Pitch counts have been instituted throughout a player's career - - - from youth baseball, college, the minors and even the pro level.
The theory is that a pitcher's arm is like a machine. It only has a certain amount of wear and tear before it physically wears out and tears (and goes for Tommy John, shoulder or other surgeries.)
This theory presupposes that each individual has a limited amount of "capital" i.e. innings that his body can tolerate.
The other more old school theory is that modern pitchers are too muscle bound by weights and constricted by pitch counts to allow the elasticity of their bodies to reach its full potential and lessen the risk of injury.
Count Detroit pitcher Justin Verlander in the latter camp. In an interview with ESPN, Verlander was critical of how teams "coddle" their young pitchers.
Verlander is looking to make at least
30 starts for the 10th straight season and nine straight with no less than 201 innings pitched. Verlander has been quite durable for a power pitcher.
Verlander believes that teams are spending too much time coddling pitchers
before they reach the big leagues. In doing so, Verlander adds, teams
are only managing to delay the inevitable breakdown until they start
counting on those arms as major league contributors, which ends up
costing them even more.
“I think baseball coddles guys so much now that you delay the inevitable. I think the reason you see so many big leaguers blowing out at a young age is because they would have done it before. But now teams limit pitch counts so much, even at the major league level, that now a guy in his second or third year will pop, when it would have happened in the minors.
“Before,” he continued, “when there wasn’t such an emphasis on pitch counts, I think you kind of weeded that out. Then guys would have surgery [in the minor leagues]. Then they’d come back. And then they’d get to the big leagues.”
Verlander is
suggesting that teams that view pitchers as limited resources which will blow up their arms at some point in their career should blow up in the minors first, have surgery, then be ready for a major league career.
Science says there is more variables in the breakdown of each
individual pitcher. In a Yahoo Sports article, research director at Dr.
James Andrews’ American Sports Medicine Institute, Dr. Glenn Fleisig, has studied
countless numbers of elbow injuries. He's looked at when they occurred,
how a pitcher felt leading up to the injury and the extent of the
damage. His findings suggest that poor mechanics and pitching while
fatigued are often the biggest factors, which supports the theory for coddling.
“I have tremendous respect for Justin Verlander. You and I are not Justin Verlander. We’ve never thrown 200 innings in the major leagues, or even one inning. So he has a different perspective than we have. But I also have a different perspective. I have science.”
"With biomechanics, we can now identify who has poor mechanics, and there are a lot of progressive organizations that are now modifying kids' mechanics in the minor leagues after they're drafted and as they develop."
Pitchers in the 1950s through 1970s often referenced the fact that the most critical aspect of their training was running as their legs were the key to pitching mechanics. The power was generated by one's legs and the arm was merely the catapult motion of the ball. As in a catapult, the arm has to be a flexible rope to transfer the mechanical energy of the lower body to the ball at release. A pitcher like Rick Reuschel used to push off the rubber and effortlessly release the ball semi-side arm toward the plate. Reuschel was not what today's fitness gurus would call a great athletic body, but he was "country strong" meaning that he toned his body parts to fit his pitching mechanics. Ferguson Jenkins was also another proponent of being lanky and flexible. He also believed that pitchers needed to pitch more in order to have their bodies adjust and get past the normal body fatigue and pain. Jenkins was from the era when a starter got the ball in the first inning, he was supposed to finish the game. As a result, pitchers were no longer "throwers" but artists trying to get outs in the most efficient manner.
Pitchers come up from youth baseball, college and the minors holding on to two stats: velocity and strike outs. In Jenkins world, strike outs are not important in the majors - - - it is getting batters to make outs. A two pitch ground out is better than a six pitch strike out. Greg Maddux made a career not on a blazing fastball, but change in velocity and spin of pitchers to elicit ground balls. Knuckleballers like Tim Wakefield and Wilbur Wood could grind out more innings than a normal pitcher while having the least velocity on their pitches.
Then you have the perfect prospect pitcher like Mark Prior. In college, scouts raved that he had the "perfect" mechanics and smooth delivery. But once Prior got to the majors, an emphasis on strike outs made him begin to throw across his chest at release (like power pitcher Kerry Wood). As a result, Prior's career got boggled down with injuries.
A pitcher may have the perfect body type to be a major league starter or reliever. It is the science of finding out how your body performs under the stress of the throwing of a baseball. But careers are still made by understanding "the art" of pitching at the major league level.
