While we were on vacation, there were a number of articles written about the rash of Tommy John surgeries in the MLB.
I stashed a couple of those pieces in my blog file and made a note to write about this when we were back in the states. I definitely have an opinion or two on the topic.
Background: a number of MLB teams have dealt with a rash of infirmities this season. Many of these are arm injuries by pitchers; many of those are torn elbow ligaments that will result in Tommy John surgery.
Baseball experts from coaches to former players to medical personnel are weighing in as to why the numbers of fallen hurlers has risen. There are myriad hypotheses – from the change in training regimens to the different manner in which is the game is played in the modern era.
Another theory – and here’s where I want to weigh in – is that the changes in youth baseball could be the culprit. I don’t have any medical knowledge or statistical data to back up the theory. But, I think there could be something to it.
When people my age were playing or following the game, life was different. Guys played baseball during baseball season and did other things in the off-season. MLB players worked off-season jobs; little kids played the next sport…or they just played.
Now, in the age of hyper-specialization, that’s not the case.
If the parents of Little Johnny are convinced his ticket to the big-time is to focus everything on baseball, that is pretty much his life as a pre-teen. The elite travel teams start training at the first of the year and they don’t stop until sometime in late fall. They may play upwards of 60 (or more) games.
There isn’t time for simple play-time. Heck, some parents don’t even take vacations. Travel is factored into Little Johnny’s baseball career.
The cumulative effect for a young pitcher is he is throwing many more pitches because the season is longer, the team plays more games and there is a short offseason.
When I coached the Choppers, we played more games than, say, a recreational team. Our niche was somewhere around 35 games in the spring and another 10 or so in the fall. We’d start training a little bit in January, ramp up in February and be ready to play games by the end of March. We’d play through mid/late June and then take a summer break. We’d start back around the first of August and go until mid-late October.
In other words, we’d play about eight months and not play about four months.
Here’s another culprit for all these arm injuries: breaking balls.
Our official Choppers rule was NO breaking balls (curve balls, sliders, slurves) until your voice changed and you had facial hair. In other words, very few guys ever threw the kinds of pitches that put stress on your shoulders and elbows. Quite frankly, we taught our pitchers that you could get lots of people out by locating your pitches and changing speeds. Most of our guys threw three pitches – a couple different fastballs (two-seamer and four-seamer) and a change-up.
And you can.
This was not the same philosophy of some of the ‘win at all cost’ teams. Pitchers from those teams were throwing curveballs by the time they were 10. And, you know what? I remember at least two pitchers from these teams – there may well have been more – who developed arm problems before they made it to high school.
I personally took responsibility for our pitchers. I knew that was a key to winning and, also, I wanted to mitigate any risk for injury. I worked with our pitchers during side sessions in the bullpen. I had them throw on their own time, at home, and I also handled the pitchers in-game. We also had a reasonable pitch count.
The moral of the story is our approach worked. We won more than our share of games AND we never had a pitcher who developed any sort of arm injury while playing for our team.
I don’t know that our approach would solve all the world’s pitching injury problems (we’ve never had any Choppers play professional ball, either), but I think the philosophy makes sense.
Still, I’m afraid the toothpaste is out of the tube. As long as parents think the year-round, serious approach will help Little Johnny make it to the pros – and as long as teams and leagues don’t have rules preventing the overuse of pitchers in terms of pitch counts, innings thrown and the types of pitches allowed – this is a fact of life that will be present in the game we all love.
JG
Originally posted 5/28/2014
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