Matt Black sent a conciliatory message to Cleveland Guardians pitcher Shane Bieber over the weekend. As a member of Cleveland’s player development system in the 2010s, Black helped Bieber rise from a college walk-on to the unanimous American League Cy Young Award winner in 2020. For a time, Bieber represented the modern model for making big names. The league’s ace, as he rose up the rankings, he added strength to his body, velocity to his fastball and spin to his offspeed pitches.
By the time Black texted, however, Bieber had become part of a growing, more disturbing group: talented young pitchers who would spend the season as spectators. Two days after the Miami Marlins announced that 20-year-old phenom Yuri Perez would undergo Tommy John surgery, The Guardian revealed that 28-year-old Bieber will need the same procedure. Recent tests on 25-year-old Atlanta Braves starter Spencer Strider revealed damage to the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow, which could lead to him receiving a second dose of Tommy John Operation. In New York, Black is now the Yankees’ pitching coach, losing the team’s ace Gerrit Cole to elbow inflammation until June and one of the team’s top relievers, Jonathan Jonathan Loaisiga passed away due to elbow surgery at the end of the year.
“As a pitching coach, trying to pitch nine innings a night for 162 games,” Black said, “I’m very concerned.”
Pitching has always been dangerous for its practitioners. There’s reason to believe that keeping them healthy is only going to get more challenging. The opening days of the 2024 season have already demonstrated the inherent fragility of the position.a recent story through ringer Citing research by former MLB coach Stan Conte, the study counted 263 surgeries performed at UCL in 2023, a steady increase from the 111 surgeries performed in 2011. Of the 166 players on the injured list to start the season, According to the New York Post, 132 pitchers. If these trends continue, 2024 will be another banner year for arm injuries and cause consternation throughout the game.
The topic sparked a barrage of barbs between Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball on Saturday, with the two sides debating via press releases the impact of a game clock introduced in 2023 and shortened in 2024. MLB Commissioner Tony Clark painted a picture of the league’s insistence on cutting back on game time. Resting players against their will ahead of the 2024 season is “an unprecedented threat to our game”. MLB countered by citing an unpublished analysis from Johns Hopkins University that found no correlation between the introduction of the clock and the surge in injuries.
However, the clock is just one of the concerns among the players, coaches and managers interviewed. Competitor this weekend. Those conversations brought up other reasons for the injury problem, including the industry’s relentless push for optimization, encouraging players to pursue maximum speed and spin, and using training methods that encourage full-speed workouts year-round. For some, these explanations are intertwined and thorny. Untangling this knot may require years of study and reassessment.
“Protecting these guys’ arms is the most important thing,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Obviously we haven’t solved this problem yet.”
The most highly regarded pitchers in baseball were on the shelf as the season began. Los Angeles Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw underwent shoulder surgery last October. Texas Rangers pitcher Max Scherzer is recovering from back surgery, while teammate Jacob deGrom is recovering from a second Tommy John surgery. Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander is experiencing shoulder soreness in spring training. All of these pitchers are over 35 years old, an age when the body can no longer adapt to the rigors of the major league schedule.
Not long ago, Yuri Perez and Sandy Alcantara were on the verge of becoming the Marlins’ twin aces. Both are now set to recover from surgery in 2024. (Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
The more pressing concern for Major League Baseball is that their weaponry collapsed shortly after becoming famous. Miami Marlins starter Sandy Alcántara, the unanimous winner of the 2022 National League Cy Young Award, underwent an elbow reconstruction last season. The same goes for Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Sean McClanahan, more than a year after playing in the All-Star Game. Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff will miss the season due to shoulder surgery. The same goes for Kansas City Royals pitcher Kyle Wright, a 21-game winner with Atlanta in 2022.
“Our sport deserves our best pitchers on the mound,” Detroit Tigers manager AJ Hinch said. “No matter what era you’re in, starting pitching is the first thing you see every day. You want the big boys out there. You want elite players, but more and more guys are getting hurt.”
To examine the issue, MLB commissioned a study last October that included conversations with 100 people during games, including medical officials. Once the study is complete, the league intends to form a task force and provide recommendations to clubs on how to keep pitchers healthy.
The sport has been grappling with this issue since its inception. In another era, pitchers were thought to suffer injuries from overuse. Teams changed the way they used pitchers in hopes of retaining them. Gone are the days of exhausted starting pitchers being pushed to the breaking point with 125 pitches or more trying to finish the seventh or eighth inning. The new prototype requires pitchers not to get out easily but to explode from the start. Go as hard as possible, for as long as possible, is the new mantra. Vast amounts of data on pitch shape and movement provide teams with granular ways to improve pitching. However, these data don’t provide answers on how to keep them healthy.
“In my many years of managing, I’ve heard that we ask less of our starting pitchers because we don’t keep them in games long enough and they don’t throw 100 pitches anymore,” Hinch said. “However, we ask them to provide maximum speed, maximum size, maximum everything and train almost year-round.”
Hinch mentioned Tarik Skubal, a 27-year-old Tigers lefty who underwent Tommy John surgery in college and a flexor tendon in 2022 Operation. Skubal practiced last winter, so when he arrived at spring training, he hit 99 mph in live batting practice in his first session. “Go to Tarik Skubal and tell him, ‘Hey, take it easy and hit 92 mph’ and see how that goes,” Hinch said. “No. Because we require our athletes to compete at the highest level.”
For some retired players, the pursuit of more velocity and spin puts pitchers at risk. Dan Haren is a 13-year veteran who now serves as the pitching strategist for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Posted on X His Instagram feed offers a video of “people throwing heavy balls at the wall as hard as they can, crow hopping, and his brothers cheering him on.” Roberts added, “It seems to me that the body is only designed to withstand a certain amount of force and speed before it succumbs.”
When Sean Bieber announced he would undergo elbow surgery, he had not allowed a run in two games this season. (Jason Miller/Getty Images)
Some, like Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell, suggest pitchers will always try to throw harder. “I think the pursuit of speed will never end,” Counsell said. “Because it makes pitchers better. I don’t think we should demonize the pursuit of speed.”
However, the industry supports this trend by shortening starting pitchers’ playing time and encouraging them to maximize their abilities. Pitchers will not only throw fastballs as hard as possible, but also throw offspeed balls as hard as possible in hopes of producing unique movement and loss of bat. “In some ways, the type of delivery that creates abnormal shape can be more stressful,” Black said. “I think maximizing power to create shape may not be helpful. When you’re going for 20-inch brakes or 20-inch ride At high speeds or at high speeds, I think there’s a certain physical cost.”
Despite protests from MLB officials, players continue to complain about the clock. This innovation reduced the average game time last season by 24 minutes. The 2023 timer gives pitchers 15 seconds to act with the bases empty and 20 seconds with a runner on. MLB’s 11-person competition committee voted to shorten the 20-second clock by two seconds in 2024 despite objections from players.
Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Anderson said pitchers may put more stress on their arms instead of their legs because of the clock. But he doubts any studies can prove a correlation between shorter intervals between pitches and increased injuries. The act of pitching is unhealthy enough. “Rob Manfred knows this is really hard to prove, and that’s my guess,” Anderson said.
The union sees the clock as a bogeyman. The commissioner’s office dismissed their complaints as straw men. For coaches like Blake, who must navigate the season with lingering injuries, time is only part of the problem, along with the dangerous pursuit of speed and spin.
“I don’t think any of them are most Be responsible,” Black said. “But it’s hard to mix them up.”
Athletic team Fabian Ardaya, Sam Blum, Patrick Mooney, Cody Stavenhagen contributed reporting.
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(Top photo of Strider: Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)
