It's all so ugly. Every day, it seems, just throwing a baseball causes another ulnar collateral ligament injury. In the past 48 hours, Eury Perez, Shane Bieber and Spencer Strider — the best young pitchers in baseball, the 2020 American League Cy Young winner and the game's current strikeout king, respectively — have all gone down with injured elbows. A game that is already stretched thin when pitching begins continues to lose its greatest talent at an alarming rate.
The elbow crisis has been simmering for decades, from youth to the major leagues, and no one in a position of power has done anything substantial to address it. This isn't bad luck or an anomaly. It's an existential problem for baseball.
In addition to the absences of Perez and Bieber, who will soon undergo Tommy John surgery, and Strider, who may need his second surgery at 25, the list of players already recovering from elbow reconstruction includes an MVP ( Shohei Ohtani), Cy Young winners (Jacob deGrom, Sandy Alcantara, Robbie Ray), All-Stars (Shane McClanahan, Walker Buehler, Lucas Giolito, Felix Bautista) and young standouts (Dustin May, Andrew Painter, Shane Baz, Kumar Rocker) . Reigning AL Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole is out until at least the end of May due to elbow problems.
It goes on and on, this relentless barrage of bad news, and if this isn't a call to action for everyone with a little influence in the baseball universe to put their energy into the argument, then nothing is. For the sake of the game, the entire sport must work together to solve a dilemma that has no obvious solution.
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Which is what made the dueling statements from the Major League Baseball Players Association and MLB on Saturday so disappointing. A problem this complex and difficult to manage requires collaboration from all stakeholders with the ability to effect change. Instead, public statements following the recent Tommy John surgeries have been rife with pettiness.
The union's statement focused on the pitch clock implemented in 2023 and the two-second reduction in runners on base that was changed this season. It made no mention of the sport's drastic increase in pitch speed or pitchers' constant maximum effort, its extreme emphasis on spin, the proliferation of year-round baseball, or any number of other possible factors. It revisited a single issue – not an unreasonable one, but one nonetheless – of a multi-faceted problem, saying: “The league's lack of willingness to date to acknowledge or examine the impact of these profound changes is an unprecedented threat to our game and its.” “ “The most valuable asset – the players.”
MLB's response didn't help matters. Speed and spin were discussed – and the league's efforts to combat elbow injuries were highlighted through a research study it conducted. But in trying to defend the pitch clock — one of the defining achievements of commissioner Rob Manfred's tenure — the league cited a Johns Hopkins University study “that found no evidence that adopting the pitch clock led to an increase in pitch clocks.” led to injuries.”
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Without a sense of the precise questions the study sought to answer, the data it combed through, and the specificity of its conclusions, it is difficult to glean anything meaningful from the league's proclamations. Considering that the study is still under peer review and its unverifiable results are being used, even as a rejoinder to the union's statement, this suggests a lack of transparency, which is essential to address the problem .
Here's what progress would look like: The voices of current pitchers — the ones who step on the mound knowing their elbows are ticking time bombs — who have a major impact on MLB's decision-making. They are the ones who feel the pain, who internalize the fear that what is expected of them — throw harder, spin faster — predisposes them to major surgery. They are the ones who exist in an industry that demands more and more from them – more bike, worse stuff, always full throttle – and leaves behind those who don't provide it.
Pitchers have always been injured – and will always be injured – but at the highest levels, the causes have evolved from longer-term overuse injuries to shorter-duration, higher-intensity injuries that muscles and ligaments cannot handle. it. Teams incentivize pitchers to throw in a way that many experts believe is the root cause of the game's injury problems. As much as speed correlates with injuries, so does productivity. Throw harder, perform better. It's a fact. It's also bad for the health of pitchers — and the game.
At the same time, it is not the only factor. The fact that the union wants more information about the pitch clock should be of concern to MLB. Even if the league has negotiated a much shorter window in negotiations with the MLBPA to implement rule changes on the field, it cannot ignore what players continue to disapprove of. This is not idle whining. Pitchers want to understand why the extra two seconds saved this year were so important. And why they don't have the right to one or two timeouts per game when they feel unwell – a nerve sending a jolt of pain down their arm, a muscle cramp and they need a break. And why there is still no accepted gripping agent to help with balls that they believe are still manufactured inconsistently. All health issues.
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Pitchers know the injury data. They've seen the number of Tommy John surgeries skyrocket in the major leagues. It's even more pronounced in the minor leagues, and the increase over the last decade is consistent with the introduction of the pitch clock at lower levels. But it also coincides with baseball's pitch design era, in which the use of technology — Trackman and Rapsodo machines that measure spin characteristics and super slow-motion cameras that capture handles and releases — allows pitchers to to construct new pitches based not on their comfort or ease of throwing, but on the detailed motion measurements they strive for.
Maybe it's the clock. Maybe it’s the pitch design. Maybe it's the speed. Maybe it's all of the above. Whatever it is, one truth that the baseball universe knows is that the best predictor of a future arm injury is a previous arm injury. In other words, the litany of pitchers who are now injured are at far greater risk of being injured again.
When a sport has evolved to the point where half of its participants are encouraged to compete in ways that are profoundly detrimental to their short-term – and in many cases long-term – health, there is no room for political wrangling, Bickering, blaming. With a solid process and commitment from both sides, all important questions could be asked and hopefully answered. This is about the people, it's about the game, and it's about the terrible place where the two intersect.
If anything in baseball deserves maximum effort, this is it.
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