The Injury Bug is Ravaging MLB Pitchers
Just two weeks into the MLB season, teams, and the league itself have lost a plethora of talent to the injured list.
Even scarier, it seems like this is a trend, not an outlier. Pitchers have seemingly been getting injured at a more frequent rate the past few years, and a multitude of factors receive the blame through different perspectives.
Some fans argue that the incorporation of the pitch clock has put more strain on their arm. Others argue that pushing pitchers to increase velocity, spin rate, and movement over command has taxed pitchers’ arms and shoulders at an unmanageable rate. Some even argue that the game’s shifting tendency to keep pitchers on pitch counts and shying away from letting pitchers pitch deeper into games prevents pitchers from creating durability.
Regardless of what the true factors of these injuries are, which someone will inevitably discover through research, one fact remains universal among these different perspectives: these injuries are horrible for the game of baseball.
Here’s the list of pitchers who have gotten injured this year, or started this year injured:
That’s multiple All-Stars, CY Young Winners, CY Young Contenders, Rookies of the Year, and all-around top-of-rotation pitchers. For teams to not be able to have their services, and fans to not be able to watch them is a travesty for the sport.
Ultimately, it is the most disappointing, frustrating, and heartbreaking for the players. They dedicate years of their life to this game, all for this one period of the year, the season, so to get significantly injured at the start of the year is likely taxing and difficult for the players.
Implications are vast for this issue. Will pitchers struggle to garner large-scale free-agent contracts or extensions? Has the incorporation of the pitch clock and its favoritism to hitters put more strain on pitchers? Has the ban on substances like spider-tack led to more injury? Is the MLB’s league-wide, and individual team pitcher training and rehabilitation effective still, or do changes need to be made to accommodate more for injury? Lots of discussion may need to be done, both within the Commissioner’s office, the MLBPA, and within individual organizations.
What is there to be done? Who knows. An investigation should be done — whether it is research on younger baseball athletes at younger levels, comparing pitchers who focus on command and pitchers who focus on velocity and spin rate, researching the baseball themselves to see if they have any correlation to injury, and pushing to remodel the pitching motion to make it more natural on the body, something must be done to help these pitchers both stay healthy in the present and preserve their bodies for the future.
