Prominent MLB team physician sounds alarm on pitching injuries

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Two articles, original from theAthletic and a follow-up from the Detroit News with comments from Tiger pitchers. Analytics has brought a focus on a lot of new baseball stats, spin rates etc, are they leading to more injuries as well? Does a harder grip bring injuries?
Here is the News article:

Are sweepers, hard changeups causing pitcher injuries? Tigers’ pitchers say no
If there was a consensus to be had among Tigers pitchers, the pumped-up velo carries a bigger risk factor than anything else.

“Guys are throwing the ball harder now,” reliever Alex Lange said. “There are more guys throwing the ball at these high velocities than there have been before. I think that has to have something to do with it.

“A lot of guys are throwing 95-mph and above fastball, 89-90 mph sliders and 90 mph changeups. That’s a tough thing on a body.”

Major League Baseball as an industry and the Tigers specifically, have poured millions of dollars into research and development, into analytics and biomechanics, into nutrition, sleep studies, state-of-the-art training and recovery techniques — no stone has been left unturned when it comes to player and pitcher safety.

As The Athletic reported, Meister shared his concerns with MLB executives before the start of spring training, as part of an ongoing study the league has undertaken on pitcher injuries.

“What I’ve talked to MLB about is, look, we have all this data on performance. We also have all this data on health. We have to marry these two metrics,” Meister said. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you to never throw a sweeper or never throw a hard changeup.

“But at some point, you have to say, ‘OK, when we see a pitcher throwing that pitch more than 15 percent of the time, the likelihood of him having an injury to his shoulder or elbow goes (up), whatever, tenfold.”

Meister said the average length of a big-league career for pitchers is 2.7 years.

Of course, the counterargument from pitchers is that they would have no big-league career if they couldn’t use all the spin and velocity they have in their arsenal.

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Prominent MLB Team Physician sounds alarm on pitching injuries

Full article at the link.

One of the game’s leading orthopedic surgeons is sounding an alarm on pitching injuries — and citing the advent of the sweeper and power changeup as significant reasons for the spike.

Dr. Keith Meister, the Texas Rangers’ head team physician, said teams are exacerbating the problem by emphasizing pitchers’ performance over their availability.

“These front offices, unfortunately, are living more in the moment than taking a longer, broader-term view,” Meister said. “There is a way to manage this. What if a guy doesn’t have a WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) of 0.8. What if he has a WHIP of 1.1 but he’s able to play 162?”

Meister, who pioneered the hybrid elbow procedure that combines a traditional ligament reconstruction with the addition of an internal brace, said surgical techniques changed markedly over the past decade in response to how pitching evolved.

As teams increased their emphasis on velocity and stuff, injury-list placements for pitchers rose from 241 in 2010 to 552 in 2021 before decreasing slightly each of the past two seasons, according to a Major League Baseball spokesperson. The days pitchers spent on the IL more than doubled over a slightly longer span.

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It’s pretty wild. I saw a stat the other day where each team averaged something like 12 starters used last year.

So build an opening day 5 man rotation… and then be sure to have 7 more starting pitchers ready to go. Good luck with that.

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