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Conditioning pitchers to go 4 innings or 70 pitches last season seems to have backfired on Hinch and the Tigers. Including Turnbull, 60% of our expected starting staff is now injured. Manning and Mize the latest to go down? Hopefully, they make it back. If they need TJ surgery, get it done and don't play around for 2 or 3 months. Hopefully, Skubal and Alexander don't get injured too. Our SP depth is going to be tested quite quickly. Like Sparky used to say, "You can't win the division in April but you can lose it"

Posted (edited)
34 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

Conditioning pitchers to go 4 innings or 70 pitches last season seems to have backfired on Hinch and the Tigers. Including Turnbull, 60% of our expected starting staff is now injured. Manning and Mize the latest to go down? Hopefully, they make it back. If they need TJ surgery, get it done and don't play around for 2 or 3 months. Hopefully, Skubal and Alexander don't get injured too. Our SP depth is going to be tested quite quickly. Like Sparky used to say, "You can't win the division in April but you can lose it"

I find it hard to believe that with all the medical technology being aimed at pitchers it is making virtually no difference in the injury rate. That argues to me that they already know the answer but it is just too devastating to the current state of the game to admit it out loud - it has to be something along the lines of "there is no safe breaking ball" or "pitch over 95", etc.

Edited by gehringer_2
Posted
6 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I find it hard to believe that with all the medical technology being aimed at pitchers it is making virtually no difference in the injury rate. That argues to me that they already know the answer but it is just too devastating to the current state of the game to admit it out loud - it has to be something along the lines of "there is no safe breaking ball" or "pitch over 95", etc.

Limiting pitchers pitch count conditioned them to be unable to safely go over 100 pitches without risking injury. Once their arm gets fatigued, it puts stress on them to throw more pitches. Are we about to start an era of SP only going 3 or 4 innings? 60 pitch limits? Or maybe we could have these pitchers actually have a minor league career and condition their bodies to go deeper into games? It seems like the more they limit these pitchers, the more they get hurt.

Posted
7 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I find it hard to believe that with all the medical technology being aimed at pitchers it is making virtually no difference in the injury rate. That argues to me that they already know the answer but it is just too devastating to the current state of the game to admit it out loud - it has to be something along the lines of "there is no safe breaking ball" or "pitch over 95", etc.

It's possible teams like the Rays and Giants have already figured this out which is why they are so committed to short starts and bullpen led pitching staffs. The Tigers are behind in this thinking still trying to build a team via starting pitching and drafting Mize 1-1 and Jobe #3 instead of position players. That is perhaps the wrong approach in a now breaking ball pitching mind set. Starting pitching is a weak foundation upon which to build a team. Despite their excessive pampering our staters are dropping like flies. They are protecting Jobe like he's the Pope touring Afghanistan. At this rate he will be 21 before he pitches a whole game. They should reconsider where to invest their money and expect lots of turnover on the pitching staff. 

Posted (edited)
17 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

Limiting pitchers pitch count conditioned them to be unable to safely go over 100 pitches without risking injury. Once their arm gets fatigued, it puts stress on them to throw more pitches. Are we about to start an era of SP only going 3 or 4 innings? 60 pitch limits? Or maybe we could have these pitchers actually have a minor league career and condition their bodies to go deeper into games? It seems like the more they limit these pitchers, the more they get hurt.

but I don't believe these are  fatigue mediated injuries. More inflammation/irritation type. You can't condition your way to a more wear resistant UCL. You have to stop doing what is causing it to fray or stay on a cycle that allows more effective healing. The truth is working shorter doesn't even help - if it did relievers wouldn't be going down just as commonly as starters.

If you try to look back at why things are so different from the past, the one argument is that pitchers have to work closer to max effort a higher percentage of the time, and I'm certainly not here to dispute that, but I also wonder how much damage is being done to arms because few guys ever take the 4-5 solid months off without throwing that used to be the case. Joint tissues grow/heal slowly. That's just one thought, but for whatever reasons the situation is not getting any better.

Edited by gehringer_2
Posted
1 minute ago, gehringer_2 said:

but I don't believe these are  fatigue mediated injuries. More inflammation/irritation type. You can't condition your way to a more wear resistant UCL. You have to stop doing what is causing it to fray or stay on a cycle that allows more healing.

I don't agree. You always hear about sending a RP down to stretch him out. So he doesn't get injured. His arm/body as a RP is used to going 50 pitches or so (in long relief) but they need him to go deeper. Same with a closer, you don't want to see him throw 30-35 pitches because he'll end up hurt. I saw some talking heads on MLB TV saying quality starting pitching isn't as important as a solid BP because the bullpen will be deciding a majority of the games. Having SP go 7 innings/110 pitches a game 30 to 32 times a season may be a thing of the past fairly soon. Heck, I remember when SP had no pitch count and pitched every 4th day.

Posted (edited)
1 minute ago, Sports_Freak said:

I don't agree. You always hear about sending a RP down to stretch him out. So he doesn't get injured. His arm/body as a RP is used to going 50 pitches or so (in long relief) but they need him to go deeper. Same with a closer, you don't want to see him throw 30-35 pitches because he'll end up hurt. I saw some talking heads on MLB TV saying quality starting pitching isn't as important as a solid BP because the bullpen will be deciding a majority of the games. Having SP go 7 innings/110 pitches a game 30 to 32 times a season may be a thing of the past fairly soon. Heck, I remember when SP had no pitch count and pitched every 4th day.

I think working your endurance up from relief to starting is a different issue than wearing out your UCL. Plus UCL, while it is the injury that causes the most lost time, is not the only thing you have to protect a pitcher from hurting that mandate some processes.

Edited by gehringer_2
Posted (edited)

The other thing that we have to be careful about also is not putting too rose colored a set of glasses on history. A LOT of pitchers did get hurt back in the day, but you only had half as many pros that had to have lucky genes and survive to keep the majors full when there were only 14 teams! And since pitchers did throw a lot more, including in the minors, maybe most of those guys got hurt and washed out long before they got to the majors (because there was no TJ in those days) and MLB fans never heard much about them.

Edited by gehringer_2
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Posted
1 minute ago, gehringer_2 said:

I think working your endurance up from relief to starting is a different issue.

It's conditioning your body to go deeper into games. When a body becomes fatigued, chances of injury goes way up. It's why the Tigers were being so careful with Mize, Manning and Skubal last season. Now, 2 of them are injured. Maybe babying them backfired? Or they were bound to eventually get hurt? No way to know but hopefully we don't start seeing all SP limited even more. 50 pitches or 4 innings? It's happening right before our eyes.

Posted
1 minute ago, gehringer_2 said:

The other thing that we have to be careful about also is not putting too rose colored a set of glasses on history. A LOT of pitchers did get hurt back in the day, but you only had half as many pros that had to have lucky genes and survive to keep the majors full when there were only 14 teams! And since pitchers did throw a lot more, including in the minors, maybe most of those guys got hurt and washed out (because there was no TJ in those days) and MLB fans never heard much about them.

Les Cain says hello....lol

Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

When a body becomes fatigued, chances of injury goes way up

All injuries are not similar. Fatigue effect is direct on muscle injuries, but fatigue effects skeletal issues  indirectly. If muscles lose tone, it put joints like knees at risk for hyper-extension for instance, but it's still hard to see how that effects the most common form of UCL injury, which is fraying from xs wear.

Edited by gehringer_2
Posted
3 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

All injuries are not similar. Fatigue effect is direct on muscle injuries, but fatigue effects skeletal issues  indirectly. If muscles lose tone, it put joints like knees at risk for hyper-extension for instance, but it's still hard to see how that effects the most common form of UCL injury, which is fraying from xs wear.

So it may be the stress of throwing certain pitches over and over that raises injury risk? That makes sense. Give me a staff of knuckle ball pitchers, those guys can throw 150 pitches...lol.

Posted (edited)

And the thing is, teams have tried to condition guys into being able to pitch deeper. Nolan Ryan made a big push when he was running the Rangers, other teams have tried more long toss, more of this/that. I don't think it's for lack of teams trying. Nothing seems to work. I'm as frustrated as anyone  - be nice if someone would figure it out!

Edited by gehringer_2
Posted

I’m trying to figure out if this team is worth paying to watch on mlb.tv this year. I always get radio so I can listen in my car. 

If this team continues to fail me I can at least watch men’s cycling races on Peacock for a week. Both La Flèche Wallonne on Wednesday and Liege-Bastogne-Liege next Sunday are terrific one-day races. But then Peacock doesn’t have anything else until mid-May. 
 

 

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