Arms Race

Is the pitch clock to blame for all the injuries among pitchers?

It’s been a rough start to the season for MLB pitchers. Already across the league, there have been 9 pitchers whose seasons are over due to elbow injuries, notable names such as Spencer Strider and Shane Bieber being among the early casualties. If we compare that against the last decade or so, it’s on pace to be the most occurrences of such recorded in the first three moths of the baseball season ever. This worrying trend has everyone asking the same question, what’s happening? Is the implementation of the pitch clock to blame despite its other benefits to the sport? And what steps can be taken to preventing injury in the future? 

Let’s look at it from a players perspective, first looking into why they have that complaint. Pitchers now are throwing harder than ever, with an almost 2 mph increase on both fastballs and sliders since 2008. This has been done in response to the rise of launch angles and an increased emphasis on all or nothing hitting. Hitters have moved away from putting the ball in play where the fielders aren’t, to hitting the ball hard anywhere. This has seen a rise in home runs and a decrease in batting average league-wide as hitters prioritize walks and extra base hits over everything. This has led to an increase in strikeouts, as to counter this approach, pitchers try and minimize balls put in play over fear of allowing too many home runs. Against pitchers who pitched on the corners of the strike zone throwing a 88-92 mph fastball in 2023, hitters hit 267/.346/.464. While against pitchers who were pumping 98 mph fastballs or faster they managed a .261/.261/.348. The tradeoff of pacing yourself versus max effort has been tipped heavily in favor of throwing as hard as you can every pitch trying to generate swings and misses. This push for maximizing velocity and break has been a focus of teams when drafting and developing players, forcing some pitchers to change philosophies on how to train, study, and execute in games. It has created this almost invisible barrier, where guys who don’t push for max effort every pitch risk losing their spot on teams.

Now let’s talk about the controversial clock. The pitch clock was implemented with an aim to cut the amount of dead time in games down and it has done its job perfectly, with average game times dropping under the three hour threshold for the first time in almost 25 years. Despite the game being faster and more exciting, it provokes the thought: is the pitch clock causing more harm than good? The clock has only been in the majors a season and in the minors for the last 5 years, and research (though it is incomplete due to small sample size) shows that it has no effect on health. The real culprit is that aforementioned increase in fastball velocity. Renowned elbow surgeon Dr. James Andrews (now retired) said this about the epidemic, “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.” So, factoring in the fact that a lot of these pitchers have hundreds, if not thousands of innings on their arms before getting drafted, it’s only a matter of time before something gives. The push for higher velocity and spin rate only magnifies the issue, and pitchers will not shy away from this gamble until they are incentivized to do so. This, however, hurts pitchers in the long run, making them less valuable and more expendable, especially after major surgery. Teams will continue to operate in a haphazard way until it’s no longer the best way to run their clubs.

So what needs to be done? Most solutions give too much advantage to the pitchers. The mound cannot be raised because you can still benefit from throwing harder and pitchers were untouchable until they lowered it. Sticky stuff was a disaster and severely disadvantages the hitter. Likewise, changing the ball the travel less distance when hit or whats know as “deadening it” will result in an adjustment period that could be disastrous for the fan viewing experience. I think the only way to solve the problem is for teams at lower levels to further restrict the strain on young guys’ arms throughout their youth. More and more baseball players are having surgery in their teens figuring they'll need it anyway without weighing the risk on long-term health. Until that trend is bucked, MLB’s problem will continue to get worse.  

By Jackson Westfall