Baseball Pitching Crisis: Threatening the Future of MLB Pitchers

Since their elbows give out from the strain of throwing their best effort on almost every pitch, several of MLB’s most gifted players are suffering from injuries.

TFD – Delve into the concerning baseball pitching crisis jeopardizing the future of MLB pitchers, impacted by competitive policies and rising injuries.

Note that by the time you read this article, another Major League Baseball pitcher might have suffered a serious arm injury. Not likely? Now take this into consideration: news broke that Nationals pitcher Josiah Gray, 26, will be out for an indefinite period of time due to a right forearm/flexor strain, just as I started writing this article. A little later we learned that Red Sox pitcher Nick Pivetta landed on the shelf with a similar injury. They join the ever-expanding list of baseball’s injured pitching stock: Gerrit Cole, Spencer Strider and Shane Bieber are just a few of the big names who have made cross-country trips getting their MRIs evaluated and their arms examined.

Naturally, everyone is curious as to why precisely this is taking place. Naturally, it’s challenging to define. Indeed, there are many conflicting theories out there, some of which come from the owners and players, two of the sport’s longest competitors.

On the one hand, Tony Clark, the president of the MLB Players Association, stated on Sunday that “our concerns about the health impacts of reduced recovery time have only intensified” following the installation of the pitch clock last season and its subsequent lowering.

The MLBPA “ignores the empirical evidence and much more significant long-term trend, over multiple decades, of velocity and spin increases that are highly correlated with arm injuries,” the commissioner’s office shot back, obviously not too like of the comments.

Meanwhile, Cole, who will be back in Yankees pinstripes sometime between May and 2025, thinks none of this bickering is particularly helpful, and that it certainly won’t help cure baseball’s ongoing arm rot anytime soon. And that much is true: the sport, also suffering from redesigned uniforms that showcase players private parts, and a gambling scandal which has affected baseball’s only global superstar, Shohei Ohtani, really could use its governing entities to try to figure things out. Because they need to find out how to turn a pastime that’s dissolved mostly into an unappealing, nine inning, starless parade of supercharged future-surgery candidates, who yield early to disposable BB throwing relievers, back into the game we used to know. The sport with pitchers who crafted performances that we couldn’t wait to watch.

On May 30, 1979, Bill “The Spaceman” Lee of the Expos had one of those outings, shutting out the Phillies in the whole game with six hits at Olympic Stadium in Montreal. “I struck out the side in the first inning, I don’t think I’ve done that since probably my pony league days,” Lee said to the CBC after the game. Typically, if you strike out the game’s opening batter, it indicates that you’re throwing too hard. However, I lost my fastball after the third inning and switched to pitching, where I was reasonably successful.

It doesn’t appear that anyone in baseball today has given “throwing too hard” any thought lately. Despite striking out just 703 batters in 1944, Lee—one of the most flamboyant players in the history of the game—had a fantastic 14-year career. 1 inning, or 3.3 strikeouts in a nine-inning frame. A pitcher like Lee has almost no chance of getting a look these days.

How did we arrive at this location? Yes, baseball has an over-engineering problem just like humans do. It is the tendency of our species to produce items that we like but may not always need, which can lead to enormous harm in the long run. Pitching with maximum effort, high velocity, and high spin rate fits perfectly into this category.

After an All-standout season in 2017, Noah Syndergaard, a standout pitcher for the New York Mets, arrived at camp with the intention of throwing even harder. He was consistently hitting his two-seamer at 98 mph, his four-seam fastball at 99 mph, and his slider at an astounding 93 mph. His season was nearly over due to a lat injury he sustained in May. Asked about Syndergaard’s injury and pitching in general, Dwight Gooden, who set the strikeout record for rookies in 1984 with the Mets, said: “I think they’re training to get bigger, throw a little bit harder, but to me, pitching is about mechanics, changing speeds, reading bat speeds.”

The lat issue ought to have been an indication that Syndergaard’s physique wasn’t supporting his desire to throw so hard and consistently. Over the following two seasons, Syndergaard made 57 starts; however, in 2020, he underwent elbow surgery. The 31-year-old pitcher, who was once thought to be a Met for life, is no longer in the major leagues.

Despite the wealth of cautionary tales like that of Syndergaard and, to a lesser extent, that of his former Mets teammate Jacob deGrom, few players, general managers, managers, pitching coaches, owners, junior level coaches, and the increasingly contentious “pitching labs” have been able to recognize and adjust. The two-time Cy Young champion knew how to increase his velocity, but he was oblivious to the fact that the extra strain on his arm was damaging his health. Thus, an early season elbow surgery also befell a pitcher who at times appeared to be among the best to have ever played, increasing his strikeouts per nine innings from 8.7 in 2016 to 14.3 in 2022.

Surprisingly, during the period when ballclubs have pampered and cradled pitchers to the extent where getting more than five innings out of a starter seems like a big deal, all of these injuries have occurred. This is due to two factors: first, bean counters upstairs have concluded that pitchers are incapable of facing an opposing lineup for the third time; and second, throwing more innings and pitches at their maximum effort today puts them at danger for injury.

It is well known that pitchers like Eury Perez have benefited not at all from any of this so-called protection. The 21-year-old was expected to be the kind of phenomenon that excited baseball fans no matter who they supported. He pitched 19 games and recorded 91.1 closely watched MLB innings in 2023, striking out 108 batters. He pitched 36.2 innings in AAA level before getting promoted, striking out 13.3 batters per nine innings. Furthermore, Perez’s elbow broke under the strain even though he was averaging less than 81 pitches per outing and fewer than five innings per appearance.

Although the sport of baseball has a history of bouncing back from crises, this pitching apocalypse is posing a greater threat than ever. Not only do we have a generation of pitchers that struggle with health, but the pitchers that are left had an all-time low average of 5.1 innings per start in 2023. Not only have we lost skill, but we’ve also lost the will and capacity to let pitchers play well into games—a quality that has been eroding for years and has the potential to make stars.

Currently, there are seven Cy Young Award winners injured, representing 13 of the last 26 plaques handed out. Blake Snell is one of the last standing, a pitcher who represents pitching’s current lack of draw to a tee. Snell is one of just seven players to have won the Cy Young in both leagues. But despite his achievement, Snell doesn’t come close to moving the needle like others who have done it: Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez. Snell isn’t box office. He’s a five-inning pitcher. That’s it. That’s all you get. Maybe that’s why Snell didn’t get the long-term deal that his agent wanted. Maybe owners have figured out that five inning, max effort, injury prone pitchers aren’t worth it no matter how many strikeouts they record. If so, the sport is lost. If so, half of the game will become even more anonymous than it’s becoming with each passing day. If so, baseball must act, and not be afraid to install rules that incentivize both longer outings and player health, restoring half the game, and its lost art before, it’s too late.