Baseball’s Bad Arms Race

There are a lot of bad arms going around in baseball these days. A lot of shoulder surgeries. A lot of elbow surgeries. If you’ve never heard of Tommy John the pitcher, you probably HAVE heard of Tommy John surgery – the innovative reconstructive surgery for pitchers whose arms have broken down.

There are more pitchers who are finding tears in ligaments and tendons in their arms in today’s baseball era than at any time in the long history of the sport. Something like a third of all the pitchers in the big leagues today have now had surgery on their throwing arm at one time or another in their career. Especially troubling is that young pitchers, whose youthful, strong arms should not have nearly enough wear and tear on them to cause such a widespread injury epidemic, are dealing with this problem as much as anyone.

There are a lot of baseball experts with theories as to why this is happening. Pitchers need to throw more often. Pitchers need to rest more often. They should play long toss more often. They shouldn’t play long toss at all. They throw too many fastballs. They throw too many curve balls. Pitching mechanics are bad.

However baseball experts want to explain why it is happening, the important thing to realize is that it is happening and SOMETHING is causing it. The tendons and ligaments in pitchers’ arms cannot handle the stresses put on them by certain pitching actions and those tendons and ligaments are tearing because of them and needing reconstructive surgeries to fix them.

This should not be happening this much.

This pitching injury epidemic wasn’t as prevalent in earlier eras. They tended to throw a pitching repertoire of fastballs, curves and change-ups, mostly fastballs, and far fewer hard sliders. The pitchers paced themselves so they could pitch complete games, meaning they didn’t try to throw at top speeds much at all instead of in crucial situations. They didn’t throw as many hard sliders, which of all pitches, tend to put the most stress on an arm.

Today’s pitchers tend to throw as hard as they can, and they do it as early and often as the first inning. They are not pacing themselves to throw complete games. They are laying it all out for six or seven innings, with the knowledge that there is a set up man and a closer to get the final outs. The repertoire of the today pitcher is mostly fast fastballs and hard sliders. Lots of hard sliders. All the more to try to get the hitters of today out – hitters who are trying with nearly every swing to hit the ball out of the park. Each pitch is an ultra stressful equivalent of a full count, 3 – 2 pitch with the bases loaded.

The arms of the pitchers of today cannot hold up to the rigors of pitching as many ultra stressful innings as they are facing today. The ever growing number of pitching arm surgeries is a symptom of a problem that is threatening the health of baseball itself. And baseball is continuing to trot out its pitchers in the same ways – ways that show it doesn’t have a clue how to stop it.