A disservice to the discourse
Mitigating the Risk vs. Solving it
Strider's 4 pieces to the puzzle
Arm injuries … will it travel to the back page
My favorite topic - Velocity
Harder throwing has contributed to injuries: The average four-seam fastball velocity was a record 94.2 mph last season, up from 91.8 mph in 2008, according to MLB Statcast data. Parents buy youth players weighted balls and track them with radar guns,
2008, velocity tracked by PITCH fw/x - camera-based, measured closer to the plate
The Athletic The Wind Up
Levi Weaver and Ken Rosental
How Mason Miller started throwing 100
Last week, we told you about Mason Miller, the A's closer who is throwing harder than anyone else in baseball. Today, Stephen Nesbitt has the story detailing how Miller went from throwing sub-90 mph in college to routinely hitting triple digits.
It turns out, Miller had Type 1 diabetes. Miller has gained 65 pounds of muscle, and double digits on his fastball. When we wrote last week, he had six of the 10 fastest pitches this year. He now has eight of the top 10, with Ryan Helsley of the Cardinals (sixth place, 102.4 mph) and Justin Martinez of the D-Backs and Nate Pearson of the Blue Jays (tied for 10th, 102.3) the only interlopers into Miller's domain.
102. - 103 96 = 97
My other favorite subject - Tommy John recovery
Since returning from a second TJ, Nathan Eovaldi is 41-27 and became a two-time All-Star, Daniel Hudson has made 420 appearances over a decade and Chris Capuano pitched in 192 games over seven seasons.
“You tell them that this is unfortunate, but this is your MRI," he explained. “This is probably why it happened — meaning you threw outside the envelope of your tissue quality — but we have a procedure that can repair your ligament and reconstruct it, kind of a belt/suspenders way that once it heals, the likelihood of you going back to pitching at the same level or above is 95%.
Book of Joe will not mention Fleisig's name - will refer to as a prominent bio machnanics expert
“We really improved the mechanics or biomechanics of many pitchers from major leagues down to little leagues,” says Glenn Fleisig, the research director at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham who is also an adviser to MLB and an established leader in pitching biomechanics.
“Improving the mechanics means getting more velocity and maximizing your force of using your whole body, but that has come with a price,” Fleisig says.
“The weak links are the ligaments and tendons. They have ligaments and tendons holding their joints together, like the Tommy John ligament in the elbow and their rotator cuff tendons in the shoulder.
Pirates
Paul Skenes unleashes 100 mph heat 34 times during unreal night on mound
The Pirates aren't in a rush to bring Paul Skenes up to the big leagues, but the Pittsburgh prospect is making a case to be up there sooner rather than later. Skenes threw 3 ⅓ innings scoreless on Thursday night for Triple-A Indianapolis in an outing where he reached at least 100 mph on 34 of the 43 four-seam fastballs he threw
Skenes, the 2023 No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 draft and MLB Pipeline's No. 3 overall prospect, averaged 100.5 mph on his fastball Thursday.
“With Paul, we've been very intentional about how we're building his volume coming into the season with a goal of really accomplishing two things,” Pirates general manager Ben Cherington said recently during an interview with The Fan,. “The goal is to try to get him to an appropriate total volume for 2024 coming off last year, when he pitched a full college season and then just a little bit of pro ball.
“We don't want to go from zero to 100 right away. Paul's so important to us long term, so we want to be really thoughtful about that.”
4 days rest
To manager Derek Shelton, it didn't matter that Jones had thrown just 59 pitches, a staggering 50 for strikes. The Pirates had determined in advance that Jones would pitch only five innings, because he was working on four days' rest for the first time.
It starts with good intentions. That's the point that should quiet the howling, if only a little, about the way teams handle young pitchers. Think about it: Who has more incentive to keep pitchers healthy than the teams that depend on them?
The problem is that nobody knows how to do it. “I wish I could say there is a perfect formula for it — there is not,” said Ben Cherington, the Pittsburgh Pirates' general manager. “At least, we don't have it. We're just trying to be as thoughtful as we can.”
Cherington, who has spent more than 25 years in baseball, offered a nuanced explanation for how we got here.
“There's a bit of a paradox, because on one hand — not just as an industry, but the whole pitching ecosystem, which includes amateur baseball — I truly believe pitching people and pitchers themselves understand much more about how to move on the mound to be able to protect the body and be efficient,” Cherington said. “And we have, obviously, much more precise ways of measuring right now than we did when I was a farm director and, honestly, we were just sort of guessing.
Around the Horn
Judge because of the size of his talent, contract, track record and, well, size draws the most attention for the offensive downturn. He has two hits in his last 20 at-bats with 12 strikeouts — though one of those hits was a winning single in Toronto. So when he struck out in the ninth against Jason Adam when one Judge-ian blast could have sent 47,629 home happy, he was booed by a segment of the crowd.
Nestor Cortes, admitted not liking the reception considering all that Judge has done for the organization. Judge said, “I have heard worse and would probably be doing the same [booing] in that situation.”
Judge said he feels great and that there are no physical maladies. He said there is not a singular reason for his slow start, noting both mechanical and pitch recognition issues, but mainly saying that he knows he will not be given a lot of pitches to do damage against based on his reputation and he must seize those moments — and so far has failed. He cited the long season and not being worried. About himself or the offense in total.
The Athletic: David O'Brein Spencer Strider
He also addressed the growing controversy surrounding what some have termed an epidemic of MLB pitching injuries. “There's so many things that go into it. It's such a complex situation, …seeing people talk and implying that they somehow are in a position to know why injuries are happening.
Strider is correct, many pieces of the injury puzzle, but they're not all the same size.
Complex to solve does not necessarily mean complex to understand.
“Yeah, there's just so many people in any topic, in any field, that are probably speaking out of their depth,” Strider said. “You know, we want to solve this problem.
Will never solve, goal is to mitigate, Do they understand?
“I's a long (discussion),” he said of what is contributing to increased pitching injuries. “Of course, the pitch clock. The condition of the balls. The banning of substances to gain grip. The effective shrinking of the strike zone. All those things are playing a factor in injuries. Guys are bigger, faster and stronger than they've ever been. I mean, you can't take that away.
Not mentioned “How you throw the baseball.” Bigger Faster Stronger is the go to phrase, but we're not speaking of Lineman/Linebackers.
“The environment of the game should be such that guys are able to compete at their highest ability and stay healthy, or have a chance to.” “It's gonna be a while before I start throwing or anything, but I'll trust the rehab process,” Strider said.
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Complex to solve depends upon one's ability to assess, distill, implement
1. Compile the issues which the experts believe impact arm health
2. Rank them according to their severity/ impact
3. Decide what MLB can realistically impact and what they can not
4. Decide which issues can be addressed short term, which ones long term
3. Develop a strategy and time line for each and implement accordingly
5. Get the experts in one room - all speak to the issue through their own narrow lens.
6. Needs to be an individual who can widen the collective lens
Around the Horn
Boone and Torres
After Stanton's home run, he watched Torres keep the rally alive with a 101.9 mph ground-ball single up the middle. Torres had struck out swinging in all three of his at-bats before the hit, and he came into the game hitting just .206 and after making a crucial error in Tuesday's loss.
“Offensively, I don't worry about Gleyber,” Boone said. … he's just too talented of a hitter to be held down.”
.243 / .259 / .257 / .273
.724 / 6.97 / .761 / .800
It's an ultr-marathon
Yankees' offense slipping back to ugly 2023 ways despite Juan Soto's torrid start
Instead, the overall offense is too in the Venn diagram with last season — a .237/.332/.378 slash line vs. a 2023 of .227/.304/.397. Judge camouflaged many offensive sins in 2022 with his historic 62 homers and the eight weeks he missed in the heart of last season after injuring his right big toe fully exposed a lineup that was overreliant on one star.
Judge because of the size of his talent, contract, track record and, well, size draws the most attention for the offensive downturn. He has two hits in his last 20 at-bats with 12 strikeouts — though one of those hits was a winning single in Toronto. So when he struck out in the ninth against Jason Adam when one Judge-ian blast could have sent 47,629 home happy, he was booed by a segment of the crowd.
Nestor Cortes, admitted not liking the reception considering all that Judge has done for the organization. Judge said, “I have heard worse and would probably be doing the same [booing] in that situation.”
Judge said he feels great and that there are no physical maladies. He said there is not a singular reason for his slow start, noting both mechanical and pitch recognition issues, but mainly saying that he knows he will not be given a lot of pitches to do damage against based on his reputation and he must seize those moments — and so far has failed. He cited the long season and not being worried. About himself or the offense in total.
Tom Brady and his Boss…College football coaches/ NIL / the Portal
Character is not gained by intelligence it is forged through adversity