Why Are There So Many Pitching Injuries? Spencer Strider, Shane Bieber
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- čas přidán 2. 08. 2024
- Shane Bieber. Eury Perez. Spencer Strider. So many pitchers have recently gone down with arm injuries.
Let's talk about where baseball currently stands in the fight between velocity and pitcher health. We'll also consider whether sweepers and spin have any implications on pitcher health, how workload management plays a part, and what the league should do, if anything, to mitigate the issue.
Check out The Setup Man CZcams Channel here for part 1, a discussion on splitters and the Chicago Cubs: • This Pitch is Dominati...
My substack can be found here: lancebroz.substack.com/
Ken Rosenthal and Eno Sarris' piece on pitching injuries can be found here: theathletic.com/5325032/2024/...
Music via lofi girl on youtube: / @lofigirl
Video and images via MLB, MLB.tv, USAToday, AP Images
0:00 Intro
0:16 Why Are There So Many Pitching Injuries
1:12 Are Sweepers MORE Stressful?
2:53 Velocity is the Main Issue
4:53 What Do Front Offices Value?
6:40 Does Workload Monitoring Play a Part?
8:08 What Should the League Do?
9:25 Where Do We Go From Here? - Sport
Oh, one of my favorite topics lol. I'm sure I'll be brief.
I do agree the main reason is velocity. There's a lot else going on - young kids pitching year round, for instance, which is ridiculous. The amount of 19 year olds getting major surgery is bananas. But really, it boils down, imo, to velo and the effort level guys throw with. And that's not the fault of the pitchers, it's the teams and the league's fault.
This has been cooking for over 40 years, frankly. Reliever usage started to climb in the 80's, then really spiked in the early 90's and kept increasing up until the mid 2010's, when it absolutely exploded. Throughout this time, MLB did next to nothing to prevent something that should've been evident. Teams began rostering more and more pitchers, because they realized that throwing a parade of max effort SIRPs from the 6th inning onward was more efficient AND cheaper than developing/paying workhorse starters.
At this point, teams will effectively force pitchers to max out their velo because if they don't, they'll fall behind and won't get to make a career out of baseball. Teams are also super quick to move prospects to the bullpen and get that short term value with max stuff in shorter appearances. Then they ride em hard until they either A) break, or B) get expensive. It's a factory, adequate relievers are basically growing on trees at this point.
Everyone's a max effort reliever now. I guarantee if we had data on the average fastball velo of pitchers (esp. SPs) back in like 1996, the gap between their average velo and their max velo would be FAR wider than it is today. Guys now throw at 99-100% effort all the time, starters included. Flamethrowers used to save some of that gas for when they really needed it - now, there's no reason to because they're not going to be allowed to face the order more than three times, if that.
I think if you want to contain injuries -because there's no stopping them for good, obv- you need to FORCE teams to change the way they develop and deploy pitchers. The option limit you mention is a good measure, and I've been yelling for years about shrinking the size of pitching staffs to make short-burst pitching less viable.
To pair with that, they should also deaden the ball. One of the main reasons everyone chases velo, stuff and Ks is that every single hitter in the lineup can slug to a certain degree. Back in the 70's and prior, every lineup had at least two or three guys who were absolutely not a threat to slug, if not more. That's not the case now, so if you wanna de-emphasize stuff being a must to succeed, you need to take the power craze out of the game, at least a little bit, so pitching to contact is viable again. And since modern ballparks are quite small, the best way I can think of doing that is deadening the ball hard.
MLB has been sleep at the wheel on this topic until very recently, and it's cost em. They should also probably expand soon, because there are lots of major league caliber pitchers and opening up 10 more spots for starters will be a good thing. But you have to force teams to change, because they're the ones creating this issue. Short burst pitching is 1) effective, 2) easy to develop, and 3) cheap. They're not giving that up unless you back em into a corner. So hopefully MLB does that.
All good points, appreciate your comments as always!
Two things I'll say.
1) the problem with forcing a shrinkage of pitching staffs is that the MLBPA would never accept less of a pool of jobs for pitchers. Maybe there's some combination of expansion teams (2-4) plus limiting pitcher spots which would balance this out?
2) Deadening the ball makes sense, but I think that runs the risk of making the game reallyyyyy boring.
As with anything, there are obvious counters. I think I see both side to everything you're saying.
@@LanceBroz
Totally agree with you on the MLBPA side of things, which is mainly why I think expansion is a must. MLB is already set to reduce the staff to 12 soon iirc, which feels like a good enough place to get to for now.
Deadening the ball would definitely change the brand of baseball we'd get, but I think it would be fun considering the rules giving great incentives for aggressive baserunning. That, and batting averages could certainly go up if hitters adjust and the bar for 50 stuff is lowered.
Always appreciate your stuff fam, you're a good and concise teacher.
In one of the Driveline pieces, there's a quote from Dr Buffi stating "There are more than 10 muscles that cross the elbow, and when we only consider the total elbow load, we really have no way of calculating how any of these muscles are individually affecting the load on the UCL during a pitch"
from what I've found, we haven't progressed from here in nearly 10 years. Until we understand how those forces are distributed across those muscles, aren't we just guessing on how grip, release, training and fatigue actually impact the only force that really matters here - the load on the UCL?
We can try to correlate UCL tears to things like the increase in sweepers, but in that same timeframe velocity went up again AND guys are throwing closer to their max AND the pitch clock was introduced AND guys are throwing year-round AND sticky-stuff was removed AND more guys coming through are a product of the over worked youth showcase system.
Surely understanding the load distribution should be the major focus of everybody involved as it seems like the only way to solve the problem
Awesome post!
On the workload side of things, Driveline PULSE is a workload monitor that can become more prevalent in the future.
I'd push back pretty hard on believing teams like the Rays or Dodgers are best at preventing pitcher injury. Pretty much every developed arm in both organizations has blown out at some point. I don't think you see an irregular number of oft injured pitchers going there and staying healthy. To me "smart" orgs just seem to be prioritizing per inning performance over everything and believing they can develop enough arms to make that a sustainable strategy.
Dustin may 😢
I almost wonder if it could even be the other way around to some degree. Teams that maybe aren’t as good at developing pitchers might be MORE inclined to focus on pitcher health. Then again, it might just be that pitchers with worse stuff tend to stay healthier, so organizational incompetence might weirdly help keep pitchers a little healthier. Hard to say.
That's fair. I think those organizations are at least well integrated top to bottom, which made me think they *might* at least be thinking about it differently.
The problem here is that I don't think that "# of pitchers who blow out" is the main metric we should use for whether a team keeps arms healthy (sounds dumb, I know). The smart teams want velo. And velo causes issues, so almost need to velo adjust for blowout or something? And even then, a lot of teams just don't have complete control over pitcher offseasons, which have massive implications in this.
Rays are also SUPER willing to sign pitchers who were previous injured, mainly because they're cheaper. Should they be penalized for that?
@@LanceBroz I agree with pretty much everything you just said which is why this is such a nuanced topic, lol. The reason I mentioned *developed* arms is because I think it's fair to see how pitchers orgs acquired at 16/18/21 etc do from a health perspective after being drafted/signed. Buehler, Gonsolin, May, Urias, and Bobby Miller are probably this regimes best home grown successes and they've all blown out at least once. Sheehan looks awesome but he's on the 60 day IL right now. You can do a similar exercise for the Rays as well. To a laymen like me, there seems to be a strong negative correlation between what would keep pitchers healthy vs what makes them effective. Maybe you'd pull injury data and find something different, but it seems clear to me that orgs like the Rays/Dodgers/Yankees have not found a secret sauce to keep pitchers healthy. They are just better than everyone else at developing arms so their supply chain is less likely to run dry.
I just think for some people it’s impossible to throw upper 90s and stay healthy. It’s simply beyond the limits of their bodies. The only possible solution I can think of is developing some sort of a brace that can be worn while throwing
Well, I'll be curious to see if the internal brace procedure helps long term with this. From my understanding, that doesn't dissolve within the body. It's adding support to the ligament indefinitely.
Lance this is awesome, would love to see more data on this if possible, I am doing my college senior capstone project on this topic!
Good luck on that capstone. Driveline has a lot of info on their blogs and an open biomech database, might be worth checking out.
Stuff + velo till I die 🔥🔥🔥
Workload management really is what has been stuck in the 80s, I think. It's impossible to put the toothpaste of stuff and velocity development back in the tube, but both ramp up and workload management seem to just be based off of vibes more than anything and lack a data driven approach. For instance, we still talk about "innings limits" on developing pitchers, as if all innings are created equal or are even on average equal once you get to 100+ in a season. A 25 or 30 pitch inning for a starting pitcher will necessarily stress/stretch the UCL more which is really the predictor of UCL tears, but still will just be counted as 1 inning towards a developing pitchers' innings limit. Additionally there's basically no thought to developing supportive musculature around the UCL, i.e. the biceps and forearms, with most classical training ideology being that muscles beyond the baseline to throw hard inhibit flexibility and therefore are bad, with pitchers preferring band work and other things to actual hypertrophic development of musculature. It's even been shown that you can strengthen/grow tendon mass in a similar (but slower) way to muscle mass using proper weight training, so I am surprised I don't see pitchers crushing curls every day.
Yep, you hit on some things I think I agree with a lot in here -- particularly that workload management is pretty far behind, say, stuff development.
Time to bring back Steve Carlton's bucket of rice!
Young pitchers aren't taught the windup anymore. Pitchers back inna day had those classic windups, and they pitched many MANY innings....and years...without the injuries we see today, and it HAS to make a difference....
One thing to note about that Driveline study is that they measure varus torque not valgus torque. A similar study from Rockland Peak Performance showed high valgus torques on sweepers.
Link? Would be interested in checking that out.
The Phillies have benefitted a lot in Aaron Nola being healthy and Zack Wheeler figuring out his health but I will say this. They worry about workload a ton. They didn’t use a reliever three days in a row until the end of September last year and came into the postseason with everyone available. Not every team can ask for 899 innings from their rotation to do this but the Phillies could and their high velocity bullpen was probably as healthy as it could be for October. Idk
I think that comes down to 2 things: 1) Caleb Cotham and 2) investment in biomechanics. Concerning #2, they've hired multiple decision-makers from Driveline, actually.
Watching this while I await strider news😭
I agree with velocity increase but think it’s largely a cause of pitchers being larger and having more intense weight lifting programs in the offseason. I’m guessing but it seems like pitchers are mostly 6.2 - 6.5 now. Kinda similar to how large Aaron Judge is. He has more power but is almost guaranteed to tweak his oblique each season and miss a month.
Tyler glasnow spoke about this a few years ago, he said that the reduction of sticky stuff was at fault, whenever he got a brand new ball and he couldnt use sunscreen and rosen anymore, he had to grip the ball much harder, and doing that is what he felt, had caused his injury
Yeah! I remember that. It definitely feels like one of the many factors at play here.
How does normalization work? Like I think a curveball might have less or the same stress due to the lower velocity of the pitch
Well, yeah, but when normalized for velo, curveball more stressful. I believe it's just dividing stress by the velocity. Per mph of velo, the curveball is more stressful. Kind of like dividing RPM by velo and coming up with velo per rpm.
I wonder if the pitch clock ends up increasing stress on pitcher's arms or if it somewhat forces pitchers to not throw max effort as much. Also while MLB wants to increase offense, maybe cracking down on sticky stuff will lead to more arm injuries by making it more difficult to chase those higher spin rates (granted I'm not sure how stringent the enforcement is at this point).
My guess is that it’s more the former. For most pitchers, particularly the younger ones, the tradeoff is worth it for a chance to reach and stay in the big leagues, or better yet, become a star. So they’ll go max effort no matter what, trying to squeeze whatever they can out of what they have, injury risk be damned, because the potential payoff is so huge. Older veterans might react a little differently, since they’re usually a little less reliant on pure velo and stuff anyway, given that they’re (usually) already having to compete with at least somewhat diminished velo. Moreover, they can lean on their own experience, they’re likely better at game planning, have wider arsenals, etc., plus they’ve already survived to reach the point they’re at.
@@IdliAmin_TheLastKingofSambar yeah that makes sense and at a certain point we have to accept that pitching is a somewhat unnatural activity that will inevitably lead to injury similar to how there's no way to make football "safe".
Why did high-velocity pitchers in the past not get injured at this rate even though they threw at 90+ and WAY MORE? While pitchers of today are 5 and divers that don't even make 30 starts a season but snap their elbows every 3-4 years.
Likely a couple of reasons.
1: crackdown on sticky stuff means you need more arm power to get better velo.
2: whilst we don't have reliable data from the past we can see a continued increase in spin rate since we started recording it.
3: Kids are expected to throw faster at a much younger age which reduces their life.
4: there's no way to tell for sure. But changes in baseball design may have resulted in changing grips etc, etc. We know the MLB messes with balls. But it's kept hush hush.
@@louiscypher4186 All of those points are conjecture.
There is no evidence for point 1
point 2 the data hasn't been around for long enough to say anything meaningful about it
point3 No causation has been proven just correlation
point 4 is 100 percent conjecture except for ball changes that were proven but you have no evidence or proof that that has anything to do with injury risks.
The average fastball velocity is around 6mph higher than it was 20 years ago. Nearly every pitcher feels compelled to try to light up the radar gun in order to justify their potential. Especially since results are the ultimate measure of a pitcher. So, if someone is struggling, it’d make more sense to try to throw harder. Maybe there’s a correlation in the data for pitchers who aren’t quite performing to their expectations and then blowing out their UCL’s trying too hard to impress.
Could be something there. But you see the difficulty in NOT taking that route, right? The training around command and pitchability is ... probably nonexistent? At least it's less guaranteed to return gains than training velo. So it's easy to say that a kid SHOULD learn how to pitch, but if the expected return on chasing velo is simply higher, I totally understand why any pitcher would take the velo route from a cost-benefit standpoint.
@@LanceBroz for sure.
Even tho you are increasing stress the harder you throw wouldn’t mechanical efficiency mitigate how that stress is distributed?
Well in other body parts like the hip or back, then (in theory) yes. But with the elbow/ shoulder, no. There is always a baseline of stress required on the arm to throw a ball at a certain speed (e.g. 95+) and there is no preventing that. The body accelerates the arm and hand to a certain speed to release the ball and there’s no real way to reduce energy/stress on the arm at that point.
I’d guess that efficient mechanics give you a better chance at sequencing correctly and preventing potential injury slightly more compared to a pitcher at the exact same velocity who is less efficient.
But I do think the lines are a bit tough to draw on this specific point.
@@LanceBrozthe pitchers mechanics release play a role as well. Land that front foot at a 45 vs directly toward home plate too..... Pedro knows baseball!
Spencer Strider added a curveball this season and he hurt his UCL again
Not rocket science, human body isn’t made to throw 100mph+ fastballs then rotate to a 88mph change up then rocket another 100+ fastball over 70 times. Need longer time in between starts
A 30 second pitching would be fine. 15 seconds is absurd! Even NBA teams get 24 seconds to shoot.
...Nolan Ryan used to pitch quite fast and maintained an exceptionally long career throwing hard. But he had excellent fundamentals and technique.
...Greg Maddux had excellent technique also. Had a very long career.
...Some pitchers today are so 'goofy' with their delivery techniques.
...Seems to me pitchers don't take as long of a stride towards home plate like they did in the past.
...Need to get back to training pitchers how to throw complete games again.
I cant believe that mlb and players dont understand how to avoid injuries and why theyre on the rise. Is for one thing and very simple. They do not train for withstanding more throws they only train for increasing velocity. Tell me which pitcher in the offseason goes all the way to 100-150 pitch bullpens? Nobody absolutely nobody. The only way to be prepared to throw 100 throws in the game is that in the offseason you slowly progress all the way to 100-150 throws. You might call me crazy to encourage offseason bullpens of 100-150 throws but its even crazier to think that 30 pitch bullpens will prepare you to throw 100 in the game. That is foolish nonsense. The arm doesnt know how many throws is doing it only knows stress. If youve only throwing 30 pitch bullpens and then increase it all of the sudden to 100 youre increasing more than double of what your body can handle. Now if you slowly progress in the offseason to 150 throws your body and arm are going to get use to that stress. But pitchers from today dont give their body the opportunity to get use to the stress. They think that fancy exercises or better mechanics will do it. Or they think that there is something else that will do the magic. It doesnt exist. The only thing you can do to prepare your body to throw 100 pitches in the game and remain healthy is that you slowly progress to those numbers of throws in the offseason. Period nothing else will do the job but that. Sometimes you only need logic and common sense to solve a problem. Its ironic that sometimes common sense is the least sense the human uses.
The pitch clock is definitely a factor. If you're in the gym and you're rushing through your reps, your form can go off the rails and you develop bad habits that will lead to injuries. The same goes for your mechanics on the mound during the game. The pitch clock is unequivocally the worst thing to happen to the sport and should be abolished, not just for this reason but for many others.
I agree that the pitch clock likely plays a role but couldn't disagree more with you otherwise. The game had gotten unacceptably slow over the years and that was almost all due to pitchers and hitters dicking around between pitches instead of playing ball. Based on my interactions online and irl the response to the pitch clock has been overwhelmingly positive so I doubt its going anywhere if MLB wants to keep its popularity long term. Furthermore, pitcher injuries have been increasing steadily for 20+ years now well before the introduction of the pitch clock so it seems like its far from the biggest factor. Sorry for the novel lol and respect your opinion but just wanted to offer a rebuttal.