Corey Binns, in Popular Science, shares an interesting feature on “The biomechanics behind throwing 100 mph without ripping your elbow apart.” (Hat tip to my father-in-law for the lead to this one.) According to the feature:
A new study published by [Glenn] Fleisig [the research director of the American Sports Medicine Institute] earlier this year in the American Journal of Sports Medicine showed that the fastball actually puts slightly more stress on the player’s arm than a curveball. The bigger risk factor, the study concluded, is how many pitches are thrown. Based on this research, Little League Baseball just instituted its first pitch-count limits: 50 pitches a day for eight-year-olds, scaling up with age.
Pretty interesting that eight-year-olds are given a limit of 50 pitches…whereas most big league starting pitchers are cooked after 100 pitches (per game).
Me? I’m still on the fence with pitch counts. I think you need to look at pitches thrown per plate appearance along with pitches thrown per inning in conjunction with the overall pitch count.
If a pitcher throws 100 pitches in a game, and he’s never had a three-ball count on any batter, and he’s never thrown more than 15 pitches per inning, that’s not the same as a pitcher throwing 100 pitches in a game where he’s barely made it into the fifth inning. The level of stress associated to both sets of 100 pitches is not the same.
And, that’s why, if you want to really protect young arms, I think the answer is simple: Teach the kids to throw strikes and to not be afraid of pitching to contact. If they do that, the pitch count issue will take care of itself.
2 Responses to “PopSci: How it Works: The Fastball”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
July 19th, 2008 at 3:38 am
Good post. It’s human nature in high stress situations to try to do *a little more*, and it’s when pitchers try to do *more* that they change their delivery and, potentially, put additional stress on their arms, whether or not they are actually throwing the ball harder.
July 19th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Pitch counts weren’t an issue until everybody started babying pitchers. If you throw out his first and last season, Walter Johnson averaged 300 IP a year for 19 years. Before that, he was working in oil fields. And somehow, a century later, we can’t expect healthy young kids (or grumpy old veterans) to toss 6 innings every 5 days. And, in the process, we’ve necessitated a whole platoon of mediocre relievers to cover half the game.