Velocity picks up, so too do arm injuries
Damaged pitchers on rise in MLB
Nathan Eovaldi stood by his locker at Yankee Stadium the other day, all dressed up with nowhere to pitch. Eovaldi, the New York Yankees righthander, was in full uniform for the official team photograph but will not pitch for the rest of this season, or next. He underwent his second Tommy John operation last month.
The scourge of pitching injuries struck again Wednesday night in Washington, when Stephen Strasburg winced in pain and left his start in the third inning with elbow discomfort. Strasburg had Tommy John surgery in 2010, and a strained flexor mass was found in an MRI exam Thursday. The Nationals said the injury was not season- ending. But until he returns, Strasburg, who is 15- 4 and signed a US$ 175million contract extension in May, is another damaged pitcher in an industry full of them.
“I don’t know, I really don’t,” Eovaldi said, struggling to explain why so many pitchers seem to break down.
“There’s guys who don’t throw as hard and they need it ( Tommy John). There’s guys who don’t work as hard as others, and they’re fine. Other guys work hard, and they need it. I don’t know what the good combination is. It’s just one of those things, I feel like — good mechanics and s t aying healthy, it’s hard to do.”
The game’s best pitcher, three- time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers, has been out since late June with a herniated disk in his back. He was to return Friday in Miami, most likely for four or five innings, a critical start for a team seeking its fourth- consecutive National League West title.
A healthy Kershaw would be a welcome sight in a landscape of untested and unfamiliar arms. Expanded September rosters always bring a new batch of pitchers, but teams are finding it harder than ever to shepherd a staff through the grind of 162 games.
“There just seems to be so much more wear and tear on this generation of kids, whether it goes back to Little League or youth baseball,” said former pitcher David Cone, now a broadcaster. “Too much, too soon, maybe.
“I only pitched during the baseball season. I didn’t do the year- round thing, didn’t do fall ball. I was playing other sports. By the time I signed professionally, I really didn’t have a lot of miles on my arm. These kids have more miles on their arms at a younger age than ever before.”
Cone pitched a complete game in his final start of 1988, in the playoffs for the New York Mets when he was 25 years old. He said he had felt off the next season; not hurt, exactly, but not as crisp with his command as he had been. His earned run average rose by more than a run, but Cone still made all his starts and would continue to do so for years.
This year’s Mets rotation has been ravaged by injuries after the team rolled to the World Series last fall. For now, only Noah Syndergaard is healthy, and he has been pitching with a bone spur in his right elbow. The Mets have compensated with a second wave of young starters — Robert Gsellman, Seth Lugo and Rafael Montero — and the oldest player in baseball, the 43- year- old Bartolo Colon.
Buck Martinez, the former catcher and manager who now broadcasts for the Toronto Blue Jays, cited Colon when asked why so many pitchers now struggle to slog through the schedule. He said pitchers do not work enough innings in the minors to learn how to navigate through trouble with anything but maximum- effort fastballs.
“Everybody’s lighting up the radar gun and not pitching,” Martinez said. “Bartolo Colon, right? He’s pitching forever. How much effort does he put into it? Mark Buehrle never put more than 80 per cent effort into any pitch he’s ever thrown. Never missed a beat. Now everybody’s so concerned about the radar gun because nobody’s going to get signed unless you touch 95 to 98.
“So that’s the emphasis of it. Nobody ever says, ‘ Can he get people out?’ It’s always: ‘ How hard does he throw?’ But what do you want in the big leagues? People who get people out. So they don’t train them for this.”
Velocity — specifically, throwing too hard, too often, at a young age — is widely believed to be a l eading cause of arm trouble.
Dr. Glenn Fleisig, research director at the American Sports Medical Institute in Birmingham, Ala., said many young pitchers had optimized their strength and conditioning to get the most out of their bodies. But it comes with a cost.
“If you’ve got a kid and you do everything to make him max out at 100 miles per hour, his muscles have been trained to do it, his bones can handle it, his brain can handle it — his ligaments and tendons cannot handle it,” Fleisig said.
“So why we’re getting more injuries now is essentially because we have more people playing for the radar gun, from the pro leagues to the high school leagues.”
The Blue Jays have been forced to get creative, using a six- man rotation at times to keep their best young starters, Aaron Sanchez and Marcus Stroman, on the mound. It is a temporary fix, not a trend — they hope.
“I don’t think any of us would like it,” manager John Gibbons said, “but it’s something we had to do to keep this thing running.”
EVERYBODY’S LIGHTING UP THE RADAR GUN AND NOT PITCHING.