MLB, players' union need to get on same page to stop rise of pitching-related injuries
Yankees starting pitcher Gerrit Cole warms up in the top of the first inning against the Blue Jays at George M. Steinbrenner Field on March 1. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
The brutal physical toll of throwing a baseball at the sport’s highest level is turning the people who do it into an endangered species.
That’s an irrefutable fact. Beyond debate.
The Marlins, in town to face the Yankees, lost 2022 National League Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara to Tommy John surgery last October and had another rising star, Eury Perez, going for the same UCL repair before Monday’s series opener.
Joining Perez on that T.J. train, just in the previous 48 hours, were Atlanta’s dazzling ace, Spencer Strider — possibly headed for his second UCL fix at age 25 — and the Guardians’ Shane Bieber, the 2020 American League Cy Young Award winner, whose brilliant start to the season abruptly was cut short for a scheduled trip under the knife.
The ever-increasing number of pitching-related injuries, from Little League through the college ranks to the majors, has been an alarming trend for as long as anyone can remember. It’s hardly a new phenomenon. And the industry, as a whole, has come to accept that pitching is an inherently dangerous activity, almost as if we’re talking about skydiving or bullfighting.
But Saturday’s double-whammy involving Strider and Bieber had a whiplash effect across the baseball landscape, snapping everyone to attention about the casualty count. Then the discussion quickly moved from mourning elbows to pointing fingers, with the Players Association immediately blaming the pitch clock (trimmed by two more seconds with runners on base for this season) and MLB soon providing a counterargument why that isn’t the case.
The public sparring over this issue — like many, many others — was not unusual from two sides that often push conflicting agendas yet claim to have the best interests of baseball as their prime directives.
That’s fine when the discussion is about money, TV deals or playoff expansion. But the health of pitchers, really the heartbeat of the sport itself, is not a pliable topic to be argued over or twisted into a political weapon.
It’s an expanding plague that threatens to do irreparable harm not only at the major-league level but down through the youngest stages of development. And no one seems to have come up with any workable solutions to stem this destructive tide.
“I don’t know what the answer is,” said Gerrit Cole, currently on the injured list himself with elbow inflammation. “I know it’s not black and white like both of the statements that were put out . . . That’s not helpful.”
Cole is one of MLB’s most insightful players, along with being one of its most durable, averaging more than 30 starts and 200 innings over his last six full (non-COVID) seasons. Relatively speaking, that’s about as rare in the modern game as seeing a no-hitter. And while Cole credited his own performance regimens, he also emphasized being “super-blessed” as integral to his healthy streak.
The definition of that, however, could involve a number of variables: a pitcher’s physiology, his throwing mechanics, possibly even a little luck. Everyone is different. There is no universal cure-all to this pitcher-injury epidemic. But Cole did mention some potential contributing factors that go into what manager Aaron Boone described as “the stew to what’s causing this.”
There is an insatiable demand for higher velocity and greater movement, which starts at the youth levels and is ultra-refined in the majors, helped by the proliferation of pitching labs across the league. That’s the product of trying to combat new rules that favor the offense, whether it’s adjusting the baseball’s specifications, cracking down on sticky substances, adding the pitch clock or gradually shrinking the strike zone.
Simply put, every year, it gets increasingly harder to get people out as hitters grow stronger and deeper lineups become more perilous to navigate. The evolution of the game is creating an “arms race,” as Boone called it, and what we’re seeing now is the blooming mushroom cloud.
With more pitchers facing extinction, it’s beyond time to get busy with finding solutions, or at least greater protective measures for the sport’s most valuable commodity.
Cole said it was “irresponsible” for either side to insist that one thing or another is excluded from blame for causing damage, such as MLB’s pitch-clock claims, without having the longer-term data to support it. MLB cited research done by Johns Hopkins University that stated the pitch clock was not responsible for any uptick in pitcher injuries during the 2023 season, nor did the timer (and resulting sped-up pace) increase the likelihood of pitchers getting hurt.
Cole, who devours analytics-driven info, scoffed at that data, mainly because we’re only 10 games into the second season of the pitch clock’s existence. But he refused to demonize the clock, either. It’s just a part of this confounding overall puzzle, and baseball isn’t getting any better at keeping pitchers in one piece.
One recent MLB study pointed out that pitcher injuries have skyrocketed from a combined 11,668 IL days over a five-year span (ending in 1999) to a whopping 31,558 in 2023 alone.
That pace clearly is not sustainable. Some have mentioned that pitcher casualties are the cost of doing business, but at this rate, baseball won’t have much of a business a decade from now. Not with its brightest pitching stars — and marquee attractions — spending more time doing rehab than standing on a mound.
“I’m just frustrated it’s a combative issue,” Cole said. “We have an issue here. We need to get on the same page to at least try to fix it.”
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
