What is causing the rash of pitching injuries.
The extent that the pitch-timer is contributing to these injuries is a contentious and conflicting topic. There were actually more pitcher injuries the year before the clock was implemented than the year after. The players were miffed that the league shaved another two seconds off this season, from 20 seconds to 18 with runners on base, without consulting them.
“I’d rather someone did some research and tell me what’s actually going on,” Skubal said. “But I can’t think it doesn’t correlate (to the increase in pitcher injuries). The 20-to-18 thing this offseason, we’re shaving 10 minutes off the game. It’s like, what’s the point? That’s my thought process on it. Especially when we were told they were leaving the game alone.”
The thing is, most players, pitchers and position players alike, like the pitch-timer. They understood the purpose of the initial rule, 15 seconds with nobody on, 20 seconds with runners on.
“I was kind of a fan of it,” Skubal said. “The games are faster and more appealing to everyone. But there probably is some correlation there. It’s hard for there not to be when you are increasing someone’s pace and they can’t keep up with it.”
Cutting two seconds off the timer when there are runners on base, Skubal said, is counterproductive. That’s when pitchers are throwing out of the stretch, when the pitches are typically more stressful.
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But all sides agree that the pitch-timer isn’t the only culprit here. It’s why Major League Baseball is in the middle of a significant research project with Johns Hopkins University to study and determine what the cause or causes might be.
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There’s been so many theories and Hinch has heard them all.
“They say we ask less of our starting pitchers because we don’t leave them in the game long enough and they don’t throw 100 pitches anymore,” he said. “But yet we ask them to give max velocity, max shapes, max everything and train virtually all year around.
“I’m not smart enough to know what the exact culprit is, but it’s a concern.”
Teams have micromanaged pitchers and their pitchers still got hurt. Teams have gone old-school and just let their pitchers throw, and pitchers got hurt. Teams have strictly governed workloads. They’ve spent millions of dollars in biomechanics and nutrition. Pitchers still get hurt.
“It’s just so unpredictable,” Skubal said. “I was one of those guys that got limited. My rookie year they told me that because I didn’t throw at all in the COVID year (2020) that I was only going to throw 150 innings. And then the next year I got hurt. So did it work? No.
