The day after a season which began with the major arm injuries to leading pitchers Shane Bieber, Spencer Strider and Eury Pérez, Major League Baseball released a report to the front offices of all 30 clubs citing an increase in velocity, an added emphasis on motion generation and the proliferation of pitchers throwing with maximum effort as primary culprits for the sport’s current injury crisis.
“Injury rates among pitchers have skyrocketed in recent decades,” reads the report, a 63-page document that represents the synthesis of more than 200 interviews conducted over the past year with managers, coaches, trainers, surgeons, amateur baseball representatives and former major league pitchers. The aim of the study, MLB officials said, was to stimulate conversation about a topic that tends to engulf sports every April.
The study cited other factors at the professional and amateur level that contributed to the increase in arm diseases. The number of surgeries to repair the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow increased from 104 between the majors and minors in 2010 to 281 in 2024. Last season began with the loss of top pitchers, like Bieber, Strider and Pérez. The World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers were so plagued by throwing injuries last season that the organization ordered an offseason audit of its developmental practices.
There are no easy solutions, the MLB report explains. The document is light on prescriptions. The report suggests that MLB’s rules “could be adjusted or designed to encourage or require that beginning pitchers maintain enough energy to allow them to engage more deeply in games” but did not offer details. Additionally, there could be more restrictions on how often teams make roster moves with pitchers.
The study, conducted by John D’Angelo, MLB’s vice president for amateur and medical baseball operations, does not include interviews with current big league players. The Major League Baseball Players Association has been working with MLB officials on a joint study that would involve input from active players, according to MLB and MLBPA officials who requested anonymity in order to speak freely about the situation. The report calls for “a detailed review of off-season training programs and early-season workloads,” indicating that arm injuries tend to increase at the start of each season.
At the center of the dilemma is increased speed. The average four-seam fastball reached 91.3 mph in 2008. That average has increased to 94.2 mph in 2024, with a corresponding increase in the velocity of off-speed pitches. The rising tide corresponds to the growing awareness that faster terrain, of all kinds, is more difficult to achieve.
“That’s why you see these guys throwing sliders at 87 mph now,” one big league executive said. Athletics earlier this year, as part of a series on the rise of strikeouts. “He can have some fringe spin and movement. But the fact that it’s hard makes him miss the at-bats.”
The MLB report describes a vicious cycle: Big league players are incentivized to throw as hard as possible with as much movement as possible. Minor players follow the same practices to obtain promotion. College and high school players attempt to emulate these attributes in order to get drafted. Junior baseball kids do the same in search of travel opportunities and college scholarships; Latin American kids also do it in hopes of signing for a big league club.
“The current generation of amateur players…attempts to emulate the way they perceive the training and performance of professionals,” the report said.
This cycle “poses a unique risk for young amateur players,” who often lack access to high-quality coaches and trainers, according to the report. The pursuit of speed leads to more arm injuries among amateurs, which leads more players to enter the professional ranks after having already undergone surgery and are therefore more likely to suffer future injuries.
“I have a 14-year-old who played travel ball last summer until the fall,” Athletics said general manager David Forst at the general managers’ meetings in November. “In August, he had three pitchers on his team who were unavailable due to arm injuries. I mean, they’re not Tommy John surgeries, but they’re kids with arm issues.”
At the professional level, the report points out, the use of ball tracking technology exacerbates the problem. This includes innovations such as Edgertronic cameras, Rapsodo monitors and Trackman radar systems, which allow pitchers to seek maximum speed and maximum amount of movement on individual pitches, potentially placing the arm in unnatural positions. The technology also allows teams to monitor bullpen sessions with a level of monitoring that was once reserved for actual games.
Because teams may become alarmed when a pitcher’s performance falters, players are now motivated to operate at higher effort levels in these formerly relaxed environments.
Access to granular data also allows teams and players to reshape pitches on a daily basis. In recent years, launchers have I adopted the separatorwhich was once mothballed for fear of injury risks, and pioneered the sweeper, a horizontally moving slider variation that some within the industry have condemned. All of these pitches, as well as fastballs, curveballs, and changeups, are thrown as hard as possible because they generate better results.
Spencer Strider’s 2024 season ended before it could truly take off due to an arm injury. (Sportswire Icon via AP Images)
In turn, some coaches interviewed in the report said they found that pitchers placed too much emphasis on strength training and downplayed cardiovascular conditioning, which could contribute to the problem.
“Pitchers are increasingly throwing near-maximum efforts, consistent with modern baseball strategies that prioritize chasing swings and misses over inducing weak contact from hitters,” the report states.
Rather than proposing concrete solutions, the report highlights the importance of continued dialogue and more research. The problem comes from overhauling a system in which all players – from amateur players to the major leagues – behave rationally. Pitchers are rewarded for throwing harder, with increased movement, with maximum effort, because it is efficient.
In other words, a healthy pitcher with a 5.00 ERA still has a 5.00 ERA.
Near its conclusion, the report states that “many experts agreed that creating a system in which pitchers are encouraged or required to moderate their activity and throw with submaximal effort to deepen games may be better for pitchers’ health.” »
Maybe it’s better for the pitcher’s health. The problem, as those involved in this process understand, is that it won’t necessarily help the club win games.
(Top Strider photo: AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
