foremost, a general reaction from me: This sort of online battling through angry statements is so incredibly pointless and outdated. And it’s not a great look for a sport that just had an incredibly hostile round of CBA negotiations, a massive cheating scandal involving the World Series champion Astros, and a gambling (theft?) scandal involving the most popular international superstar player ever. But they can’t help themselves. Either side. Any opportunity to dunk on each other is taken. It’s so embarrassing and depressing and short-sighted. I’m already dreading the next round of CBA negotiations, if this is what the relationship looks like during “peace” time.
Second of all, this is one of those debates that won’t ever pull people from one side to the other. How you feel about the pitch clock in general – even absent of injuries – is going to inform whose “side” you’re on here, regardless of the data and context.
I’m not immune to that of course, despite my best efforts, and so I see the Union’s statement as pretty silly. I do understand the intent, and I’m not saying there’s no correlation between the pitch clock and injuries. But they just leave out SO much context.
But most of all, it seems likely that an increasing focus on velocity and spin rates — and at younger and younger ages — is what’s leading to the increase in pitcher injuries.
Here’s Dr. James Andrews speaking on this very issue over the offseason:
“I started following the injury patterns and injury rates in the year 2000,” Andrews says. “Back in those days, I did about eight or nine Tommy Johns per year in high school aged and younger. The large majority of Tommy Johns were at the Major League level, then the Minor League level, then the college level and then just a handful of high school kids.
“In today’s situation, the whole thing is flip-flopped. The largest number is youth baseball. They’ve surpassed what’s being done in the Major Leagues. That’s a terrible situation.”
Andrews says the obsession with velocity and spin at the youth level is having a devastating impact on arms and the game itself.
“These kids are throwing 90 mph their junior year of high school,” he says. “The ligament itself can’t withstand that kind of force. We’ve learned in our research lab that baseball is a developmental sport. The Tommy John ligament matures at about age 26. In high school, the red line where the forces go beyond the tensile properties of the ligament is about 80 mph.”
Basically, as long as front offices are willing to draft and pay pitchers for ever-increasing velocity and spin rates, players will keep chasing it. Lance Brozdowski had an excellent take on this last week:
So until teams start valuing sustainability and durability, pitchers are going to keep pushing the limits on what they can accomplish. In a way, that’s actually an unfortunate but potentially positive long-term impact of the pitch clock. In other words, if a guy can’t maintain velocities/spin with shorter recovery times between pitches, pitchers might start holding back a bit, which might be an even more direct path to reducing pitcher injuries. That’ll just take time and an overall behavioral/philosophical change.
It’s the same reason we think speed might become a more targeted skillset over time in a new era of baseball where base stealing is a lot more feasible than it was before the rules changes (pitch clock, pickoff limits, bigger bases, etc.).
The real question, as Brett put it this morning, is “whether the clock ADDS to injuries in an environment where we say guys must be permitted to train all year, max out every bit of the human body, and make choices about risk. Because I do want players to have a choice here. Blaming the clock as the sole pitcher health issue in the current era takes away some of that agency.”
Messy situation. No doubt. And like I said, it’s really difficult to separate what you think is the root cause from how you feel about the pitch clock in isolation. I’m recognizing that multiple times here in an effort to at least acknowledge my potential bias. Best I can do.
