Colorado Rockies News and Notes for Monday, April 15, 2024
Every day, in the early part of the 2024 MLB season, it’s the same.
Wake up in the morning. Check the headlines. Notice another pitcher is probably headed to the IL with an arm issue.
For Colorado Rockies fans, it feels a bit like the rest of baseball is finally catching up to a 2023 that saw first Lucas Gilbreath and later Germán Márquez, Antonio Senzatela, Gabriel Hughes, and Jackson Cox undergoing Tommy John surgery — the last four in the span of a few weeks.
Just last week, Eury Pérez, Shane Bieber, Spencer Strider, Josiah Gray, Trevor Gott, and Framber Valdez have either suffered some kind of arm discomfort that sent them to the IL, were scheduled for surgery, or had a procedure performed on their arm.
And then yesterday, this:
Robert Stephenson Being Evaluated For Elbow Soreness https://t.co/JwOd1c0beb pic.twitter.com/JjF0IVd8PZ
— MLB Trade Rumors (@mlbtraderumors) April 15, 2024
What are the causes of these arm injuries?
That’s complicated.
The Major League Baseball Player’s Association focused on a lack of adequate research before implementing the pitch clock.
“Despite unanimous Player opposition and significant concerns regarding health and safety, the Commissioner’s Office reduced the length of the Pitch Clock last December, just one season removed from imposing the most significant rule change in decades,” MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said in a statement.
Since then, our concerns about the health impacts of reduced recovery time have only intensified.
The league’s unwillingness thus far to acknowledge or study the effects of these profound changes is an unprecedented threat to our game and its most valuable asset — the Players.
This statement 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.
Nobody wants to see pitchers get hurt in this game, which is why MLB is currently undergoing a significant comprehensive research study into the causes of this long-term increase, interviewing prominent medical experts across baseball which to date has been consistent with an independent analysis by Johns Hopkins University that found no evidence to support that the introduction of the pitch clock has increased injuries. In fact, JHU found no evidence that pitchers who worked quickly in 2023 were more likely to sustain an injury than those who worked less quickly on average.
JHU also found no evidence that pitchers who sped up their pace were more likely to sustain an injury than those who did not.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan, who’s been reporting on this topic for over a decade, added this:
“You wanna talk about a sport that’s youth system needs to be completely overhauled it’s baseball..
It’s not a surprise that we’re seeing what we’re seeing now with the injuries in MLB”@JeffPassan #PMSLive https://t.co/wNjco9ATwo pic.twitter.com/6XjQDxIkL1
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) April 15, 2024
Dr. James Andrews, an expert on Tommy John surgery, agrees.
While there may not be consensus on the causes, there’s a clear sense that this is a serious issue — a “pandemic,” according to Justin Verlander.
Or is there?
As Travis Sawchik notes at The Score, “There’s no Tommy John surge this spring. (It’s always this bad).” He continues, “[T]he truth is that while this spring is bad for elbow injuries, it’s always been this way in recent years. It’s always bad” — and Sawchik has the data to prove it.
A logical person to ask about pitcher injuries is Rockies manager Bud Black, a former pitcher himself.
Black has spent some time considering this issue — and it’s not lost on him that no one paid much attention to the Rockies 2023 arm injury pandemic. (Seriously: Most analysis of the Rockies’ 2023 season omits the devastation that struck the Rockies’ starting rotation.)
“Last year, we went through a lot of it, and nobody really talked about it” Black said last week in the Rockies Coors Field dugout. “And now a lot of other guys are getting banged around a little bit, and they’re talking about it a lot.”
For Black there are a couple of factors.
“For me, I think it’s two major components,” Black continued. “I think the chasing of velocity, the maximum effort to create velocity, not only on the fastball, but on secondary pitches — sliders, curveballs. And, also, the effort to create a lot of spin off, to get as many revolutions as you can on breaking pitches. I think those are the two main factors: Maximum effort to create velocity, maximum effort to manipulate the ball to create maximum spin.”
That, then, raises the question of “sticky substances” banned in 2021. Would their return help alleviate some of the injuries?
Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow thinks so.
“I one hundred percent believe that contributed to me getting hurt, no doubt,” he told reporters following his injury. “I switched my fastball grip and my curveball grip. I’ve thrown it the same way for however many years I’ve played baseball and I had to change it.” (The entire video is worth watching.)
Black can see how reintroducing some banned substances might provide an answer for some players. “I do believe that there’s some — to what degree I’m not sure.”
However, it wasn’t something Black dealt with as a player.
“I didn’t have that problem, so I can’t speak to a fellow who can’t grip the ball. Rosin was good enough for me,” Black said. “Some guys, it’s a little harder. They need more than rosin, supposedly.”
Still, for Black, that’s not a primary source of injuries: “I think that’s down the list of what’s causing these injuries.”
When asked what MLB could do, Black answered, “I don’t know if that’s an answerable question. I don’t think MLB can do anything.”
He continued, “MLB can’t tell a major-league pitcher, ‘Don’t throw as hard,’ or ‘Don’t spin the ball as hard.’ It’s up to the pitchers. What do they want to do? That’s the answer.”
And it’s possible that arm injuries will become an accepted part of any pitcher’s career.
“Potentially,” Black said. “I mean, it’s happening right before our eyes.”
Ultimately, pitcher injuries speak to a fundamental way in which baseball has changed. Younger pitchers — as in children — are training more and throwing harder than ever before. In addition, they have an almost-exclusive focus on baseball, rather than becoming multi-sport athletes. Moreover, players who excel at those skills get signed, promoted, and earn big contracts, so these athletes are incentivized to throw hard, even though doing so may work against their long-term health.
And it’s not physically possible for a pitcher to strengthen the Tommy John ligament, which does not fully mature until a player is about 26 years old, according to Dr. Andrews.
It’s a complicated question — one that each pitcher will probably have to answer for himself — and it’s not going away.
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Canadian snack tasting with Michael Toglia
Toglia made the most of his trip north of the border.
Hard pass on those ketchup chips for me, but if it’s the reason Toglia is leading the Rockies in home runs, maybe the Rockies should add them to the training table. Be like Mike!
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Inside Feltner’s first win since May | MLB.com
Feltner discusses his win in Tortono with Thomas Harding, who adds this nugget: “Manager Bud Black considered letting Lambert earn a four-inning save, but he decided to give Tyler Kinley some work and spare Lambert in case he was needed again in Toronto.” Paging Eric Stephen.
Bad Bunny-led agency faces MLBPA sanctions | ESPN.com
Alden Gonzalez, Jeff Passan, Jorge Castillo report on Rima Sports’ primary baseball agent, William Arroyo, losing his Major League Baseball Players Association certification. This followed a union investigation after complaints from other agents that Arroyo had provided improper benefits to players. Why does it matter to the Colorado Rockies? Ezequiel Tovar is one of their clients, and his seven-year, $63.5 million extension is the largest deal the agency has negotiated. It’s worth noting that Arroyo and Rimas Sports have the right to appeal.
What a pitcher’s eyes can tell you | Washington Post ($)
This is a fascinating piece by Andrew Golden on where Washington Nationals pitchers focus when they’re pitching. “It just depends on where the pitch is called,” lefty MacKenzie Gore said. “You just got different spots on the catcher that you pick out. … It changes every pitch.” Sure, the catcher’s mitt is always a focal point, but it’s more complicated than that.
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