“You Can Do Everything Right And Still Get Hurt”
“You can do everything right and still get hurt.”
This is a quote from me to my son. I have used it many times as he progressed through every level of amateur baseball. We would hear about pitcher injuries - pitchers in club ball, travel ball, high school, college, and pro… and we would talk about it…. They’re all getting injured at higher rates than ever, and mostly elbow injuries involving the UCL (ulnar collateral ligament). But it is true – you can do everything right… like stretching, long toss, religious arm care exercises, various warm up and cool down strategies, limiting pitch counts and innings… and still end up hurt. Why?
Well this is not like stretching a hamstring before sprinting the bases. It is not like warming up your hips, shoulders, back before swinging a bat. Throwing a 95 mph fastball or a 87 mph slider at 2,600 spin is not a natural motion for the human body – let alone doing it dozens of times every few days for years. Biomechanically every throw adds to the repetitive stress on the weakest link in the chain, the elbow ligament.
It is human nature to look for a single, simple cause. Newsflash - there isn’t one. The causes are varied and there are as many opinions as there are people talking about it. The consensus of experts however are not blaming pitch clocks. The best minds and surgeons in this field “…have all publicly pointed to the extra stress on arms induced by the quest for increased velocity, increased spin, and maximum effort as the primary causes of increased pitcher injury rates, a quest that starts in youth baseball, while players’ bodies are still developing. The idea that the pitch clock could be contributing by making pitchers dial up to maximum intensity with less time to recover between pitches has intuitive appeal, but injury rates had already risen before the clock’s introduction last year.”1
Speed is the name of the game for pitchers in the MLB, with the average fastball rising from 91.9 miles per hour (mph) league-wide in 2007 to 94.2 mph in 2023. Pitchers throwing harder requires more arm speed, which in turn means more stress on the elbow. Spin rates have been the new fad for pitchers to chase since devices began to measure that around ten years ago. The average spin rate on breaking pitches in the MLB since 2015 has gone from 2,193 to 2,458 this year. It adds torque on the elbow to spin the baseball. “Outside the goal of trying to optimize velocity and spin rate, there are mechanical things that can be evaluated with pitchers that lower the torque in the elbow. But even with perfect mechanics, there are numerous studies showing the harder you throw and the more you spin the ball, it puts more torque across the elbow.”2.
The obsession for velocity starts in little league and club baseball. Club organizations famously announce on social media how hard kids are throwing and in this immediate gratification society, kids and parents chase this fleeting fame. Rather than recognizing command and a great changeup, all we see are the pictures of radar guns with ever bigger numbers for ever younger kids. Players in warm weather states can play year-round. Smart parents limit this and also limit playing for multiple teams in the same season. There are a tremendous amount of Club and Travel coaches that do the right thing for their players, adhering to USA Baseball Pitch Smart limits and prioritizing player health over the weekend championship. Conversely we all saw examples where a Coach has a kid pitch back to back days, pitches maximum pitch counts early in a season, or in the usual offseason, and my personal favorite, moving a kid from pitcher to catcher and back like that is somehow better for their arm. It starts very early, parents need to be educated on how to protect their pitcher’s health. Resist the calls to play for a second team. Set limits for your coach on how your kid is to be used. And leave teams where the coach is not open to this input. Encourage them to put the baseball down and play another sport. The fear of missing out is strong but I can assure you it all evens out when they mature and get on the big baseball field. Those extra reps in 12u wont matter.
The epidemic we are seeing started when most of these men were boys playing on a small field and falling in love with this game. The ones that threw hard were adored and encouraged to throw harder. Add in the allure of Club/Travel baseball, the thrill of coaches recruiting young players, availability and development of radar guns, social media attention, year round play, specialization, and the explosive growth of club/travel organizations and you have a clue of how we got here.
MLB started a comprehensive study of pitcher injuries last year. The intent is to form a task force to make recommendations to protect pitchers once the study results are completed. Until then, let’s stop looking for simple, single cause answers. Your heroes on your favorite team are not being injured by stepping up their tempo between pitches. After all they can do everything right and still get hurt.
Submitted by David Schaefer