John Smoltz explains why MLB's top pitchers are getting hurt with elbow injuries 

No. It's probably exacerbating the injuries though.

No. I think teams are being more cautious with there pitchers I'm sure the team Dr's don't want to be wrong and rush million dollar pitchers back to soon I believe pitchers want to pitch tho

@@kellytaylor7699 your response makes no sense . Its like you don’t understand baseball.

Pitch clock isn't the main reason, but I think it's clearly affecting the pitcher and it would definitly be the final push for the elbow injury. So many "ace pitchers" getting hurt at the same time from 2023. If there were no pitch clock, these ace pitchers wouldn't have injured at the same time.

Nope

I was going to say something to this effect before I read your comment. Yes pitchers are all throwing harder than they used to, on average. But baseball still seems like the exact same game. It plays out the same way. Hitters adjust, so what’s the point of shredding arms like this?

I'm not sure Greg Maddux would be drafted today.

94 is a lot

Both those pitchers are maxing out. Not every person has the same top speed of 98. take my 72mph fastball for example...

They should watch Trevor Bauer's videos. He is sharing everything about his pitch grip and training. He hits 99 without a death grip on the ball that blows his arm out. The guys complaining about grip never learned how to pitch right.

The union will never allow anything except 100% guaranteed contracts, so other than performance incentives there is no real way for teams to incentivize playing, and no serious agent is going allow their clients to accept a contract based primarily on incentives if pitchers still get hurt at the rate they are currently.

Players association needs to address this. Owners don't care and will just shuffle to next pitcher

can you imagine how many players would have given up a few years of their pitching career if it meant they were able to perform at an even higher level and make more money doing so? John's comparing two eras of baseball where contracts are literally hundreds of millions of dollars apart.

@@michaelweston2285 frankly, the shorter contracts are better for fans and ownership and they have the effect of spreading cash out evenly among union members, so I really don’t see much support for any radical changes

@@barkerm9 if the owners take a hard stance on not doing 100% guarantees, then the union will have to buckle or not play. And given the amount of money players make today there's no way they would risk losing an entire season going on strike.

Nope, he's go 80-90 pitches at 94-95, then hit 100 in the 7th and 8th innings.

And changing your speeds help keep batters off balance. When you feed a batter 2-3 pitches at 90-91 mph then unleash a 98, he’s out.

Everybody just tries to throw their arm out since they were 12 and it shows.

@@kdutch98 what do you mean nope? I wrote that he routinely stayed around 94-95 then would increase his velocity at the end of games depending on the situation. You basically rephrased what I wrote.

@@Balshem i was agreeing with you.

I taught myself to throw a knuckleball in little league and they threw me out of a game because the ump said I was throwing illegal curveballs, which honestly was ridiculous because it wasn’t like I had Wakefield movement on it. But yeah we were never allowed to throw curveballs until high school level. Middle school it technically wasn’t allowed but they never enforced the rule

@@dylanhawthorne4842 thats because throwing a curve can cause an arm injury that damages the growth plate in your elbow. You don't want that to happen, but especially not before your body has stopped growing

@@Calibrownsfan happened to me, started throwing a nasty Nolan Ryan curve ball when I was 11 and threw my arm out 4 games into my senior year of high school. Grew up playing short stop had to play second cause I couldn't throw from short lol.

Messed up my elbow, throwing curve balls as a kid

Thousands?? 😂

@@bradleyhayman2682 you play a tourney 30-40:weekends out of the year. Total pitches per year 2000 at 9m and 10, 3000 pitches 11+. Average inning is around 15 pitches. So maybe not 2000 innings but well over a thousand. That’s an insane amount of stress on these kids but they do it to get scholarship. This is the norm for the sport now. Colleges look to the travel ball circuit.

Travel ball is the number one reason no one can change my mind on that. Kids should not be playing baseball as much as they are not only is it hard on their arms. It’s hard ontheir whole body. Plus, I thought pictures have always thrown as hard as they can throw.

Agree and i think this is the case for most kids now. The body can only take so much wear and tear.

Good point. Some teams like drafting pitchers from cooler climates as they haven't been throwing as much

This has been my thinking from the get go. Psychologically, if pitchers know they realistically only have 5-6 innings, they're going to go maximum effort the whole time. Knowing you might have to go 7-8 innings would naturally lead you to pace yourself a bit.

yea and the game is completely different, smaller strike zones, better prepared hitters, no more shift. pitchers need to be on their A game every pitch, very, very difficult to be a command pitcher nowadays, u cant blame pitchers for chasing what it takes to succeed nowadays

@@lavs8696 it def seems like there is going to be mixed feelings about that. I get that it’s harder to be a pitcher now but also it makes the game better. Forcing guys to be under a certain time and honestly making the game a little bit easier for hitters makes it better for baseball fans. But I also can agree that if there was incentives to go longer that would benefit the injury crisis. But regarding how hard it is to be a pitcher, it’s hard to be a damn hitter too.

@@noahmarshall8625 i agree, i was moreso just listing the realities, not really grievances. I enjoy the faster paced games, tighter (correct) strike zones, and as a result more offense/more flamethrowers. Definitely a better game to watch. Only downside is you will lose tons of pitchers. Who knows, they may go the way of the running back in the NFL soon, apart from a few genetic freaks, the norm might be get a good 4-5 years out of them then dispose of them.

100 pitch start ?!? 125 minimum. I had games in which I threw 200 pitches. I never had a major arm injury and I threw hard with conviction. Kids today don't practice enough and don't pitch as.much in games to build upntheir arms. Pitching in games is what built up my arm strength the best with my mechanics. The compact motions and leg whip kick finishes are killing the arms of these kids. And I don't hear anyone talking about running anymore, or at least biking to build up their legs

Jaime Moyer agrees with this.

@@ericheisler5351 So does Randy Jones, the 1976 Cy Young winner who threw sinkers in the low 80's pitch after pitch.

@@slundgr Probably the most underrated pitch. You would think it would be more beneficial to learn that than try to throw a 100 mph fastball

@@BurnNotice2023 Yes, along with the changeup.

@@slundgr Yes, I made that point in another post. But that would require actual "pitching" not "throwing"

Every Saturday!

@@randombutrelevant1606 It would not change anything.

So true, Smoltzy IS the best! Love that guy!

@@randombutrelevant1606Greg Maddux says otherwise

Side sessions regularly… but pitch movement is more important than speed.

Facts, when I was in college 85 was the number. I never understood that because I've faced guys who couldn't break glass and would tear me up yet another guy throwing 92 getting smoked. There is no number except stats to measure quality

@@Brhoward31 well it's pretty well explained by data, 85 with outlier movement and shape is more effective than a flat 92. For a top college throwing 90+ alone would not be enough today.

@my2l oh for sure but in 06, that data wasn't available like that.

He could dial a 98 for a key inning or two late in a game... even as a Starter.. I think he had superior genetics though. Some guys just don't get hurt as much. Randy Johnson was like that too.. He could pitch 94-96 for most of the game, but in key late inning gas it up over 100. Also, hitters are just better now. The art of hitting comes into play as well.

@@alcoholya hitters are definitely forced to adapt, I think with the invention of the new trajekt pitching machine the hitters will slowly balance the scale.

Smoltz still would have been drafted, come on now. They just would have ruined his arm.

Great point!

No it isn’t. Randy Johnson is the antithesis to your statement. Degrees of external rotation per second and altered pronation at release.

​@Smllc22318 he also has was 6 10 and had the leverage to pull it off. Randy was still centered on his delivering. Some machines are built differently. Kind of like a golf club. The longer the shaft the more bend you can put on it like a driver. The shorter the shaft the easier for it to break like a putter. Look at greg maddux. Small and didnt throw hard and never had injuries.

@@croach69 wrong. Longer “shafts” as you say create a longer lever arm. Longer lever arms increase torque at the pivot. In such an example, longer Randy Johnson arms would exacerbate delivery inefficiencies and encourage injury rather than cover them. In your example, golf club makers use “steps” towards the ends of iron shafts to account for the ease of flexing a longer iron shaft during the golf swing relative to shorter irons using the same shaft stiffness. Without this, the longer shaft would stand a higher chance of breaking, not a lower chance. Go find a short stick and a long stick of equal thickness in the yard, the longer stick is easier to break every time. The comment I questioned was related to a horizontal arm path and how that relates to TJ as a function of throwing a sweeper pitch. Those two things are not related and Randy Johnson is one example of why that is not true so as to demonstrate my counter argument as easily as possible. Many pitchers have thrown breaking balls that move east to west more than north to south and it is a function of the shape of the delivery - the “sweeper” is not a new pitch it is just being recognized with a different name. Watch videos of anyone who threw side arm in the history of baseball and you can see a sweeper as early as the beginning of baseball itself. And before you say it, no a sweeper does not relegate one to throwing side arm, but they will utilize a more 3/4 delivery than Gooden did - hence the angle of his curveball. Tommy John surgeries and pitchers durability are more closely related to altered pronation at release to impart as much spin rate as possible (this is why breaking balls will have a more deleterious effect on elbow health compared to straight pitches) and emphasizing velocity. Pronation at release is a compensatory mechanism inherent in throwing that protects the elbow. John Smoltz said it best in a recent interview that the game and contracts rewarding these metrics above most others, is beginning to rear its head. Outside of spin rate and what some would refer to as “over throwing” the measure of degrees of external rotation per second of the shoulder joint during the delivery is the primary contributor to torque at the elbow resulting in elbow injury. Former professional pitcher. No I wasn’t a hall of famer, now work in orthopedics.

That is not how you throw a 12/6 CB. You can throw it out of a 1:00 (LHP) clock position with your elbow slightly above the glenohumeral joint. The key is spinning the ball at a true 12/6 rotation. The cue I use with my pitchers is think middle knuckles to the sky, get the hand to the side of the ball and run those knuckles from the catcher’s mask through his bellybutton.

They would get signed. Just not as top of the rotation. However, they would be the guy on the team that makes 150+ starts over a 5 year stretch.

Im pretty sure maddux threw 96 98mph early in his career

They both threw mid 90s in at the start of the career around 93-94 average. However, the thing about it is they could throw harder when they needed it. They teach guys to empty the tank now on every pitch but back then pitchers were taught to only use it as needed. Also, the science behind pitching and workouts has changed. I guarantee both would have greater velocity if they were privy to the knowledge that we have now.

@@joshualee6765 Maddux admitted he threw hard to get noticed. But became a pitcher once he was drafted. He learned to locate, change speeds, and make the ball move in various ways.

Greg Maddux and tom glavine were control artists pitchers.

I think he feels that he wouldn’t be given a chance to compete because he didn’t max effort 95+ every pitch even though he had it in him to touch 100. I remember when he was the closer for a time and he would consistently hit 98-100+ with a nasty splitter. Then when he returned to the starting role, he sat 92-94 and would hit 96-97 here and there with the splitter and slider combo.

@@juancisneros7005yup. I grew up watching him in ATL. He was the hard throwing SP which is crazy bc guys today routinely hit upper 90’s almost like it’s the standard. He’d be pretty mild by comparison!

@@patrickd8770 Definitely. Smoltz was the power arm of the trio of him, Maddux and Glavine. Maddux and Glavine were geniuses at dissecting batters and made them look foolish even without the upper 90s fastball even though Greg could hit 93-94 as he was coming through the minors but then figured out using location and changing speeds gave him the recipe for success. It seems nowadays pitchers coming up pitching that way would be turned away so fast.

@@juancisneros7005 yes and Glavine was usually low 80’s but untouchable when he was on his game. I wonder if that’s even possible today ? I can’t think of anyone who keeps it that low today

there was no technology to measure it so it was not quantifiable, but everyone knew the more you spin a ball the more it moves, new tech just allows you to have instant feedback and make spin improvements.

Most of the huge increases in lateral movement (sliders and sinkers) you are seeing is no based in spin rate. It is the effect of seam shifted wake. They are making it move just like Maddox made his 2 seam front hip lefties.

I slightly disagree. It's not good to try throwing your pitches all year round, but it is good to just play catch in the off-season. Not trying to throw as hard as one can. Not trying to throw breaking pitches. Just playing catch, like kids do with their dads.

Meh look back a century. MLB players pitched way more throughout their seasons. Than barnstormed all over the country. Some had second jobs. Because the pay wasn't enough. Look at some of the hall of fame pitchers. The god awful amount of innings they pitched. Back when there was no surgery or knowledge to fix anything arm related. Back than they pitched not throw. They had usually multiple pitches in their bags. It was alot of control and changing speed. Also alot of pitching to contact. Thrusting their defense. Managers knowing the game shifting the defenders. Maybe shift a center fielder up. Because you know the odds are the contact will lead to a shallow fly ball to center. The problem is to much on throwing hard and spin rate crap that don't matter.

Pressure on kids from the day they enter the sports pipelines. Batshit crazy schedules and batshit competitive vicarious parents. Highly evolved training programs intended to extract every last ounce of energy from the human body. Data, metrics and analytics just to make sure we put as much pressure on everyone as possible (even though good research has been done, especially in football, showing most metrics are useless at predicting game performance). Its to the point where the ONLY question on my mind at the start of every season is "Will my team get destroyed by injuries this year?"

Well said

not true, the best pitchers can pitch better than ever now, except they throw everything max effort. If you look at stats walk rates have remained the same or lower than 30 years ago. If an 88mph arm could really be a top level starter we would see one in mlb, except that's not really possible in today's game.

Bingo. It's all about money.

Just think, you could learn how to throw a changeup and increase your career by the same amount of pitches

We need to spread the word. This is like CTE in football. People need to be educated like an innoculation against ignorance. We need enough parents to know the health risks of chasing velocity and spin rate.

100 % agree. The result would be more strikeouts less scoring MLB no way wants that. Would rather sacrifice arms.

Underrated comment.

I was thinking even left to right expansion. Make the plate wider. An inch on both sides would be a tremendous difference.

@@86bryand Verticality is one thing, but changing the basic dimensions of the field is not okay (including the recent enlargement of the bases).

How would that slow down pitchers. If a 93mpb fastball at the chest is as effective as a 99mph fastball at the knees, pitchers will just throw 99 at the chest.

Yea. It ain’t the pitch clock

Oh interesting I never heard that.. a new pictures did a lot of running but I didn't know it helped with soreness. How much distance would you recommend let's say 11-year-old to run after pitching?

Increases blood flow to the body, increased oxygen in the blood. Makes sense!

Uh. Hard to buy that argument. But blood flow does aid in healing

players do cardio, just not as much as the old school coaches tell them to. It's standard protocol for pitchers to do some running after starts for bloodflow to the shoulders.

@@my2l they all probably don’t do anywhere near enough. Which makes my point.

A lefty throwing mid 80s and can pitch would still get high level college offers 20 years ago.

90s braves were fun to watch. Im a yankees fan. Greg, tom, and john were b.a

Ryan used his body a lot. Strong legs helped take some of the load off his arm.

@@ncasti Yeah, I remember seeing old clips of Ryan weight training, one of the few to do it back then. He was strong like bull!

Guys arm was the baseball equivalent of tom platz's thighs. Absolute freak arm structure that let him throw 85mph at 60.

@@ncastiyep, which he showed Randy Johnson, and he too had a long career as a pitcher.

If you look at his body, the way he used his legs, and then his wind up, his arm was doing the least amount of action. He got most of his energy before the arm went forward, that is the key in all of this.

Chapman also only has to work 1 maybe 2 innings a game so he can afford to throw that hard.

@@TheForeverRanger I would agree but a lot of them are not starters as well. I mean Bautista is a closer as well and he’s out. So that goes out the window

pitchers are still pitchers in mlb, they just throw harder than before, a thrower with terrible command is not making it to mlb let alone sticking around for a career.

@@my2l batters get hit in the head often I don’t see pitchers hitting their spots in todays age of mlb baseball. Is very rare. Most of the technique is to over power the batter. There’s no sequencing and executing that sequence in todays pitching so no there are very few “pitchers” pitchers. The game has changed and yea it works chucking 103 mph is very hard to hit but to what detriment. Injuries are up 🤷🏽‍♂️

@@luisz3354 that's simply not true at all, walk rate has not changed much in the last 40-50 years (it's actually significantly lower than the 90s) and the starter with the worst walk rate now wouldn't even be bottom 10 thirty years ago, the league is actually less tolerant of guys who can't throw strikes now. If your definition of a "pitcher pitcher" is the 88mph lefty with a nice changeup that guy has been filtered out a long time ago in the minors, you NEED TO miss bats to be effective in today's game, striking out 5 per 9 innings makes you rely heavily on defense and luck.

Same.

Well said. Incentives is everything. Bad incentives lead to bad behavior, if you want to change behavior, examine the incentives.

Truth. Smoltz is real

Agreed. Bring back real baseball. I think this has a chance to happen, but probably not through existing pro leagues. It may happen by baseball being reinvented from the ground up through groups like MLW, Blitzball, etc.

Dumb

@@bnegs521 dumb how?

@spacelion4763 and if you use the first 4 the 5th guy stays out there and what if he is having a bad day. Look Chris knows nothing about baseball

@@bnegs521 Forces managers to plan accordingly. Again...the problem right now is starters being used for 5 innings...so the mindset is having them throw as hard as they can without regard for them needing to go deeper into games. We need to FORCE pitchers to stop throwing hard to every single batter and pitch to contact more. Limiting the amount of pitchers a manager can use would FORCE that change. Sounds to me like you're the dumbass here

@@bnegs521 If you use up all your pitchers, you get fucked. That is the point. It's to force pitchers to pitch longer, and relearn how to pitch without just throwing as hard as they can every pitch. Having 20 relievers is what enables teams to be so reckless with their pitchers health.

He did. He said they can't throw it as hard, as often as they do.

@@name-vi6fs That's not a viable answer. MLB management would have to agree that all of their pitchers would perform at a level below their best. Then there would have to be a method to measure and control such a thing. And how would you distinguish a decent pitcher capable of 92 MPH from Justin Verlander's intentionally slowed down 92 MPH pitch?

@GalileoSmith his answer is correct. You want a magic solution in a biological world. There is no magical cure for torn tendons and ligaments, only surgery and time. Smoltz is essentially saying the PA and owners need to create a protocol similar to how concussions are handled in sports. If they take a look at previous decades in pitching, they can create a baseline of sorts. If the players and owners don't care, pitchers will continue to injure themselves. It's that simple.

They are going to have to go back to actually being "pitchers" instead of throwers. Guys are just trying to blow everything right past the batter instead of pitching to the hitters weakness or some having some actual control and putting pitches where they are getting miss hits. Let the guys behind you do their job.

@@GalileoSmithit is a viable answer bc it used to be the accepted method

1000%. You'd think that is what the coaches would be for, and the young players want to throw hard. But it seems like all the coaches and parents just want their kids to blow out their arms throwing gas, instead of learning control.

It's really about the economics: if the teams can afford to treat pitchers as disposable, they will. If it costs too much, or if the talent pool dries up, that will force change. Sad but true.

I would think 1-2 less bullpen arms would incentivize longevity of starting pitchers.

@@Fetch0491-2 more is what I said haha. Basically make it easier for teams to pull in the 4th or 5th. Might be crazy, I’m not an expert. But seems the standardization of the 6 inning starter is possibly a cause here when combined w smoltz’ point around analytics. Id want to learn more about the history of the “starting pitcher” cause I honestly don’t know the background on how we got to the current bullpen roster rules

@@yateswebb If you have pitcher pitch less, then they will throw harder, because they can. That's part of the problem. The reason pitchers pitch less isn't because it keeps them healthy, but because they can't go as long while throwing as hard as they do. The obsession with velocity led to smaller pitch counts and less healthy pitchers. I used to read books on pitching from HOF pitchers, and they all said they didn't throw as hard as they could all the time, because they were expected to pitch deep into the game and for many starts in a year. But they could dial it up in a key spot. They also said that changing speed was the key, because batters can time up to even a 100 MPH fastball, if that's all you throw. Whereas if you have a 90 MPH fastball, and a 70 MPH Change or Curve, you can get the batters off speed with either one.

More physical therapy each day but not sure even that would do it

They would rather have pitchers only pitch 3 innings as hard as they can, and increase the roster size to 25 pitchers, before they actually address the real cause.

This is very true

@@FlippinBatsPod right?!

He was the exception, not the rule. Also, he used his legs very strongly in his windup to get the whole chain going. His arm was basically going along for the ride.

God the author life gave him strong tendons and ligaments. Thats the key is to work on developing stronger tendons and ligaments in the off seasons. I believe doing Isometric exercises and weight lifting will help in this area. Nolan Ryan is a great example of this.

He was a one off. There will NEVER BE ANOTHER

I've always wondered about this myself. If the purpose of inflammation is to increase blood flow, and the purpose of increased blood flow is to increase healing, what effect would we expect icing to have? Sure, it may reduce pain, but pain is just a side effect of the inflammation.

@@blahblah49000 You need that inflammation to start the healing process It’s another reason for tired arms late in the season.

But he didn't spin the ball tbe way they do now. Fast ball, change and curve.

Some guys are outliers. Ryan was able to throw extremely hard and snap off an unhittable curveball for 27 years without an injury, he's an exception.

@@NotFadeAway522 Back in the day Tommy John was the exception. Tom Seaver was the rule.

@@johnshepherd9676 It was all in his mechanics. Pitchers don't run enough today. Seaver,Koosman &Ryan ran in the outfield every day.

@@philstaniscia7103 The mechanics of spin put stress on the elbow. The more spin and velocity the more the stress and higher rates of injury. There is more emphasis on bio-mechanics today than in previous eras but the bio-mechanics emphasize maximizing performance and not longevity.

Another guy who “almost made it” but got hurt. Lololololol. Do you teach middle school gym class now?