Author: Luis Tirado Jr.
Date: 9-10-13
Twitter: @LTJ81
Website: http://www.TheNYExpress.com
“Are the Mets coddling our pitchers?”
These past few months for the NY Mets pitchers have been chock full of injuries left and right. Stemming from last season with SP Johan Santana, the Mets have a grand total of eight pitchers on the disabled list. Injuries ranging from stress fractures, surgeries to fix pain from pitching, herniated disks, and the dreaded Tommy John Surgery that takes almost a year to heal. Needless to say, is there something wrong with how Management treats their pitchers? Or could it be that the Mets are simply overprotecting them from imaginary harm? Let me explain.
Between having proposed “innings caps” in the minors, to pulling pitchers out due to high pitch counts early in games, a lot of times doing those kind of moves makes baseball sense to a degree. You have your starting pitcher hitting 80 pitches too early in a game and you worry about him getting tightened up, sore, or playing through fatigue. Most of the time these injuries come with the game, you pitch so many days of the week and only have a day or so of rest in between starts and practices. It's bound to happen because of the workload that you have with every start. I remember last year the outburst of joy mixed with fear of letting Santana pitch that perfect game because everyone worried would he last the entire year. He didn't, but I refuse to believe that him pitching 134 pitches in one game truly led to his shoulder issue that ultimately needed surgery. It was even reported that Manager Terry Collins wanted to pull him out due to fear of him getting hurt. Santana of course refused and is etched in MLB history for that perfect game, but what if Collins did indeed pull him out? Could that have prevented his shoulder injury? I doubt it, it's one of those things you can't really predict. That's my whole point. No medical staff, manager, or coach can prevent an injury based on “what ifs” because of how you're playing. One thing that I feel should never happen is limiting your pitcher because of worrying about the future.
I read a great article about a week ago in the New York Daily News about how legendary Mets SP Tom Seaver said that while he felt bad for what happened to SP Matt Harvey, nothing could have prevented his injury. Not innings limits, pitch counts, or pulling him out early because of the wear and tear of his arm. That not only just the Mets but baseball in general truly “babies” young pitchers instead of letting them go out and do what they've been doing since they were little; play baseball. That in his era, pitchers didn't get coddled or told to take it easy with their pitches, they relied on mechanics, practice, and playing at their highest. I completely agree with Seaver here because honestly, he's absolutely correct. Back in his day, pitchers pitched way more than they do now, not pitch less for concerns about longevity. They also didn't suffer any major injuries and that's with double the workload back then to what it is now.
It just doesn't make sense to have the mentality as a pitching coach or even Manager that coddling pitchers will ultimately prevent injuries. Nothing can truly predict what causes an injury and when I look at the injury report and see eight pitchers on there for the Mets, I think there is something bigger going on. It feels like management treats their pitchers like fans do with their fantasy teams.... like robots! Too many times technology gets in the way and everything is being counted and tallied against you. Trying to teach young talent how to throw slower speed pitches so you last longer doesn't make much sense to me. Especially being pulled from a game against your will because you are throwing too hard and need to be “protected” for the future. As a pitcher, you know your game and your body more than any coach thinks he knows about you. Unless you are writhing in pain and can't go the distance, then by all means, let the medical staff/coach make that decision and take you out. But if you are in a rhythm and doing your thing, it's not right to be limited because your name and age determine your playing status.
The whole reason MLB went to five and possibly six man rotations depending on your team structure, was to limit the workload on starting pitchers. However, back in the day, especially when Seaver played, it use to be four man rotations and not many severe injuries to boot. No shoulder surgeries, or hernias, blown arms, nothing. Just straight up baseball where 300 inning workloads were the norm. Let pitchers go to their potential and stop coddling them for fear of their careers. Everyone is a competitor, let that natural aggression out and let it get sorted out as the years go by. You can't prevent injury but it seems lately, coaches are preventing players from doing what they love. Let the players play because at the end of the day, injuries are part of the game. It's just going to happen in this day and age. Trying to prevent them by limiting and shutting down players shouldn't be the only option to preserve careers. Conditioning, practicing, and executing does that.
Let's look at a different sport for a contrast. Unlike baseball, football players march straight from the college campus to the NFL where they are thrown into a much more brutal sport. Granted, baseball injuries are more about overuse and endurance whereas football injuries tend to be about violence to the body, but no one worries about the starting QB throwing too many passes or the wide receiver running too many sprints. Why then do we worry about pitchers who have gone through Little League, high school, sometimes college and multiple levels of the minor leagues all of the sudden incapable at the major league level to submit to a normal workload? Are the players professionals or not?
ReplyDeleteNow, to be fair, the past baseball players were loathe to report an injury because not working meant not getting paid (and the paychecks were a whole lot smaller, too). Read the wonderful book about Old Hoss Radbourn entitled "59 in '84" in which you learn about the game when players often pitched both ends of a doubleheader or went out and played the field on days when they weren't pitching.
Are they babied? A resounding yes from my perspective!
Hey Reese! Exactly, very well said. I would find it funny if a head coach in the NFL told his starting quarterback to throw slower to "rest" his arm. It's ridiculous! All these young baseball pitchers come up through the minors and have LESS workloads in the majors, yet they work like horses in the farm system. Makes no sense to me.......
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna check out that book, love sports reading! But yeah, back in the day, pitchers would pitch double headers, no problem. Now? They get pulled with an out to go in the 7th inning because of a pitch count!
I'm not going to disregard what you're saying because there is definite truth that this "coddling" of pitchers is ineffective at preventing injury. However, to say that noting could prevent Harvey's type of injury takes the discussion to the other extreme. Yes, something definitely could've been done,to, if not prevent it, at the very least identify and correct the problems leading up to the elbow tear. When it comes to things like biomechanics and science baseball skips the science and jumps straight to science fiction. Kinesiology, for example, is a science that could go a long way towards helping the sport come out of the dark ages. Baseball, a sport so bound by tradition, is slow to warm to any change. The point I'm making is less about Kinesiology however, than it is that baseball continues to largely ignore science at the expense of its future participants. When teenagers are getting Tommy John surgery before any arm problems exist, there is a larger issue with the sport than the coddling "pitch count" vs. pitch 'em til they drop mentalities. It's a sport, that in regards to pitching, is existing in the dark ages during an enlightened age.
ReplyDeleteHere's the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Fifty-nine-84-Radbourn-Barehanded-Baseball/dp/0061825875
I'd send you my copy since I read it, but it's on my Nook, not a paperback.
Hey DaveWhitman, thanks for the comment! It's true, surely they need to come up with other methods to prevent injuries like this. It's all about preparing and continuously spot examining to make sure everything is good.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link Reese, LoL gonna get it on my Kindle! Thank you for the offer though :-)