5 of the Top Reasons There Are So Many Baseball Arm Injuries
Baseball arm injuries are grabbing headlines everywhere.
2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Tommy John Surgery. And to “celebrate,” the arm-injury epidemic has really kicked into gear.
Pitchers are hitting the Injured List like crazy – just ask Yankees fans about Gerrit Cole and Jonathan Loáisiga.
Why the increase in injuries?
The Players Association wants to believe it’s due to the pitch clock.
HINT – it’s not.
Every kid who has ever pitched has wanted to do two things – throw hard, and throw a curveball.
We went over some of the issues with throwing a curveball too soon a few days ago.
The emphasis on velocity is equally troubling. College coaches can deny this all they want, but if you’re not in the 90 mile per hour range as a high school junior, odds are you aren’t getting too many (any?) high-level Division 1 looks.
Here are 5 of the top reasons for the rash of arm injuries we are seeing.
1 – Maximum Velocity
Too many pitchers are throwing WAY too hard, WAY too soon, at WAY too young an age.
This past winter, I ran two pitching programs. One was for elementary school players, and the other was for middle-school age players in a club organization.
In both cases, there were players who came in firing the ball from Day One.
One fourth-grader, who threw very hard for his age, threw one ball that hit the backboard in the gym we were using.
He didn’t seem to get the message when I told him, “It’s great that you can throw hard, but you have no idea where the ball is going when it leaves your hand.”
And this is happening at every level of baseball, from eight -year-olds all the way up to Major League Baseball.
Look at the number of relief pitchers who come in throwing 98-100 miles an hour, knowing that they’re only going to face three batters. Of course, they’re going to try to max out.
Major League starting pitchers? When the expectation is that you only need to give five innings per start before the next flame thrower comes out of the bullpen, of course they’re more likely to offer maximum velocity more often.
When Jacob deGrom was still with the Mets in 2022 and came back from one of his stints on the Injured List, two of the first three pitches he threw were at 100 miles per hour.
So it probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone when, roughly a year later, deGrom underwent the second Tommy John surgery of his career.
Here is former MLB pitcher Al Leiter talking about deGrom’s mechanics back in 2022.
Do an online search and you can come up with middle school velocity programs.
And there was one pitching “guru” whose entire online presence was based around getting pitchers to throw 90 miles per hour.
Excuse me?
How about we get the arm conditioned and get young pitchers to understand that what they’re doing – throwing a baseball overhand – is not a natural movement for an arm. Underhand is far more in tune with how our arms work. Your arm needs to be conditioned and trained to throw hard.
Disclaimer – it wouldn’t surprise me that some of those middle school programs are actually just cleaning up a kid’s mechanics which can easily result in an increase in velocity. But selling it as a velo program might be a bit misleading.
Dr. James Andrews on the increase in Tommy John surgery
Don’t want to take my word for it?
Dr. James Andrews is one of the leading authorities on Tommy John surgery and arm injuries in pitchers.
Listen to what Dr. James Andrews has to say about why there are so many arm injuries today. If you’re underdeveloped kids are going to Velocity Training facilities that’s on you Parents. BTW they don’t care about your kids health I promise. #shegone pic.twitter.com/n3EAqwh7dY
— Fryedaddy/Frito (@shegone03) April 7, 2024
2 – Too Much Pitching
Baseball has become a year-round sport with kids playing on multiple teams. It’s not unusual to see 9, 10, and 11-year olds pitching their rec team and a travel team in the same week.
Give it a rest. It’s okay to not be playing every day of the week. And if you are playing on multiple teams it is crucial that you (or your parents, depending on your age) monitor your pitch count.
It’s not enough to expect that your rec coach, your travel coach, and your middle school coach are all on the same page.
3 – Not Enough Throwing
This may seem like a contradiction to what’s above, but it’s not.
I have had the opportunity to work with former MLB pitching coach extraordinaire Leo Mazzone on a number of occasions and one of the things Leo constantly would stress is that pitchers need to throw more, but with less exertion.
As the pitching coach for an Atlanta Braves team that won 14 National League Eastern Division titles in a row, it wasn’t unusual for guys like Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, and Tom Glavine throwing pretty much every day.
Some days might be just playing catch, followed by a day of long toss, then a bull pen day, then another day of long toss. The point was that Leo’s pitchers were conditioning their arms and not throwing max effort every time they picked up a ball.
4 – Improper Warm Up
Go to any youth baseball game and you’re likely to see players going out to the field and start throwing as soon as they arrive.
Without a proper warmup, this is an absolute recipe for disaster.
My mantra – warm up to throw, don’t throw to warm up.
What that means is some jogging to get loose, some form running, and some dynamic stretching designed to get the muscles warmed up.
Static stretching will indeed stretch a muscle, but it does absolutely nothing to warm it up.
Why all the TJ’s (Part 7)
— Jaeger Sports (@jaegersports) April 10, 2024
Throwing with FULL intent when the arm isn’t FULLY stretched out ⬇️
Cardinal Rule:
Your arm should be FULLY stretched out to its ~ MAX distance (Long Toss) PRIOR to any type of High Intent throwing (Pull-Downs, Run & Guns, Mound Work).
PERIOD.
5 – Curveballs
Actually, this is a little misleading. I wrote something about this a few days ago – the curve ball gets a bad rap.
The fact is that any pitch thrown improperly – not just curveballs – can potentially hurt a young arm. And often, when a young pitcher first tries to throw a curve, he’s doing it improperly.
What you want to do is make sure that a player can throw his fastball for a strike before he even thinks about throwing any kind of breaking ball.
This past winter in the middle school program I mentioned above, at the start of the third session (out of eight), one of the pitchers aske me if he could start to work his curve into the routine.
Mind you, were we still doing flat ground work and not be on a mound for another two weeks, but he was still very inconsistent when it came to throwing strikes in the work so far.
No one – absolutely NO ONE – cares how hard you throw ball four.
I will repeat that a little louder for the people in the back of the room – NO ONE CARES HOW HARD YOU THROW BALL FOUR.
Want to help reduce baseball arm injuries?
Take a baseball break.
I mentioned about that for some young players, baseball has become a year-round sport.
Give it – your throwing arm and your body – a rest.
It’s okay to play another sport in the fall and winter. You’re working on using your muscles in a different way.
It’s equally okay to NOT pick up a baseball for six to eight weeks in the winter. If you play fall baseball and your season ends at the end of October, take November (and maybe even December) off.
You will have plenty of time in January and February to get ready for high school, and younger players can use March as well.
MORE EPISODES OF WDHA’S TWO-MINUTE DRILL WITH JIM MONAGHAN AND CHRIS SWENDEMAN
25 Best Sports Anthems, Ranked
Sports Anthems: It’s amazing how they can move thousands and thousands of people all at once. Without a doubt, at least some of these songs on this list will be played at some point during MLB’s Opening Day.
Most sporting events without music nowadays just fall flat. An appropriate soundtrack is practically essential. Now, different sporting events often have different vibes. This can vary by the sport itself, the level of said sport or the region in which the sport is being played.
With this in mind, this list was crafted to have some surprises, yet also be overall universal. It’s trying to walk a very particular line of mass appeal and unexpectedness. Truth be told, this list of the best sports anthems walks that line rather brilliantly.
A general view during the 2023 Opening Day game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Cincinnati Reds at Citizens Bank Park on April 07, 2023 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
How This Best Sports Anthems List Was Determined
This author has been to her share of sporting events over the years. Regardless of the sport, there are just certain songs that are ubiquitous at sporting events. Whether it’s high school, minor leagues or the pros, these 25 songs deliver on at least one over more of these levels:
-Does the song help hype up a crowd?
-Does the song add a new, appropriate level of emotion to a sporting event?
-Does the song have a unique tie to a team/athlete, but can also transcend it?
-Does it have a universally recognizable hook?
-Has it been used in a sports movie, thus, increasing its reach to the general public?
Look, this list is far from scientific, but it sure is a lot of fun, which is the whole point of any list like this. Frankly, it was a lot of fun to put together. It’s even more fun to revisit when major sports events appear on the calendar, from Opening Day to the Super Bowl and everywhere in between.
From rock to hip hop to EDM to pop, here are the 25 best sports anthems, ranked.
