Counterpoint to those who argue that "we never had all those arm injuries back in the good old days of baseball."
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports....ed-pitchers/related/
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Pitchers used to get what was called dead arm for the lack of medical ability to diagnose further. What I don't remember was pre high school pitchers having injuries. I attribute this to excessive travel pitching at early ages. I had to wait my turn to pitch in LL. The first year I pitched more than twenty innings I was twelve.
When you treat professional pitchers like little leaguers, no wonder these pitchers are getting tommy john. Professional pitchers need to be throwing more! Not less. Strasburg and Harvey the poster boys of today's mentalty of banking pitches so they can pitch when theyre 40 but arent nearly what they were in their 20s and 30s so whats the point.
Save the innings limit and pitch counts for the little leaguers
Originally Posted by zombywoof:
When you treat professional pitchers like little leaguers, no wonder these pitchers are getting tommy john. Professional pitchers need to be throwing more! Not less. Strasburg and Harvey the poster boys of today's mentalty of banking pitches so they can pitch when theyre 40 but arent nearly what they were in their 20s and 30s so whats the point.
Save the innings limit and pitch counts for the little leaguers
So you're saying that both of these pitchers- whom were considered to be overused by their respective college coaches- were "babied" in the Major Leagues? Strasburg's innings limit came after Tommy John Surgery and was based on medical advice, Harvey was injured before the possibility of reaching any innings limit that may have been set.
Do you have proof that these two specific injuries were a direct cause of innings limits and pitch count limits? Please explain.
Average innings pitched by leading pitchers 100 years ago isn't much different than today. They are not being babied. Late 1800s vs early 1900s there was a dramatic drop. Why would that be....injuries (I assume, and owners learned)?
Originally Posted by J H:
Originally Posted by zombywoof:
When you treat professional pitchers like little leaguers, no wonder these pitchers are getting tommy john. Professional pitchers need to be throwing more! Not less. Strasburg and Harvey the poster boys of today's mentalty of banking pitches so they can pitch when theyre 40 but arent nearly what they were in their 20s and 30s so whats the point.
Save the innings limit and pitch counts for the little leaguers
So you're saying that both of these pitchers- whom were considered to be overused by their respective college coaches- were "babied" in the Major Leagues? Strasburg's innings limit came after Tommy John Surgery and was based on medical advice, Harvey was injured before the possibility of reaching any innings limit that may have been set.
Do you have proof that these two specific injuries were a direct cause of innings limits and pitch count limits? Please explain.
Yes. Strawburg and Harvey are from the generation of babied pitchers and both miss extensive time duento arm injury. Pitchers in the past like the Seavers of the world started 40 times a year and threw 300 innings. Today a pitcher throws 200 innings 30 starts and is called a workhorse. And its odays pitchers getting the surgery at record numbers
Originally Posted by zombywoof:
Originally Posted by J H:
Originally Posted by zombywoof:
When you treat professional pitchers like little leaguers, no wonder these pitchers are getting tommy john. Professional pitchers need to be throwing more! Not less. Strasburg and Harvey the poster boys of today's mentalty of banking pitches so they can pitch when theyre 40 but arent nearly what they were in their 20s and 30s so whats the point.
Save the innings limit and pitch counts for the little leaguers
So you're saying that both of these pitchers- whom were considered to be overused by their respective college coaches- were "babied" in the Major Leagues? Strasburg's innings limit came after Tommy John Surgery and was based on medical advice, Harvey was injured before the possibility of reaching any innings limit that may have been set.
Do you have proof that these two specific injuries were a direct cause of innings limits and pitch count limits? Please explain.
Yes. Strawburg and Harvey are from the generation of babied pitchers and both miss extensive time duento arm injury. Pitchers in the past like the Seavers of the world started 40 times a year and threw 300 innings. Today a pitcher throws 200 innings 30 starts and is called a workhorse. And its odays pitchers getting the surgery at record numbers
Did you read the article that MTH posted?
Originally Posted by zombywoof:
Originally Posted by J H:
Originally Posted by zombywoof:
When you treat professional pitchers like little leaguers, no wonder these pitchers are getting tommy john. Professional pitchers need to be throwing more! Not less. Strasburg and Harvey the poster boys of today's mentalty of banking pitches so they can pitch when theyre 40 but arent nearly what they were in their 20s and 30s so whats the point.
Save the innings limit and pitch counts for the little leaguers
So you're saying that both of these pitchers- whom were considered to be overused by their respective college coaches- were "babied" in the Major Leagues? Strasburg's innings limit came after Tommy John Surgery and was based on medical advice, Harvey was injured before the possibility of reaching any innings limit that may have been set.
Do you have proof that these two specific injuries were a direct cause of innings limits and pitch count limits? Please explain.
Yes. Strawburg and Harvey are from the generation of babied pitchers and both miss extensive time duento arm injury. Pitchers in the past like the Seavers of the world started 40 times a year and threw 300 innings. Today a pitcher throws 200 innings 30 starts and is called a workhorse. And its odays pitchers getting the surgery at record numbers
They're getting surgery in record numbers because there are surgeries now that will allow them to come back and continue pitching and there weren't before. Also because getting surgery now allows you to potentially continue a lucrative career, and in 1960 you could probably make more money getting a real job in a lot of cases, so there wasn't nearly the incentive to try to continue.
And for every Tom Seaver, there's a handful of guys like Mark Fidrych.
MTH, thank you for this article. There are so many myths in baseball.
A good article but I recall the days when my all time favorite pitcher, Juan Marichal, threw 25 or more complete games, season after season, as did Bob Gibson, as did Don Drysdale and others. Marichal and Warren Spahn of course hooked up for a 16 inning game where both pitched complete games (and my man Willie Mays won it with a home run, 1-0). It does seem that starting pitchers went much deeper in games (Just peeked at the records-=Marichal threw 244 complete games in his career).
Face it, pitching is pretty much an unnatural act with an arm no matter what precautions are taken-we're accelerating the hand to somewhere north of 90 mph, then stopping it within a matter of a few feet-gotta be tough on the body.
From 1871 to 1980, 127 pitchers put up more than 1000 innings after age 30.
From 1981 to 2013, 88 pitchers did it.