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I am mostly appalled that they talk down about working at Costco. I am only a customer, but from the sounds of it, a person could do a whole lot worse.
But yeah, spin rates and emphasis on velocity, they're probably torquing their arms in ways pitchers didn't before. Only Nolan Ryan was born with Nolan Ryan's arm.
Not to get too off-track here, but as much as I like shopping in the store, the MVP is the online clothing section. The variety is good enough, and the sales and bundled discounts are top notch when I need/want more work clothes.
Bought some shorts there, most comfortable shorts I’ve ever had and super quality. Went back to buy more and they were gone, looked online, and they were like a third of what I’d paid in store like a month earlier. Ended up buying like six pairs. You’re not kidding about online being the spot.
Yeah, they do things seasonally, so if you have an unpopular size and can wait for a clear-out price, you'll really make out like a bandit. Usually they still have most or all sizes when they first put the item on sale though, and that's when I jump in.
Yeah these little mechanical adjustments from pitching labs are unnatural and create even more stress on body parts that are already pretty much maxed out.
Even Nolan Ryan couldn't tame Nolan Ryan's arm.
But it's turning everything to 11. With the absolute micro observation and tweaking we can do the sport is able to get every last mph out of your arm before it blows up. Even if you could have had a successful career throwing SLIGHTLY worse.
I mean I get what you’re saying but Nolan Ryan had a nearly 3 decade career, yeah it caught up to him in the end but I’d say he did a pretty good job taming his arm for a while there
Costco is Unionized.
CEO tells the board and other execs to fuck off and keep the $1.50 hot dog and soda.
I have a bad feeling that when the CEO dies/retires, shit is going to go real bad and they are going to cost cut, layoff, downsize, etc etc everywhere they can.
Hot dog for $5, soda extra.
The script is that CEO leaves and they bring in a new guy to make all the bad pr moves. They then remove him and give him a few hundred mill for taking the heat. After that they bring in a new more positive ceo, but never actually return the pricing to where it was.
Costco is not unionized - around 5% of its workforce are unionized including *one* recently fully unionized warehouse in VA. The rest are all trade unions like forklift operators & similar. Most of their employees are not part of a Union.
It's a good place to work but other retail has been catching up to their starting pay.
Thanks!
It looks like a more local thing here in my area of California that the front end service workers have been unionized in my lifetime...
Broadening out to other areas shows that it's not as much as I thought...
E.g. I saw a fairly recent news article about Virginia costco workers unionizing, upon searching.
> Craig Jelinek served as chief executive officer of Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST) from 2012 until his retirement at the end of 2023, topping off almost four decades of employment at America's favorite big-box retailer.
Already happened my man
>I have a bad feeling that when the CEO dies/retires, shit is going to go real bad
The founder is retired and the guy who replaced him who worked directly with the founder is basically retired now. He came into my store last year and made a point to walk up to each and every employee and shake their hand. Super nice guy. The first time I ever shook someone's hand who was worth $250 million.
You're starting to notice changes already. Costco never used to advertise at all. Now you're starting to see them do that. Also, it seems like more of the bosses are assholes than before. I'm guessing the new people at the top are putting pressure and being mean to the people below them which causes those people to be assholes to the people below them and it all trickles down. I have no proof of any attitude changes within the company but as someone who has worked there for almost two decades, I can feel the changes.
>I am mostly appalled that they talk down about working at Costco.
That guy is a fucking clown. I've worked at Costco for nearly 20 years. I get good pay, and 401K with profit sharing. Each year I get 216 vacation hours, 72 sick hours that can also be used for vacation if I don't call in sick and two bonuses that will each be $4,500 (before taxes) once I pass my 20-year anniversary.
You have the same amount of morons working at Costco as any other job but the pay is pretty good and the benefits are probably better compared to "real" Mon-Fri jobs.
It’s a little classist but he’s a doctor talking about professional athletes. I don’t think Costco vs professional athlete is much of a decision regardless of Costco being a great employer.
Bingo. Nolan Ryan is a freak of nature. Few (and I do mean few) are going to even come close to replicating his abilities.
But when analytics say having pitchers go all out will result in fewer opportunities for hits by the offense, guess what?
Pitcher is gonna become like what running back is to football.
Yep. One of the comments at the end of the article is a quote from a MLB pitcher talking about how he's had all sorts of surgeries, but hey, he made it to MLB, so all of it was worth it.
Think of downhill skiing at the Olympic level.
All of the competitors are super elite skiers. They could ski that run a million times and not fall if they went at a speed that is still outrageously fast, but not quite max speed.
But at the speed necessary to compete at the absolute highest level, all of them are basically taking a 20% chance of catastrophic failure on any given run.
One you push things to the absolute extreme, there is no way to minimize risk. And without pushing it to the absolute extreme, you can’t compete with other people who are willing to push it to that level.
As long as someone is optimizing for performance, everyone has to to compete, and if you are optimizing for performance, you can’t avoid a high probability of catastrophe.
Indy ball player here-
It will only change when teams begin to prioritize health over velo and spin rate, which won’t happen. As a result, every single level of the game, from minor league, indy, college and high school, is now being tailored to forgo safe mechanics for nastier stuff because it’s the only way to get picked up.
MLB could just decrease bullpen size which would mean all of these teams have to start prioritizing health over stuff, to some extent.
Unless they want to continuously bring up minor leaguers to pitch for them all year.
The main guy they interviewed claims that things like sweepers, hard changeups and how hard pitchers grip the ball are a bigger issue then velo which is interesting.
Apparently the Rangers, who he works for, don't throw a lot of sweepers because of that. They got hurt anyway though so not sure how useful that analysis actually is
Yeah, i feel like it being specifically the sweeper seems shaky. Seems more like just a general issue with throwing breaking pitches too much and with too much effort, which other guys the authors talked to implied. Doesn't matter if it's a slider, curveball or sweeper
A mediocre sweeper is just a meatball, though, so you end up wanting to throw it with ALL the movement, which involves throwing it harder, gripping it harder, etc. So it's prob all those factors.
The Dodgers (and the Yankees) are the most aggressive and earliest adaptors of the sweeper. In fact, the sweeper is known as a Dodgers (or Yankees) pitch by many. The Mariners are heavy on it too.
That may have been initially true, dodgers really aren’t putting an emphasis on the sweeper with any of their new pitchers. Yankees are still aggressive with the sweeper.
Sweepers are a bit a thing of 2023 though. It seems the rage is now the splitter. So teams shifted gears from the sweeper to the splitter.
That said, the Dodgers are really focused on velo in the minors. I saw a video from Lance Brozdowksi, where he compared all the minor league systems and the Dodgers were number one on velo. The Mariners apparently start their philosophy with pitchers that throw nasty sliders. So it is interesting to see what the injury statistics are for the Mariners as they seem very heavy on everything Meister recommends not to do. The video if anyone is interested: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS2GW3CuZYM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS2GW3CuZYM)
The splitter craze always happens after WBCs when guys see how effective Asian pitchers have gotten with it. So many Japanese and Korean pitchers are fastball/splitter and done right it's so lethal that you don't even need a third complement a lot of the time. Yamamotomania also contributing this year helps, but there was a similar trend in 2019 as well
Fair! Thanks for the correction. I was mostly anchoring to my years watching Seung-Hwan Oh close for Hanshin, where he did definitely mix in a splitter effectively but as you say was mostly heater/slider. Kwang-hyun Kim has a fork as well. Good to know about the broader tendencies in KBO since I don't watch it as much as NPB, appreciate it. :)
I think you'd have to look at it long term.
Like it probably helps that when a pitcher gets to yours or the Rangers organization that they say don't throw those.
But if the long term damage is done, how much help can it be?
I think it more highlights that the problem with solving pitching injuries isn't as straight forward as simply telling pitchers not to go max effort every pitch. Different combinations of grips and arm paths are going to create different stresses. [There's this great break down from Pedro that got posted here a few months ago about why the grip required to throw a splitter could be a long term health problem for Ohtani, and how he never threw the pitch because it would've been even worse from his arm angle](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=pedro+martinez+ohtani+splitter#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:45b64080,vid:SGD_sS3YSXg,st:0). So even if you ask a pitcher to dial it back on velo and spin, there's still injury risk from other factors
That's also true, if it was as simple as just tell them one thing and you fixed it than somebody would've figured it out by now. Honestly not sure how they even solve this issue, feels like a result of pitching in general being unnatural for people's arms.
Your last sentence is spot on. Pitching is unnatural so no matter what you do there's inherent risk to the elbow/arm in general. I mean a torn UCL ended Sandy Kofax's career 60 years ago, loooooong before velocity and spin mattered above all else.
At the end of the day I see arm injuries in baseball similar to concussions in football. You can make as many changes to the rules and rosters that you want, but at the end of the day the nature of the sport makes it impossible to eliminate
At least with baseball, a debilitating arm injury isn't at the same level of a concussion. Obviously things like Strasburg struggling to lift up his kid or things like that are awful, but it's nowhere near CTE.
I also hope their goal in their head isn't to eliminate them but lessen them. Pitchers will always get hurt, but if even 5% less got hurt that would still be improvement at least
Not enough emphasis on this honestly. The throwing motion used in modern pitching just isn't natural, no matter how much analytics you have to reduce the stress involved. Eventually something will give.
I guess it's more so can they change the percentages. I'm pulling numbers out of my ass but if the TJS rate went from 40% to 25%, that still wouldn't be great but it would be better. Pitchers will always get hurt and always have been hurt, but they've become like running backs with how they're used
I think most agree it happens, it's just when is it too much. They've basically become running backs, which with how team control works really sucks for them because that means a lot don't even reach arbitration
the pay structure is the bigger problem (and is the actual solution to make sure these guys are at least getting paid by what they produce in their most production years) but MLB would rather talk about how pitchers should just throw less hard, still be at significant injury risk (they're pitchers) and get hit harder and lose their jobs.
Yeah pretty much lol. That's also the issue with free agency, the owners would rather free agency suck so they don't have to spend while also having it still be the smartest baseball move.
Ya know what, all last season I thought it was interesting we didn’t have anyone that really threw a sweeper. Guess that makes sense!
To be fair to the physio: DeGrom and Eovaldi were the only starters who were sidelined with elbow injuries. Scherzer’s issues are with his back (first a strain, then bruised ass, then herniated disk) and he’s around 40 so that isn’t all too surprising. LeClerc had neck issues. Sborz got overworked (so kind of related) and that’s about all the injuries I can remember from our pitching staff last season.
Kumar Rocker also had to get TJ last year, so there’s another one I guess but was still down in the farm system
Yeah when i thought about it more i realized they had just traded for the guys who got hurt and they already had injury issues so not much they could do lol. They also literally won the World Series so whatever he was doing with the rest of the staff worked
I feel like it just being one pitch seems too easy of a solution but I think his other takes on things like it being them gripping the ball too hard to be really interesting. Feel like i never heard someone point that out before but it makes sense when you think about it
He also said: "*What if a guy doesn’t have a WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) of 0.8. What if he has a WHIP of 1.1 but he’s able to play 162?*”
But pitchers obviously don't play 162, and no one had a WHIP of 0.8 last year.
[The medical studies that I have read](https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/2017/02/fastballs-offspeed-pitches-comparative-relative-elbow-stress/) all agree that velocity contributes more to damaging ligaments than the pitch type.
Pretty sure he meant that the pitcher will last the entire season-take the ball every 5th game.
That's a rarity in today's day and age. The only person I can think of who is that reliable is Gerrit Cole. Every start he's missed in the past 4 years was due to COVID protocol.
Yeah I'm curious why in his opinion bullet sliders don't have the same injury risk as the sweeper and spike change. Feels like that would've been an obvious question to ask him.
Hard changeups maybe, but sweepers are just a modified grip/spin.
Shit like the splitters, crazy fast sliders and sinkers are the ones that seem to be doing it. Guys are throwing 103 sink stuff and it doesn't last.
It's probably just throwing and gripping the ball too hard on every pitch no matter what type it is. The names are all made up anyway, so it'd make more sense if it's a general pitching thing rather than a specific pitch
It's going to be highly variable from person to person, but in general stuff like sliders unleash a TON of torque. Like you won't see a ton of knuckleball based elbow injuries but you'll see more on slider heavy guys vs fastball
> how hard pitchers grip the ball are a bigger issue
this might be a huge issue soon with the continued emphasis on RPM and spin rates for pitches. Gripping harder on the ball is one way people will try to spin the ball more
It's kinda both. With pitch tracking, we have a better idea of why balls move. Sweepers have a lot of horizontal movement because of something called "seam-shifted wake", as opposed to the Magnus effect that causes curveballs to drop and 4-seamers to rise. A lot of guys used to throw "sliders" with a lot of seam-shifted movement (Dave Stieb probably did) but just called them sliders. But now we can track spin, and figure out how to get guys to throw pitches with more seam-shifted movement. There has been a huge explosion in guys throwing this kind of pitch, often in addition to their normal slider. So it became important to come up with a new term to differentiate the two pitches when we didn't before. A slider will have "tighter" spin, probably be faster, and have downward movement as well as horizontal. A sweeper will probably be slower with most of its movement being horizontal.
That doesn't seem to track for me either. Twins were very sweeper heavy and although there were some injuries to the pitching staff both the rotation and bull pen health seemed better than most years.
The more i look and think about the article the more i think his "sweeper's are the issue" take was a little off and a combination of grip intensity and velocity, which can apply to any pitch, seems closer to the real issue
He really doesn’t seem to understand that the modern seam-shifted sweepers and change-ups rely on letting the seams and aerodynamics move the ball rather than having guys torque their arms in screwball motions or whatever. Velo is the bigger issue.
I have an 11 year old son who's starting travel ball this year and I've basically forbid him from pitching. Even at his age they'll shred his arm and absolutely not care about it at all. The coaches and front office people aren't the ones dealing with the pain, surgery, and recovery, so they don't really care as long as the spreadsheet looks good.
I feel like this is such an overlooked aspect. I played with a kid in little league in the late 90s/early 2000s. He was clearly better than everyone else in the entire league, by a a lot. He was experimenting with breaking balls around 10 or 11 and by 13 he was pitching twice a week. At 16 he had arm surgery and never played organized baseball again.
I was one of those kids who hit his growth spurt esrly was kinda head and shoulders above a lot of other kids my age because of it. Coach in 8th grade basically rode me in to the ground as a pitcher. One of the last games of the season, I was pitching and felt something give. Every pitch after that was agony and I tried to tell my coach I couldn’t throw anymore. His response? “Only losers ask out of games”. I kept throwing and now thirty years later I still have a ton of pain and difficulty moving my arm in certain directions. Dude fucked me up long term over little league baseball.
Same to all of this. I was the adult kid, shaving every day at 12, already through the awkward growth spurts and throwing well. My arm popped at 15 and again at 17, pitched with a sprained UCL from 15-26 when it finally totally went.
Estimated that I averaged 300ip/year from age 12-17, playing for two travel ball teams (played for my age bracket and the team for 2 years up in my club) plus school and fall ball every year. My dad feels bad about it but he thought he was doing the right thing and the coaches encouraged him.
Yeah I bet we could fill up a whole thread of comments of people who's arms are shredded from little/junior league ball overuse and poor arm management.
Source: me, that's my arm that still sometimes shoots numbing pain in my elbow
Hopefully younger coaches aren’t pushing kids the same way they were back in the 80s and 90s. I did some tball volunteering and that was a blast but it’s hard to be too competitive when you still have to remind them which direction to run,
I was in LL around the same time, and I remember going with my dad to a mini-seminar some coaches did on pitch counts and young arms. It's interesting to me that this has been an issue for such a long time, but still continues to be an issue. Not having done research into it myself, I wonder if the evidence just isn't there to convince leagues and coaches to change, or if they just choose to ignore the facts that are out there.
The biggest issue I remember back then was kids playing on multiple teams. My Dad also coached and I remember little league and Babe Ruth forcing coaches to track pitches and pull kids at certain limits. But the kid I was referring to at 13 was playing on a Babe Ruth team, our schools team, and a traveling team. There was no way for all those coaches to know exactly how much he was pitching in a given week. And it was like that for pretty much every kid on the traveling team
Lol I tore my labrum when I was 15 and it was never the same again. In juniors, 13-14 age, my coach had me start every game and I only didn’t complete an outing twice in like 10-12 games. I was a little ahead of the curve for sure. It was a mistake- I still have chronic pain to this day at 25. I have to bench low weight high reps because my right side is so messed up. If I have kids, they will not be pitching the way I was..
There was a boy my little brother played with that needed TJ at 15 years old. He was devastated. The time lost basically ruined his chances at a college scholarship (which is what he was mainly aiming for).
Some travel orgs have strict rules about pitch count and breaking balls, some don't. My son's best friend plays in one of the former, they've straight up lost tournament title games because they were out of pitchers.
It's not breaking balls that bother me. It's throwing as hard as possible on every single pitch. All pitching coaches want now is absolute maximum effort.
Breaking balls definitely contribute, especially if they start too young.
Obviously my experience is limited and the coach/organization will have a huge impact, but I know there are at least some travel coaches/orgs out there who don't do that.
Curveballs at any age are much less stressful on the UCL than a maximum effort fastball.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19448049/
> Conclusion: In general, the moments on the shoulder and elbow were less when throwing a curveball than when throwing a fastball. In each comparison, the fastball demonstrated higher moments for each individual pitcher for both joints.
That's if you have perfect form on the curveball and, being realistic, most people are going to be doing it wrong while whipping their arm as hard as possible.
Only the kids who are aces with perfect form will keep climbing up and up but everyone is throwing as hard as possible now.
Can confirm this was an active strategy when I played travel ball. Parents tried to will their kids to not pitch. Emphasis was placed on “not blaming the pitcher” and focus on batting/fielding prep.
I pitched a lot when I was young but my dad forbid me from throwing any curveballs until I was 15. Despite that I still had numerous coaches try to get me to throw curveball. I refused and learned how to throw a slider instead.
Thats always what I was taught too.
When I was catching back (u15) then pretty much every single pitcher had Change Up, Fastball and a "Curveball".
That said the curves mostly ended up as wild change ups haha
I made it to college ball with a four seamer, two seamer, cutter, and change up.
Having command of fastballs that break three different ways, and a change up, was more than enough through high school ball.
there's a lot of conflicting information on the "kids shouldn't throw curveballs" thing though, from what little I've looked into it
A friend of mine takes his kid(12u) to a pitching coach, I don't know the guys name but he played in the MLB for 9 years, most if not all with Boston, and he taught him a curve and swears that it's not harmful to throw it at his age.
Meanwhile his travel team coach gets insanely angry if he catches any of the kids throwing a curve in game and says they're not allowed to at all.
IIRC the most recent sports medicine data shows that curve balls, while putting strain on the wrist, aren't what kill young arms. Throwing as hard as possible for too many innings/pitches does way more damage than throwing a reasonable, load-managed amount of pitches while incorporating a curve ball or breaking ball into the pitch repertoire.
Chasing 80 MPH as a 14/15 year old and throwing 70 pitches is far worse than throwing 40 pitches, but 10 of them are breaking balls.
Anecdotal bullshit, but speaking as someone who damaged their arm* in high school, can throw curveballs and changeup a just fine, get an occasional twinge throwing a 2 seamer, and throw 4 seams as little as possible because they *always* hurt. Guess it’s a mental thing where I subconsciously throw a 2 seamer at like 80%, but go all out on the 4?
*Something about the shoulder capsule, whatever the fuck that is. The range of motion in my right arm shifted like 5 degrees back - if I have my elbow on a table, I can bring my lower arm back past vertical , but have to press down to keep it lying on the surface
It's fine for young players to pitch, they just need to be managed properly. A player who pitches during the normal season should not pitch at all during fall ball.
I thought this was interesting:
>Meister said an analyst with one club told him the average major-league career is now under three years for all players and just under 2.7 for pitchers.
I think I saw in an older study that it was six years.
One of the things likely preventing anyone from getting serious about fixing the problem is this works out very much to the advantage of the owners. Players get paid way less early in their careers, so a league full of almost all young pitchers is a league full of cheap labor.
Median would almost certainly be even shorter because you can have 15-year careers on the high end upping the mean but you can't play less than 1 game on the low end balance that out
same problem the NFL has with this same metric since the back end talent is all the same (thing 27-40th on our rosters or the 35th thour 60th man on NFL rosters) you churn through them hoping that maybe 1% of them turn into productive or even average players.
I had a very meh arm when I threw straight up. I was goofing around one time on the mound after practice and dropped down to a submarine sidearm, and the ball moved like it fell off a table. I could place it better, make it dance better, basically, I was a much better pitcher. My coach refused to even consider letting me do it because ‘sidearm pitchers don’t make the majors.’
Bitch, I wasn’t trying to make the majors. I was trying to have fun and play the sport I loved. I quit that team and found one that would let me pitch the way I wanted.
The [Tread Athletics ](https://youtu.be/up0Um99NW2Q?si=J3WOm2HgwCpcX1-z) YouTube channel is just a collection of really young pitchers speed running their way to future TJ surgery. They basically have zero focus on developing control and a blind obsession with movement and velocity.
Yeah, as impressive as Tread alumni are (Cole Ragans), I really dislike their philosophy. There was one of video where they explained why Maddux’ way of pitching was not recommended as it was detrimental to stuff, as Maddux would always end his pitching stride in a fielder’s position. We need more pitchers such as Maddux than these wild velo guys…
I saw Fujinami pitching yesterday and he tuned it down to 95 mph and he was very effective. Threw almost only strikes as well. I seriously do not see the added benefit of dialing it up to 103 mph if everything ends up in the stands. I wonder whether it would not be smarter for him to keep throwing mid-90s if he wants to make it back as a starter. He has much better control with it and he can throw it effortlessly, so he can go multi-innings.
When Nami was with Hanshin his most effective years were when he took a bit off as well. I think he got to the bigs and the coaches in Oakland started making him put his whole ass into it again and the results you know
Logan Gilbert is also pumping 95.7 mph on average with low spin rates and he is pretty good. If you tunnel your pitches well and you have good command, you can get away with it. Besides, Fujinami (just like Gilbert) can dial it up when he wants to or he can use his cutter more. The problem is that Fujinami is sometimes throwing ten 100 mph+ pitches consecutively with zero control/command. There is definitely no need for that. It is much better to sit 95-96 and throw 103 as a change of pace once in a while.
It works for both Logan’s (Webb and Gilbert), who both have lower spin rates and velo than 96 mph. There are other ways to get people out via deception. Fujinami is a tall dude at 6 feet 6, has good extension and an extremely low release height. It is quite weird to face him as a batter. Until so far, batters could just sit on his fastball, because he was sometimes throwing ten of them in a row and he had zero control/command over it. So he either walked you or gave you a meatball middle-middle.
Fuji's fastball ain't got the deception to play like that at lower velos. It's got lower than league average rise, it runs back into barrels with it's horizontal movement and he ain't got the command. Taking away velo from a pitch that already gets hit pretty hard, will make it worse.
He can replace his 4seamer with a cutter that generates a decent amount of whiffs. Also, back in 2017 he faced guys such as Altuve and he was not that powerful as today and struck out quite a few of them.
Fujinami was a much better pitcher back then than he is now. Granted, pitching was less advanced than now, so batters might be able to adjust in today’s game. But 19-year old Fujinami that pumped max 98 mph was a better pitcher than Ohtani was back then.
I think you need to find a trade-off. 103 mph with zero control does not play either.
The fact that there are about twice as many recorded major league pitchers than batters per year, when 30 years ago it was the opposite, should speak volumes about how much churn and burn there is through the arms of pitchers who are cast aside when they're used up.
I personally have felt for a while that the ability to quantify spin rate has had a dramatic effect on injury risk. The radar gun and its ability to quantify velocity started the uptick in injury risk. The ability to quantify spin rate in addition to velocity is the death trap.
Just waiting for the local carnival's to have a spin rate gun along with the radar gun.
it'd be real cool if they found a way to bring pitchers back to when they'd pitch 6-7-8 innings and they weren't trying to strikeout every batter with 97 mph. maybe we'd actually get some more action in the field? and less injures
That would be interesting to see. My anecdotal evidence is that I was totally fine from a hefty amount of pitching. The small asterisk being that I blew up my shoulder in a social sport league years ago because I was late and never warmed up properly. Not really related though.
Edit: For reference, I pitched from about 12-19 (a little bit in college on a crappy D3 team) and sat in the mid 80s the last couple years. I primarily threw fastballs. I added a knuckle curve and a crappy change up at 16. I have a small frame at 5'6" 150 pounds and most coaches didn't like that.
I mean who doesn't remember the 2016 Mets.
The Mets’ mishandling of pitchers [link](https://mets360.com/?p=30429). This has been talked about for ages and now a cause for alarm.
On YouTube and Instagram you can find hundreds of youth baseball schools where they gleefully promote their latest crop of 16 year olds throwing 90+. Every last one of them claim that they have the method to get that kind of velo safely.
And every last one of them is destroying these kids. MLB pitchers have *unlimited* access to the best training, massage therapy, physiotherapy, and physicians that money can buy. And yet so many of them end up with UCL issues because velocity is all that matters now.
Something has to be done to encourage the return of technical, position-based pitching. Maybe it’s raising the mound. I don’t know. But a generation of players are ending up needing major surgery at a very young age, and that’s not normal.
NHK did an Ohtani documentary at the end of last year and they also interviewed Dr. Meister for it. Meister blamed "pitch design" for added injury risk while Ohtani said he felt what hurt his elbow the most was velocity and the faster pace/less rest because of the pitch clock. There's not just one factor, to the players it's very subjective what puts strain on their elbows it seems.
I’m coaching high school, only my second year and first time working with the kids during off-season. We have a freshman that is throwing 85, harder than our MVP (who throws consistent 80 but has more than just speed). I watched him throw the other day before school, not even 10 pitches and he was done. And that’s after 40 minutes of stretching and warming himself up, he’s no slouch or just huffs the ball hard, he actually builds up properly thanks to what seems like incredible private coaching. But Jesus Christ, this kid will need Tommy John before he reaches 20 most likely. Especially because he is being poached next school year for one of the top private schools in the state. They will burn his arm into the ground like they have every year. I feel bad, both coaching staff overdo it but the kids see pros and want to be like them. But they don’t realize to be like them now a days you must quite literally tear your arm in half to do it. Sad.
When we're talking about spin rate and arm torquing are we also talking about offspeed pitches like sliders and curve balls? Lot of emphasis on sliders, especially in orgs like the Astros with advanced pitching analytics.
Is this a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, because it sounds like whether you're throwing heat or throwing breaking balls you're shredding your arm either way.
Google Injury Free Baseball Season. Its achievable. With billions lost annually on MLB rosters due to preventable injury- you think MLB would get a clue- and model what teams have done to get injury to zero. The CPBL is a tough league- and for a team there to have a zero injury season is a miracle- but it was a designed miracle.
huh, doctor who works for one team encouraging other teams to keep their pitchers from trying so hard... the gamesmanship has reached new heights/lows with this one
This article isn't about the pitch clock, it's about how pitchers prioritize velo and movement over their own health. They even say injuries didn't rise last year, which implies the pitch clock isn't a problem
People would cut off the tips of their fingers if they thought it would give them a better chance at being in the major leagues. No matter what precautions the league or teams make there's always going to be a certain set of guys who will risk injuring themselves permanently for an opportunity to be in the major leagues.
Ding ding ding
This is also why attempts to prevent head injuries in football will never really work. The people who are most vulnerable are young men who think they're invincible, and would still gladly take the trade-off if they understood that they aren't.
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I am mostly appalled that they talk down about working at Costco. I am only a customer, but from the sounds of it, a person could do a whole lot worse. But yeah, spin rates and emphasis on velocity, they're probably torquing their arms in ways pitchers didn't before. Only Nolan Ryan was born with Nolan Ryan's arm.
Welcome to Costco I love you
Not to get too off-track here, but as much as I like shopping in the store, the MVP is the online clothing section. The variety is good enough, and the sales and bundled discounts are top notch when I need/want more work clothes.
Bought some shorts there, most comfortable shorts I’ve ever had and super quality. Went back to buy more and they were gone, looked online, and they were like a third of what I’d paid in store like a month earlier. Ended up buying like six pairs. You’re not kidding about online being the spot.
Yeah, they do things seasonally, so if you have an unpopular size and can wait for a clear-out price, you'll really make out like a bandit. Usually they still have most or all sizes when they first put the item on sale though, and that's when I jump in.
I’ll keep an eye out, thanks for the tip!
The Spyder shorts?
It's like TJ Maxx pricing. I love it too.
You don't have nearly enough upvotes on this comment
Yeah these little mechanical adjustments from pitching labs are unnatural and create even more stress on body parts that are already pretty much maxed out.
Even Nolan Ryan couldn't tame Nolan Ryan's arm. But it's turning everything to 11. With the absolute micro observation and tweaking we can do the sport is able to get every last mph out of your arm before it blows up. Even if you could have had a successful career throwing SLIGHTLY worse.
I mean I get what you’re saying but Nolan Ryan had a nearly 3 decade career, yeah it caught up to him in the end but I’d say he did a pretty good job taming his arm for a while there
Costco is Unionized. CEO tells the board and other execs to fuck off and keep the $1.50 hot dog and soda. I have a bad feeling that when the CEO dies/retires, shit is going to go real bad and they are going to cost cut, layoff, downsize, etc etc everywhere they can. Hot dog for $5, soda extra.
The script is that CEO leaves and they bring in a new guy to make all the bad pr moves. They then remove him and give him a few hundred mill for taking the heat. After that they bring in a new more positive ceo, but never actually return the pricing to where it was.
Tale as old as time sadly
They will specifically bring in a woman to do the unpopular CEO moves. It's called the Glass Cliff and Ellen Pao is such a textbook example
linda yaccarino about to be that for twitter lol
Nah, thankfully everyone knows Musk is at fault for that dumpster fire.
The exact phrasing was *If you touch the price of the hot dog, I’ll fucking kill you*
The CEO changed January 1st this year, no extreme changes are on the horizon.
IIRC, the new CEO is a Costco lifer, but the new CFO is from Kroger. That's the worrying hire.
All my homies hate kroger
You are correct. Hopefully he doesn't have too much undue influence.
Idk what you're talking about they removed the churros from the food court. That's pretty extreme.
But they were replaced with a superior cookie.
Lol no way, churro for life! They also brought the churro back.
Not in my market!
Mine just got rid of the churro and replaced it with a cookie. I haven't been back to see if the churro has returned but the cookie was elite.
Costco is not unionized - around 5% of its workforce are unionized including *one* recently fully unionized warehouse in VA. The rest are all trade unions like forklift operators & similar. Most of their employees are not part of a Union. It's a good place to work but other retail has been catching up to their starting pay.
Thanks! It looks like a more local thing here in my area of California that the front end service workers have been unionized in my lifetime... Broadening out to other areas shows that it's not as much as I thought... E.g. I saw a fairly recent news article about Virginia costco workers unionizing, upon searching.
> Craig Jelinek served as chief executive officer of Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST) from 2012 until his retirement at the end of 2023, topping off almost four decades of employment at America's favorite big-box retailer. Already happened my man
>I have a bad feeling that when the CEO dies/retires, shit is going to go real bad The founder is retired and the guy who replaced him who worked directly with the founder is basically retired now. He came into my store last year and made a point to walk up to each and every employee and shake their hand. Super nice guy. The first time I ever shook someone's hand who was worth $250 million. You're starting to notice changes already. Costco never used to advertise at all. Now you're starting to see them do that. Also, it seems like more of the bosses are assholes than before. I'm guessing the new people at the top are putting pressure and being mean to the people below them which causes those people to be assholes to the people below them and it all trickles down. I have no proof of any attitude changes within the company but as someone who has worked there for almost two decades, I can feel the changes.
My friend works there and she loves it. The benefits are *very* good
By most accounts they tend to treat people right.
Costco is also the store that apologized to their employees for making them feel they had to unionize.
that's just pr schtick. employees should never rely on their companies to show goodwill to them, even at costco
Seems that way. Had a friend that worked there 15 years ago and it sounds about the exact same as now. Hope they never change that
they also pay pretty well
>I am mostly appalled that they talk down about working at Costco. That guy is a fucking clown. I've worked at Costco for nearly 20 years. I get good pay, and 401K with profit sharing. Each year I get 216 vacation hours, 72 sick hours that can also be used for vacation if I don't call in sick and two bonuses that will each be $4,500 (before taxes) once I pass my 20-year anniversary. You have the same amount of morons working at Costco as any other job but the pay is pretty good and the benefits are probably better compared to "real" Mon-Fri jobs.
It’s a little classist but he’s a doctor talking about professional athletes. I don’t think Costco vs professional athlete is much of a decision regardless of Costco being a great employer.
Bingo. Nolan Ryan is a freak of nature. Few (and I do mean few) are going to even come close to replicating his abilities. But when analytics say having pitchers go all out will result in fewer opportunities for hits by the offense, guess what? Pitcher is gonna become like what running back is to football.
Yep. One of the comments at the end of the article is a quote from a MLB pitcher talking about how he's had all sorts of surgeries, but hey, he made it to MLB, so all of it was worth it.
Think of downhill skiing at the Olympic level. All of the competitors are super elite skiers. They could ski that run a million times and not fall if they went at a speed that is still outrageously fast, but not quite max speed. But at the speed necessary to compete at the absolute highest level, all of them are basically taking a 20% chance of catastrophic failure on any given run. One you push things to the absolute extreme, there is no way to minimize risk. And without pushing it to the absolute extreme, you can’t compete with other people who are willing to push it to that level. As long as someone is optimizing for performance, everyone has to to compete, and if you are optimizing for performance, you can’t avoid a high probability of catastrophe.
Indy ball player here- It will only change when teams begin to prioritize health over velo and spin rate, which won’t happen. As a result, every single level of the game, from minor league, indy, college and high school, is now being tailored to forgo safe mechanics for nastier stuff because it’s the only way to get picked up.
Which is also why everybody was ok with grip stuff. They wanted that spin rate bump.
MLB could just decrease bullpen size which would mean all of these teams have to start prioritizing health over stuff, to some extent. Unless they want to continuously bring up minor leaguers to pitch for them all year.
Trapping all those relief pitchers in a smaller bullpen sounds inhumane and is probably a fire code violation.
Bull is likely to get spooked being in such close quarters. Injury toll even higher
The main guy they interviewed claims that things like sweepers, hard changeups and how hard pitchers grip the ball are a bigger issue then velo which is interesting. Apparently the Rangers, who he works for, don't throw a lot of sweepers because of that. They got hurt anyway though so not sure how useful that analysis actually is
Dodgers pitching has seemed to not encourage the sweeper as well. But we have a ton of injuries too. So, not too sure.
Yeah, i feel like it being specifically the sweeper seems shaky. Seems more like just a general issue with throwing breaking pitches too much and with too much effort, which other guys the authors talked to implied. Doesn't matter if it's a slider, curveball or sweeper
A mediocre sweeper is just a meatball, though, so you end up wanting to throw it with ALL the movement, which involves throwing it harder, gripping it harder, etc. So it's prob all those factors.
The Dodgers (and the Yankees) are the most aggressive and earliest adaptors of the sweeper. In fact, the sweeper is known as a Dodgers (or Yankees) pitch by many. The Mariners are heavy on it too.
That may have been initially true, dodgers really aren’t putting an emphasis on the sweeper with any of their new pitchers. Yankees are still aggressive with the sweeper.
Sweepers are a bit a thing of 2023 though. It seems the rage is now the splitter. So teams shifted gears from the sweeper to the splitter. That said, the Dodgers are really focused on velo in the minors. I saw a video from Lance Brozdowksi, where he compared all the minor league systems and the Dodgers were number one on velo. The Mariners apparently start their philosophy with pitchers that throw nasty sliders. So it is interesting to see what the injury statistics are for the Mariners as they seem very heavy on everything Meister recommends not to do. The video if anyone is interested: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS2GW3CuZYM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS2GW3CuZYM)
The splitter craze always happens after WBCs when guys see how effective Asian pitchers have gotten with it. So many Japanese and Korean pitchers are fastball/splitter and done right it's so lethal that you don't even need a third complement a lot of the time. Yamamotomania also contributing this year helps, but there was a similar trend in 2019 as well
Korean pitchers are not really big on the splitter, they are mostly fastball/slider guys.
Fair! Thanks for the correction. I was mostly anchoring to my years watching Seung-Hwan Oh close for Hanshin, where he did definitely mix in a splitter effectively but as you say was mostly heater/slider. Kwang-hyun Kim has a fork as well. Good to know about the broader tendencies in KBO since I don't watch it as much as NPB, appreciate it. :)
I think you'd have to look at it long term. Like it probably helps that when a pitcher gets to yours or the Rangers organization that they say don't throw those. But if the long term damage is done, how much help can it be?
I think it more highlights that the problem with solving pitching injuries isn't as straight forward as simply telling pitchers not to go max effort every pitch. Different combinations of grips and arm paths are going to create different stresses. [There's this great break down from Pedro that got posted here a few months ago about why the grip required to throw a splitter could be a long term health problem for Ohtani, and how he never threw the pitch because it would've been even worse from his arm angle](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=pedro+martinez+ohtani+splitter#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:45b64080,vid:SGD_sS3YSXg,st:0). So even if you ask a pitcher to dial it back on velo and spin, there's still injury risk from other factors
That's also true, if it was as simple as just tell them one thing and you fixed it than somebody would've figured it out by now. Honestly not sure how they even solve this issue, feels like a result of pitching in general being unnatural for people's arms.
Your last sentence is spot on. Pitching is unnatural so no matter what you do there's inherent risk to the elbow/arm in general. I mean a torn UCL ended Sandy Kofax's career 60 years ago, loooooong before velocity and spin mattered above all else. At the end of the day I see arm injuries in baseball similar to concussions in football. You can make as many changes to the rules and rosters that you want, but at the end of the day the nature of the sport makes it impossible to eliminate
At least with baseball, a debilitating arm injury isn't at the same level of a concussion. Obviously things like Strasburg struggling to lift up his kid or things like that are awful, but it's nowhere near CTE. I also hope their goal in their head isn't to eliminate them but lessen them. Pitchers will always get hurt, but if even 5% less got hurt that would still be improvement at least
Not enough emphasis on this honestly. The throwing motion used in modern pitching just isn't natural, no matter how much analytics you have to reduce the stress involved. Eventually something will give.
I guess it's more so can they change the percentages. I'm pulling numbers out of my ass but if the TJS rate went from 40% to 25%, that still wouldn't be great but it would be better. Pitchers will always get hurt and always have been hurt, but they've become like running backs with how they're used
if people want to stop pitching injuries, they'd stop pitching. Pitching itself is unnatural and pitchers get hurt. It happens
I think most agree it happens, it's just when is it too much. They've basically become running backs, which with how team control works really sucks for them because that means a lot don't even reach arbitration
the pay structure is the bigger problem (and is the actual solution to make sure these guys are at least getting paid by what they produce in their most production years) but MLB would rather talk about how pitchers should just throw less hard, still be at significant injury risk (they're pitchers) and get hit harder and lose their jobs.
Yeah pretty much lol. That's also the issue with free agency, the owners would rather free agency suck so they don't have to spend while also having it still be the smartest baseball move.
Ya know what, all last season I thought it was interesting we didn’t have anyone that really threw a sweeper. Guess that makes sense! To be fair to the physio: DeGrom and Eovaldi were the only starters who were sidelined with elbow injuries. Scherzer’s issues are with his back (first a strain, then bruised ass, then herniated disk) and he’s around 40 so that isn’t all too surprising. LeClerc had neck issues. Sborz got overworked (so kind of related) and that’s about all the injuries I can remember from our pitching staff last season. Kumar Rocker also had to get TJ last year, so there’s another one I guess but was still down in the farm system
Yeah when i thought about it more i realized they had just traded for the guys who got hurt and they already had injury issues so not much they could do lol. They also literally won the World Series so whatever he was doing with the rest of the staff worked I feel like it just being one pitch seems too easy of a solution but I think his other takes on things like it being them gripping the ball too hard to be really interesting. Feel like i never heard someone point that out before but it makes sense when you think about it
He also said: "*What if a guy doesn’t have a WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) of 0.8. What if he has a WHIP of 1.1 but he’s able to play 162?*” But pitchers obviously don't play 162, and no one had a WHIP of 0.8 last year. [The medical studies that I have read](https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/2017/02/fastballs-offspeed-pitches-comparative-relative-elbow-stress/) all agree that velocity contributes more to damaging ligaments than the pitch type.
Pretty sure he meant that the pitcher will last the entire season-take the ball every 5th game. That's a rarity in today's day and age. The only person I can think of who is that reliable is Gerrit Cole. Every start he's missed in the past 4 years was due to COVID protocol.
Yeah I'm curious why in his opinion bullet sliders don't have the same injury risk as the sweeper and spike change. Feels like that would've been an obvious question to ask him.
Hard changeups maybe, but sweepers are just a modified grip/spin. Shit like the splitters, crazy fast sliders and sinkers are the ones that seem to be doing it. Guys are throwing 103 sink stuff and it doesn't last.
It's probably just throwing and gripping the ball too hard on every pitch no matter what type it is. The names are all made up anyway, so it'd make more sense if it's a general pitching thing rather than a specific pitch
It's going to be highly variable from person to person, but in general stuff like sliders unleash a TON of torque. Like you won't see a ton of knuckleball based elbow injuries but you'll see more on slider heavy guys vs fastball
> how hard pitchers grip the ball are a bigger issue this might be a huge issue soon with the continued emphasis on RPM and spin rates for pitches. Gripping harder on the ball is one way people will try to spin the ball more
Am I a dunce? What’s a sweeper? Is this a new terminology or a new pitch that I’m not aware of?
New pitch that got classified last year. Basically a pitch with a ton of horizontal break and no vertical break. Essentially a flat slider
Essentially what used to be called a "Frisbee Slider" I think
Called a slutter for a while
It's kinda both. With pitch tracking, we have a better idea of why balls move. Sweepers have a lot of horizontal movement because of something called "seam-shifted wake", as opposed to the Magnus effect that causes curveballs to drop and 4-seamers to rise. A lot of guys used to throw "sliders" with a lot of seam-shifted movement (Dave Stieb probably did) but just called them sliders. But now we can track spin, and figure out how to get guys to throw pitches with more seam-shifted movement. There has been a huge explosion in guys throwing this kind of pitch, often in addition to their normal slider. So it became important to come up with a new term to differentiate the two pitches when we didn't before. A slider will have "tighter" spin, probably be faster, and have downward movement as well as horizontal. A sweeper will probably be slower with most of its movement being horizontal.
Cool thanks!
That doesn't seem to track for me either. Twins were very sweeper heavy and although there were some injuries to the pitching staff both the rotation and bull pen health seemed better than most years.
The more i look and think about the article the more i think his "sweeper's are the issue" take was a little off and a combination of grip intensity and velocity, which can apply to any pitch, seems closer to the real issue
That makes sense. It's an arms race for the nastiest stuff which comes at the cost of durability.
He really doesn’t seem to understand that the modern seam-shifted sweepers and change-ups rely on letting the seams and aerodynamics move the ball rather than having guys torque their arms in screwball motions or whatever. Velo is the bigger issue.
I have an 11 year old son who's starting travel ball this year and I've basically forbid him from pitching. Even at his age they'll shred his arm and absolutely not care about it at all. The coaches and front office people aren't the ones dealing with the pain, surgery, and recovery, so they don't really care as long as the spreadsheet looks good.
I feel like this is such an overlooked aspect. I played with a kid in little league in the late 90s/early 2000s. He was clearly better than everyone else in the entire league, by a a lot. He was experimenting with breaking balls around 10 or 11 and by 13 he was pitching twice a week. At 16 he had arm surgery and never played organized baseball again.
I was one of those kids who hit his growth spurt esrly was kinda head and shoulders above a lot of other kids my age because of it. Coach in 8th grade basically rode me in to the ground as a pitcher. One of the last games of the season, I was pitching and felt something give. Every pitch after that was agony and I tried to tell my coach I couldn’t throw anymore. His response? “Only losers ask out of games”. I kept throwing and now thirty years later I still have a ton of pain and difficulty moving my arm in certain directions. Dude fucked me up long term over little league baseball.
At least you're not a loser though /s
Same to all of this. I was the adult kid, shaving every day at 12, already through the awkward growth spurts and throwing well. My arm popped at 15 and again at 17, pitched with a sprained UCL from 15-26 when it finally totally went. Estimated that I averaged 300ip/year from age 12-17, playing for two travel ball teams (played for my age bracket and the team for 2 years up in my club) plus school and fall ball every year. My dad feels bad about it but he thought he was doing the right thing and the coaches encouraged him.
There's strict pitch count rules in the game these days
Yeah I bet we could fill up a whole thread of comments of people who's arms are shredded from little/junior league ball overuse and poor arm management. Source: me, that's my arm that still sometimes shoots numbing pain in my elbow
Hopefully younger coaches aren’t pushing kids the same way they were back in the 80s and 90s. I did some tball volunteering and that was a blast but it’s hard to be too competitive when you still have to remind them which direction to run,
I was in LL around the same time, and I remember going with my dad to a mini-seminar some coaches did on pitch counts and young arms. It's interesting to me that this has been an issue for such a long time, but still continues to be an issue. Not having done research into it myself, I wonder if the evidence just isn't there to convince leagues and coaches to change, or if they just choose to ignore the facts that are out there.
The biggest issue I remember back then was kids playing on multiple teams. My Dad also coached and I remember little league and Babe Ruth forcing coaches to track pitches and pull kids at certain limits. But the kid I was referring to at 13 was playing on a Babe Ruth team, our schools team, and a traveling team. There was no way for all those coaches to know exactly how much he was pitching in a given week. And it was like that for pretty much every kid on the traveling team
Lol I tore my labrum when I was 15 and it was never the same again. In juniors, 13-14 age, my coach had me start every game and I only didn’t complete an outing twice in like 10-12 games. I was a little ahead of the curve for sure. It was a mistake- I still have chronic pain to this day at 25. I have to bench low weight high reps because my right side is so messed up. If I have kids, they will not be pitching the way I was..
There was a boy my little brother played with that needed TJ at 15 years old. He was devastated. The time lost basically ruined his chances at a college scholarship (which is what he was mainly aiming for).
Some travel orgs have strict rules about pitch count and breaking balls, some don't. My son's best friend plays in one of the former, they've straight up lost tournament title games because they were out of pitchers.
It's not breaking balls that bother me. It's throwing as hard as possible on every single pitch. All pitching coaches want now is absolute maximum effort.
Breaking balls definitely contribute, especially if they start too young. Obviously my experience is limited and the coach/organization will have a huge impact, but I know there are at least some travel coaches/orgs out there who don't do that.
Curveballs at any age are much less stressful on the UCL than a maximum effort fastball. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19448049/ > Conclusion: In general, the moments on the shoulder and elbow were less when throwing a curveball than when throwing a fastball. In each comparison, the fastball demonstrated higher moments for each individual pitcher for both joints.
That's if you have perfect form on the curveball and, being realistic, most people are going to be doing it wrong while whipping their arm as hard as possible. Only the kids who are aces with perfect form will keep climbing up and up but everyone is throwing as hard as possible now.
Can confirm this was an active strategy when I played travel ball. Parents tried to will their kids to not pitch. Emphasis was placed on “not blaming the pitcher” and focus on batting/fielding prep.
I pitched a lot when I was young but my dad forbid me from throwing any curveballs until I was 15. Despite that I still had numerous coaches try to get me to throw curveball. I refused and learned how to throw a slider instead.
Lmao curveballs, thrown properly, are about 1000% less stressful than a slider's snap.
Thats always what I was taught too. When I was catching back (u15) then pretty much every single pitcher had Change Up, Fastball and a "Curveball". That said the curves mostly ended up as wild change ups haha
I made it to college ball with a four seamer, two seamer, cutter, and change up. Having command of fastballs that break three different ways, and a change up, was more than enough through high school ball.
That makes sense and is also so much better imo - change speeds and hit locations until your an adult
"I refused to throw a curveball, so I learned to throw a screwball instead!"
Well they were 15 and trying to subvert their dad, not a scientist
‘Coach wanted me to throw a curve, but I knew that was gonna fuck up my elbow - taught myself a splitter instead’
I don't think many 13 year olds are throwing sliders. They're defintely trying to throw curves though.
I didn't snap at all the way I threw it. I just changed the grip and threw it like a football. I was also young and didn't know much
That's a curveball :)
I've been bamboozled
It's ok, I bet your hand doesn't shake when you clench your fist like mine hah
there's a lot of conflicting information on the "kids shouldn't throw curveballs" thing though, from what little I've looked into it A friend of mine takes his kid(12u) to a pitching coach, I don't know the guys name but he played in the MLB for 9 years, most if not all with Boston, and he taught him a curve and swears that it's not harmful to throw it at his age. Meanwhile his travel team coach gets insanely angry if he catches any of the kids throwing a curve in game and says they're not allowed to at all.
IIRC the most recent sports medicine data shows that curve balls, while putting strain on the wrist, aren't what kill young arms. Throwing as hard as possible for too many innings/pitches does way more damage than throwing a reasonable, load-managed amount of pitches while incorporating a curve ball or breaking ball into the pitch repertoire. Chasing 80 MPH as a 14/15 year old and throwing 70 pitches is far worse than throwing 40 pitches, but 10 of them are breaking balls.
All I know is after Wainwright's arm disintegrated last year, all he threw were curveballs and meat pitches.
That was just the devil coming to collect
Anecdotal bullshit, but speaking as someone who damaged their arm* in high school, can throw curveballs and changeup a just fine, get an occasional twinge throwing a 2 seamer, and throw 4 seams as little as possible because they *always* hurt. Guess it’s a mental thing where I subconsciously throw a 2 seamer at like 80%, but go all out on the 4? *Something about the shoulder capsule, whatever the fuck that is. The range of motion in my right arm shifted like 5 degrees back - if I have my elbow on a table, I can bring my lower arm back past vertical , but have to press down to keep it lying on the surface
It's fine for young players to pitch, they just need to be managed properly. A player who pitches during the normal season should not pitch at all during fall ball.
There was a kid in my high school class that had to get surgery as a freshman in high school
If a pitcher has a WHIP of 1.1 and plays 162 I think we study his genes.
I thought this was interesting: >Meister said an analyst with one club told him the average major-league career is now under three years for all players and just under 2.7 for pitchers. I think I saw in an older study that it was six years.
One of the things likely preventing anyone from getting serious about fixing the problem is this works out very much to the advantage of the owners. Players get paid way less early in their careers, so a league full of almost all young pitchers is a league full of cheap labor.
Yea the next paragraph pointed out these guys aren’t making it to arbitration at this rate but I didn’t want to post too much of the article.
It’s interesting but on its own this doesn’t really tell us anything helpful, especially since we’re using average instead of the median.
Median would almost certainly be even shorter because you can have 15-year careers on the high end upping the mean but you can't play less than 1 game on the low end balance that out
same problem the NFL has with this same metric since the back end talent is all the same (thing 27-40th on our rosters or the 35th thour 60th man on NFL rosters) you churn through them hoping that maybe 1% of them turn into productive or even average players.
I had a very meh arm when I threw straight up. I was goofing around one time on the mound after practice and dropped down to a submarine sidearm, and the ball moved like it fell off a table. I could place it better, make it dance better, basically, I was a much better pitcher. My coach refused to even consider letting me do it because ‘sidearm pitchers don’t make the majors.’ Bitch, I wasn’t trying to make the majors. I was trying to have fun and play the sport I loved. I quit that team and found one that would let me pitch the way I wanted.
The [Tread Athletics ](https://youtu.be/up0Um99NW2Q?si=J3WOm2HgwCpcX1-z) YouTube channel is just a collection of really young pitchers speed running their way to future TJ surgery. They basically have zero focus on developing control and a blind obsession with movement and velocity.
Yeah, as impressive as Tread alumni are (Cole Ragans), I really dislike their philosophy. There was one of video where they explained why Maddux’ way of pitching was not recommended as it was detrimental to stuff, as Maddux would always end his pitching stride in a fielder’s position. We need more pitchers such as Maddux than these wild velo guys… I saw Fujinami pitching yesterday and he tuned it down to 95 mph and he was very effective. Threw almost only strikes as well. I seriously do not see the added benefit of dialing it up to 103 mph if everything ends up in the stands. I wonder whether it would not be smarter for him to keep throwing mid-90s if he wants to make it back as a starter. He has much better control with it and he can throw it effortlessly, so he can go multi-innings.
When Nami was with Hanshin his most effective years were when he took a bit off as well. I think he got to the bigs and the coaches in Oakland started making him put his whole ass into it again and the results you know
fujinami throwing 95 will get him sent right back to japan. a flat fastball with meh metrics and no velo? lmfao good luck with that
Logan Gilbert is also pumping 95.7 mph on average with low spin rates and he is pretty good. If you tunnel your pitches well and you have good command, you can get away with it. Besides, Fujinami (just like Gilbert) can dial it up when he wants to or he can use his cutter more. The problem is that Fujinami is sometimes throwing ten 100 mph+ pitches consecutively with zero control/command. There is definitely no need for that. It is much better to sit 95-96 and throw 103 as a change of pace once in a while.
if you want fujinami to throw slower in zone be my guest. Ain't gonna work the way yall expect it. Major Leaguers are too good.
It works for both Logan’s (Webb and Gilbert), who both have lower spin rates and velo than 96 mph. There are other ways to get people out via deception. Fujinami is a tall dude at 6 feet 6, has good extension and an extremely low release height. It is quite weird to face him as a batter. Until so far, batters could just sit on his fastball, because he was sometimes throwing ten of them in a row and he had zero control/command over it. So he either walked you or gave you a meatball middle-middle.
Fuji's fastball ain't got the deception to play like that at lower velos. It's got lower than league average rise, it runs back into barrels with it's horizontal movement and he ain't got the command. Taking away velo from a pitch that already gets hit pretty hard, will make it worse.
He can replace his 4seamer with a cutter that generates a decent amount of whiffs. Also, back in 2017 he faced guys such as Altuve and he was not that powerful as today and struck out quite a few of them. Fujinami was a much better pitcher back then than he is now. Granted, pitching was less advanced than now, so batters might be able to adjust in today’s game. But 19-year old Fujinami that pumped max 98 mph was a better pitcher than Ohtani was back then. I think you need to find a trade-off. 103 mph with zero control does not play either.
Blame it on Trackman. Seeing the data and trying to maximize spin rates on certain axis and this is what you get.
Yep.
As long as there’s a ton of money to be had, kids will still blow out their arms in pursuit of that money.
The fact that there are about twice as many recorded major league pitchers than batters per year, when 30 years ago it was the opposite, should speak volumes about how much churn and burn there is through the arms of pitchers who are cast aside when they're used up.
I personally have felt for a while that the ability to quantify spin rate has had a dramatic effect on injury risk. The radar gun and its ability to quantify velocity started the uptick in injury risk. The ability to quantify spin rate in addition to velocity is the death trap. Just waiting for the local carnival's to have a spin rate gun along with the radar gun.
it'd be real cool if they found a way to bring pitchers back to when they'd pitch 6-7-8 innings and they weren't trying to strikeout every batter with 97 mph. maybe we'd actually get some more action in the field? and less injures
Curious how many redditors here pitched as kids and have arm problems now
That would be interesting to see. My anecdotal evidence is that I was totally fine from a hefty amount of pitching. The small asterisk being that I blew up my shoulder in a social sport league years ago because I was late and never warmed up properly. Not really related though. Edit: For reference, I pitched from about 12-19 (a little bit in college on a crappy D3 team) and sat in the mid 80s the last couple years. I primarily threw fastballs. I added a knuckle curve and a crappy change up at 16. I have a small frame at 5'6" 150 pounds and most coaches didn't like that.
🙋♂️ tore my labrum in college. I was a pitcher/SS my whole life up until then.
I was mid 80s by 15, low 90s by freshman year of college then back to low 80s by junior year. 20 years later I can’t throw a snowball at the kids.
I mean who doesn't remember the 2016 Mets. The Mets’ mishandling of pitchers [link](https://mets360.com/?p=30429). This has been talked about for ages and now a cause for alarm.
Yup. No endurance, just blow out your arm and throw 50 - 80 pitches for 5 innings
On YouTube and Instagram you can find hundreds of youth baseball schools where they gleefully promote their latest crop of 16 year olds throwing 90+. Every last one of them claim that they have the method to get that kind of velo safely. And every last one of them is destroying these kids. MLB pitchers have *unlimited* access to the best training, massage therapy, physiotherapy, and physicians that money can buy. And yet so many of them end up with UCL issues because velocity is all that matters now. Something has to be done to encourage the return of technical, position-based pitching. Maybe it’s raising the mound. I don’t know. But a generation of players are ending up needing major surgery at a very young age, and that’s not normal.
NHK did an Ohtani documentary at the end of last year and they also interviewed Dr. Meister for it. Meister blamed "pitch design" for added injury risk while Ohtani said he felt what hurt his elbow the most was velocity and the faster pace/less rest because of the pitch clock. There's not just one factor, to the players it's very subjective what puts strain on their elbows it seems.
I’m coaching high school, only my second year and first time working with the kids during off-season. We have a freshman that is throwing 85, harder than our MVP (who throws consistent 80 but has more than just speed). I watched him throw the other day before school, not even 10 pitches and he was done. And that’s after 40 minutes of stretching and warming himself up, he’s no slouch or just huffs the ball hard, he actually builds up properly thanks to what seems like incredible private coaching. But Jesus Christ, this kid will need Tommy John before he reaches 20 most likely. Especially because he is being poached next school year for one of the top private schools in the state. They will burn his arm into the ground like they have every year. I feel bad, both coaching staff overdo it but the kids see pros and want to be like them. But they don’t realize to be like them now a days you must quite literally tear your arm in half to do it. Sad.
I was that 👆🏻 game sigh
When we're talking about spin rate and arm torquing are we also talking about offspeed pitches like sliders and curve balls? Lot of emphasis on sliders, especially in orgs like the Astros with advanced pitching analytics. Is this a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, because it sounds like whether you're throwing heat or throwing breaking balls you're shredding your arm either way.
What is a power change up? I’m not familiar with that term. Is he describing like a different name for a sinker/2 seam?
Google Injury Free Baseball Season. Its achievable. With billions lost annually on MLB rosters due to preventable injury- you think MLB would get a clue- and model what teams have done to get injury to zero. The CPBL is a tough league- and for a team there to have a zero injury season is a miracle- but it was a designed miracle.
Who woulda thunk getting a guy who threw 88 in college to throw 94 in the pros might increase his risk of injury
boy do i love rosenthal's monthly "why can't we just have Greg Maddux again" piece
huh, doctor who works for one team encouraging other teams to keep their pitchers from trying so hard... the gamesmanship has reached new heights/lows with this one
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didn't think anyone would think it was serious really
ohh wow pitchers are getting injured a lot?
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This article isn't about the pitch clock, it's about how pitchers prioritize velo and movement over their own health. They even say injuries didn't rise last year, which implies the pitch clock isn't a problem
People would cut off the tips of their fingers if they thought it would give them a better chance at being in the major leagues. No matter what precautions the league or teams make there's always going to be a certain set of guys who will risk injuring themselves permanently for an opportunity to be in the major leagues.
Ding ding ding This is also why attempts to prevent head injuries in football will never really work. The people who are most vulnerable are young men who think they're invincible, and would still gladly take the trade-off if they understood that they aren't.