By Robert Whiting (2019)
It’s been 44 years since the first so-called Tommy John surgical procedure, which occurred September 25, 1974, and, according to the popular website 538, half of the recorded surgeries have occurred in the nearly six and a half years since April 1, 2012.
Why is that?
Some American commentators say that the new wave of arm troubles in MLB is because of the youth travel leagues that have American youths pitching more and more at a younger age. However, many, many others point to the increased MLB emphasis on the fast ball, with today’s coaches, managers and front office executives telling their pitchers to throw harder and harder and harder: The average speed of a MLB fastball has now risen from nearly 3 miles per hour from 88.5 in 2002 to 92 in 2018. But the harder pitchers throw, the more stress is put on the ulnar collateral ligament, a triangular, roughly 1-by-2 centimeter ligature that connects the humerus bone of the upper arm with the ulnar bone of the lower arm. With pitchers throwing at faster and faster speeds nearly every year of the pitch-tracking era, this little band of fibers has never been under more stress. Not only are big-name professional players going under the knife, including Yu Darvish and Shohei Ohtani, but young amateurs are also entering professional baseball with TJ scars in their elbow. Pitchers who alternate their fastballs with 90 mile per hour sliders and split finger fast balls put even more stress on the arm.
As a result, pitchers are throwing fewer pitches: Restrictive pitch counts have grown commonplace and bullpens are absorbing more innings by design. According to 538, were 20,517 pitching appearances in MLB in 2018 about 1,200 more than there were in 2014. From 2014 to 2018, average pitch counts fell from 96 to 89 per start. Some managers even say 70 is ideal. The 100 pitch game has become passé. The number of pitchers to throw at least 200 innings has also dropped, from 28 in 2015 to 15 in 2017 and 2018. The leader in Complete Games had 2!
This trend is also seen in Japan, where only one pitcher, Tomoyuki Sugano pitched over 200 innings, albeit it with 10 complete games.
Moreover, managers now remove a starting pitcher when they see his fastball speed start to decrease on the radar gun, believing his effectiveness is deteriorating, This usually happens by the third time through the batting order and batters start to make hard contact.
Thus, in this environment, to admire the number of wins a pitcher accumulates or to encourage him to toss a complete game is outdated thinking. Pitching is all about new statistics like WHIP (Walks and Hits Per Innings Pitched) and FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) and a long line of relief pitchers. Some teams like Tampa Bay are even using relievers to start the game, with starters to come in in the second or third inning and pitch three or four innings, then turn the game back over to the relievers . The 20-game winner appears to be a doomed species.
I believe this trend is harming the game of baseball. It reduces a major league baseball game to a long line of one-inning relief pitchers, as so memorably demonstrated by the LA Dodgers in last year’s world series, and removes much of the drama from an MLB game. The question of how long a starter can last is no longer a relevant one. No-hitters and perfect games—accomplishments which have thrilled fans enormously over the years –will disappear from the game.
In January this year, The New York Times, in an article by Michael Powell, addressed the issue of starting pitching. Powell interviewed Leo Mazzone, well-known Atlanta pitching coach of one of the greatest pitching rotations of all time featuring three Hall of Fame pitchers Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and John Smoltz during the 1990’s.
Mazzone expressed his disgust for the fastball. “Trying to heave balls as fast as you can is for muscle-beach dolts,” he said, “A good pitcher throws at 85 to 90 percent of effort and makes the pitch move and hit its location. Varies speeds, too.
As for the notion a pitcher can last but five or six innings before batters grow wise and clobber him?, the Times article cited Atlanta aceGreg Maddux , who won 323 games in his career, as having a 3.23 E.R.A. in his first three innings and a 2.86 from the seventh inning through the ninth. And while he possessed a good fastball, it was not a three-digit express train.
One spring training in the mid-1990s, Maddux, who in a 23-year career piled up 355 fairly meaningful wins, asked to speak with the team’s young pitchers, about what he key to successful pitching was.
“You know why I am a millionaire?” he was quoted as telling a group of young pitchers, “Because I can put my fastball wherever I want to.”. “Do you know why I own beachfront property in L.A.? Because I can change speeds. O.K., questions?”
Maddux wasn’t the only one who was better in his last inning than in the first inning.
Indeed, as the article pointed out, for most good pitchers, their worst inning was the first. Once they found a rhythm and once pitches began to crackle, they became progressively more difficult to hit.
270 game winner Mike Mussina, recently voted into the Hall of Fame, gave up fewer runs on average in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings than he did in the first three. He was at his best in the ninth inning.)
311 game winner Tom Seaver’s lifetime earned run average in the first inning was 3.75. His E.R.A. for the last three innings of a game, the third and fourth time through the batting order that modern day analysts worry so much about, stood at 2.75.
Seaver won 25 games in 1969 and helped pitch the Miracle Mets to a World Series championship. He pitched the ninth inning 17 times that season and surrendered not a single run.)
Seaver’s pitch count was 135 pitches per game. 300 game winner Nolan Ryan’s pitch count was 150 pitches. Nobody threw faster than Ryan. He was still throwing 100 MPH at age 45. But he also threw one of the best curve balls in MLB history.
Ryan regularly pitched 20-25 complete games per season in his 27 year career. He threw over 324 innings a year twice and once and had a season in which he started 41 games. Ryan has said that limiting pitch counts limits a pitchers potential (the way that putting a plant in a small pot limits that plants growth, as Hanamaki High School Kantoku Sasaki, Shoehi Ohtani’s former manager, has observed.)
Said Ryan in an interview with Newsday back in 2016, “I believe when an organization puts those kind of random restrictions on their pitching staff, they don’t take advantage and utilize the talent that they have. I think everybody has a pitch limit, but I think also you can tell when a guy’s reached his pitch limit by watching him. That’s what pitching coaches used to do. Now they look at the number of pitches and at around 100, they get somebody up and that pitcher comes out of the game no matter whether he’s having an exceptionally good game or if he struggled. Obviously, they put pitch limits to try to protect people, but I think it’s worked just the opposite.’’
Ryan is fifth on the all-time list of innings pitched with 5,386. Asked if his record seven no-hitters would have occurred under the current climate of safeguards, Ryan said: “I used to average 150 to 160 pitches a game because of the nature of pitcher I was. Would it have impacted my effectiveness? Yes. I think it probably would.’’
Ryan, Seaver, Ryan, Maddux, et al have their counterparts in Japan in Keiishi Suzuki, Yutaka Enatsu, Masaichi Kaneda, and many others,
Maybe we should start listening to these people and rethinking our ways.
Unfortunately, restrictions on pitchers are likely to remain in place until findings dictate a new protocol.
That will not bode well for fans of the game.
Tokyo Junkie 