The Tommy John epidemic is tearing through baseball at a exponential rate. Over 25 percent of active Major League pitchers have had the surgery at least once, and even though the more than 80 percent success rate looks great on paper, that still means close to 20 percent of pitchers never fully return to their past form.
Nevertheless, the true epidemic of the game is the regimen that Tommy John-affected pitchers are forced to undergo by team management upon their return to the major leagues: innings limits.
The concept behind innings limits is simple: decreasing the workload of a pitcher coming back from injury will reduce the attrition on recovering arms, averting any future wear-and-tear to the ulnar collateral ligament, the piece of the elbow that Tommy John surgery reconstructs. Because of this simple explanation, baseball executives, agents, and even doctors recommend this process as the solution for any pitcher recovering from the surgery.
It sounds all well and good in theory. Limiting stress on the elbow will help it repair more quickly and will minimize the chances or a recurrence of the injury. But it is astoundingly absurd to assume that every pitcher should have the same solution to their arm problems.
Here’s a quick news flash: every pitcher is different.
From Cy Young to Matt Harvey, every pitcher that has ever taken the mound in a Major League game has something different in their make-up, and because of that fairly simple reasoning, innings limits will never be the only solution to restoring Major League arms.
Mending a surgically repaired elbow to bring it back to its past strength is an intricate process that should be adjusted to fit each individual pitcher. Trying to find a quick fix solution for all pitchers is missing the point. This infectious dilemma that baseball is enduring deserves more thought and research toward monitoring each pitcher individually, instead of collectively agreeing that one solution will work for everyone.
Let’s take Stephen Strasburg’s career as an example. In August of 2010, Strasburg underwent Tommy John surgery on his UCL, sidelining him for thirteen months. He would return to make five starts in September of 2011, throwing twenty-four innings. He then was one of the hottest pitchers in baseball in 2012, becoming the fastest pitcher in baseball history to record 100 strikeouts and making his first All-Star appearance.
Then it was made public that Strasburg was on an innings limit for the season and that he would miss the playoffs for the Nationals, who finished the regular season with the best record in baseball. The Nationals would end up being knocked out in the division series against the eventual champion San Francisco Giants in five games.
Now, Strasburg did have the best season of his career in 2014, three years after his surgery. However, in 2015, his arm struggles resurfaced and he had the weakest season of his career. He is now enters his walk year, unhealthy and pitching for a contract.
The Nationals decision to shut down Strasburg for the playoffs despite his successful regular season might have cost them a chance at the World Series, and it didn’t even work to prevent future injuries.
To further the point, there is no scientific evidence supporting the idea that innings limits work. Numerous studies have been conducted since the Tommy John epidemic first emerged and all reports show that Major League personnel cannot solely rely on innings limits to protect young pitchers from future injury, as innings counts do not accurately depict the demands placed on a pitcher’s arm.
The belief that there is a need for change in the general thinking on innings limits is becoming more prevalent among baseball minds, most notably former Major League pitching coach Leo Mazzone.
“These theories on pitching are not working. We don’t need a pitch count or an innings count to tell us (a pitcher’s) done. If you’re a coach and you can’t read body language or certain types of mechanics, then you shouldn’t be a coach.”
Mazzone is arguably the greatest pitching coach in baseball history; he guided the great Atlanta Braves rotation of the 1990s, which featured Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, who would combine for seven Cy Young awards and three Hall of Fame plaques. Yet, no Major League club will hire Mazzone as a pitching coach because he disagrees with the increased insistence on having multiple power arms in a rotation, to which he attributes the escalation of arm injuries in baseball.
This seems a more intelligent thought process than counting pitches and innings. From the age of twelve, this era of baseball’s future arms are being taught to focus more on the radar gun than the batters they face, and are having college scholarships and professional contracts thrown at them with the “knowledge” that speed fares better than location. Every stud starting pitcher, every bullpen asset, every top minor league and high school draft prospect can consistently hit 97 mile per hour.
Major League Baseball has taken some strides toward an improved approach, monitoring individual pitchers, and using technological advances in research to construct throwing programs specifically for each individual arm. But until they figure out a middle ground that players, executives, agents, and doctors alike can agree to comply with, it will just be a guessing game, with inning limits and pitch counts remaining the recovery method of choice.
Hopefully soon, by making the solution more complex, the results will be simpler.
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