MLB injury problem ‘getting worse’
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – It was perhaps the most costly 24-hour span for pitchers in Major League Baseball history.
It began Saturday with the Cleveland Guardians announcing that ace and former Cy Young winner Shane Bieber would undergo elbow reconstruction surgery, ending not only this season, but most of 2025.
Next up was New York Yankees reliever Jonathan Loaisiga, who revealed that he has a torn UCL, will undergo surgery and be out for the season.
Then it was Atlanta's turn to reveal that ace Spencer Strider, who finished second in the Cy Young voting last season, has a damaged UCL and will undergo tests with Dr. Keith Meister in Texas, likely leading to season-ending elbow surgery.
Oh, and if you go back just two days, the Miami Marlins announced that prized prospect Eury Pérez needs to un- dergo Tommy John surgery, too.
“This is not an epidemic,” veteran trainer Stan Conte, who spent 23 years with major-league teams, told USA TODAY Sports.
“This is a pandemic. It's been going on forever, and it's getting worse.”
The most alarming aspect to this rash of pitching injuries is that there's no end in sight, with MLB commissioning a research study and interviewing medical experts.
There were more than 260 majorleague and minor-league pitchers in 2021 who had elbow surgeries, an increase of more than 400% from 10 years ago.
Pitchers requiring a second Tommy John or elbow surgery have now doubled.
While shoulder injuries have diminished, 37% of all non-position player pitchers have undergone Tommy John surgery at one point in their lives, according to researcher Jon Roegele's studies.
Teams spent a major-league record $1.147 million last season on salaries for injured players and their replacements, mostly, pitchers.
“People have been trying to come up with all kinds of solutions,” said Conte, who works at the Conte Performance clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., “but it ain't working.”
Conte, who has been a trainer or head of medical services for the San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers and Miami Marlins, doesn't have a magical answer either.
The increase in velocity certainly is a leading cause of elbow stress.
“Let me check my Insta feed,” Arizona Diamondbacks special assistant Dan Haren sarcastically tweeted, “for guys throwing weighted balls at max effort against a wall, with a crow hop, with his bros cheering him on.”
Meister, director of the Texas Metroplex Institute for Sports Medicine, believes the increased spin rate is even more damaging.
Tony Clark, director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, says the pitch clock is leading to injuries, although there were actually more injuries two years ago before the pitch clock was implemented.
“The league's unwillingness thus far to acknowledge or study the effects of these profound changes,” Clark said in a statement Saturday, “is an unprecedented threat to our game and its most valuable asset – the players.”
MLB responded by saying: “This statement ignores the empirical evidence and much more significant longterm trend, over multiple decades, of velocity and spin increases that are highly correlated with arm injuries. Nobody wants to see pitchers get hurt in this game, which is why MLB is currently undergoing a significant comprehensive research study into the cause of this longterm increase.”
Certainly, the wear and tear from kids pitching so frequently, Conte says, is playing a vital role in Tommy John surgeries.
“There's such a sports specialization now,” Conte says. “The fact that kids are throwing 85, going on travel teams and throwing all year-long, catches up to you. It's like threads on a tire. You keep running them, and sooner or later, they go bald.”