As baseball becomes more and more competitive every year, teams come up with ideas to have their pitchers throw harder fastballs, filthier sliders and curveballs with unreal vertical and horizontal break, and knee-buckling changeups 15 or 20 mph slower than their heaters.
This all sounds fantastic for performance-related reasons: better pitches make better pitchers, and better pitchers lead to more wins.
However, this new wave of nasty pitches, top-end velocity, and movement has consequences on the body, more specifically but not limited to the arm.
MLB has never seen pitchers get injured so frequently, and for longer periods.
The list of pitchers who have gotten hurt in February and March is long, and there are still several days until March 20, the day of the first scheduled regular-season game.
“SPs with injuries since spring training began: Gerrit Cole, Kyle Bradish, Kodai Senga, Justin Verlander, Lucas Giolito, Sonny Gray, Taj Bradley, Gavin Williams, Braxton Garrett, Edward Cabrera,” Underdog MLB tweeted.
SPs with injuries since spring training began:
Gerrit Cole
Kyle Bradish
Kodai Senga
Justin Verlander
Lucas Giolito
Sonny Gray
Taj Bradley
Gavin Williams
Braxton Garrett
Edward Cabrera— Underdog MLB (@Underdog__MLB) March 13, 2024
Some of those pitchers are expected back shortly, like Gray and Verlander.
Others, like Giolito, are already out for the year.
The jury is still out on most of those names, though, but the majority of them have experienced some kind of arm injury.
Pitching can be very stressful for the body, particularly the arm.
Repeating a violent delivery 80-100 times every five days (plus throwing and bullpen sessions) has a toll, and it becomes more evident every day.
The hope is that the list of names stops growing so quickly, but the outlook on that front is not particularly encouraging.
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