RASH OF INJURED PITCHERS: AT A TIPPING POINT

• Posted on 18 August 2024
• By Carl Lemelin
• 0

Long-term injuries to star hurlers like Jacob DeGrom, Spencer Strider, and Sandy Alcantara are hurting baseball by preventing fans of the marquis matchups they crave.

If you play Fantasy Baseball, you have assuredly felt a fraction of the pain and frustration that has beset almost every MLB GM this season. Pitchers are dropping like early August stock prices!

The consensus best pitcher in baseball, Jacob DeGrom, has only managed 6 starts since signing a behemoth $185 million deal with the Texas Rangers in the winter of 2022. He is still recovering from his second Tommy John surgery.

The Miami Marlins have basically lost their entire opening day rotation to injury. The same can be said about the World Series favorite L.A. Dodgers for most of the 2024 season. Every team has had to contend with at least one key member of their rotation on IL at some point or another in 2024.

What is going on?

Coming out of a pandemic, are we entering a pitching injury epidemic? Is it just a fluke or is it a worrisome trend that sounds an alarm? How can this fast-evolving phenomenon be analyzed and understood?

One thing we are sure of is that the data does not lie. We are in the midst of an injury crisis among MLB pitchers, particularly starters. What can MLB front offices do to address this serious, and costly issue?

DATA NEVER LIES

I hate when people say: “You can make numbers say whatever you want them to say.”

That may be true if you isolate certain stats within a broader study, but any researcher or person who seeks to understand the correlation between different data points will tell you that statistics can tell you the whole story if you know where to look and if you know the questions that need to be answered.

In this case, we want to confirm that injuries to starting pitchers have become a hinderance to the competitive integrity – and therefore the entertainment value – of big league baseball.

I pulled up the list of every starting pitcher currently injured (as of August 9^th) and came up with the eery number of 77! That’s more than 2.5 hurt starters per team. Considering that the average rotation is composed of 5 men, that means more than half of the starting hurlers population is currently M.I.A.

Just how significant are the names on this list? Of the 77, 7 are team aces. That means almost one quarter of MLB teams are without the anchor of their rotation. What’s worse is that all 7 are gone for the rest of the season, including DeGrom – presumably, since the Rangers are out of the playoff race.

You may ask: “Yes, but how many of these injuries are to replacement level pitchers?”

Well, only 8 of the 77 rehabbing starters were not part of their team’s projected rotation to start the season.

Nearly half (32) of the injuries were suffered by a projected top-3 rotation cog.

Want more gloom? 34 of the ailments are season-ending!

It doesn’t take a master’s degree in quantitative analysis to deduce from all this data that injuries to star MLB tossers have had a negative effect on the current level of play, competitive balance, and consequently, the entertainment value in The Show.

THE ROOT CAUSE

Many hypotheses have been evoked by experts and fans alike to explain this recent rash of injuries to baseball’s precious mound men:

• The Statcast era’s uber-focus on velocity and spin rate
• The new rules adopted in 2023 – the pitch clock in particular
• Modern training programs
• The strict ban on sticky substances (for better grip)

We’ve heard all the speculation over the last couple of seasons on game telecasts and news reports.

So, what is the true culprit? Or is it a combination of factors, or all the above?

First, let’s eliminate the factors that have been scientifically dispelled.

The theory that the advent of the pitch clock – or even the 2024 drop from 20 seconds to 18 with runners on base – could be responsible for a spike in pitcher injuries is plausible because both coincide perfectly in the timeline.

However, no biomechanics expert has yet to determine with any certainty that a few seconds more or less between pitches has a determining effect on the stress being put on ligaments and muscles used by pitchers.

The same can be said of the substance ban. The adoption of the ban by MLB matches the approximate period we identify with the uptick in injuries, but there is simply no scientific proof to confirm any direct link.

That leaves us with modern training and the chase for velocity and movement.

We know that today’s athletes don’t train the way they did 20-30 years ago. Trainers have learned to isolate muscle groups that are more solicited for an athlete’s specific sport. It’s not just about lifting to get stronger. It’s about the core, and cross-training to simulate game situations. Plyometrics are all the rage in baseball.

With pitching, a trainer’s focus will be on rotation and flexibility. A good portion of the training schedule will also be geared toward strengthening the lower body, which serves as a pitcher’s foundation.

To determine if new training methods are at all to blame, we need to examine where pitchers are getting injured. Among the 77 injured starters, 53 (68.8%) are experiencing throwing arm ailments (shoulder/biceps/triceps/elbow/forearm/wrist), and almost all of those were elbow injuries.

A weak foundation (lower body) could explain some arm injuries, because compensation would then be needed to attain the desired velocity, but as mentioned all modern MLB pitchers have strong lower bodies, and work constantly on their flexibility.

Fifty years ago, a pitcher named Tommy John became a guinea pig for an experimental operation that would forever bear his name.

You see, the real culprit for what is ailing modern pitchers is a small, rather weak elbow tissue called the Ulnar Collateral Ligament (UCL). It links the upper arm and forearm bones.

The Tommy John procedure consists of taking a ligament from the patient’s own body or from a donor to replace the injured UCL. It has proven to be so successful over the past five decades that some college pitchers have even resorted to undergo T.J. before getting injured, as a preventative measure.

This may seem extreme, but it goes to show how inevitable UCL injuries now seem to elite level pitchers.

There is only one logical cause for the proliferation of T.J. surgeries; one factor that can put so much stress on this small elbow ligament that it eventually snaps like an old elastic band. You guessed it, the Statcast era obsession with speed.

Need proof? Will Laws, of Sports Illustrated, wrote a great piece last spring (There’s a Clear Root to the Injury Issues Plaguing Pitchers) in which he exposed his eye-opening research on the cause of pitching injuries.

“I looked at all the starting pitchers from 2019-23 who averaged at least 96.5 mph with their four-seam fastball in any season in which they threw at least 600 fastballs. I came up with 21 high-velocity throwers over the past five years. Of those 21, 18 broke down with major injuries and account for at least 22 elbow surgeries.”

If I was a prosecutor, I would call this piece of evidence my golden nugget. That is as probing and incriminating a statistic this inquiry can uncover!

But just in case, I would also make sure to highlight this exhibit: by the end of the 2023 campaign, 31 of the 64 hardest throwers had undergone Tommy John surgery.  

The human UCL simply cannot withstand the constant pressure that today’s widespread max effort pitching philosophy exerts on it.

SO, WHAT’S THE FIX?

Growing up, I was always a fan of the artists on the mound. Obviously, Greg Maddux represents the ultimate pitching genius.

It wasn’t all that uncommon to see him throw sub-2-hour, sub-90 pitch complete game gems back in the 90’s. All he did was play ‘X’ marks the spot with 2-seam fastballs that he masterfully manipulated in both directions on both corners of the plate, seemingly at will.

But that was only part of the Atlanta Braves legend’s secret recipe that he rode to a Hall of Fame career. Since he maxed out at around 93 mph, he also knew he had to game plan better than anyone else and read opponent bats to make key in-game adjustments.

Today, we call that skill “pitchability”, and sadly it’s a lost art among young hurlers.

Seattle Mariners George Kirby is probably the best at it among current big leaguers, but even he averages 95.9 mph on his 4-seamer, so it’s a stretch to call him a finesse pitcher.

Nobody can dispute the fact that velocity is a great weapon to get hitters out. But velocity is only one component of a complete pitcher’s makeup. I would even argue that it isn’t even the most important aspect of pitching.

The question MLB front offices must ask themselves is: what’s better? Prioritizing velocity and running a significant risk of losing a highly paid, win-generating asset for 18 to 24 months, or establishing teaching and coaching methods in their development systems that focus on game planning, locating, creating movement, changing speeds, and pitchability?

I understand that all sports are evolving toward creating more powerful, fast, and agile athletes, but throwing a ball is a very specific action and we now know that we are hitting the proverbial wall in the chase for velocity.

If I was an MLB GM, I would immediately look to hire pitching coaches who have a link to the way the position was taught in the 80’s to 2000’s and implement an organizational philosophy based on teaching prospects proper mechanics and grips that help reign in command and movement.

Instead of chasing speed in pitching labs, I would have my athletes work with trainers on injury prevention programs.

Learning to read opposing hitters within games would also be a point of emphasis. You can have all the scouting reports you want on a hitter pre-game, but no hitter feels the same way every single day. When you are trying to get a hitter out during a particular at-bat, it is paramount that you identify his reaction to different pitches and make the proper adjustments in real time.

It has been said a lot, but it is so true: the key to getting hitters out is to disrupt their timing.

I firmly believe that Maddux, Tom Glavine, Pedro Martinez, Zack Greinke and other such crafty Picasso’s of pitching would be just as effective in today’s game as they were in their primes. They were experts in timing disruption and didn’t need to live in the upper 90’s with their heater to achieve it.

If you’re not constantly throwing upper 90’s fastballs, nothing keeps you from reaching for those heights 5 to 10 times a game when you judge it necessary; keep high velocity in reserve for a specific situation. Surprise your opponent with it. That’s pitching.

Such a paradigm shift would undoubtedly help reverse this gloomy stream of arms going under the knife. It would save organizations hundreds of millions in lost man-games to injury. Who knows how much more eyes it would put on each game, with all the marquee pitching matchups that would be restored.

Just how much does this parade to the IL affect the competitive balance?

The juggernaut Dodgers were expected to be on the record-wins-in-a-season watch, but they have been without Clayton Kershaw, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Walker Buehler for nearly the entire season, which has kept the Arizona D-Backs well within reach of the NL West lead.

The Houston Astros (6 injured SP) and Atlanta Braves (lost pre-season Cy Young favorite Spencer Strider to season-ending T.J. surgery) are barely hanging on to playoff spots instead of striving as World Series contenders.

Conversely, the Seattle Mariners (the only team currently with no SP injury) have surprised everyone by staying in the AL West pennant race despite an anemic offense.

We’ve all heard it: pitching is the name of the game. So, baseball must start finding ways to protect the investments they make in elite arms.

If I was a betting man – and I’m not – I would put my money on the Tampa Bay Rays or the Cleveland Guardians as the two franchises most likely to have already started implementing some form of my suggested overhaul of their pitcher development program.

After Moneyball, the defensive shift, the four-man outfield, and the opener, I am convinced this is the next big change in baseball that will give the pioneer franchise a definitive edge in sustained success on the mound.