Robert Chou
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Matt Blake 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, Blake helped Bieber go from a college student to a unanimous American League Cy Young Award winner in 2020. For a time, Bieber represented the modern model for the making of a great player. ace in the league, a player who added strength to his frame, velocity to his fastball and spin to his off-speed pitches as he rose through the ranks.
By the time Blake sent his text, however, Bieber had become part of a growing and more worrisome demographic: talented young pitchers who will spend this season as spectators. Two days after the Miami Marlins announced that phenom Eury Perez, 20, would undergo Tommy John surgery, the Guardians revealed that Bieber, 28, would require the same procedure. A recent exam of Atlanta Braves starter Spencer Strider, 25, revealed damage to the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow, which could result in his second Tommy John surgery. In New York, where Blake is now the Yankees’ pitching coach, the team lost its ace, Gerrit Cole, until June to elbow inflammation and one of its top relievers, Jonathan Loaisiga, to elbow surgery that ended year.
“As a pitching coach trying to pitch nine innings a night for 162 games,” Blake said, “I’m pretty concerned.”
Throwing has always been dangerous for those who practice it. There is reason to believe that it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep them healthy. The early days of the 2024 season have demonstrated the inherent fragility of the position. A recent story by The Ringer cited research by former MLB coach Stan Conte that counted 263 UCL surgeries in 2023, a steady increase from the 111 procedures performed in 2011. Of the 166 players who began the season on the injured list, as the New York Post reported, 132 were pitchers. If these trends continue, 2024 will be another banner year for arm injuries and will be cause for alarm across the sport.
The issue sparked criticism between Major League Baseball and the MLBPA on Saturday, as the two sides argued via press releases over the effect of the pitch clock, which was introduced in 2023 and shortened by 2024. The head of the MLBPA Tony Clark described the league’s insistence on cutting off time ahead of the 2024 season against players’ wishes as “an unprecedented threat to our game.” MLB responded by citing an unpublished analysis from Johns Hopkins University that found no link between the introduction of the clock and increased injuries.
The clock, however, was only one area of concern among the players, coaches and managers surveyed by The Athletic this weekend. Those conversations presented a host of additional reasons for the injury problem, including the industry’s relentless drive for optimization, encouragement of players to pursue maximum speed and spin, and use of training methods that encourage workouts. at full throttle all year round. For some, the explanations are intertwined and intractable. Untangling the knot may require years of research and reevaluation.
“Protecting these guys’ arms is paramount,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “And clearly we haven’t achieved that.”
This season began with baseball’s most acclaimed pitchers on the shelf. Los Angeles Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw underwent shoulder surgery last October. Texas Rangers pitcher Max Scherzer is recovering from back surgery, while his teammate Jacob deGrom is rehabbing from a second Tommy John surgery. Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander experienced shoulder pain in spring training. All of those pitchers are 35 or older, the type of age at which the body no longer cooperates with the rigors of the major league schedule.
Not long ago, Eury Pérez and Sandy Alcántara were on their way to becoming twin aces for the Marlins. Now both will spend 2024 rehabilitating from surgery. (Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
For MLB, the most pressing concern is that the weapons fleet will decay soon after rising to prominence. Miami Marlins starter Sandy Alcántara, the unanimous winner of the 2022 National League Cy Young Award, underwent elbow reconstruction last season. Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Shane McClanahan did the same, a little more than a year after starting the All-Star Game. Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff will miss this season due to shoulder surgery. Same story for Kansas City Royals pitcher Kyle Wright, a 21-game winner for Atlanta in 2022.
“Our game deserves our best pitchers on the mound,” said Detroit Tigers manager AJ Hinch. “Regardless of what season you’re in, the starting pitching matchup is the first thing you look at every day. You want the big guys out there. You want the guys who are elite, and more and more of them are getting hurt.”
To investigate the issue, MLB commissioned a study last October, which has expanded to include conversations with 100 people connected to the game, including medical officials. When the study is complete, the league intends to create a task force and provide recommendations to clubs on how to keep pitchers healthy.
The sport has fought the problem since its inception. It was once believed that pitchers got hurt from overuse. Teams altered the way they used pitchers in hopes of preserving them. Gone are the days of the exhausted starter, pushed to the limit with 125 pitches or more, trying to finish the seventh or eighth inning. The new archetype asks the pitcher not to relax in the starts but to explode from the beginning. Go as hard as you can for as long as you can., is the new mantra. An influx of data on pitch shape and motion offered teams detailed ways to improve pitchers. However, the data did not offer an answer on how to keep them healthier.
“Throughout my years as a manager I’ve heard that we ask less of starting pitchers because we don’t leave them in the game long enough and they don’t throw as many 100 pitches anymore,” Hinch said. “However, we ask them for maximum speed, maximum form, maximum in everything and they practically train all year round.”
Hinch pointed to Tarik Skubal, a 27-year-old lefty for the Tigers who had Tommy John surgery in college and flexor tendon surgery in 2022. Skubal trained last winter so when he arrived at spring training, He touched 99 mph in his first session. from live batting practice. “Go to Tarik Skubal and tell him, ‘Hey, relax and throw 92 mph,’ and see how it works out for you,” Hinch said. “No. Because we ask our athletes to compete at the highest level.”
For some retired players, the quest for greater velocity and spin has put pitchers at risk. Dan Haren, a 13-year veteran who now works as a pitching strategist for the Arizona Diamondbacks, published in X on his Instagram account that provides images of “boys throwing heavy balls with maximum effort against a wall, with a crow’s jump, with their brothers cheering him on.” Roberts added: “In my opinion, the body is designed to withstand a limited amount of force and speed before giving way.”
Shane Bieber had not allowed a run in two starts this season when it was announced that he would undergo elbow surgery. (Jason Miller/Getty Images)
Some, like Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell, suggested that pitchers will always try to throw harder. “I don’t think the pursuit of speed is ever going to end,” Counsell said. “Because it’s something that makes pitchers better. “I don’t think we should demonize the pursuit of speed.”
However, the industry has defended this trend by shortening starting pitchers’ outings and encouraging them to maximize their production. Pitchers not only throw their fastballs as hard as possible, but they also throw off-speed pitches as hard as possible, hoping to generate one-time swings and miss bats. “The types of births that create atypical birth patterns are probably more stressful in some ways,” Blake said. “I think maximizing force to create the shapes probably doesn’t help. When you’re looking for 20 inches of rest or 20 inches of travel or the high speed, I think there’s some level of physical cost.”
Despite protests from MLB officials, players will continue to complain about the clock. The innovation cut the average game time by 24 minutes last season. The 2023 timer gave pitchers 15 seconds to act with the bases empty and 20 with runners on board. MLB’s 11-man competition committee voted to shave two seconds off the 20-second clock by 2024 despite player objections.
Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Anderson suggested that pitchers might put more pressure on their arms than their legs because of the clock. But he doubted that any study could show a correlation between decreased time between pitches and increased injuries. The act of throwing was already unhealthy enough. “Rob Manfred knows it’s really hard to prove, I guess,” Anderson said.
The union sees the clock as the boogeyman. The commissioner’s office views his complaint as a straw man. For coaches like Blake, who must navigate the season while injuries continue, the clock is only part of the problem, along with the dangerous pursuit of speed and spin.
“I don’t think any of them are the most responsible,” Blake said. “But the cocktail of all of them is difficult to achieve.”
the athletic one Fabián Ardaya, Sam Blum, Patrick Mooney and Cody Stavenhagen contributed reporting.
GO DEEPER
Rosenthal: Pitcher injury crisis has no easy solution, but baseball leaders better get to work on a solution
(Strider top photo: Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)
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