Matt Blake texted Cleveland Guardians pitcher Shane Bieber a conciliatory message over the weekend. As a member of the Cleveland player-development system in the 2010s, Blake helped Bieber rise from college walk-on to unanimous winner of the American League Cy Young Award in 2020. For a time, Bieber represented the modern model for the manufacturing of a big-league ace, a player who added strength to his frame, velocity to his fastball and spin to his offspeed pitch as he climbed the ranks.
By the time Blake sent his text, however, Bieber had become part of a growing, more troubling demographic: talented young pitchers who will spend this season as spectators. Two days after the Miami Marlins announced 20-year-old phenom Eury Pérez would undergo Tommy John surgery, the Guardians revealed Bieber, 28, will need the same procedure. A recent examination of 25-year-old Atlanta Braves starter Spencer Strider revealed damage to the ulnar collateral ligament of 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 with elbow inflammation and one of its top relievers, Jonathan Loaisiga, at the end of the year elbow surgery.
“As a pitching coach trying to handle nine innings worth of pitching every night for 162 games,” Blake said, “I’m a little worried.”
Pitching has always been dangerous for its practitioners. There’s reason to believe it’s only getting harder to keep them healthy. The opening days of the 2024 season showed the inherent weakness of the position. A recent story of The Ringer cited research from former MLB trainer Stan Conte that recorded 263 UCL surgeries in 2023, a steady increase from the 111 procedures performed in 2011. Of the 166 players who started the season on the injured list, as reported by the New York Post, 132 were pitchers. If these trends continue, 2024 will be another banner year for arm injuries — and cause alarm throughout the game.
The topic prompted sniping between Major League Baseball and the MLBPA on Saturday, as the two sides sparred through press releases over the impact of the pitch clock, which was introduced in 2023 and shortened for 2024. . MLBPA head Tony Clark painted the league’s insistence on the cut. clock before the 2024 season against the players’ wishes as “an unprecedented threat to our game.” MLB countered by citing an unpublished analysis from Johns Hopkins University that found no link between the introduction of the clock and the surge in injuries.
The clock, however, was only one area of concern to the players, coaches and managers who examined it. The Athletic this Saturday or Sunday. Those conversations revealed a tapestry of additional reasons for the injury problem, including the industry’s relentless push for optimization, encouraging players to chase maximum speed and cycle, and the use of training methods that encourage year-round, full-throttle exercise. For some, the explanations are convoluted and indecipherable. Untangling the knot may require years of research and re-examination.
“Protecting guys’ arms is paramount,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “And obviously we didn’t get it.”
This season began with baseball’s most heralded pitchers on the shelf. Los Angeles Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw underwent shoulder surgery in October. Texas Rangers pitcher Max Scherzer is recovering from back surgery, while teammate Jacob deGrom is rehabbing from a second Tommy John surgery. Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander experienced shoulder pain in spring training. All of the pitchers are 35 and older, the kind of age where the body no longer copes with the rigors of the big league schedule.
Before long, Eury Pérez and Sandy Alcantara were on their way to being the twin aces for the Marlins. Now, they will both spend 2024 rehabbing from the surgery. (Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
For MLB, the more pressing concern is the fleet of arms that break up soon after reaching prominence. Miami Marlins starter Sandy Alcántara, the unanimous winner of the 2022 National League Cy Young Award, underwent elbow reconstruction last season. So did Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Shane McClanahan, 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 sport deserves our best pitchers on the mound,” Detroit Tigers manager AJ Hinch said. “No matter what season you’re in, the starting pitcher matchup is the first thing you look at every day. You want the big boys out there. You want the elite, and more are hurt.”
To research the problem, MLB commissioned a study last October, which expanded to include interviews with 100 people around the game, including medical officials. Once the study is complete, the league intends to create a task force and provide recommendations to clubs about how to keep pitchers healthy.
The sport has wrestled with the problem since its inception. At other times, it was believed that pitchers would get hurt from overuse. Teams changed how they used pitchers in hopes of preserving them. Gone are the days of a tired starter, pushed to the brink at 125 pitches or more, trying to finish the seventh or eighth inning. The new archetype asks the pitcher not to loosen up on the outing but explode from the start. Face as much as you can as long as you can, is the new mantra. The influx of data about the shape and movement of pitches offers teams granular ways to make pitchers better. The data does not, however, offer an answer for how to keep them healthy.
“I’ve heard in my years of managing that we’re asking starting pitchers less because we’re not leaving them in the game long enough and they’re not throwing 100 pitches,” Hinch said. “However, we ask them to max velo, max shape, max everything, and train almost all year round.”
Hinch pointed to Tarik Skubal, a 27-year-old Tigers lefty who underwent Tommy John surgery in college and flexor tendon surgery in 2022. Skubal trained this past winter so that when he arrived in spring training, he was holding 99 mph in his first session of live batting practice. “Go to Tarik Skubal and tell him, ‘Hey, take it easy and throw 92 mph,’ and see how that works for you,” Hinch said. “No. Because we ask our athletes to compete at the highest level.
With some retired players, the quest for high speed and spin has put pitchers at risk. Dan Haren, a 13-year veteran who now works as a pitching strategist for the Arizona Diamondbacks, posted on X about his Instagram feed providing footage of “guys throwing weighted balls at maximum effort against a wall, with a crow hop, with his brothers cheering him on.” Roberts added, “The body is designed, I think, to take only so much force and speed before it gives way.”
Shane Bieber didn’t allow a run in two outings this season when it was announced he would undergo elbow surgery. (Jason Miller/Getty Images)
Some, like Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell, suggested pitchers always try to throw harder. “I don’t think the pursuit of speed will ever 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 combated this trend by shortening pitchers’ starting outings and encouraging them to maximize their output. Not only do pitchers throw their fastballs as hard as they can, they throw offspeed pitches with all their might, hoping to generate unique movement and missing bats. “The types of delivery that create outlier shapes tend to be more worrisome in some ways,” Blake said. “I think maximizing force to create shapes is probably not going to help. When you’re chasing 20 inches of rest or 20 inches of travel or that high velo, 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 24 minutes from the average game last season. The timer in 2023 gave pitchers 15 seconds to act with the bases empty and 20 with runners on. MLB’s 11-man competition committee voted to shave two seconds off the 20-second clock for 2024 despite player objections.
Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Anderson suggested that pitchers may put more stress on their arm than their legs because of the clock. But he doubted any study could show a correlation between reduced time between pitches and increased injuries. The act of erection is unhealthy enough. “Rob Manfred knows it’s really hard to prove, my guess,” Anderson said.
The union sees the clock as a bogeyman. The commissioner’s office sees their complaint as a straw man. For coaches like Blake, who must navigate the season as injuries continue, the clock is only part of the problem, along with the dangerous pursuit of speed and rotation.
“I don’t think any of them are mostly responsible,” Blake said. “But the cocktail of them all is hard to come by.”
The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya, Sam Blum, Patrick Mooney, Cody Stavenhagen contributed reporting.
DEEP
Rosenthal: The pitching injury crisis isn’t an easy fix, but baseball leaders better make one
(Top image of Strider: Justin K. Aller / Getty Images)
