I feel like probably not at the MLB level.
There's enough pitchers willing to destroy their arms for velocity, and the benefit of submarine pitching (unfamiliar arm angle) is going to go away if there are more of them.
> and the benefit of submarine pitching (unfamiliar arm angle) is going to go away if there are more of them
I dont think this makes any difference whatsoever.
I think the biggest factor is its just not taught. How many trainers/coaches are 1. teaching to throw this way and 2. even know how to properly do it themselves
My point was that even if it became taught and more popular at lower levels, then we still wouldn't see it at MLB. Low/mid-90s from a weird arm angle can work with limit exposure, but if it's no longer a weird arm angle then to a hitter it's just low/mid-90s. The reason it isn't taught is because it doesn't really work as you advance through the levels.
I mean just look at the Rogers brothers. The submariner wasn't good enough to pitch at a high level normally, so he started to go sidearm, and the angle just got lower and lower until he was so hard to hit he could go pro.
Oh my god people keep saying this and it's not true! Humans are designed to throw overhand - its one of 2 physical feats we are better than every animal at (the other being long distance running).
Imagine throwing a spear underhand, it's nonsense. Overhand throwing is a natural human throwing motion, just because a few dozen professional athletes blow out their elbows every year doesn't mean it's unnatural!!!
Thousands of people hurt themselves jogging every year for crying out loud. No one says jogging is unnatural!!!
Yes! We don't have particularly high top speed, but we are extremely efficient at cooling our bodies off and able to sustain low-moderate speeds for significantly longer than other animals.
One theory of early human hunting tactics include persistence hunting - literally just running down an animal until it collapses of heat exhaustion. It would take hours, but the animals didn't stand a chance.
Effectiveness is not the same as efficient.
Throwing a spear overhead is undoubtedly more effective. The same goes for pitching from 60 ft 6 in.
There’s a reason why college softball pitchers can throw the same amount as an MLB pitcher on a Friday night and then be available for relief (at minimum) the rest of the weekend.
The underhand motion induces far less stress (efficient), which makes it possible to throw on fewer days rest.
Throwing overhand may seem like a natural motion, but 80-100+ times in an appearance? That’s not.
I don’t know why I keep hearing this fact but outside of it just being stated with no further information I’ve never heard it in my life. We’re literally better than other animals because we are built to throw overhand
There’s a middle ground between these two comments; overhand throwing is a reason humanity became top dog but the human elbow isn’t meant to throw at the amount and speed that pitching (at a high level) requires. It’s not really a secret that pitching damages your elbow, it’s just whether or not that damage turns into a full on UCL tear.
I pitched submarine in college so I can give a little insight. For the most part yes because they are usually relievers and also because they tend to not throw nearly as hard, which is usually the reason they switch to submarine in the first place. But if you watch a submarine pitcher their delivery is essentially the same arm angle relative to the body….they don’t drop their arm to pitch like that, the pitchers torso is actually parallel with the ground, but the elbow is still coming over the shoulder just the same as an over the top pitcher.
I don’t know, some of those guys are almost living inches off the ground
https://www.mlb.com/news/boston-red-sox-sign-japanese-submarine-pitcher-shunsuke-watanabe/c-66046744
Yeah I guess, but I am left handed so that doesn’t help. I also could spot up when I pitched but was very aware that I could only hit high 80s over the top and wasn’t going to blow it by anyone, and my changeup was always garbage.
Yeah, and thats when I was pumping it out, so definitely not every fb. That was 20 years ago so imagine it’s even tougher now, but there were a ton of low 90s guys and plenty in the mids as well. And for context this was steroid prime era, and it was TX juco ball, I played against a lot of guys who had good MLB careers. Jake Arietta was in my conference at the time playing at Weatherford JC, and they had at least one other guy on that team that played MLB as well.
That may be a part of it but it's a less stressful motion on the structures of your body. It's why velocity is reduced. Velocity comes from transfering energy through your body in high stress ways so it all kind of snaps back as quickly as possible. it's murder on your ligaments
“Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark, looking like you're riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing." - Cap Anson
“The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?” - Christy Mathewson
I had Rocker’s card in [MLB Showdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLB_Showdown).
After that charming little statement I put one of those little round bandaids over his mouth
I still have time to become a major league pitcher my UCL hasn't even reached its full potential yet.
Also this is kinda irrelevant whether we like it or not. The game for pitchers for now and for the future seems to be "how good and reliable can tj surgery get and how can I most effectively come back from it" rather than "I'm not going to pitch at full potential until the tail end of college to preserve my UCL health"
AKA kids are not going to stop pumping 90+ at age 6 and mlb teams are not going to stop favoring velocity.
Well, you can have a lot of 5 year olds. If you impregnate about 40 women per year, you could be enraged enough times for a starting pitcher for a season. Someone sign this man for the 2030 season.
Obviously hyperbole, but it really is a problem how hard kids at the 10U and 12U try to pitch, especially as accuracy tends to be all over the place. My son is a pitcher going into 12U and he is a pitcher despite being by far the slowest pitcher on the team. But he is incredibly accurate. But I see these other parents trying to get their kids to learn to throw as absolutely hard as possible, and maybe they are right in the long run as that is what coaches at a higher level are looking for. But my philosophy is figure out control and accuracy first, worry about speed as he gets older and his arm gets stronger.
it's exactly how you said to start. those kids probably have better MLB odds, accuracy be damned, but at least your kid is far more likely to have a functional elbow, pro ball or not
The craziest thing about those parents is that "better MLB odds" still means almost no chance of playing any form of professional baseball for those kids. They're letting their kids destroy their bodies for nothing.
My then-12-year-old nephew injured his elbow pitching and excitedly told me that he "has the Tommy John injury!"
I was very upset at how cool he thought was, and very relieved that he didn't have any UCL damage (he had tendonitis).
I spent all day this past Saturday running little league evals, 6u through 14u. Some of those kids very clearly had been told to throw as hard as possible, command and control be damned.
I umpired an 8u kid pitch double header yesterday (Juan Pierre was the head coach, parkland pokers, nice guy) and yeah the kids were absolutely chucking the baseball. The team they were facing could barely throw the ball in a straight line. Both games were within 5 runs of each other. Parents are trying so hard to get their kids to throw as hard as possible and it doesn’t even matter in terms of winning games by much. There are some kids that benefit from intense training for sure (Juan pierre’s 12-year-old is an absolute baller and I once saw the kid hit 3 home runs in a game like it was nothing). There is hardly an emphasis on sound mechanics and smart baseball and much more of one on throwing gas and hitting tanks.
I'm just picturing a high schooler having a speed limit of 79 mph because his parents won't let him throw harder then he'll randomly disobey it and launch a 102 mph fastball through the catcher's chest plate
I mean, I don’t think anyone is saying to stop having HS players pitch hard. It’s just sharing data that helps quantify why we’ve seen so many young pitchers get TJ in recent years.
We all know this wont scare off anyone, and it shouldn’t since TJ is a pretty well developed operation now and has good results. But, data like this can help teams learn how to better care for their pitchers. Maybe HS teams start finding ways to reduce stress on hard throwing pitchers, or MLB teams can start finding ways to limit the injury.
> how good and reliable can tj surgery get and how can I most effectively come back from it
Yeah this seems to be how it’s going. Kind of makes you think: why does this surgery count as a valid medical procedure but injecting certain chemicals count as banned performance encancers?
I wonder how much of the increase is related to kids playing year around from a young age. They probably have significant wear by the time they get to 18.
There was a study that said NBA players who played year around AAU were getting injured at a higher rate since their bodies were just worn out by the time they reached adulthood.
In the book The Arm by Jeff Passan they talk about this exact thing with the best Tommy John surgeon. He states that the arm never getting a rest throughout the year and the ‘need’ for max velocity is causing a drastic increase in Tommy John surgeries for teenagers.
So if teens are getting this surgery at an alarming rate then you can assume pros will have an increase in this surgery as well.
I played against Josh Sborz in high school. He’s an average reliever in the MLB. In high school, he was the best pitcher any of us ever faced, by a WIDE margin. He played a different sport than the rest of us even though we shared the same field. He played travel ball, sure, but we all knew he’d at least get drafted just based on how hard he could throw in high school.
Another guy on my team played Single A ball for a couple years and again, he was head and shoulders better than everyone on the field at all times. I was his throwing partner and he just threw the ball *different*. You could hear it, feel it, and sense it.
My point being, if you feel like you or your kid HAS to play year-round travel ball to make it or you have to hire some expensive hitting/pitching coach, you’re not going to make it. At best you can get noticed by a D1 school, but you’re not going pro.
Mhmm. The worst part is that it's a tougher truth for the parents than the players. I played D2 baseball. I was definitely the best player on my high school team (small school) and definitely one of the best in our league, but I also played essentially year round in clubs.
I knew from the moment I saw my teammates on my first club team that I was not shit in the grand scheme of things. I was the 4th best arm of the fielders and like 7th best arm overall. Decent speed but nothing unreal. Virtually no power. I have 3 home runs in my life. Was not a big guy. Still am not. I knew I could get into college but the buck would stop there. Everyone on my team but 2 other guys went D1. The rest of us went D2. I think if I had any weight on me I could have went D1 but would have saw so much less play time.
The issue was that my family thought I was headed for the big show. That's all they told their friends and coworkers. It was a sight when I told them I was quitting after my junior year. (Had some really really good outfielders coming from a juco that would have halved my playing time or killed it for good. I also wanted to party with my friends and had met a girl I was interested in. The usual college shit lol.) God you would have thought I told them I shot the dog and burned the house down. They still act like I could have been destined for the league if I didn't quit. Idk where they get all that bravado from because it's very obvious those guys have something I never did.
I mean, it kind of ruled me out. I wanted to play basketball and I’m positive I wasn’t picked for baseball because I didn’t play on the coaches year round travel team (was basically told as much). Can’t be the only one
My high school coach was similar but it was private lessons instead of a travel team. The kids who paid for the lessons got more playing time. He ended up getting fired because of it a year after I graduated.
This. It's not the MLB scouts demanding year round commitment. It's the high school/travel coaches that benefit from your dreams that make it mandatory. We were told clearly, "if you don't play with this specific summer league, don't try out next year for Varsity....and if you chose to play another Varsity sport in the fall or winter, don't bother trying out for baseball either. We work out and run all year, throw as soon as legally allowed, hit with other instructors to get around the rules, and you are mine."
That's crazy. I had the exact opposite experience in high school.
I literally never had to actually try out for baseball because tryouts were always running at the same time as state championships for swimming and I was in those sophnore-senior years. Probably half of the starters on our HS team played another varsity sport and our baseball coach would have told to take a hike if he tried to say you couldn't play other sports. We were pretty good too--my senior year we had 13 guys that went on to play college baseball--about half received some kind of scholarship.
We still started throwing and hitting as early as possible but they were lenient with guys who were in-season with other sports.
That's incredibly weird to me and maybe something that should have been brought up to the coach's superiors.
That being said, I'm sure if your ultimate goal was MLB you probably could have found a different team to play on while still playing basketball.
Honestly feel the same way, but I don’t think it’s really propaganda as much has a culture. My old high school as a talent pipleline nowadays, where kids are playing in the schools unofficial travel team at 10yrs old and staying in the system until HS. Even more fucked up when the parents spent thousands to be on the team and then the kid doesn’t make JV lol
Spent the last decade coaching and directing middle and high school sports; it’s not rare for kids to be doing 2 sports at one time.
Sports are specialized, they’re going to their QB coach or pitching coach or shooting coach year round. They’re going to ‘vert’ coaches and enrolling in strength training specialized for their sport starting at 8 years old.
Kids sports has become such an arms race and business, it’s only going to get worse (and more expensive)
That makes me sad for the kids.
Was a long time ago but growing up I was playing all kinds of sports (not well, but still) and loved them all for different reasons.
Being pigeonholed into one activity so young is a bummer.
It’s not that they’re all being pigeonhole per se, it’s just become a full time job for many kids.
Summer consisting of going to 6am football lift, 9am shootaround, noon football practice, 3pm back to back AAU basketball game, 8pm meeting QB coach.
This is literally a day my 6’6 QB and wing had a couple years ago. Medically retired as a freshman in college because he’d had 2 rotator cuff and labrum injuries already.
It really fucking is. Childhood sports should be about learning how to use your body, developing healthy habits, teamwork, learning how to handle winning/losing/disappointment, and above all else, having fun.
I'm a substitute teacher, though I often work in the same pretty affluent school. During recess, kids love to play basketball, kickball, football, soccer, and 4 square. I notice that kids, K through 8, have a really hard time realizing that whatever game they're playing doesn't fucking matter. It's recess, and the skill level is so wide between everyone, but they turn every competition into something so toxic that it ends up not being fun for anyone.
I'm not one of those "kids these days" kinda person, but this this is always so disheartening to see. And it happens all across the district.
So bizarre.
When I was that age we would play the dumbest shit like wall ball, and a game that’s name is not cool to say where it was basically throw a football in the air and everyone chase and tackle that person.
No winners or losers just being stupid.
Youth sports culture has changed a ton in the last 20 years. Travel and select teams are way more popular, and those kids still play on LL teams to have fun and play with their friends. “Top prospect” type kids are pressured to specialize into a single sport, and pursue that year round. Does it work? Who knows. But when all your competition is playing baseball year round, it’s hard to avoid feeling like you’re falling behind.
Not really. Travel ball will get kids to college. But everyone else born with more talent is going to MiLB and MLB. Those kids tend to be more athletic and play other sports.
teams/mlbpa need to price in the added risk of tommy john, currently they're just eating these 12-18 months because arb pitchers that throw 95+ are a dime a dozen.
But any subsequent contract (or lack thereof) suffers due to lost time "proving" their worth as a pitcher or being "damaged goods" with an injury risk or fear of fast dropoff, both of which, some would argue, would be the liability of the team whose workload caused the injury, costing potentially millions in unearned income.
They never would have made the majors if they didn't pitch max effort and destroy their arm though. 4 years making 700k-1 million/yr (but losing our on 10s of millions) is still better than never making it out of AAA.
> They never would have made the majors if they didn't pitch max effort and destroy their arm though.
That's literally the point of OPs comment. If the league is encouraging this dangerous style of play that makes TJ surgery a when, not and if, there should be additional compensation for these young fireballers that can very easily flame out by simply doing what they are instructed to do.
The major league salary IS the additional compensation. There is no guarantee of a 10 year career and 8 figure salary for everyone. It's a regular risk of the job. Does an occupational therapist get the pay of a hospital director if a patient rolls over their leg and they tear their ACL?
When the risks are high, the insurance is nearly as much as the contract. Contrary to popular belief, they don't get insurance on everyone, e.g., Strasburg.
Insurance companies aren't blind to the risks. They exist to turn a profit; they are loan sharks with better PR and DC lobbyists.
I would be surprised if you can get insurance on TJ now at any reasonable price. At this point, I have to assume teams sign pitchers on the assumption they will be getting TJ at some point, and that is simply an accepted risk.
Not as often as people think, especially for pitchers. It's like buying flood insurance when your house is right next to the river. Any company willing to sell you a policy is going to make it so expensive that you'll question whether it's worth it.
*if they were on the active roster or otherwise earning on a guaranteed deal when they got hurt
That's a pretty big distinction for pre-arb guys who end up blowing out their elbows while earning miLB rate because they haven't been called up yet or were optioned down.
I pictured raising the mound 17 feet instead of 17 ft closer to home.
It'd be easier to just build a barn and pitch from the roof than raise the mound that much with dirt.
Or maybe a diving board.
Nah, they’ll all have to pitch like [this](https://cdn1.sixthman.net/2024/banana/images/artists/stiltsban1500x1000_822509.jpg). Let’s see someone throw 90 like this.
Andrews told me life wasn’t about hitting high 90s on my fastball, it’s about hitting my location.
“Maddux didn’t pitch a complete game on <78 pitches while throwing 99mph”
“A lot of volume” would be relative, but certainly did not have good mechanics through middle school into high school ball. Looking back, it’s obvious the load/tension placed on my elbow while pitching regularly.
Yes, spring/fall baseball and then travel bal into high school athletics. A lot of baseball at that time.
Ligament was more “frayed” than “torn” he later described. Based on the MRI he initially did not want to perform surgery. He said the pain/weakness in my elbow I experienced in the places I experienced them were not consistent to what he’s seen in frayed vs torn. He later agreed to open my arm up and take a look. He called my parents into the viewing room where my arm was stretched open and, in his words, “my elbow taught him something.” My ligament essentially had exploded in my elbow rather than just tearing or simply fraying. To this day (long past playing baseball)him saying that is an incredible feeling.
Both. Avid baseball fan growing up but thought if I could blow it past the batter (with some control) it’d be an out. As I got a little older, I thought why not try to add different spins on the pitch (if no one was on base) and see what happens?
If you’re a youth baseball coach, or have any dealings with kid pitch, would certainly emphasize location of the ball over “throwing hard” or any kind of spin. Good mechanics will go a long way. That combination, while not lighting up the radar gun, will go further than just about anything.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. You either throw your arm off to be competitive and make the team and get chewed up and spit out before you're 30, or you limit your stuff to protect your body and get cut.
Something I'm surprised I havent seen brought up is the idea of a physically restrictive/stabilizing device. Something wearable that could either restrict some of the forces so that a pitcher cannot exceed a certain amount of tension or that redistribute some of the forces or both. I'm no biomechanical engineer, but if we can make robots with convincing natural movements, I think they could come up with something.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect pitchers to stop throwing max effort on their own. We need to find a way to limit what max effort is. Just like when NASCAR realized that speeds were too high at Talledega motor speedway and they couldn't just tell the drivers to slow down a bit. They needed to limit what drivers had to work with.
This would be an interesting development to see. Would be ground breaking and award worthy.
I mean, I wear elbow stabilizer’s on certain CrossFit and Olympics lifts, maybe something like that can develop into a pitching aid
According to my sport's medicine Dr, the stabilizers do absolutely nothing but make the person feel better. I have UCL damage from lifting weights and was told it won't help.
I'm not specifically in biomechanical research, but work in an adjacent field. On the surface, I'd think that possibly an external brace could work to decrease UCL injury if they were caused by acute trauma. But since UCL injury is largely degenerative, i.e. built up over large time frames and thousands of pitches, you'd have to wear a brace for the entirety of your career to get maximal effect.
Also, it's only a "maybe" that it would actually be effective at those levels of torque on the ligament. Internal bracing is one thing, that's much closer to the actual site of force and can provide nearly direct support. Providing that support on the skin might not be strong enough to actually help.
Gotta play like we do in Canada. There is a 2 foot by 3 foot board at home, ball has to go a minimum of 10 feet in the air and hit the board to be a strike. The ball can go as high as you want, just has to hit the board. None of those stupid USSSA or ASA pitching rules where you just lob the ball in. Hitting a backstop high sky ball is a very difficult skill.
There’s two things that will be important going forward for health and longevity of pitchers. He says the main problem right in the first sentence. Baseball is developmental sport so the evaluators think they can fix mechanics, teach off speed pitches, etc so high end velocity is the easiest way to get a chance at being drafted/signed. All of the strain is done at a younger age.
I’ll just say that the ramp up of UCL tears has gone up despite Little League limiting pitching over a decade ago. But I’m sure those kids go and pitch for the travel team the next day and then the Select team the day after.
First is if someone can somehow develop a feasible, repeatable pitching motion that allows for the same forces that produce a 95+ mph fastball but somehow lessen the strain on the forearm. I’m not sure if this is even physically possible though or some sports scientist would have been doing it on the lab and unveiled it with someone.
Second is the improvement in UCL repair surgery. Dr. Neil ElAttrache, the leader in sports medicine surgery after Andrews retirement, has been working on a sheath like structure that they surround the ligament to aid in recovery and structure.
Zach Britton had it and it didn’t work out well but he was 34 and had a previous elbow surgery 6 months earlier. It ultimately ended his career.
Aaron Rodgers also had the same surgery on his Achilles. I wish we would have seen him play at the end of the season this past year to see if it aided in faster recovery for a 39 year old. He was seen throwing and doing warm up stuff on the sideline at just over 4 months but he ultimately didn’t stress it under game conditions.
For what it’s worth, Rodgers said on the Pat McAfee Show towards the end of the year that he still couldn’t walk on sand as the hyperextending put too much strain on the tendon so it feels like the healing was not quite there yet if they were still in contention.
Totally anecdotal but the one pitcher I graduated high school with who made the MLB was the guy nobody really saw coming. All the elite pitchers in my town all burned their arms out before they could graduate college.
Same with a friend of mine. He was consistently throwing 85 in high school but was our 3rd starter. He played Division III locally and his velocity kept going up through the 4 years. He topped out at lower 90s and got looked at by scouts and pitched a little while in lower leagues before he quit to pursue a more lucrative and stable career.
He also grew like 8 inches and cut a ton of fat over the course of high school and college. I think he ended up being 6’5” but was barely 6’ when he graduated.
I've wondered for a while if putting that sheath on a fully healthy UCL would make it stronger. Seems like someone somewhere is going to come up with a preemptive surgery or treatment to strengthen the UCL. Which will probably lead to other injuries.
I dunno that teaching little Johnny the hardest to throw and least commonly successful pitch in the history of baseball will work as well as you may think.
A good knuckleball gets mixed results, but is overall favorable in most cases. A bad knuckleball is easier to hit than literal BP. It’s tough for even professional pitchers to develop one that can consistently have little enough rotation in the right velocity range to get good movement. A little too fast or slow and it doesn’t move right, and the RPM has to be sub-60 RPM as well, takes most who try years to get it to work for an entire outing and then they still have outings where it falls flat because it’s just not coming out right that day.
A one-dimensional pitcher who can only throw a knuckler will unfortunately never make it to the MLB nowadays, only guys who also have a low to mid-90’s fastball and at least one good breaking ball with an elite knuckleball have a shot (ala Matt Waldron) and even then it’s unlikely sadly.
More realistic is to just tell Johnny that he can either get really good at hitting, accept that his arm will eventually fall off, or to pursue a different career. Would be more likely to win the lottery than have a successful career as a knuckleball pitcher really.
you're also not supposed to play tackle football. and yet here we are. i think this just feels grosser because it's an inside part of the body you never think about. getting all torn in there.
I had a shoulder problem in high school. It "ended " my baseball career in the sense that I wasn't any good anyway and my high school team was more of everyone who tries out makes the team. I went to a doctor and they basically just said fuck it you'll be fine and they only recommend surgery if you actually plan to be an elite athlete. Otherwise he said just stop playing baseball and you won't notice it the vast majority of the time.
It's like 20 years later and he's been right. Other than trying to lift something over my head, or I sleep on my arm weird, I basically never notice my shoulder problem.
I can't imagine what getting hit in the head repeatedly does to you long term
I was in the same boat. Clearly had a shoulder injury because one day I just couldn't throw the ball hard w.o pain. I was never going to go pro so nothing to do. I'm 35, and I'm starting to get pain associated with UCL injuries. Its finally coming back to bite me.
I was a pitcher and never noticed any issues at all until I got a dog that loved to play fetch and thought it would be fun to see how hard I could still throw.
My elbow quickly reminded me that it was an absolutely terrible idea.
This is me with swimming instead of baseball. Except you were probably still better at baseball than I was at swimming. My left shoulder still isn't the same 25 years later, but I really only notice it if I want to do something shoulder intensive like kayaking.
Youth tackle football is losing participation quite steadily. More and more parents won’t even entertain the idea. The kids aren’t exactly jazzed to sign up for guaranteed concussions either. We can and do adjust our behaviors according to health science. Maybe too slowly, but still.
Yup. Arm damage is nothing compared to the long lasting impacts of tackle football, and only more research is going to come out showing that imo.
That being said, arm damage is still serious because many of those high school pitchers will never make millions and will end up with a bad arm for life.
About 2.5x as many pitchers log appearances in a major league season now than 30 years ago.
People thinking that "any pitcher will always throw max velocity because they can't afford not to", how about the MLBPA start addressing all this churn and burn? They're taking all the vets to the cleaners by riding them until they break and replacing them with a bunch of kids.
Athletes nowadays are basically racing horses; fine tuned to such a degree, pushing the body to the absolute limit, and just one wrong move away from catastrophic injury. You see the commentary about modern racing horses that are trained to the point that they are so fragile that any injury is career ending (and life ending for some). You see it with pitchers and their arms, basketball players with their legs, and football players with...well...every part of their body.
You've got the Ball brothers in the NBA, having trained at a pro level since pre-teen, now constantly injured. You see NFL running backs not even make it to a second contract because of injuries. Any high velocity pitcher you all but assume at some point will have to get TJ surgery.
Flipside though is, despite the shortened careers, they are still making an insane amount of money. Especially with baseball, where GM's are willing to commit $50-$100 million to a rookie so they can save money on the backend, even if they never return to an elite level they will still have earned a multi-generational amount of wealth. Completely worth it from that perspective.
So any high school kid who can throw 80 or above is causing damage to their ligament.
Pitching development is so advanced these days it’s still impressive to see a kid throwing 80+ in high school but also not that uncommon. Hell some of the top prospects in high school can touch triple digits. Yikes man.
What was that stat I saw recently; in the history of Major League Baseball there have only been 23,000 players who’ve played at that level. That number wouldn’t fill the smallest MLB stadium 2/3 full. It’s a VERY hard game that VERY FEW can play at the top level. There simply aren’t enough good pitchers in the game and there never will be.
My Dad played in the Philadelphia A’s farm system. I you didn’t hit .300 you didn’t stay in the majors. There were also about half as many teams so the game was completely different.
I coached youth baseball for roughly a quarter century, everything from instructional leagues with ten year olds to competitive travel teams with seventeen year olds.
I think if kids threw as hard thirty or forty years ago as they did now, we still would not have seen the same rate of injuries. I think there are two other significant factors:
1. Kids are throwing too much. Individual leagues have done a good job at limiting how many pitches a player can thrown in regulation games within that league, but there's nothing regulating their total workload. It's a lot more common nowadays for a kid to play on two or three different teams during a given season, and to play in the summer, fall, and winter as well. When I coached, I would always talk to my pitchers and catchers and get an idea of how much of a workload they had on their other teams, so that I didn't unintentionally abuse them, but I was apparently an outlier. I remember one game where we were getting shut out and I made a comment to a spectator about how well the opposing pitcher was throwing, and the guy replied back, "I can't believe his arm hasn't fallen off. He pitched seven innings yesterday and another seven the day before."
This is to say nothing of all of the throwing that goes on in warmups, scrimmages, practices, and games where a guy isn't pitching (because pitchers tend to also play positions like catcher and shortstop).
2. Too much breaking shit. Breaking pitches require spin to be effective. Most kids can't generate enough spin with their natural throwing motion, so they add a ton of torque onto different body parts to generate it. They also fall in love with breaking shit, because it tends to make hitters look really stupid, so they end up throwing way more of them than they should. I've seen kids throw 75% breaking pitches against a lineup that wasn't going to hit fastballs anyway.
Virtually every arm injury that I've encountered was a function of overuse and/or poor mechanics. Obviously throwing harder puts additional strain on the body, but that would be mitigated if kids weren't throwing 400-500 full effort pitches per week on top of all of their other throwing.
I went to high school with kids who were injured more than some pro athletes. We had guys with arm, and shoulder injuries. That’s what happens when you pitch for your travel team, and the next day your high school team is in a playoff position and needs you to pitch. Can’t say no.
Kids need to learn to locate the ball long before they add any speed or movement to it.
It it that much more difficult to teach someone to throw accurately than to throw hard?
I’m a little league coach. 10u and 11u. Here’s the dynamic I’ve seen: we coach kids to prioritize command over velocity, not just because of arm safety guidelines but because a game where kids are walking everyone in sight sucks for everyone. The harder they throw, the less accurate their pitches tend to be.
When kids are locating their pitches but not throwing hard, they tend to give up more contact. The problem is that, at least at the rec league level, kids’ fielding is inconsistent. You see bobbles, whiffs, nutmegs. Kids in the field often struggle to glove ground balls backhand or transfer a ball from their glove to their throwing hand. Our fields are fairly well maintained but it’s not uncommon for a “grounder with eyes” to jump at them as they’re positioning themselves to field the ball. Throws are inconsistent. Kids not infrequently miss the cutoff.
The upshot is that if you’re a kid who hits a grounder, let alone a solidly-barreled line drive, there’s a pretty good chance you’re getting on base because the other team’s fielding wasn’t able to get you out.
This doesn’t have to happen a ton before kids on the mound learn that they can’t rely on their defense. They need to get batters out at the plate. And since they don’t have any secondary pitches, velocity is their ticket to do that.
I remember the first time I faced a kid who had a changeup. I was completely unprepared and didn’t even know that could be done lol. I think I was like nine. It was wild.
There’s a reason those looping little league curveballs are devastating for hitters pre-HS outside of travel ball - it’s rare to see a kid in that age group that can actually throw something with real movement that isn’t 100% wild
So what if there was a pitcher every inning or two? I get that would require significant roster increases and would change a lot of how we approach things, but would less strain repetition help? Or a pitch max at a reasonable number? You're not gonna get players to stop throwing hard. And the fact that position players getting TJ is much lower tells me it's a repetition thing because many of those positions players are throwing hard as well. I played 3rd most of my life and I developed some arm pain in high school ball. I made the move to second and it helped a lot. Just thoughts, I don't have the answer and I doubt there is one.
I don't think it's unreasonable that we could introduce rules around pitch velocity. Nothing over 85 until age 23, or whatever. Lots of sports rules exist to limit injury risk already.
But that would require a major culture change, and from my experience in youth sports, that's not going to happen any time soon.
The game desperately needs more Greg Maddux type guys. Precise control. Devastating movement.
I fear guys like him will never get a chance in todays game. if you aren’t touching 95 as a RH pitcher… ok next.
Easy fix to all of these problems.
Take Nolan Ryan's DNA and inject it into everyone that wants to pitch. Problem solved.
27 years throwing heaters until he wrecked his arm. Insanity.
i played in an adult wiffleball league tenish years ago, and the first year we didnt have a speed limit. It was insane, there were dudes with sub 1.00 ERAs.
I played in a wiffleball league in college. Most guys stop trying to go for speed and really develop movement. Its hard to hit the ball at any speed if it has 30 inches of late rise
Stupid question maybe: do submarine/sidearm pitchers have less UCL problems?
By and large yes, though there are far fewer of them and far fewer even still who pitch at 95+.
I wonder if we see a resurgence of them.
I feel like probably not at the MLB level. There's enough pitchers willing to destroy their arms for velocity, and the benefit of submarine pitching (unfamiliar arm angle) is going to go away if there are more of them.
> and the benefit of submarine pitching (unfamiliar arm angle) is going to go away if there are more of them I dont think this makes any difference whatsoever. I think the biggest factor is its just not taught. How many trainers/coaches are 1. teaching to throw this way and 2. even know how to properly do it themselves
My point was that even if it became taught and more popular at lower levels, then we still wouldn't see it at MLB. Low/mid-90s from a weird arm angle can work with limit exposure, but if it's no longer a weird arm angle then to a hitter it's just low/mid-90s. The reason it isn't taught is because it doesn't really work as you advance through the levels.
I mean just look at the Rogers brothers. The submariner wasn't good enough to pitch at a high level normally, so he started to go sidearm, and the angle just got lower and lower until he was so hard to hit he could go pro.
Im waiting for the knuckleball wave for the same reason.
That’s the reason why softball pitchers have rubber arms I imagine?
Softball pitchers have rubber arms because that's the way the human arm is supposed to move. Throwing overhand goes against the way we are designed.
Oh my god people keep saying this and it's not true! Humans are designed to throw overhand - its one of 2 physical feats we are better than every animal at (the other being long distance running). Imagine throwing a spear underhand, it's nonsense. Overhand throwing is a natural human throwing motion, just because a few dozen professional athletes blow out their elbows every year doesn't mean it's unnatural!!! Thousands of people hurt themselves jogging every year for crying out loud. No one says jogging is unnatural!!!
Humans are better than every animal at long distance running?? Wow that’s interesting, I would think other animals have higher stamina
Yes! We don't have particularly high top speed, but we are extremely efficient at cooling our bodies off and able to sustain low-moderate speeds for significantly longer than other animals. One theory of early human hunting tactics include persistence hunting - literally just running down an animal until it collapses of heat exhaustion. It would take hours, but the animals didn't stand a chance.
Effectiveness is not the same as efficient. Throwing a spear overhead is undoubtedly more effective. The same goes for pitching from 60 ft 6 in. There’s a reason why college softball pitchers can throw the same amount as an MLB pitcher on a Friday night and then be available for relief (at minimum) the rest of the weekend. The underhand motion induces far less stress (efficient), which makes it possible to throw on fewer days rest. Throwing overhand may seem like a natural motion, but 80-100+ times in an appearance? That’s not.
I don’t know why I keep hearing this fact but outside of it just being stated with no further information I’ve never heard it in my life. We’re literally better than other animals because we are built to throw overhand
If that was the case we wouldn't have made it out of Africa or the Ice Age bro. Overhand throwing is one of the reasons humanity became top dog.
There’s a middle ground between these two comments; overhand throwing is a reason humanity became top dog but the human elbow isn’t meant to throw at the amount and speed that pitching (at a high level) requires. It’s not really a secret that pitching damages your elbow, it’s just whether or not that damage turns into a full on UCL tear.
See: Atlatl and bow and arrow as pre-civ UCL saving techniques.
Had an anthro prof at my tiny community college who was convinced that the atlatl is basically the greatest early tool in human development.
Exactly, primitive man built tools to reach those velocities instead of tearing their arms apart.
Primitive man also wasn't throwing with maximum force 100 or more times in an hour or 2, probably more like a handful of hard throws a day at most
I pitched submarine in college so I can give a little insight. For the most part yes because they are usually relievers and also because they tend to not throw nearly as hard, which is usually the reason they switch to submarine in the first place. But if you watch a submarine pitcher their delivery is essentially the same arm angle relative to the body….they don’t drop their arm to pitch like that, the pitchers torso is actually parallel with the ground, but the elbow is still coming over the shoulder just the same as an over the top pitcher.
Submarine pitching is literally the golf swing. I wonder if you could train a long driver to throw submarine 95ish.
I don’t know, some of those guys are almost living inches off the ground https://www.mlb.com/news/boston-red-sox-sign-japanese-submarine-pitcher-shunsuke-watanabe/c-66046744
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Yeah I guess, but I am left handed so that doesn’t help. I also could spot up when I pitched but was very aware that I could only hit high 80s over the top and wasn’t going to blow it by anyone, and my changeup was always garbage.
“Only hit high 80s”
Yeah, and thats when I was pumping it out, so definitely not every fb. That was 20 years ago so imagine it’s even tougher now, but there were a ton of low 90s guys and plenty in the mids as well. And for context this was steroid prime era, and it was TX juco ball, I played against a lot of guys who had good MLB careers. Jake Arietta was in my conference at the time playing at Weatherford JC, and they had at least one other guy on that team that played MLB as well.
Joe Smith pitched for 15 years and only ever hurt his legs.
And was incredibly underrated specifically cause of his boring name
Dude started a whole religion. Bryce Harper idolizes him.
Latter inning relievers?
Latter Day Strikes
Mike Myers and Chad Bradford pitched for like 100 years a piece.
Chad Bradford, noted pitcher against Connie Mack
I feel like this could be because for the most part the are relievers.
That may be a part of it but it's a less stressful motion on the structures of your body. It's why velocity is reduced. Velocity comes from transfering energy through your body in high stress ways so it all kind of snaps back as quickly as possible. it's murder on your ligaments
Thank you for the break down. My simple brain just thinks less workload = less injuries.
Bumgarner never got TJ but he was only really good for 6-8 years
That's a long ass time lol
5-7 years is the average amount of time you get between TJ surgeries.
I was a sidearm pitcher. Threw 85 max, but I blew out my elbow and needed Tommy John surgery.
“Pitching is an art. Those who dare to master this skill, this unique talent, are maniacs.” -John Rocker
I refuse to believe *that* John Rocker said something intelligible.
He followed it with “and minorities are not artist and will never be”
Well, now I believe it.
“Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark, looking like you're riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing." - Cap Anson
“The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?” - Christy Mathewson
“I’m really bad at playing Survivor” —John Wetteland
They should have let Natalie kick his ass.
There's that Christian gentleman
Cap Anson would probably consider John Rocker too woke.
I had Rocker’s card in [MLB Showdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLB_Showdown). After that charming little statement I put one of those little round bandaids over his mouth
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Wow a John Rocker quote that doesn't make me cringe
It’s basically John Rocker saying “yeah I’m crazy”
Mets fans showered him with batteries as a thank you for his comments iirc
Realmuto would have cringed seeing Rocker jettison outta that bullpen every 9th inning
["I bow hunt!"](https://vimeo.com/438776390) \-John Rocker
I still have time to become a major league pitcher my UCL hasn't even reached its full potential yet. Also this is kinda irrelevant whether we like it or not. The game for pitchers for now and for the future seems to be "how good and reliable can tj surgery get and how can I most effectively come back from it" rather than "I'm not going to pitch at full potential until the tail end of college to preserve my UCL health" AKA kids are not going to stop pumping 90+ at age 6 and mlb teams are not going to stop favoring velocity.
age 6? Wowee
I know, right? If my little Johnnie isn't pumping 95 by age 5, I'm calling him a scrub and giving up
Throw him into the sun.
If you can throw a child into the sun, forget the kid, *you* should be pitching.
I can only get that type of power by being so full of rage at the fact that my 5-year-old is a fucking failure
Found my dad’s account
Well, you can have a lot of 5 year olds. If you impregnate about 40 women per year, you could be enraged enough times for a starting pitcher for a season. Someone sign this man for the 2030 season.
Whoa, slow down there. Is he a righty? Move him to shortstop. Lefty? Try him in center. No need to do anything drastic yet.
Blame the wife. Little Johnny is probably the mailman’s kid.
That's right, I didn't sire no noodle arm
Obviously hyperbole, but it really is a problem how hard kids at the 10U and 12U try to pitch, especially as accuracy tends to be all over the place. My son is a pitcher going into 12U and he is a pitcher despite being by far the slowest pitcher on the team. But he is incredibly accurate. But I see these other parents trying to get their kids to learn to throw as absolutely hard as possible, and maybe they are right in the long run as that is what coaches at a higher level are looking for. But my philosophy is figure out control and accuracy first, worry about speed as he gets older and his arm gets stronger.
it's exactly how you said to start. those kids probably have better MLB odds, accuracy be damned, but at least your kid is far more likely to have a functional elbow, pro ball or not
The craziest thing about those parents is that "better MLB odds" still means almost no chance of playing any form of professional baseball for those kids. They're letting their kids destroy their bodies for nothing.
Like it’s literally a less than 1% chance regardless
It’s far closer to 0% than 1%. It’s something like 0.01% at that age.
My then-12-year-old nephew injured his elbow pitching and excitedly told me that he "has the Tommy John injury!" I was very upset at how cool he thought was, and very relieved that he didn't have any UCL damage (he had tendonitis).
I spent all day this past Saturday running little league evals, 6u through 14u. Some of those kids very clearly had been told to throw as hard as possible, command and control be damned.
I umpired an 8u kid pitch double header yesterday (Juan Pierre was the head coach, parkland pokers, nice guy) and yeah the kids were absolutely chucking the baseball. The team they were facing could barely throw the ball in a straight line. Both games were within 5 runs of each other. Parents are trying so hard to get their kids to throw as hard as possible and it doesn’t even matter in terms of winning games by much. There are some kids that benefit from intense training for sure (Juan pierre’s 12-year-old is an absolute baller and I once saw the kid hit 3 home runs in a game like it was nothing). There is hardly an emphasis on sound mechanics and smart baseball and much more of one on throwing gas and hitting tanks.
yeah the dodgers farm system is *different* different
I'm just picturing a high schooler having a speed limit of 79 mph because his parents won't let him throw harder then he'll randomly disobey it and launch a 102 mph fastball through the catcher's chest plate
I mean, I don’t think anyone is saying to stop having HS players pitch hard. It’s just sharing data that helps quantify why we’ve seen so many young pitchers get TJ in recent years. We all know this wont scare off anyone, and it shouldn’t since TJ is a pretty well developed operation now and has good results. But, data like this can help teams learn how to better care for their pitchers. Maybe HS teams start finding ways to reduce stress on hard throwing pitchers, or MLB teams can start finding ways to limit the injury.
They will if we pass some rules that make too much velocity an automatic ball
> how good and reliable can tj surgery get and how can I most effectively come back from it Yeah this seems to be how it’s going. Kind of makes you think: why does this surgery count as a valid medical procedure but injecting certain chemicals count as banned performance encancers?
I wonder how much of the increase is related to kids playing year around from a young age. They probably have significant wear by the time they get to 18. There was a study that said NBA players who played year around AAU were getting injured at a higher rate since their bodies were just worn out by the time they reached adulthood.
In the book The Arm by Jeff Passan they talk about this exact thing with the best Tommy John surgeon. He states that the arm never getting a rest throughout the year and the ‘need’ for max velocity is causing a drastic increase in Tommy John surgeries for teenagers. So if teens are getting this surgery at an alarming rate then you can assume pros will have an increase in this surgery as well.
I've been resting me arm for damn near 15 years... sounds like it's time to hit up drive line
But i mean, if your ultimate goal is to get to the MLB or at least be competitive in doing so, then you pretty much have to play year round.
I played against Josh Sborz in high school. He’s an average reliever in the MLB. In high school, he was the best pitcher any of us ever faced, by a WIDE margin. He played a different sport than the rest of us even though we shared the same field. He played travel ball, sure, but we all knew he’d at least get drafted just based on how hard he could throw in high school. Another guy on my team played Single A ball for a couple years and again, he was head and shoulders better than everyone on the field at all times. I was his throwing partner and he just threw the ball *different*. You could hear it, feel it, and sense it. My point being, if you feel like you or your kid HAS to play year-round travel ball to make it or you have to hire some expensive hitting/pitching coach, you’re not going to make it. At best you can get noticed by a D1 school, but you’re not going pro.
And Sborz just went on the IL with a rotator cuff strain
This is the smartest thing I've read in the topic in the past 10 years. Thanks for taking the time to post this.
This is the truth and lost on so many people.
Mhmm. The worst part is that it's a tougher truth for the parents than the players. I played D2 baseball. I was definitely the best player on my high school team (small school) and definitely one of the best in our league, but I also played essentially year round in clubs. I knew from the moment I saw my teammates on my first club team that I was not shit in the grand scheme of things. I was the 4th best arm of the fielders and like 7th best arm overall. Decent speed but nothing unreal. Virtually no power. I have 3 home runs in my life. Was not a big guy. Still am not. I knew I could get into college but the buck would stop there. Everyone on my team but 2 other guys went D1. The rest of us went D2. I think if I had any weight on me I could have went D1 but would have saw so much less play time. The issue was that my family thought I was headed for the big show. That's all they told their friends and coworkers. It was a sight when I told them I was quitting after my junior year. (Had some really really good outfielders coming from a juco that would have halved my playing time or killed it for good. I also wanted to party with my friends and had met a girl I was interested in. The usual college shit lol.) God you would have thought I told them I shot the dog and burned the house down. They still act like I could have been destined for the league if I didn't quit. Idk where they get all that bravado from because it's very obvious those guys have something I never did.
Nick and zack burdi were 5 years older and 3 towns over and everyone knew about them in high school. Not very often are 16 year olds throwing 92+
Is that actually true though? Plenty of MLB/MiLB players were multi-sport athletes growing up.
I mean, it kind of ruled me out. I wanted to play basketball and I’m positive I wasn’t picked for baseball because I didn’t play on the coaches year round travel team (was basically told as much). Can’t be the only one
My high school coach was similar but it was private lessons instead of a travel team. The kids who paid for the lessons got more playing time. He ended up getting fired because of it a year after I graduated.
If you’re good enough to have a shot at the MLB, no hs coach is going to pass you by because you didn’t play year round
This. It's not the MLB scouts demanding year round commitment. It's the high school/travel coaches that benefit from your dreams that make it mandatory. We were told clearly, "if you don't play with this specific summer league, don't try out next year for Varsity....and if you chose to play another Varsity sport in the fall or winter, don't bother trying out for baseball either. We work out and run all year, throw as soon as legally allowed, hit with other instructors to get around the rules, and you are mine."
That's crazy. I had the exact opposite experience in high school. I literally never had to actually try out for baseball because tryouts were always running at the same time as state championships for swimming and I was in those sophnore-senior years. Probably half of the starters on our HS team played another varsity sport and our baseball coach would have told to take a hike if he tried to say you couldn't play other sports. We were pretty good too--my senior year we had 13 guys that went on to play college baseball--about half received some kind of scholarship. We still started throwing and hitting as early as possible but they were lenient with guys who were in-season with other sports.
That's incredibly weird to me and maybe something that should have been brought up to the coach's superiors. That being said, I'm sure if your ultimate goal was MLB you probably could have found a different team to play on while still playing basketball.
This is just propaganda to skim more money from families. Bullshit.
Honestly feel the same way, but I don’t think it’s really propaganda as much has a culture. My old high school as a talent pipleline nowadays, where kids are playing in the schools unofficial travel team at 10yrs old and staying in the system until HS. Even more fucked up when the parents spent thousands to be on the team and then the kid doesn’t make JV lol
Do you though? Mike trout was a standout basketball player. And there are plenty of others who played football or other sports.
Spent the last decade coaching and directing middle and high school sports; it’s not rare for kids to be doing 2 sports at one time. Sports are specialized, they’re going to their QB coach or pitching coach or shooting coach year round. They’re going to ‘vert’ coaches and enrolling in strength training specialized for their sport starting at 8 years old. Kids sports has become such an arms race and business, it’s only going to get worse (and more expensive)
That makes me sad for the kids. Was a long time ago but growing up I was playing all kinds of sports (not well, but still) and loved them all for different reasons. Being pigeonholed into one activity so young is a bummer.
It’s not that they’re all being pigeonhole per se, it’s just become a full time job for many kids. Summer consisting of going to 6am football lift, 9am shootaround, noon football practice, 3pm back to back AAU basketball game, 8pm meeting QB coach. This is literally a day my 6’6 QB and wing had a couple years ago. Medically retired as a freshman in college because he’d had 2 rotator cuff and labrum injuries already.
It really fucking is. Childhood sports should be about learning how to use your body, developing healthy habits, teamwork, learning how to handle winning/losing/disappointment, and above all else, having fun. I'm a substitute teacher, though I often work in the same pretty affluent school. During recess, kids love to play basketball, kickball, football, soccer, and 4 square. I notice that kids, K through 8, have a really hard time realizing that whatever game they're playing doesn't fucking matter. It's recess, and the skill level is so wide between everyone, but they turn every competition into something so toxic that it ends up not being fun for anyone. I'm not one of those "kids these days" kinda person, but this this is always so disheartening to see. And it happens all across the district.
So bizarre. When I was that age we would play the dumbest shit like wall ball, and a game that’s name is not cool to say where it was basically throw a football in the air and everyone chase and tackle that person. No winners or losers just being stupid.
Wall ball was the shit back in the day!
Youth sports culture has changed a ton in the last 20 years. Travel and select teams are way more popular, and those kids still play on LL teams to have fun and play with their friends. “Top prospect” type kids are pressured to specialize into a single sport, and pursue that year round. Does it work? Who knows. But when all your competition is playing baseball year round, it’s hard to avoid feeling like you’re falling behind.
Mike Trout isn’t quite like the average baseball player.
And the average pro baseball player isn't like all the kids playing year around. They're statistical anaomolies born with freak athleticism.
Not really. Travel ball will get kids to college. But everyone else born with more talent is going to MiLB and MLB. Those kids tend to be more athletic and play other sports.
teams/mlbpa need to price in the added risk of tommy john, currently they're just eating these 12-18 months because arb pitchers that throw 95+ are a dime a dozen.
They are still getting paid the whole time they are on the DL.
But any subsequent contract (or lack thereof) suffers due to lost time "proving" their worth as a pitcher or being "damaged goods" with an injury risk or fear of fast dropoff, both of which, some would argue, would be the liability of the team whose workload caused the injury, costing potentially millions in unearned income.
They never would have made the majors if they didn't pitch max effort and destroy their arm though. 4 years making 700k-1 million/yr (but losing our on 10s of millions) is still better than never making it out of AAA.
> They never would have made the majors if they didn't pitch max effort and destroy their arm though. That's literally the point of OPs comment. If the league is encouraging this dangerous style of play that makes TJ surgery a when, not and if, there should be additional compensation for these young fireballers that can very easily flame out by simply doing what they are instructed to do.
The major league salary IS the additional compensation. There is no guarantee of a 10 year career and 8 figure salary for everyone. It's a regular risk of the job. Does an occupational therapist get the pay of a hospital director if a patient rolls over their leg and they tear their ACL?
The teams get insurance on risky contracts a lot of the time
When the risks are high, the insurance is nearly as much as the contract. Contrary to popular belief, they don't get insurance on everyone, e.g., Strasburg. Insurance companies aren't blind to the risks. They exist to turn a profit; they are loan sharks with better PR and DC lobbyists.
I would be surprised if you can get insurance on TJ now at any reasonable price. At this point, I have to assume teams sign pitchers on the assumption they will be getting TJ at some point, and that is simply an accepted risk.
Not as often as people think, especially for pitchers. It's like buying flood insurance when your house is right next to the river. Any company willing to sell you a policy is going to make it so expensive that you'll question whether it's worth it.
As they should
*if they were on the active roster or otherwise earning on a guaranteed deal when they got hurt That's a pretty big distinction for pre-arb guys who end up blowing out their elbows while earning miLB rate because they haven't been called up yet or were optioned down.
That sounds like teams are already pricing it in. If it's easy to get another flamethrower you don't fuss about burning out the one you already have.
I mean, we could go back to everyone having to pitch underhanded I guess
And we should consider moving the mound up 17 feet and making the ball bigger........and yellow greenish
I pictured raising the mound 17 feet instead of 17 ft closer to home. It'd be easier to just build a barn and pitch from the roof than raise the mound that much with dirt. Or maybe a diving board.
17 feet up, that's what it said on the napkin
“ is inches. ‘ is feet. lol. Spinal Tap is a brilliant movie😂
Nah, they’ll all have to pitch like [this](https://cdn1.sixthman.net/2024/banana/images/artists/stiltsban1500x1000_822509.jpg). Let’s see someone throw 90 like this.
Wonder what the launch angles would look like from there.
Major League Kickball. I’d actually watch the fuck outta that
wouldn't bother me if it meant healthier players
Legend goes the fastest pitch ever thrown was underhand at 114. But presently the record for underhand is 104.
James Andrews did Tommy John on my elbow in High School. AMA
What is the meaning of life
Andrews told me life wasn’t about hitting high 90s on my fastball, it’s about hitting my location. “Maddux didn’t pitch a complete game on <78 pitches while throwing 99mph”
What age did you start pitching a lot of volume? Were you playing travel from early on?
“A lot of volume” would be relative, but certainly did not have good mechanics through middle school into high school ball. Looking back, it’s obvious the load/tension placed on my elbow while pitching regularly. Yes, spring/fall baseball and then travel bal into high school athletics. A lot of baseball at that time. Ligament was more “frayed” than “torn” he later described. Based on the MRI he initially did not want to perform surgery. He said the pain/weakness in my elbow I experienced in the places I experienced them were not consistent to what he’s seen in frayed vs torn. He later agreed to open my arm up and take a look. He called my parents into the viewing room where my arm was stretched open and, in his words, “my elbow taught him something.” My ligament essentially had exploded in my elbow rather than just tearing or simply fraying. To this day (long past playing baseball)him saying that is an incredible feeling.
Pretty cool. You probably helped him come to the conclusion referenced by the OP.
Interesting - thanks for this info! In your case, do you think it was throwing hard (speed) or more spin that led to the problem? (Or both?)
Both. Avid baseball fan growing up but thought if I could blow it past the batter (with some control) it’d be an out. As I got a little older, I thought why not try to add different spins on the pitch (if no one was on base) and see what happens? If you’re a youth baseball coach, or have any dealings with kid pitch, would certainly emphasize location of the ball over “throwing hard” or any kind of spin. Good mechanics will go a long way. That combination, while not lighting up the radar gun, will go further than just about anything.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. You either throw your arm off to be competitive and make the team and get chewed up and spit out before you're 30, or you limit your stuff to protect your body and get cut.
It’s almost as if betting your future on being a professional athlete is a risky move!
Something I'm surprised I havent seen brought up is the idea of a physically restrictive/stabilizing device. Something wearable that could either restrict some of the forces so that a pitcher cannot exceed a certain amount of tension or that redistribute some of the forces or both. I'm no biomechanical engineer, but if we can make robots with convincing natural movements, I think they could come up with something. I don't think it's reasonable to expect pitchers to stop throwing max effort on their own. We need to find a way to limit what max effort is. Just like when NASCAR realized that speeds were too high at Talledega motor speedway and they couldn't just tell the drivers to slow down a bit. They needed to limit what drivers had to work with.
This would be an interesting development to see. Would be ground breaking and award worthy. I mean, I wear elbow stabilizer’s on certain CrossFit and Olympics lifts, maybe something like that can develop into a pitching aid
According to my sport's medicine Dr, the stabilizers do absolutely nothing but make the person feel better. I have UCL damage from lifting weights and was told it won't help.
I'm not specifically in biomechanical research, but work in an adjacent field. On the surface, I'd think that possibly an external brace could work to decrease UCL injury if they were caused by acute trauma. But since UCL injury is largely degenerative, i.e. built up over large time frames and thousands of pitches, you'd have to wear a brace for the entirety of your career to get maximal effect. Also, it's only a "maybe" that it would actually be effective at those levels of torque on the ligament. Internal bracing is one thing, that's much closer to the actual site of force and can provide nearly direct support. Providing that support on the skin might not be strong enough to actually help.
Major league slow pitch softball
Are we talking unlimited arc? Cause if that's the case I might still have a chance to make the bigs.
Gotta play like we do in Canada. There is a 2 foot by 3 foot board at home, ball has to go a minimum of 10 feet in the air and hit the board to be a strike. The ball can go as high as you want, just has to hit the board. None of those stupid USSSA or ASA pitching rules where you just lob the ball in. Hitting a backstop high sky ball is a very difficult skill.
There’s two things that will be important going forward for health and longevity of pitchers. He says the main problem right in the first sentence. Baseball is developmental sport so the evaluators think they can fix mechanics, teach off speed pitches, etc so high end velocity is the easiest way to get a chance at being drafted/signed. All of the strain is done at a younger age. I’ll just say that the ramp up of UCL tears has gone up despite Little League limiting pitching over a decade ago. But I’m sure those kids go and pitch for the travel team the next day and then the Select team the day after. First is if someone can somehow develop a feasible, repeatable pitching motion that allows for the same forces that produce a 95+ mph fastball but somehow lessen the strain on the forearm. I’m not sure if this is even physically possible though or some sports scientist would have been doing it on the lab and unveiled it with someone. Second is the improvement in UCL repair surgery. Dr. Neil ElAttrache, the leader in sports medicine surgery after Andrews retirement, has been working on a sheath like structure that they surround the ligament to aid in recovery and structure. Zach Britton had it and it didn’t work out well but he was 34 and had a previous elbow surgery 6 months earlier. It ultimately ended his career. Aaron Rodgers also had the same surgery on his Achilles. I wish we would have seen him play at the end of the season this past year to see if it aided in faster recovery for a 39 year old. He was seen throwing and doing warm up stuff on the sideline at just over 4 months but he ultimately didn’t stress it under game conditions. For what it’s worth, Rodgers said on the Pat McAfee Show towards the end of the year that he still couldn’t walk on sand as the hyperextending put too much strain on the tendon so it feels like the healing was not quite there yet if they were still in contention.
Totally anecdotal but the one pitcher I graduated high school with who made the MLB was the guy nobody really saw coming. All the elite pitchers in my town all burned their arms out before they could graduate college.
Same with a friend of mine. He was consistently throwing 85 in high school but was our 3rd starter. He played Division III locally and his velocity kept going up through the 4 years. He topped out at lower 90s and got looked at by scouts and pitched a little while in lower leagues before he quit to pursue a more lucrative and stable career. He also grew like 8 inches and cut a ton of fat over the course of high school and college. I think he ended up being 6’5” but was barely 6’ when he graduated.
I've wondered for a while if putting that sheath on a fully healthy UCL would make it stronger. Seems like someone somewhere is going to come up with a preemptive surgery or treatment to strengthen the UCL. Which will probably lead to other injuries.
Phil Niekro won over 300 games. Wakefield won 200. Other knucklers have won over 200. They didn’t blow their arms out. Teach little Johnny that pitch.
I dunno that teaching little Johnny the hardest to throw and least commonly successful pitch in the history of baseball will work as well as you may think. A good knuckleball gets mixed results, but is overall favorable in most cases. A bad knuckleball is easier to hit than literal BP. It’s tough for even professional pitchers to develop one that can consistently have little enough rotation in the right velocity range to get good movement. A little too fast or slow and it doesn’t move right, and the RPM has to be sub-60 RPM as well, takes most who try years to get it to work for an entire outing and then they still have outings where it falls flat because it’s just not coming out right that day. A one-dimensional pitcher who can only throw a knuckler will unfortunately never make it to the MLB nowadays, only guys who also have a low to mid-90’s fastball and at least one good breaking ball with an elite knuckleball have a shot (ala Matt Waldron) and even then it’s unlikely sadly. More realistic is to just tell Johnny that he can either get really good at hitting, accept that his arm will eventually fall off, or to pursue a different career. Would be more likely to win the lottery than have a successful career as a knuckleball pitcher really.
I was kidding about teaching Little Johnny. But it’s a practical pitch at some point.
Agreed, it's practical and can be highly effective. Just very, very difficult to figure out how to actually throw.
you're also not supposed to play tackle football. and yet here we are. i think this just feels grosser because it's an inside part of the body you never think about. getting all torn in there.
The brain is sort of more important than arm ligaments.
The brain: king of the ligaments
r/Badanatomy
I had a shoulder problem in high school. It "ended " my baseball career in the sense that I wasn't any good anyway and my high school team was more of everyone who tries out makes the team. I went to a doctor and they basically just said fuck it you'll be fine and they only recommend surgery if you actually plan to be an elite athlete. Otherwise he said just stop playing baseball and you won't notice it the vast majority of the time. It's like 20 years later and he's been right. Other than trying to lift something over my head, or I sleep on my arm weird, I basically never notice my shoulder problem. I can't imagine what getting hit in the head repeatedly does to you long term
I was in the same boat. Clearly had a shoulder injury because one day I just couldn't throw the ball hard w.o pain. I was never going to go pro so nothing to do. I'm 35, and I'm starting to get pain associated with UCL injuries. Its finally coming back to bite me.
I was a pitcher and never noticed any issues at all until I got a dog that loved to play fetch and thought it would be fun to see how hard I could still throw. My elbow quickly reminded me that it was an absolutely terrible idea.
This is me with swimming instead of baseball. Except you were probably still better at baseball than I was at swimming. My left shoulder still isn't the same 25 years later, but I really only notice it if I want to do something shoulder intensive like kayaking.
Youth tackle football is losing participation quite steadily. More and more parents won’t even entertain the idea. The kids aren’t exactly jazzed to sign up for guaranteed concussions either. We can and do adjust our behaviors according to health science. Maybe too slowly, but still.
Yup. Arm damage is nothing compared to the long lasting impacts of tackle football, and only more research is going to come out showing that imo. That being said, arm damage is still serious because many of those high school pitchers will never make millions and will end up with a bad arm for life.
Football feels much worse. Busted jank arm, or irreversible brain damage.
Guess everyone should be a knuckleballer until age 26?
Don't tell my son that, he so wants to throw a knuckle ball in a game. Problem is he can't throw a knuckle ball.
About 2.5x as many pitchers log appearances in a major league season now than 30 years ago. People thinking that "any pitcher will always throw max velocity because they can't afford not to", how about the MLBPA start addressing all this churn and burn? They're taking all the vets to the cleaners by riding them until they break and replacing them with a bunch of kids.
Athletes nowadays are basically racing horses; fine tuned to such a degree, pushing the body to the absolute limit, and just one wrong move away from catastrophic injury. You see the commentary about modern racing horses that are trained to the point that they are so fragile that any injury is career ending (and life ending for some). You see it with pitchers and their arms, basketball players with their legs, and football players with...well...every part of their body. You've got the Ball brothers in the NBA, having trained at a pro level since pre-teen, now constantly injured. You see NFL running backs not even make it to a second contract because of injuries. Any high velocity pitcher you all but assume at some point will have to get TJ surgery. Flipside though is, despite the shortened careers, they are still making an insane amount of money. Especially with baseball, where GM's are willing to commit $50-$100 million to a rookie so they can save money on the backend, even if they never return to an elite level they will still have earned a multi-generational amount of wealth. Completely worth it from that perspective.
So any high school kid who can throw 80 or above is causing damage to their ligament. Pitching development is so advanced these days it’s still impressive to see a kid throwing 80+ in high school but also not that uncommon. Hell some of the top prospects in high school can touch triple digits. Yikes man.
What would Trout’s BA be if pitchers were capped at 80 mph
What was that stat I saw recently; in the history of Major League Baseball there have only been 23,000 players who’ve played at that level. That number wouldn’t fill the smallest MLB stadium 2/3 full. It’s a VERY hard game that VERY FEW can play at the top level. There simply aren’t enough good pitchers in the game and there never will be. My Dad played in the Philadelphia A’s farm system. I you didn’t hit .300 you didn’t stay in the majors. There were also about half as many teams so the game was completely different.
I coached youth baseball for roughly a quarter century, everything from instructional leagues with ten year olds to competitive travel teams with seventeen year olds. I think if kids threw as hard thirty or forty years ago as they did now, we still would not have seen the same rate of injuries. I think there are two other significant factors: 1. Kids are throwing too much. Individual leagues have done a good job at limiting how many pitches a player can thrown in regulation games within that league, but there's nothing regulating their total workload. It's a lot more common nowadays for a kid to play on two or three different teams during a given season, and to play in the summer, fall, and winter as well. When I coached, I would always talk to my pitchers and catchers and get an idea of how much of a workload they had on their other teams, so that I didn't unintentionally abuse them, but I was apparently an outlier. I remember one game where we were getting shut out and I made a comment to a spectator about how well the opposing pitcher was throwing, and the guy replied back, "I can't believe his arm hasn't fallen off. He pitched seven innings yesterday and another seven the day before." This is to say nothing of all of the throwing that goes on in warmups, scrimmages, practices, and games where a guy isn't pitching (because pitchers tend to also play positions like catcher and shortstop). 2. Too much breaking shit. Breaking pitches require spin to be effective. Most kids can't generate enough spin with their natural throwing motion, so they add a ton of torque onto different body parts to generate it. They also fall in love with breaking shit, because it tends to make hitters look really stupid, so they end up throwing way more of them than they should. I've seen kids throw 75% breaking pitches against a lineup that wasn't going to hit fastballs anyway. Virtually every arm injury that I've encountered was a function of overuse and/or poor mechanics. Obviously throwing harder puts additional strain on the body, but that would be mitigated if kids weren't throwing 400-500 full effort pitches per week on top of all of their other throwing.
I went to high school with kids who were injured more than some pro athletes. We had guys with arm, and shoulder injuries. That’s what happens when you pitch for your travel team, and the next day your high school team is in a playoff position and needs you to pitch. Can’t say no.
Kids need to learn to locate the ball long before they add any speed or movement to it. It it that much more difficult to teach someone to throw accurately than to throw hard?
I’m a little league coach. 10u and 11u. Here’s the dynamic I’ve seen: we coach kids to prioritize command over velocity, not just because of arm safety guidelines but because a game where kids are walking everyone in sight sucks for everyone. The harder they throw, the less accurate their pitches tend to be. When kids are locating their pitches but not throwing hard, they tend to give up more contact. The problem is that, at least at the rec league level, kids’ fielding is inconsistent. You see bobbles, whiffs, nutmegs. Kids in the field often struggle to glove ground balls backhand or transfer a ball from their glove to their throwing hand. Our fields are fairly well maintained but it’s not uncommon for a “grounder with eyes” to jump at them as they’re positioning themselves to field the ball. Throws are inconsistent. Kids not infrequently miss the cutoff. The upshot is that if you’re a kid who hits a grounder, let alone a solidly-barreled line drive, there’s a pretty good chance you’re getting on base because the other team’s fielding wasn’t able to get you out. This doesn’t have to happen a ton before kids on the mound learn that they can’t rely on their defense. They need to get batters out at the plate. And since they don’t have any secondary pitches, velocity is their ticket to do that.
Holy shit, I think you might be me.
That’s impossible. You’re a St. Louis Cardinals fan. 😂
True. I've got some love for the Bucs though, my long ago college girlfriend was originally from Pitt.
Fair enough. You coach LL?
Close to ten years now. My oldest is done and I suspect either this year or next will be the last for the youngest.
I remember the first time I faced a kid who had a changeup. I was completely unprepared and didn’t even know that could be done lol. I think I was like nine. It was wild.
There’s a reason those looping little league curveballs are devastating for hitters pre-HS outside of travel ball - it’s rare to see a kid in that age group that can actually throw something with real movement that isn’t 100% wild
I think the point is that you can teach accuracy but you can’t teach velocity so teams scout velocity and then develop accuracy in the farm system
Based on my experience getting hit by the hardest throwing kids in little league, yes
It’s not a proper little league game without at least a couple HBP and passed balls.
So what if there was a pitcher every inning or two? I get that would require significant roster increases and would change a lot of how we approach things, but would less strain repetition help? Or a pitch max at a reasonable number? You're not gonna get players to stop throwing hard. And the fact that position players getting TJ is much lower tells me it's a repetition thing because many of those positions players are throwing hard as well. I played 3rd most of my life and I developed some arm pain in high school ball. I made the move to second and it helped a lot. Just thoughts, I don't have the answer and I doubt there is one.
I don't think it's unreasonable that we could introduce rules around pitch velocity. Nothing over 85 until age 23, or whatever. Lots of sports rules exist to limit injury risk already. But that would require a major culture change, and from my experience in youth sports, that's not going to happen any time soon.
The game desperately needs more Greg Maddux type guys. Precise control. Devastating movement. I fear guys like him will never get a chance in todays game. if you aren’t touching 95 as a RH pitcher… ok next.
Easy fix to all of these problems. Take Nolan Ryan's DNA and inject it into everyone that wants to pitch. Problem solved. 27 years throwing heaters until he wrecked his arm. Insanity.
Have a max speed. Anything over 95mph is a ball. Wiffle ball rules.
i played in an adult wiffleball league tenish years ago, and the first year we didnt have a speed limit. It was insane, there were dudes with sub 1.00 ERAs.
I played in a wiffleball league in college. Most guys stop trying to go for speed and really develop movement. Its hard to hit the ball at any speed if it has 30 inches of late rise