Protecting Pitchers – One Topic to Fool them All

4-24-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

Want to know the absolute facts about protecting pitchers from injuring their arms in baseball?

We know there are more reported and treated than ever before.

There’s your fact. The only one that’s not at least got a ways to go to prove itself out.

So everyone of course is an expert. That’s what we, meaning humans, do. We of course know the answer and how to stop it. Ranging from “Walk it Off Sissy!” to the pseudo anatomy majors who pretend biometrics should be discussed in the public forum with any degree of wisdom attached.

People with access to Google and thereby Statcast diagnose pitchers on a pitch by pitch basis, from the spin to the angle to the shape the velocity, it gets even crazier than this, truly. Well, these guys want to make money and know what pays? Yeah, all those crazy numbers. Chasing targets because analytics departments are now embedded in scouting departments, and those numbers get their attention the same way ol’ Buck used to sneer over his cigar and crack a smile about a power hitter slugging a curveball.

Kids that have that dream start chasing it in grade school. Travel teams, All Star tours, Individual training coaches, then you get to High School you’re throwing, and playing in the field every day you aren’t and it’s let go in some places, and in some prep schools there is more structure. You get scouted, go to college, or the draft, and either get more potential overuse in school or coddling in the draft.

Both paths produce the injuries.

Hard throwers and high spin guys seem to be the hardest hit, but like we just kinda walked through, that’s what is at least in part being scouted.

Like, Jared Jones is 100% the type of kid being looked for. High School kid, huge spin, plenty big arm, good handle on mechanics, a little wild. Now he’s here, doing what he’s doing and it’s awesome.

So why does it wind up being an episode of M.A.S.H. instead of a celebration that he’s doing this incredible stuff?

Well, the conventional wisdom on protecting arms is so in your face how the hell could you not think about him getting injured? All game long they talk about pitch counts, the Pirates epically failing offensive approach is all about creating high pitch counts. We’re warned every inning past the 5th, Will We See Him Again Today??

We hear about their rest, their side sessions, their game planning, and it’s always of course mentioned, how long he was going to go, or how many pitches he could give. Just last night a huge deal was made that David Bednar was used 3 straight days. You as a fan best not dare he go a 4th! Don’t you care about him!?!

What’s sad is, nobody really knows if it’s helping. I mean, the injury numbers say it isn’t but it’s a moving target. What they did 10 years ago was old and dumb by 5 years ago, and now that we’re here, well 5 years ago we might as well have been using leaches.

How can you possibly know what is or isn’t working when there are 30 different organizations, all doing different things, with slight variations and similar results. Even if the answer is stop throwing hard and stop spinning the ball so much, how the hell could you stop it? Regulate it? If players are willing to accept the risk, don’t you kinda have to just let them do the best of what they’re capable of doing?

I’ll tell you one thing this is, no friggin’ fun for fans.

I don’t want to plan on whoever the hell pitches for my team probably missing like 18 months once or twice in the 6 years they’re guaranteed to be here.

In fact, I don’t want to have to think about it at all. I mean players can get hurt in all the other sports I watch too, but in no other sport is it routine to just accept 25% of people who play this position are going to have a year and a half long injury, oh and by the way, if it’s at the wrong time they’re probably a bullpen pitcher if anyone gives them another chance. They were broken toys now mind you.

Know what’s effected injuries at least from hitting the timeline in the right place? Eliminating sticky stuff. It’s caused guys to grip the ball tighter and there is some early study that may hold some key. It may put additional stress on the forearm to tighten the grip. Again, more theories and conjecture.

That’s probably for 5 years from now when we finally have the next “right” way to protect those arms.

I don’t believe that team executives, trainers, coaches, players have bad intentions. I truly believe they are all following the best science they have at their disposal. I really mean that, but what they’re doing is not working, and it’s hurting the game, none more than young players who both are being hurt, and being robbed of an opportunity to be exceptional because we’re treating all arms as though they’re made exactly the same by in large.

God I wish I had an answer.

I’ve been blessed to have a chance to talk to a bunch of pitchers through the years, I’m sure a lot of you have too, most of them take it in stride, it’s almost a toll they pay for a career. The older guys don’t understand why it’s so much worse, they swear they were throwing just as hard, and there’s some radar advancements through the years that support that being at least more true than most think.

The younger guys have grown up in it, they can probably tell you roughly how many pitches they were allowed to throw in High A at the end of the season. They buy in on the modern voodoo largely, at least by my unofficial poll. Just the other day I heard Jared Jones on with the Pitching Ninja and he quoted the exact vertical break metric of his slider with the perfect tunnel off his fastball and the slight differences in his grip and arm slot to achieve it. These guys know they could get hurt, and they know down to the smallest detail exactly what they’re asking their arm to do.

It’s maddening. We’re taking a game that takes being special to play at the highest level, then intentionally not allowing the exceptional to shine because it might help.

The Pirates will be a contender every season that Jared Jones, Paul Skenes and Mitch Keller are healthy together is not a stretch to say. Saying they’ll be healthy together more than one or two seasons sure feels like it though. In what other sport do you have to think like that? In what other sport would you get a Skenes and Jones and feel good because there’s a good shot one will always be healthy, but both is asking for a lot.

I want to watch baseball, and I don’t want to need an anatomy book next to me while I do it. I’d like to get back to seeing a guy get gassed and that’s why he got pulled. I want to see players do the best they can do, and the team to try to win every game as hard as they can.

I’m just afraid the genie is very very out of the bottle, a lot of people make a lot of money for “knowing” what will help, and a league and union desperate for an answer they probably already have but don’t want to admit.

Fans have always had the fear of injury taking a player off the field, it just didn’t used to be as commonplace as an umpire losing his sight.