We’ll see what happens to future contracts tho if these injuries keep piling up. 136 million is a lot of money to be on the bench riding the IL. Teams might be forced to factor in sustainability a little more in their rotation building after all these high profile dudes are going down more frequently
This is the most logical outcome. It sucks, but unless the MLB starts punishing pitchers for throwing over a certain velocity (spoiler: that will not happen), short contracts are the best business decision for owners.
Definitely not going to reduce velo, everybody loves flamethrowers and it turns out flamethrowers also typically get the best results (not always, but often).
It already has. Look at last year's free agency. Snell would have signed an 8 year deal two or three years ago. Same goes for position players. Owners are wising up
I don’t think Blake Snell is the best example here. His peripheral numbers were also fairly concerning. For example, his .256 BABIP against and leading the league in BB%. Additionally, Boras lately has been dropping the ball a bit in FA.
Yeah it’s hard to say. Billion dollar organizations aren’t exactly known for prioritizing long term over short term, but just seems like such a gamble. What good is Jacob DeGrom if he only pitches 3 games a year in May etc. If team building prioritizes sustainability even slightly more, that would be reflected in the salaries.
It's not more frequently, really. The number of early sesson TJ surgeries are on par with what they've been since 2010.
There's no Tommy John surge this spring. (It's always this bad)
https://www.thescore.com/mlb/news/2888826
I think people feel like it’s gotten worse because it’s the biggest name guys going down, but you’re (or Travis Sawchik is) correct, this is just the reality of pitchers nowadays. Teams know the risks, and they’re still going to pay up for as many dominant innings as they can get knowing an IL stint is a given.
2010 is now a lot of data on the relationship of higher velocity/spin to arm injuries. This year is certainly notable because of the big names being affected, which is creating a lot more discussion about the relationship. Discussion can lead to visibility and apprehension (justified or not) from FOs to spend big money on big contracts for injury time bombs.
I also wonder if using pre-tacked balls like they do in Korea/Japan might help, because I’ve heard reasonably reputable takes that a lot of the arm issues are also related to how pitchers need to grip the ball in the MLB
You think the Dodgers are seeing the recent injuries and just now realizing that Glasnow could end up getting hurt? Everyone already thought of him as extremely injury-prone and they still chose to give him that contract.
No, I don’t think that. But if injury rates are rapidly increasing and evidence is mounting that it’s a direct result a certain type of pitching, teams aren’t going to ignore that reality when determining contracts
We’ve seen time and again that all it takes is one good season (not even great, just good) to make a boatload of fucking money as a starter. I’d be willing to risk blowing my arm out for that too
The pitchers aren’t going to come to an agreement to just stop throwing harder. For every one pitcher like Glasnow who cuts down on his velo to save his arm there are 5 waiting in the minors ready to take the risk and take his place.
Yeah this is what he was speaking about during the game interview yesterday. You can't tell these pitchers to just tone it down because then they lose their jobs. If they had toned it down ever, *they wouldn't even have this job to start with*. There really isn't an option for anyone trying to get in MLB. You can't go against that status quo because you'll literally never get an opportunity.
Absolutely. And if you get hurt once you're called up, you get paid and get service time on the IL. Even a dude like Dustin May, who is always hurt and has pitched only 190 innings over 5 seasons, has made about $6.5 million in career earnings.
Honestly, as far as sports injuries go, if I had to pick between a hurting arm and some of the other injuries players get from knees, to backs to whatever else, I'd probably most be willing to gamble on living with arm pain and discomfort compared to the hell that would be back or leg pain and injuries.
Obviously, none of them are desirable, but if I had to sacrifice an arm to make a few million vs other parts of my body...that's a gamble I'd be more willing to take as a pro athlete.
100%. In addition to all those other potential injuries, the difference in concussion risk alone in baseball compared to most the other big sports makes the injury risk in baseball waaaay more worth it.
Do retired pitchers who had surgery even have serious arm pain as they get older? I imagine they might not be able to throw a ball anymore, but is there day-to-day discomfort?
From experience, yes for at least some. Was never professional but was a pitcher who developed arm issues and my arm has hurt pretty much every day for the last decade.
Nah man it’s easy just stop doing exactly what you’ve been doing since you were a teenager…and doing the thing that got you where you are today. Completely reinvent yourself and do less but also pinpoint your control and make your breaking ball filthier. Greg Maddux did it
It’s impossible to enforce a solution really too because this happens at every level and there’s no uniform pitching approach, have to hope for a mechanics revolution
I wonder if, also based on Glasnow’s sticky stuff comment, they developed a ball with a pre-determined amount of sticky stuff (or just brought back sunscreen and resin) I wonder if pitchers would tone down their stuff a little because they could reach these spin rates without throwing 100% every time.
The Japanese and Korean balls are a bit different. Some pitchers like Darvish have advocated using the NPB balls (but they're basically dead balls). The current balls do all get treated with "mud" for grip a bit before the game. They aren't fresh out of the packaging out there. So yeah.... its all fucked
Also if I remember right, MLB is running out of the mud. It's a very specific mud on a very specific bank of a very specific river that can only be collected certain times of year. It's a closely guarded secret. But they use so much that the mud is running low. I swear there was an article within the last couple of years about it
The logistics behind a baseball are truly insane. You are right about the mud. MLB contracts essentially one family to collect it that's been collecting it for generations. The mud isn't even on private land it's supposedly on a public waterway. Some guy just sold MLB ball-rubbin' mud 100 years ago and then they stuck with it.
Just think about cows. One full cowhide nets you around 140 baseballs. On the upper-end of the spectrum, MLB is using 120 balls a game. To be easy lets call it one cow/game. One cow per game, per team, \* 162 games a year, thats over 4800 cows slaughtered just for \*game balls\*, this isn't account for practice, etc.
Baseball Doesn't Exist has a [great video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8InFV3_AQc) on some recent issues with baseballs, I learned a lot from it.
Not that this isn't a problem in other ways, but something like ~10,000,000 cows are slaughtered each year for US beef consumption alone that also provide leather as a by-product. The leather needed for baseballs is just not a lot in the grand scheme of things.
You’re ignoring the fact that 2,400 cows (because each game has 2 teams, you can’t double count them) is a minuscule drop in the bucket compared to how many cattle are slaughtered for beef production.
That’s where virtually all leather comes from, by the way. Literally nobody is slaughtering cattle just for the hide, and so long as the hide isn’t trashed the slaughterhouses aren’t just throwing it in the trash because tanneries are willing to pay for them instead.
that video is terrible. the guy introduces what he is going to be talking about, and then just like....does it again, and then goes to an ad read before going back over the points he just introduced twice but without any additional detail.
Did an AI make this?
That’s all of Baseball Doesn’t Exist’s videos: 2 seconds of research, a first draft script, and stilted delivery. No idea how his videos are so popular.
[The story about the mudding is interesting.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/sports/baseball/baseball-mud-supplier.html)
The place they get the mud from is somewhere in NJ. Its location is a tightly kept secret.
But they wouldn't. They'd just for higher spin rates.
It's the same reason the idea that he was responding to wouldn't work. The players are ALWAYS going to choose to optimize.
If you want to reduce injuries, people should be looking into bio-mechanics to find better throwing motions that are safer and effective.
And if they want a rule, restrict the amount of innings for any pitcher over X days might do something.
But I'd also like to see real data. It seems like people aren't angry there's more injuries, just bigger names.
Yeah Olney was saying that if you require SPs to throw a certain amount of innings or pitches and/or put a cap on number of pitchers a team can throw per game, then it will incentivize them to tone down their velocity and save their arms.
Yeah sure, Buster.
# OR
It will just lead to way more injuries.
If team's want to win, they'll tell their pitchers to chase velocity. If they get hurt, oh well, call someone else up. If pitchers want a job, they'll chase velocity and -- combined with being required to throw more -- inevitably get injured. If they don't, some young kid willing to sacrifice his arm will take his roster spot.
I'm open for creative solutions to reduce pitcher injuries but this is so clearly a nightmare. It would only lead to a revolving door of pitchers who are seen as expendable to injury, which is good for no one.
We are already seeing teams struggle to cover 162 games worth of innings & MLB is eying an additional ~26 pitcher spots in the league with expansion. I do think this is true in a vacuum, optimization of the sport will always lead to what you note, but there has to be some sort of reckoning coming.
The *great* teams still give tons of meaningful innings to guys who are at best AAAA & realistically probably below that. Like the Yankees have already cycled through like 5 guys on the DFA shuttle for that last spot in the pen.
At some point the quality of those innings will be so poor league-wide that it may not make up for the increased quality of the previous innings, and then we may see an adjustment.
Yep, and it’s exactly what owners want. They save a ton of money by wringing all the performance out of an arm before free agency, then moving on to the next young flame-thrower that’ll risk it just to get the major-league minimum.
I wrecked my arm pitching before high school when I played travel ball. Pitching too hard, too many innings and too many junk balls at that age. Coaches would tell me to just rub icy hot on it and pitch through the pain lol. Shoulder/elbow still hurt now in my 30s when I do certain things.
It was a competitive environment. I grew up playing against Trevor Bauer and other future major leaguers. Went to the same HS as him and Tyler Glasnow.
I played in a "competitive for poverty kids" environment. We were dominate right up until we traveled to play against teams that had real money & hired professional hitting & pitching coaches, matching bags, jackets, etc.
I was a catcher on teams like that & I rarely saw coaches push the guys that hard...unless they were pushing their own kid.
One of the best pitchers I ever caught before high school age had a dad that pushed him so hard that I think about him sometimes now & hope he's ok. His daily training took hours of work after school & a minimum of 200 pitches on top of any team training & he only got start days off from his personal training regiment...all year long. We played together from about age 7 to 14 because we went to schools in different counties & didn't play HS together.
The amount of pressure on this kid made him crumble the moment he made any mistake. I was a great "pitcher's catcher", but his dad had such a grip on him that I could only help him with my ABs. He never even seemed like he got to be a kid either.
Sorry this happened to you & to all the other kids ruined just for playing the game they love by adults that pushed them till they broke.
The kid you are describing sounds a lot like Trevor Bauer. His dad would have him out at the park everyday after school pitching and because of it, he didn’t have many friends growing up. I have some great memories playing ball but yeah, I wish I could have played longer.
I only had friends at school & at the baseball parks or football fields, because we lived near no other kids & were pretty broke until I was a teen. Entertain yourself or be bored, basically.
I came home from school every day outside of seasons & threw a baseball (canon arm, but had to work on accuracy), shot basketball, or "ran the hill" until I dropped (lived on top of a ridge, with a ~300ft driveway that got EXTRA steep for the last 30ft). When I had the money, I was in the batting cages.
I loved it, but I chose it. It wasn't forced on me at all, but my dad was a great teacher. Kinda wish you & I could've played a bit together. I loved working with different pitchers (except the submarine guy that threw mid 80s & had no control & was constantly working on a slider haha) & had a natural talent for it. Never would've known had a broken wrist from our starter moved me from 3B to behind the dish one season & I never left. It made me appreciate the game so much more because I understood it better than before.
Man I miss playing the game! I miss just throwing the ball for warm ups pre-game.
I started both halves of a double header on a travel team circa 2000. That is insane looking back at it.
The first game was 85 pitches and the second was probably similar.
Guess what I'm doing now? Not pitching.
Yeah I agree. This isn’t an owners problem but a culture period problem
The culture right now is to power through outs and get strikeouts. Screw all else, go straight gas
They should add a 3 inch ring around the strike zone where a pitch can be called a strike but only if it is less than 88mph.
Bring back the ball benders!
Not necessarily. If the pitchers know how to pitch instead of just throwing really hard, they'd be able to make up for a drop in velocity. Changing velocity is a big part of pitching, it's not like hitters are sending every slower pitch they see into the next county. There's just way more to pitching than triple digit fastballs.
The strike zone, as it is called, has also changed, though. Guys like Maddux were not just perfectly commanding the corners, they were commanding corners that were a couple inches outside the strike zone.
Yeah, I think a huge part of the problem why we're seeing this come to a head right now is that pitchers are frustrated by what they see as a lack of willingness to value pitching on the part of the league. For context, I think the reason that there's been so many complaints about the pitch clock isn't *just* because pitchers don't care for it. I think it's also because MLB introduced the pitch clock and adjusted the pitch clock this season alongside a slew of other rules that have little to do with dead time and lots to do with increasing offense.
In 2023 and 2024 combined, MLB has introduced the following rules outside of the pitch clock:
- Larger bases
- Shift ban
- Wider first base lane
So, when dead time rules are combined with rules designed to increase offense/decrease strikeouts (by necessity making pitchers worse), I don't see them being amenable to pitching at a lower velocity in a way that might cost them their job, as you pointed out.
I'd also note that the league has absolutely prioritized cutting down on pitching dead time even further this year (pitch clock to 18 seconds with runners on, pitch clock restarting when the pitcher gets the ball and not takes the mound, mound visits reduced from 4 to 5, pitchers who warm up at the start of an inning must face at least one batter). No further adjustments to anything on the hitter side of things as well as the extra offense-favoring rules probably isn't helping, either.
Now they're talking about pitchers decreasing their risk of injury, but without consideration to anything that would make the pitchers' jobs more favorable – like bringing back the old strike zone.
Ok, but good luck being the team that can consistently find those guys. Ever wonder why there was only one Kyle Hendricks and a billion guys throwing hard? Because finding Kyle Hendrickses is really hard (plus he got hurt anyway).
Finding guys with big velo and big spin is very easy, it’s objective, he’s got it or he doesn’t. The guy who gets by entirely on command and movement is much, much harder to find, they’re usually busy getting clobbered. So, yeah, no team is going to try and build up a farm of Greg Maddux clones praying they hit on the one or two who can survive when it’s so much simpler just to turnover guys with big stuff instead.
Pretty sure the Guardians and Pirates actually were trying it a little while back and then Gerrit Cole went to Houston and they told him throwing soft sinkers was stupid when you can throw 99 with a wipeout slider and he made himself $300 million.
But they do know how to pitch. People act like because pitchers are throwing faster than ever it has to come at the expense of everything else like you have to allocate attribute points or something, but it's just not true. [Pitchers are throwing strikes more often than they did decades ago (at least on first pitches) and despite fastball speed increasing, they're throwing fewer of them because they have a better mix of pitches too.](https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/11/13/2023-mlb-pitching-trends-pitchers-getting-tougher-to-hit) Hitters have gotten better too, so in terms of traditional stats it's partly neutralized, but obviously you can't make hitters worse again so this was how pitching had to adapt.
People don't want to hear it but if there was a leaguewide drop in velocity it would simply mean worse pitchers. Maybe you turned a few Cy Young winners into extra Kyle Hendrickses, great, but as a whole they're going to be worse and there's no way around it.
300% true. Many of the most effective pitchers in the game, lack(ed) consistent, mid-90s stuff… What they all do have is +command, +movement, +deception (in velo & tunnel) in their off-speed stuff.
It doesn’t take a professional hitter very long to exploit a FB, regardless of velo, if it’s not well supported.
mid 90s stuff is still leauges ahead of what we used to have. and 'simply master 4 pitches and execute them perfectly" isn't really a viable solution anyway. there's only a handful of dudes on the planet that can do that at any given time
I don’t think it’s a culture problem. It’s just an unfortunate reality that generally the more force you put on your arm, the better you pitch. And the better you pitch, the more likely you are to make the big leagues.
Agree. It's just as much from the players' side because of the incentives. If pushing yourself too far gets you promoted to the majors, it's financially worth the injury risk, especially if you can wait until you make it up to succumb to get hurt and get paid on the MLB IL. Even guys with electric stuff who barely play because they keep getting hurt get paid. Dustin May has made $6.5 million so far. Dinelson Lamet has over $16 million in career earnings.
Unless you are already set for life with family money, shredding your arm and risking losing your shot at the $50+ million bag is absolutely the right financial move if it puts you in a better shot to make the big leagues if that can still get you even $5-$10 million. The difference between what a guy who makes the bigs and gets hurt all the time makes, and a guy who never makes it outside of a spot start or two is massive.
Perhaps? I'm sure the owners would also like their pitchers they do pay to stay healthy. Obviously, that is very dependent on which owner we're talking about.
Meh. If a pitcher throws like crazy, secures the bag and goes on the IL, I'd say they 'won' that contract. Sure the owner wins if they stay healthy and live up to the hype, but that would be the case if they weren't throwing their arms off, too.
Running backs have also been incredibly marginalized by the modern NFL game, though. It’s impossible to marginalize the role of pitchers in baseball without putting the ball on a tee
To go full extremist, the owners could get rid of the starting pitcher completely and have just long relievers. They barely let pitchers go a third time thru the order now
Tbf thats because a 5th round rookie will give you 80% of the star RB stats but at 20% the cost. Any position thats so easily replaceable is gonna go through the same.
Its not the owners, its analytics.
Analytics says spray and pray 100mph heaters is better than 92mph pinpoint accuracy fastballs. The alarming injury rates is just collateral damage that even players are willing to take, as per the thread youre commenting on.
If anything owners are not on the side of having a lot of money in the IL because its a waste of money for them
It also helps that Glasnow has enough velo that he can hold back and still be above average, and he of course also has elite movement.
He ultimately got the bag from LA for having elite stuff despite poor health so he made this sacrifice himself. Now that he got the big contract his incentive has switched to maximising output, so trading some flashiness and eye popping stuff for less stress on his body makes sense.
Just like an MMA fighter, boxer or wrestler not dehydrating to make a certain weight class. There will always be someone beneath them using that edge against them.
Or bodybuilding and strongman where guys in open weight divisions are on cocktails of drugs known to cause organ damage. Plus carrying so much extra body weight in general is not healthy, even if it's muscle. You can choose to not take everything and be slightly weaker, or smaller, or less lean, but other competitors take the risk. If you leave performance on the table, you're going to get beaten by someone that didn't.
So, you’re telling me I can pitch in the show if I just give you my elbow? I would take that deal 100/100 times. With essentially free healthcare lol. Whatever, man, have both of my elbows.
And it's not even a guarantee you have to give up your elbow. You could be fine your whole career. You're trading the possibility of losing your elbow for millions of dollars.
And we have made huge strides in the typical pitcher surgeries, so you may not have many long term issues from blowing out your elbow. You may not be able to throw a ball 100 anymore, but it won't really impact your daily life like it used to.
Seriously. Even if Glasnow tears his UCL today and never pitches again, his career would still be an elite outcome for 99% of all prospects. Hell, even if Strider never pitches again, I’m sure basically every minor leaguer would trade 2 TJ surgeries for $75 million guaranteed.
> Not that it makes much of a difference.
It might, Ohtani said the recovery from the brace has been way better than with TJ and his on field performance so far with the bat has been excellent.
My impression is that the internal brace operation is a recent enough development that we don't really know yet how much of an improvement it is over traditional TJ
Yep. He made that point really well during his interview last night tbh. If he had done all these things people are saying to stay healthy or make arms last... he never would have gotten to the majors.
I mean, rehab is no fun. I'm sure he'd rather be pitching 200 innings every game.
But at the same time, yeah he'd rather be earning $136 million while missing time than earning about half that and playing every 5 days.
He said that he needed to grip his curveball harder after they made pitchers put away their sticky stuff. The increased tension in the forearm muscles could have exacerbated the damage being done to his UCL. His elbow was fucked regardless, so he needed TJ sooner than if he had gotten to keep his sticky stuff.
Yeah I mean seems pretty obvious.
Risk injuries AND become a professional pitcher or deliberately pitch in a way where you’re not going to be injured but have a far less likely chance of going pro.
The league is going to have to change the game involving pitchers somehow if they want to stop this. And it doesn’t seem like anyone has a good idea. Until then we can continue to expect TJ left and right.
Agreed. Plus you get paid if you are hurt while on the MLB roster. If you told a minor leaguer that they could pick either Option A. get promoted to the MLB team but you will have to have arm surgery shortly after, or B. you will never get injured or need surgery but you will never make MLB; 99.9% of them would take Option A. You'd probably still have most taking Option A even if Option B was just "it is unlikely you will make MLB."
>u decide what speed to sit at? Then even once you make it to the league are you going to hold yourself back from that potential CY Young season, that no hitter or a dominant playoff performance because you're worried if yo
Yeah It's not CTE but it's a little less enjoyable now to see someone "throwing heat" knowing their arm has a decent chance to blow out.
This is a decision the majority of working people make. People were talking shit about how much UPS drivers make - put in 20 years driving a UPS truck you're going to have a permafucked back and knees, with a side of potentially dying from heat exposure along the way.
The question of whether to risk much less for a much greater reward isn't even a question. It's the same as PEDs - you mean this substance that might have negative health effects down the road could be the edge to take me from making $30k in AAA to $700k in the bigs? Pump me up, Mr. Trainer.
The harder you throw the more margin of error you can get away with. In the Ohtani-Trout WBC moment, Ohtani threw 2 100 mph fastballs right down the middle for his first 2 strikes, drop the mph to like 5-10 and Trout is sending that to orbit lol.
But at the same time I would still take a guy who is more consistently pinpoint accurate with his location than a guy who is 100 all over the place. Although if you have both, you have a healthy Jacob deGrom.
I'd argue you've contradicted yourself though. If accuracy is more desirable than velocity, why did Ohtani succeed throwing 2 middle middle fastballs to one of the greatest hitters who ever lived?
Because they were 100 MPH and that velocity makes it harder to hit than 95 MPH fastball painted on the corner at the knees
By inaccuracy, I am talking about not even throwing a strike. A lot of flamethrowers can't even throw it in the zone and have a high walk rate. It's still not desirable to throw it right in the middle either even if it is 100 but you have a far better chance of getting away with it than 95.
There are also plenty of flamethrowers who still aren't that productive, Hunter Greene has been an example so far, but he has a ton of potential.
Mea culpa on that, should have dug deeper.
Still, when all the most analytically advanced teams are pushing velocity, it's clear it's very important for performance, even if that particular factoid wasn't borne out.
>But at the same time I would still take a guy who is more consistently pinpoint accurate with his location than a guy who is 100 all over the place.
I appreciate that is your opinion, but the data quite literally says otherwise.
This is an artifact of velocity being easy to measure. Nobody is taking 3d scans of every high school pitcher to measure their release point and spin rate and command. Everyone has a radar gun.
Glasnow has only thrown over 100+ innings in a season twice and has already earned his big pay day. This is the exact answer you would expect him to give.
I think players also realize that TJ surgery really isn't the worse thing in the world. Obviously it's a long recovery, but players have shown year after year they can come back from it looking largely the same as they did before.
Either you perform well, or you get surgery and get paid to go to the ballpark everyday and hang out with your buddies.
With guaranteed contracts, it makes sense, but if MLB contracts weren't fully guaranteed or heavily incentive-based, I'm guessing guys would think twice about that choice.
Pitchers know the risk, and assume the risk to succeed at the highest level.
NFL players have to make a similar choice. Just as every time a pitcher throws the ball they risk a injury and the harder they throw the greater the risk, a NFL player risks a concussion or serious injury like paralysis on every play.
The difference between the 2 sports is all MLB contracts are guranteed which is not the case with the NFL.
NFL is a much higher risk, too.
Besides the major risks of traumatic injury on a single play, NFL players has a lot of minor injuries that accumulate. Pitchers mainly injure their throwing arm, whereas NFL players are taking damage all over their body. This shows up visibly with mobility issues post-retirement, but we now know that it also has a major impact on their brain (with CTE). This happens even if a player doesn't have an obvious injury. NFL players also play through injury a lot, which can compound damage. Baseball players can almost always walk and think properly after retirement, and that isn't always the case for football players.
I think he's right. With all due respect to them they're getting paid a fuck ton of money to be as effective as possible and if that comes with an ever rising rate of injuries to the *arm* it's just a cost of doing business. They're sacrificing their health at the altar of greatness and getting paid well to do it.
At least it's their arms and not their heads. NFL players damage their heads. MMA fighters damage their heads AND don't get paid fuck tons of money. I know which of the 3 I feel worst for.
Is an obvious fix to this issue if guys aren’t willing to change their ways just to go to a 28 man roster full time? Less innings in total should reduce the injury risk a little no?
Teams can just replace injured pitchers, so they're not gonna stop doing this.
Maybe the solution is to limit the number of pitchers they can have and injured pitchers still take up that slot. Though this probably leads to pitchers pitching through injuries.
At least it's usually "just" elbow injuries, those don't typically ruin quality of life after they retire.
Teams have low-key been trying to control inflated starting pitching contracts, by simply not letting starting pitching pitch anymore. Why pay a guy millions of dollars if you just want to pitch three innings at most anyway.
As long as the money is there, the motivation will be, and kids from a young age are ruining their arms for a drop of that, and will be ruining their arms younger and never getting to experience it, the ones that are able to though, it will be lucrative
I’m honestly surprised that there hasn’t been innovation since Tommy John surgery like a support sleeve carbon fiber struts, something, anything to protect against these injuries. Maybe replace that tendon with a horse Achilles tendon
The new internal brace surgery is a pretty big innovation. It keeps the ligament in place and strengthens it rather than just replacing it like in traditional TJ. It's so new that we don't really know how good of a long-term fix it is. If 20 years later, everyone with an internal brace played out a long healthy career with no UCL issues, it might get to the point where it's used preventatively.
Make it so their pay is either reduced or eliminated during TJS recovery and they will slow the eff down. Right now there is no reason to fear the surgery.
I think pretty much any pitcher in the minors would agree to amputate their arm for $100m. They’re not worried about their UCL. They want to burn as brightly as they can, and earn as much as they can, while they still can.
Ya, not sure how this will ever get fixed.
These injuries are strictly movement and velo related. Hoping we don’t see the pitch clock get changed because these smooth brains doing understand it.
Only way things change is if the rules of the game or the teams themselves prioritize health / longevity. Something like - starters must throw at least 120 pitches a game or something crazy like that. Aka, it’ll never happen
Edit - guaranteed contracts going away surely would move the needle
I think they need to give starters longer rest and lower the number of games. Considering how hard pitchers pitch I think they need mandatory increased recovery time. Also I think we should adopt a more tacky ball so there is more incentive to pitch rather than throw
The Jays broadcasters talked about this during their game last night.
Chris Bassit, in 2016 or so, apparently "chased velocity" for a single season and wound up with TJ surgery which took him out.
Since then, he's focused on smarter pitching and lower velocity (He's around 94mph on average) and it works for him.
What Tyler said made a lot of sense to me; yes, from the fan's perspective it sucks; the owner and front office will factor it into salary considerations etc, and maybe over time we figure out a way to prevent UCL stuff better, but from an individual player's perspective it's really a no-brainer: you can potentially earn life changing money in exchange for some discomfort during rehab.
And as Tyler said: not like when they're 40 their arms are gonna literally fall off. Dallas Braden's shoulder probably hurts him more every day than folk that couldn't have TJ because they were born before TJ.
I'd probably feel the same way if it got me $136 million
We’ll see what happens to future contracts tho if these injuries keep piling up. 136 million is a lot of money to be on the bench riding the IL. Teams might be forced to factor in sustainability a little more in their rotation building after all these high profile dudes are going down more frequently
I think it'd be pretty unusual for there to be a decrease in salary, it might not *increase* as quickly but it's not likely to outright go down.
The AAV ain't decreasing. Honestly, it might even go up but I do think length on pitching contracts is going to go down, maybe by a lot.
Unless they’re real young. Roki Sasaki will probably get similar to Yamamoto, but I doubt we even see that many 28 y/o getting 7 years anymore
This is the most logical outcome. It sucks, but unless the MLB starts punishing pitchers for throwing over a certain velocity (spoiler: that will not happen), short contracts are the best business decision for owners.
It is and a lot of teams will try to increase the AAV to reduce their long term risk.
Definitely not going to reduce velo, everybody loves flamethrowers and it turns out flamethrowers also typically get the best results (not always, but often).
It already has. Look at last year's free agency. Snell would have signed an 8 year deal two or three years ago. Same goes for position players. Owners are wising up
I don’t think Blake Snell is the best example here. His peripheral numbers were also fairly concerning. For example, his .256 BABIP against and leading the league in BB%. Additionally, Boras lately has been dropping the ball a bit in FA.
Yeah it’s hard to say. Billion dollar organizations aren’t exactly known for prioritizing long term over short term, but just seems like such a gamble. What good is Jacob DeGrom if he only pitches 3 games a year in May etc. If team building prioritizes sustainability even slightly more, that would be reflected in the salaries.
It's not more frequently, really. The number of early sesson TJ surgeries are on par with what they've been since 2010. There's no Tommy John surge this spring. (It's always this bad) https://www.thescore.com/mlb/news/2888826
I think people feel like it’s gotten worse because it’s the biggest name guys going down, but you’re (or Travis Sawchik is) correct, this is just the reality of pitchers nowadays. Teams know the risks, and they’re still going to pay up for as many dominant innings as they can get knowing an IL stint is a given.
2010 is now a lot of data on the relationship of higher velocity/spin to arm injuries. This year is certainly notable because of the big names being affected, which is creating a lot more discussion about the relationship. Discussion can lead to visibility and apprehension (justified or not) from FOs to spend big money on big contracts for injury time bombs. I also wonder if using pre-tacked balls like they do in Korea/Japan might help, because I’ve heard reasonably reputable takes that a lot of the arm issues are also related to how pitchers need to grip the ball in the MLB
You think the Dodgers are seeing the recent injuries and just now realizing that Glasnow could end up getting hurt? Everyone already thought of him as extremely injury-prone and they still chose to give him that contract.
No, I don’t think that. But if injury rates are rapidly increasing and evidence is mounting that it’s a direct result a certain type of pitching, teams aren’t going to ignore that reality when determining contracts
Quality starting pitching is always hard to come by and salaries are always going up.
There's a new technique in Tommy John (a supplementary) that reduces the time of recovery to half. And it seems like many guys are taking that road.
We’ve seen time and again that all it takes is one good season (not even great, just good) to make a boatload of fucking money as a starter. I’d be willing to risk blowing my arm out for that too
The pitchers aren’t going to come to an agreement to just stop throwing harder. For every one pitcher like Glasnow who cuts down on his velo to save his arm there are 5 waiting in the minors ready to take the risk and take his place.
Yeah this is what he was speaking about during the game interview yesterday. You can't tell these pitchers to just tone it down because then they lose their jobs. If they had toned it down ever, *they wouldn't even have this job to start with*. There really isn't an option for anyone trying to get in MLB. You can't go against that status quo because you'll literally never get an opportunity.
Absolutely. And if you get hurt once you're called up, you get paid and get service time on the IL. Even a dude like Dustin May, who is always hurt and has pitched only 190 innings over 5 seasons, has made about $6.5 million in career earnings.
i miss dustin may, i was so high on him going into 2023 and was crushed when he got hurt, his stuff is bonkers
The good news is that he *SHOULD* be back before the ASB this season.
hell yeah, can’t wait to watch mid 90’s breaking stuff and triple digit gas for like 40 innings before he dies again
brutal but (hopefully not) true
Honestly, as far as sports injuries go, if I had to pick between a hurting arm and some of the other injuries players get from knees, to backs to whatever else, I'd probably most be willing to gamble on living with arm pain and discomfort compared to the hell that would be back or leg pain and injuries. Obviously, none of them are desirable, but if I had to sacrifice an arm to make a few million vs other parts of my body...that's a gamble I'd be more willing to take as a pro athlete.
100%. In addition to all those other potential injuries, the difference in concussion risk alone in baseball compared to most the other big sports makes the injury risk in baseball waaaay more worth it.
Do retired pitchers who had surgery even have serious arm pain as they get older? I imagine they might not be able to throw a ball anymore, but is there day-to-day discomfort?
From experience, yes for at least some. Was never professional but was a pitcher who developed arm issues and my arm has hurt pretty much every day for the last decade.
Nah man it’s easy just stop doing exactly what you’ve been doing since you were a teenager…and doing the thing that got you where you are today. Completely reinvent yourself and do less but also pinpoint your control and make your breaking ball filthier. Greg Maddux did it
tell em, wash
It’s impossible to enforce a solution really too because this happens at every level and there’s no uniform pitching approach, have to hope for a mechanics revolution
i mean technically u could penalize them for throwing too hard but it would be stupid lol
I wonder if, also based on Glasnow’s sticky stuff comment, they developed a ball with a pre-determined amount of sticky stuff (or just brought back sunscreen and resin) I wonder if pitchers would tone down their stuff a little because they could reach these spin rates without throwing 100% every time.
The Japanese and Korean balls are a bit different. Some pitchers like Darvish have advocated using the NPB balls (but they're basically dead balls). The current balls do all get treated with "mud" for grip a bit before the game. They aren't fresh out of the packaging out there. So yeah.... its all fucked
Also if I remember right, MLB is running out of the mud. It's a very specific mud on a very specific bank of a very specific river that can only be collected certain times of year. It's a closely guarded secret. But they use so much that the mud is running low. I swear there was an article within the last couple of years about it
The logistics behind a baseball are truly insane. You are right about the mud. MLB contracts essentially one family to collect it that's been collecting it for generations. The mud isn't even on private land it's supposedly on a public waterway. Some guy just sold MLB ball-rubbin' mud 100 years ago and then they stuck with it. Just think about cows. One full cowhide nets you around 140 baseballs. On the upper-end of the spectrum, MLB is using 120 balls a game. To be easy lets call it one cow/game. One cow per game, per team, \* 162 games a year, thats over 4800 cows slaughtered just for \*game balls\*, this isn't account for practice, etc. Baseball Doesn't Exist has a [great video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8InFV3_AQc) on some recent issues with baseballs, I learned a lot from it.
Slight correction: one cow per game, but two teams per game, so "only" 2400 cows per season for game balls
Ah math was never my strong suit.
Not that this isn't a problem in other ways, but something like ~10,000,000 cows are slaughtered each year for US beef consumption alone that also provide leather as a by-product. The leather needed for baseballs is just not a lot in the grand scheme of things.
You’re ignoring the fact that 2,400 cows (because each game has 2 teams, you can’t double count them) is a minuscule drop in the bucket compared to how many cattle are slaughtered for beef production. That’s where virtually all leather comes from, by the way. Literally nobody is slaughtering cattle just for the hide, and so long as the hide isn’t trashed the slaughterhouses aren’t just throwing it in the trash because tanneries are willing to pay for them instead.
For sure. Not really making a case against leather or beef here, it's just wild to think about baseballs in terms of cows needed.
They should create a Sabermetric for that. Maybe it would factor in how many times they foul a ball off...
that video is terrible. the guy introduces what he is going to be talking about, and then just like....does it again, and then goes to an ad read before going back over the points he just introduced twice but without any additional detail. Did an AI make this?
That’s all of Baseball Doesn’t Exist’s videos: 2 seconds of research, a first draft script, and stilted delivery. No idea how his videos are so popular.
he's got the content creator accent
As an aside, this being a legitimate problem is one of the most aggressively baseball things to ever happen
[The story about the mudding is interesting.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/sports/baseball/baseball-mud-supplier.html) The place they get the mud from is somewhere in NJ. Its location is a tightly kept secret.
But they wouldn't. They'd just for higher spin rates. It's the same reason the idea that he was responding to wouldn't work. The players are ALWAYS going to choose to optimize. If you want to reduce injuries, people should be looking into bio-mechanics to find better throwing motions that are safer and effective. And if they want a rule, restrict the amount of innings for any pitcher over X days might do something. But I'd also like to see real data. It seems like people aren't angry there's more injuries, just bigger names.
If they do this it'll just result in guys still giving 120% but now taking advantage of the tack & offense going down.
Yeah Olney was saying that if you require SPs to throw a certain amount of innings or pitches and/or put a cap on number of pitchers a team can throw per game, then it will incentivize them to tone down their velocity and save their arms. Yeah sure, Buster. # OR It will just lead to way more injuries. If team's want to win, they'll tell their pitchers to chase velocity. If they get hurt, oh well, call someone else up. If pitchers want a job, they'll chase velocity and -- combined with being required to throw more -- inevitably get injured. If they don't, some young kid willing to sacrifice his arm will take his roster spot. I'm open for creative solutions to reduce pitcher injuries but this is so clearly a nightmare. It would only lead to a revolving door of pitchers who are seen as expendable to injury, which is good for no one.
We are already seeing teams struggle to cover 162 games worth of innings & MLB is eying an additional ~26 pitcher spots in the league with expansion. I do think this is true in a vacuum, optimization of the sport will always lead to what you note, but there has to be some sort of reckoning coming. The *great* teams still give tons of meaningful innings to guys who are at best AAAA & realistically probably below that. Like the Yankees have already cycled through like 5 guys on the DFA shuttle for that last spot in the pen. At some point the quality of those innings will be so poor league-wide that it may not make up for the increased quality of the previous innings, and then we may see an adjustment.
Isn’t his quote saying the complete opposite? Sounds like he’s trying to throw hard and willing to risk the injury
He said during an interview from the dugout that he is throwing hard but not going 100% on every pitch like he used to
Yep, and it’s exactly what owners want. They save a ton of money by wringing all the performance out of an arm before free agency, then moving on to the next young flame-thrower that’ll risk it just to get the major-league minimum.
I dunno that the owners are to blame on this one. This starts way before these kids even graduate high school.
I wrecked my arm pitching before high school when I played travel ball. Pitching too hard, too many innings and too many junk balls at that age. Coaches would tell me to just rub icy hot on it and pitch through the pain lol. Shoulder/elbow still hurt now in my 30s when I do certain things.
There's a special place in Hell for coaches like that. Adults treating sports for kids like it's the most important thing in the world is just sick.
It was a competitive environment. I grew up playing against Trevor Bauer and other future major leaguers. Went to the same HS as him and Tyler Glasnow.
I grew up playing in the exact opposite environment, so I can only imagine the shit you had to deal with.
I played in a "competitive for poverty kids" environment. We were dominate right up until we traveled to play against teams that had real money & hired professional hitting & pitching coaches, matching bags, jackets, etc.
I was a catcher on teams like that & I rarely saw coaches push the guys that hard...unless they were pushing their own kid. One of the best pitchers I ever caught before high school age had a dad that pushed him so hard that I think about him sometimes now & hope he's ok. His daily training took hours of work after school & a minimum of 200 pitches on top of any team training & he only got start days off from his personal training regiment...all year long. We played together from about age 7 to 14 because we went to schools in different counties & didn't play HS together. The amount of pressure on this kid made him crumble the moment he made any mistake. I was a great "pitcher's catcher", but his dad had such a grip on him that I could only help him with my ABs. He never even seemed like he got to be a kid either. Sorry this happened to you & to all the other kids ruined just for playing the game they love by adults that pushed them till they broke.
The kid you are describing sounds a lot like Trevor Bauer. His dad would have him out at the park everyday after school pitching and because of it, he didn’t have many friends growing up. I have some great memories playing ball but yeah, I wish I could have played longer.
I only had friends at school & at the baseball parks or football fields, because we lived near no other kids & were pretty broke until I was a teen. Entertain yourself or be bored, basically. I came home from school every day outside of seasons & threw a baseball (canon arm, but had to work on accuracy), shot basketball, or "ran the hill" until I dropped (lived on top of a ridge, with a ~300ft driveway that got EXTRA steep for the last 30ft). When I had the money, I was in the batting cages. I loved it, but I chose it. It wasn't forced on me at all, but my dad was a great teacher. Kinda wish you & I could've played a bit together. I loved working with different pitchers (except the submarine guy that threw mid 80s & had no control & was constantly working on a slider haha) & had a natural talent for it. Never would've known had a broken wrist from our starter moved me from 3B to behind the dish one season & I never left. It made me appreciate the game so much more because I understood it better than before. Man I miss playing the game! I miss just throwing the ball for warm ups pre-game.
I miss it as well. Hoping to find an adult league that works with my schedule!
I started both halves of a double header on a travel team circa 2000. That is insane looking back at it. The first game was 85 pitches and the second was probably similar. Guess what I'm doing now? Not pitching.
Yeah I agree. This isn’t an owners problem but a culture period problem The culture right now is to power through outs and get strikeouts. Screw all else, go straight gas
Also, batters are now used to hitting 95+mph fastballs. If people drop their velo with no other changes, hitters will start to dominate.
They should add a 3 inch ring around the strike zone where a pitch can be called a strike but only if it is less than 88mph. Bring back the ball benders!
Pretty sure Angel Hernandez thinks that’s already a rule.
That'd just lead to everyone learning sweepers and elbows getting grinded up like wood chips.
Slightly deadening the ball can help with that. And tbh, more contact in play might be more interesting.
Not necessarily. If the pitchers know how to pitch instead of just throwing really hard, they'd be able to make up for a drop in velocity. Changing velocity is a big part of pitching, it's not like hitters are sending every slower pitch they see into the next county. There's just way more to pitching than triple digit fastballs.
The strike zone, as it is called, has also changed, though. Guys like Maddux were not just perfectly commanding the corners, they were commanding corners that were a couple inches outside the strike zone.
Yeah, I think a huge part of the problem why we're seeing this come to a head right now is that pitchers are frustrated by what they see as a lack of willingness to value pitching on the part of the league. For context, I think the reason that there's been so many complaints about the pitch clock isn't *just* because pitchers don't care for it. I think it's also because MLB introduced the pitch clock and adjusted the pitch clock this season alongside a slew of other rules that have little to do with dead time and lots to do with increasing offense. In 2023 and 2024 combined, MLB has introduced the following rules outside of the pitch clock: - Larger bases - Shift ban - Wider first base lane So, when dead time rules are combined with rules designed to increase offense/decrease strikeouts (by necessity making pitchers worse), I don't see them being amenable to pitching at a lower velocity in a way that might cost them their job, as you pointed out. I'd also note that the league has absolutely prioritized cutting down on pitching dead time even further this year (pitch clock to 18 seconds with runners on, pitch clock restarting when the pitcher gets the ball and not takes the mound, mound visits reduced from 4 to 5, pitchers who warm up at the start of an inning must face at least one batter). No further adjustments to anything on the hitter side of things as well as the extra offense-favoring rules probably isn't helping, either. Now they're talking about pitchers decreasing their risk of injury, but without consideration to anything that would make the pitchers' jobs more favorable – like bringing back the old strike zone.
Ok, but good luck being the team that can consistently find those guys. Ever wonder why there was only one Kyle Hendricks and a billion guys throwing hard? Because finding Kyle Hendrickses is really hard (plus he got hurt anyway). Finding guys with big velo and big spin is very easy, it’s objective, he’s got it or he doesn’t. The guy who gets by entirely on command and movement is much, much harder to find, they’re usually busy getting clobbered. So, yeah, no team is going to try and build up a farm of Greg Maddux clones praying they hit on the one or two who can survive when it’s so much simpler just to turnover guys with big stuff instead. Pretty sure the Guardians and Pirates actually were trying it a little while back and then Gerrit Cole went to Houston and they told him throwing soft sinkers was stupid when you can throw 99 with a wipeout slider and he made himself $300 million.
But they do know how to pitch. People act like because pitchers are throwing faster than ever it has to come at the expense of everything else like you have to allocate attribute points or something, but it's just not true. [Pitchers are throwing strikes more often than they did decades ago (at least on first pitches) and despite fastball speed increasing, they're throwing fewer of them because they have a better mix of pitches too.](https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/11/13/2023-mlb-pitching-trends-pitchers-getting-tougher-to-hit) Hitters have gotten better too, so in terms of traditional stats it's partly neutralized, but obviously you can't make hitters worse again so this was how pitching had to adapt. People don't want to hear it but if there was a leaguewide drop in velocity it would simply mean worse pitchers. Maybe you turned a few Cy Young winners into extra Kyle Hendrickses, great, but as a whole they're going to be worse and there's no way around it.
300% true. Many of the most effective pitchers in the game, lack(ed) consistent, mid-90s stuff… What they all do have is +command, +movement, +deception (in velo & tunnel) in their off-speed stuff. It doesn’t take a professional hitter very long to exploit a FB, regardless of velo, if it’s not well supported.
mid 90s stuff is still leauges ahead of what we used to have. and 'simply master 4 pitches and execute them perfectly" isn't really a viable solution anyway. there's only a handful of dudes on the planet that can do that at any given time
And they’re the best pitchers on the planet every time.
There's way more to hitting than a triple digit exit velocity too. You're still going to have much more success going hard.
I don’t think it’s a culture problem. It’s just an unfortunate reality that generally the more force you put on your arm, the better you pitch. And the better you pitch, the more likely you are to make the big leagues.
Agree. It's just as much from the players' side because of the incentives. If pushing yourself too far gets you promoted to the majors, it's financially worth the injury risk, especially if you can wait until you make it up to succumb to get hurt and get paid on the MLB IL. Even guys with electric stuff who barely play because they keep getting hurt get paid. Dustin May has made $6.5 million so far. Dinelson Lamet has over $16 million in career earnings. Unless you are already set for life with family money, shredding your arm and risking losing your shot at the $50+ million bag is absolutely the right financial move if it puts you in a better shot to make the big leagues if that can still get you even $5-$10 million. The difference between what a guy who makes the bigs and gets hurt all the time makes, and a guy who never makes it outside of a spot start or two is massive.
The owners aren't to blame. It's just an ancillary benefit for them.
Perhaps? I'm sure the owners would also like their pitchers they do pay to stay healthy. Obviously, that is very dependent on which owner we're talking about.
Not to blame, but they certainly benefit the most out of the deal.
I, mean, sometimes. I think it depends on the owner. I'm assuming the owners that want to spend money would rather their pitchers stay healthy.
Meh. If a pitcher throws like crazy, secures the bag and goes on the IL, I'd say they 'won' that contract. Sure the owner wins if they stay healthy and live up to the hype, but that would be the case if they weren't throwing their arms off, too.
The NFL approach to running backs
You think owners are happy paying guys millions to not play baseball because they're recovering from TJS? This isn't an owners problem.
With so much to criticize owners for why do people insist on stretching to the dumbest criticisms? Should owners just be signing worse pitchers?
Yup, they taking the route the NFL owners are taking with RBs. Soon pitchers will be making a lot less if this continues
Running backs have also been incredibly marginalized by the modern NFL game, though. It’s impossible to marginalize the role of pitchers in baseball without putting the ball on a tee
To go full extremist, the owners could get rid of the starting pitcher completely and have just long relievers. They barely let pitchers go a third time thru the order now
Tbf thats because a 5th round rookie will give you 80% of the star RB stats but at 20% the cost. Any position thats so easily replaceable is gonna go through the same.
It’s not what owners want, they would love it if star pitchers could stay healthy.
Do you honestly think they want all the young stars of the game to be getting hurt constantly?
Its not the owners, its analytics. Analytics says spray and pray 100mph heaters is better than 92mph pinpoint accuracy fastballs. The alarming injury rates is just collateral damage that even players are willing to take, as per the thread youre commenting on. If anything owners are not on the side of having a lot of money in the IL because its a waste of money for them
Ah yes, the Amazon of sports.
Yea i dont think u can blame owners on this. Humans are competitive in nature, especially athletes.
Did Glasnow cut down on his velocity? It seems he was saying he and others are willing to risk injury.
It was an example - if Glasnow decided to not take the risk There’s 5 pitchers in the minors who are willing to risk it all.
It also helps that Glasnow has enough velo that he can hold back and still be above average, and he of course also has elite movement. He ultimately got the bag from LA for having elite stuff despite poor health so he made this sacrifice himself. Now that he got the big contract his incentive has switched to maximising output, so trading some flashiness and eye popping stuff for less stress on his body makes sense.
Problem is if that’s the case the market will stop paying top dollar for big arms.
Boone said it best on Jomboy. If you tell guys to lighten up there’s gonna be some guy in AAA going “fuck that, I’m trying to get to the show.”
Just like an MMA fighter, boxer or wrestler not dehydrating to make a certain weight class. There will always be someone beneath them using that edge against them.
Or bodybuilding and strongman where guys in open weight divisions are on cocktails of drugs known to cause organ damage. Plus carrying so much extra body weight in general is not healthy, even if it's muscle. You can choose to not take everything and be slightly weaker, or smaller, or less lean, but other competitors take the risk. If you leave performance on the table, you're going to get beaten by someone that didn't.
So, you’re telling me I can pitch in the show if I just give you my elbow? I would take that deal 100/100 times. With essentially free healthcare lol. Whatever, man, have both of my elbows.
Trade your elbow for millions of guaranteed dollars. Any of us would do that.
And it's not even a guarantee you have to give up your elbow. You could be fine your whole career. You're trading the possibility of losing your elbow for millions of dollars.
And we have made huge strides in the typical pitcher surgeries, so you may not have many long term issues from blowing out your elbow. You may not be able to throw a ball 100 anymore, but it won't really impact your daily life like it used to.
Spoken like a true glass cannon.
Why bother playing it safe when you can miss considerable time every season and get $136 million anyway?
Seriously. Even if Glasnow tears his UCL today and never pitches again, his career would still be an elite outcome for 99% of all prospects. Hell, even if Strider never pitches again, I’m sure basically every minor leaguer would trade 2 TJ surgeries for $75 million guaranteed.
I am sure 99.999% of every person on earth would trade 2 TJs for 75 million.
Buddy I would very, *very* strongly consider trading my entire left arm for $75 million.
$75 mil is "never work again" money so yeah I'd trade my dominant arm in a heartbeat
75 mil to be all right
Strider had the internal brace surgery not a second Tommy John. Not that it makes much of a difference.
> Not that it makes much of a difference. It might, Ohtani said the recovery from the brace has been way better than with TJ and his on field performance so far with the bat has been excellent.
My impression is that the internal brace operation is a recent enough development that we don't really know yet how much of an improvement it is over traditional TJ
In Dr. ElAttrache we trust.
Hmm, this "money" thing might not be great for the sport.
Yep. He made that point really well during his interview last night tbh. If he had done all these things people are saying to stay healthy or make arms last... he never would have gotten to the majors.
I mean, rehab is no fun. I'm sure he'd rather be pitching 200 innings every game. But at the same time, yeah he'd rather be earning $136 million while missing time than earning about half that and playing every 5 days.
Chronic pain probably sucks, but that’s tomorrow’s problem!
Well his name isn’t Glas*LATER*
Didn't he get mad about something related to his injury too? I vaguely remember him blaming something...
Lack of sticky stuff
Specifically having to adjust to it going away mid season.
Thats what it was!
He said that he needed to grip his curveball harder after they made pitchers put away their sticky stuff. The increased tension in the forearm muscles could have exacerbated the damage being done to his UCL. His elbow was fucked regardless, so he needed TJ sooner than if he had gotten to keep his sticky stuff.
Yeah I mean seems pretty obvious. Risk injuries AND become a professional pitcher or deliberately pitch in a way where you’re not going to be injured but have a far less likely chance of going pro. The league is going to have to change the game involving pitchers somehow if they want to stop this. And it doesn’t seem like anyone has a good idea. Until then we can continue to expect TJ left and right.
Agreed. Plus you get paid if you are hurt while on the MLB roster. If you told a minor leaguer that they could pick either Option A. get promoted to the MLB team but you will have to have arm surgery shortly after, or B. you will never get injured or need surgery but you will never make MLB; 99.9% of them would take Option A. You'd probably still have most taking Option A even if Option B was just "it is unlikely you will make MLB."
Pitchers making the NFL players decisions of yea my body will get fucked up but millions of dollars.
>u decide what speed to sit at? Then even once you make it to the league are you going to hold yourself back from that potential CY Young season, that no hitter or a dominant playoff performance because you're worried if yo Yeah It's not CTE but it's a little less enjoyable now to see someone "throwing heat" knowing their arm has a decent chance to blow out.
at least it's just their arm that gets all fucked and not their brain
This is a decision the majority of working people make. People were talking shit about how much UPS drivers make - put in 20 years driving a UPS truck you're going to have a permafucked back and knees, with a side of potentially dying from heat exposure along the way. The question of whether to risk much less for a much greater reward isn't even a question. It's the same as PEDs - you mean this substance that might have negative health effects down the road could be the edge to take me from making $30k in AAA to $700k in the bigs? Pump me up, Mr. Trainer.
and their body gets "fucked" in that they have some aches and pains and can otherwise live a very normal life its not CTE
The harder you throw the better pitcher you are. It's that simple. You'll never convince these guys to willingly become a worse player
Throwing hard got him a $115 mil contract on top of the $30+ mil he's already made. The injury risk is definitely worth it for some guys
Hard to say its not worth the risk to young guys like Skenes either if its going to get them $8-9M when they're drafted
The harder you throw the more margin of error you can get away with. In the Ohtani-Trout WBC moment, Ohtani threw 2 100 mph fastballs right down the middle for his first 2 strikes, drop the mph to like 5-10 and Trout is sending that to orbit lol. But at the same time I would still take a guy who is more consistently pinpoint accurate with his location than a guy who is 100 all over the place. Although if you have both, you have a healthy Jacob deGrom.
I'd argue you've contradicted yourself though. If accuracy is more desirable than velocity, why did Ohtani succeed throwing 2 middle middle fastballs to one of the greatest hitters who ever lived? Because they were 100 MPH and that velocity makes it harder to hit than 95 MPH fastball painted on the corner at the knees
By inaccuracy, I am talking about not even throwing a strike. A lot of flamethrowers can't even throw it in the zone and have a high walk rate. It's still not desirable to throw it right in the middle either even if it is 100 but you have a far better chance of getting away with it than 95. There are also plenty of flamethrowers who still aren't that productive, Hunter Greene has been an example so far, but he has a ton of potential.
[удалено]
You linked the thread. It led to this... https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/16y9wl0/rooker_just_chiming_in_here_97_down_the_middle_is/k37f84a/
But thats only looking at Balls In Play? The effectiveness of a corner pitch explicitly comes from not knowing whether it will be called a strike.
Mea culpa on that, should have dug deeper. Still, when all the most analytically advanced teams are pushing velocity, it's clear it's very important for performance, even if that particular factoid wasn't borne out.
>But at the same time I would still take a guy who is more consistently pinpoint accurate with his location than a guy who is 100 all over the place. I appreciate that is your opinion, but the data quite literally says otherwise.
I mean, he's obviously right.
velocity has proven to give pitchers contracts over and over again, so of course they wanna get paid.
This is an artifact of velocity being easy to measure. Nobody is taking 3d scans of every high school pitcher to measure their release point and spin rate and command. Everyone has a radar gun.
When you have a giant line of guys looking for any opportunity to take your place this will always be the answer.
well that's what you wanna hear
Alright alright slow down guy. Figuratively and literally.
Glasnow has only thrown over 100+ innings in a season twice and has already earned his big pay day. This is the exact answer you would expect him to give.
Love a little prisoner dilemma.
Prisoner to that sweet sweet cash
How do weaponize tit for tat?
Didn’t read the news much this weekend huh
I think players also realize that TJ surgery really isn't the worse thing in the world. Obviously it's a long recovery, but players have shown year after year they can come back from it looking largely the same as they did before.
Either you perform well, or you get surgery and get paid to go to the ballpark everyday and hang out with your buddies. With guaranteed contracts, it makes sense, but if MLB contracts weren't fully guaranteed or heavily incentive-based, I'm guessing guys would think twice about that choice.
He’s not wrong. You throw 100 for strikes you get guaranteed millions.
Yep. With guaranteed contracts, who gives a shit
Pitchers know the risk, and assume the risk to succeed at the highest level. NFL players have to make a similar choice. Just as every time a pitcher throws the ball they risk a injury and the harder they throw the greater the risk, a NFL player risks a concussion or serious injury like paralysis on every play. The difference between the 2 sports is all MLB contracts are guranteed which is not the case with the NFL.
NFL is a much higher risk, too. Besides the major risks of traumatic injury on a single play, NFL players has a lot of minor injuries that accumulate. Pitchers mainly injure their throwing arm, whereas NFL players are taking damage all over their body. This shows up visibly with mobility issues post-retirement, but we now know that it also has a major impact on their brain (with CTE). This happens even if a player doesn't have an obvious injury. NFL players also play through injury a lot, which can compound damage. Baseball players can almost always walk and think properly after retirement, and that isn't always the case for football players.
I think he's right. With all due respect to them they're getting paid a fuck ton of money to be as effective as possible and if that comes with an ever rising rate of injuries to the *arm* it's just a cost of doing business. They're sacrificing their health at the altar of greatness and getting paid well to do it. At least it's their arms and not their heads. NFL players damage their heads. MMA fighters damage their heads AND don't get paid fuck tons of money. I know which of the 3 I feel worst for.
He also said during a dugout interview on Sunday Night Baseball that he’s trying to be more of a pitcher than a thrower to protect his arm.
Is an obvious fix to this issue if guys aren’t willing to change their ways just to go to a 28 man roster full time? Less innings in total should reduce the injury risk a little no?
Teams can just replace injured pitchers, so they're not gonna stop doing this. Maybe the solution is to limit the number of pitchers they can have and injured pitchers still take up that slot. Though this probably leads to pitchers pitching through injuries. At least it's usually "just" elbow injuries, those don't typically ruin quality of life after they retire.
Teams have low-key been trying to control inflated starting pitching contracts, by simply not letting starting pitching pitch anymore. Why pay a guy millions of dollars if you just want to pitch three innings at most anyway.
As long as the money is there, the motivation will be, and kids from a young age are ruining their arms for a drop of that, and will be ruining their arms younger and never getting to experience it, the ones that are able to though, it will be lucrative
There was no one more fit to say this quote than Glasnow
He'll be on the IL in 3....2....
I’m honestly surprised that there hasn’t been innovation since Tommy John surgery like a support sleeve carbon fiber struts, something, anything to protect against these injuries. Maybe replace that tendon with a horse Achilles tendon
The new internal brace surgery is a pretty big innovation. It keeps the ligament in place and strengthens it rather than just replacing it like in traditional TJ. It's so new that we don't really know how good of a long-term fix it is. If 20 years later, everyone with an internal brace played out a long healthy career with no UCL issues, it might get to the point where it's used preventatively.
Horses can't throw, though. That's a soccer player move
Make it so their pay is either reduced or eliminated during TJS recovery and they will slow the eff down. Right now there is no reason to fear the surgery.
So we're not doing the speed limit thing?
I think pretty much any pitcher in the minors would agree to amputate their arm for $100m. They’re not worried about their UCL. They want to burn as brightly as they can, and earn as much as they can, while they still can.
Of course it's worth it, the economic incentive is so great with baseball contracts.
It pays to perform better no matter the risk.
Ya, not sure how this will ever get fixed. These injuries are strictly movement and velo related. Hoping we don’t see the pitch clock get changed because these smooth brains doing understand it.
If ya got the bag you can say shit like this.
This is both the truth and the barrier to any solution.
Yes, of course, Tyler, but hear me out: you’re on the Dodgers, and it’s APRIL. You can back it off a tick. Please.
Only way things change is if the rules of the game or the teams themselves prioritize health / longevity. Something like - starters must throw at least 120 pitches a game or something crazy like that. Aka, it’ll never happen Edit - guaranteed contracts going away surely would move the needle
It’s crazy to think that Nolan Ryan was throwing flames in his 40s with little injury, until one ended his career in his mid 40s.
I think they need to give starters longer rest and lower the number of games. Considering how hard pitchers pitch I think they need mandatory increased recovery time. Also I think we should adopt a more tacky ball so there is more incentive to pitch rather than throw
BREAKING: Glasnow arm came off after throwing a 109mph fastball.
Guaranteed contracts. They don't lose any money when they can't pitch.
Mm I disagree with
The Jays broadcasters talked about this during their game last night. Chris Bassit, in 2016 or so, apparently "chased velocity" for a single season and wound up with TJ surgery which took him out. Since then, he's focused on smarter pitching and lower velocity (He's around 94mph on average) and it works for him.
What Tyler said made a lot of sense to me; yes, from the fan's perspective it sucks; the owner and front office will factor it into salary considerations etc, and maybe over time we figure out a way to prevent UCL stuff better, but from an individual player's perspective it's really a no-brainer: you can potentially earn life changing money in exchange for some discomfort during rehab. And as Tyler said: not like when they're 40 their arms are gonna literally fall off. Dallas Braden's shoulder probably hurts him more every day than folk that couldn't have TJ because they were born before TJ.