Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
MLB: Toronto Blue Jays at New York Yankees
(Bronx, NY) – Elbow injuries are all the rage these days in professional baseball. Not really. It’s actually a less-than-desirable reality these days: every time a headline pops up from MLB, the odds are it’s a frontline pitcher dealing with elbow problems.
Shane Bieber is headed for Tommy John surgery. Spencer Strider has a UCL injury. And the New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole has been shut down (but recently played catch for the first time) as a result of an elbow issue. The debate will continue as to why elbow issues are so common at present.
Some argue the approach modern starting pitchers take – in which they try to throw the ball as hard as they can and spin it as hard as they can, longevity be damned – is the biggest culprit. Others, like Dodgers’ pitcher Tyler Glasnow, say MLB’s crackdown on “sticky stuff” forced him to grip the ball harder, leading to an elbow injury.
But Cole, who is working his way back and hopes to avoid Tommy John surgery, waded into another theory: the pitch clock. Some have suggested MLB’s pitch clock, and the push for shorter games in terms of elapsed time, has put pitcher’s arms at risk. Cole said earlier this week that he’s “just frustrated it’s a combative issue.
It’s like, ‘OK, we have divorced parents and the child’s misbehaving and we can’t get on the same page to get the child to behave,’ not that the players are misbehaving, but we have an issue here and we need to get on the same page to at least try and fix it.”
Cole is referring to the back-and-forth between MLB’s commissioner’s office and the Player’s Union. A statement from MLBPA president Tony Clark more or less suggested the pitch clock is to blame for the recent rash of injuries. MLB countered by saying the push for higher velocity is the more accurate reason. Hence Cole’s divorced (and fighting) parents comment.
Unfortunately, it’s going to take a lot more than several sessions of counseling to figure this one out. Some, like former Mets pitchers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, have suggested teams should be punished for pulling pitchers early – potentially resulting in the loss of the DH for that game.
In theory that could push the league back toward utilizing starting pitchers for longevity – valuing their durability – as opposed to arms that light up the radar gun and RPM count at the expense of all else.
