Baseball is broken
Jeff Passan is not happy. Okay, we don't actually know how he's feeling, but there must be a certain amount of frustration. To the long time baseball reporter, the game is broken. There is an epidemic at hand.
On Tuesday, Major League Baseball released and announced the results of their year-long expansive study into pitching and arm injuries. And while the study's results didn't exactly reveal anything new, the league is rather slow to move on these things, it did confirmed what Passan wrote about in his book a decade ago.
Pitchers are getting hurt more frequently and more often. However, to put it all on the MLB is unfair. The pitching problem is bigger than the major leagues. What is even more alarming is that injuries are happening earlier in the season.
Velocity is the main culprit.
Pitchers who throw 95 mph and above are obviously more susceptible to injury. And yet Passan laments that college and developmental baseball programs are teaching young hurlers to do just that: throw fast and throw hard.
In the seven years since Passan published his book «The Arm», injuries have gotten a whole lot worse.
Case in point. In 2008, there were 214 pitches over 100mph. In 2023, that number was 3880.
Look no further than the three Blue Jays pitchers who are currently rehabbing from arm injuries - Brandon Barriera, Alek Manoah, and Ricky Tiedemann. All three of them are hard and fast throwers, and two of them are under 25.
This is why baseball is broken.
The game is teaching kids to destroy their arms and the league is surprised to learn the cause of said destroyed arms?
But velocity isn't the only thing to blame. The rise of the machines has certainly had a negative impact.
Haters of the pitch clock will be disappointed to know that it has no correlation to arm injuries. More so, its the way players look at video replay to determine arm angles and release points.
And yet, the league doesn't seem to be doing anything about it Arm injuries have become an accepted part of the job, and rather than the address the issue head on, teams just work around them, acquiring depth piece after depth piece.
It's why bullpens and pitching staffs are much larger than they used to be.
Gone are the days of teams carrying 10 pitchers. Some rosters are up to 13 now. It's what so many starters are used throughout the season.
Going deeper into games doesn't affect career outcomes anymore so the league has no issues changing or modifying pitching behaviour.
Nolan Ryan was fast. He played forever but shredded his arm. Greg Maddux never threw hard and he is one of the best people ever to throw a baseball.
It's why knuckleballers played forever. Or a guy like Jamie Moyer. They didn't blow you away, but they also didn't destroy their bodies.
Baseball is broken.
| POLL | ||
DECEMBRE 17 | 149 ANSWERS Baseball is broken Who is to blame for the rise in pitching injuries? | ||
| PRob Manfreds | 16 | 10.7 % |
| Development | 30 | 20.1 % |
| Players themselves | 15 | 10.1 % |
| all of the above | 88 | 59.1 % |
| List of polls | ||
