While baseball players, medical professionals and conspiracy theorists try to assess blame concerning the current rash of pitching injuries at all levels of the game, the problem — if common sense is used — could be solved rather easily.
Don’t throw the ball so hard.
There, done and done. We can soon get the Shane Biebers, Jacob deGroms and Spencer Striders of the pitching world back to doing what baseball fans want to see them do and not have to worry about lost seasons and shortened careers.
OK, back to reality. As long as the human arm can produce triple-digit velocity and the quest for more and more heat and spin rate equals fortune, fame, Cy Young Awards and World Series titles, elbows and shoulders are going to continue to fall apart at high rates.
How high? In 2022, 34.4% of Major League Baseball pitchers had undergone replacement procedures for the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow, better known as Tommy John surgery. To start this season, the number had risen to 35.3%, and that was before the likes of established MLB stars Bieber, Strider, Felix Bautista, Lucas Giolito, Eury Perez, Brandon Woodruff and many others joined the current list of pitchers with UCL damage.