Session 3, 100 pitches

Clemens is a rare breed, steroids or not. His mechanics are exactly the same (and near perfect) on every pitch. Very, very few pitchers are able to do that. If Matsuzaka can do that, great for him, but if not that workload is going to catch up with him.

 

This is right on. I was sitting in a minor league clubhouse a couple of summers ago talking to the manager about some of his pitchers and he gave me one the best quotes ever that I couldn't use.

"These young guys don't learn a fuckin' thing in their first 50 pitches. If I don't leave 'em out there for at least 70 I ain't doing a god damned thing for the organization."

 

If you believe the second part of that, then you don't understand the first part of it.

 

ask a major league pitcher how his arm feels at the end of the season and you'll soon believe in pitch counts.

 

Tom, that may hold true for many guys, but I don't think it's a hard-and-fast rule. There are some guys who can pitch until they're damn near 50. Of course, they're freaks of nature. Ryan was one, and I wouldn't be surprised if Clemens somehow sticks around for another couple years. Wasn't Jesse Orosco like 47 by the time he retired?

And if you're Tim Wakefield, you still can be effective at 50 if you wanted to with that knuckler.

 

It's easier for a guy like Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan, since they rely on mostly fastballs. There's little you can do to tear your arm up if you're throwing mostly fastballs.

On the same token, guys like Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux have lasted because they are mostly fastball/changeup guys, and they have outstanding accuracy. So they minimize stress on their arms and pitches.

Pitch counts and mechanics mean a lot more to guys that rely on pitches that are tough on your arm, particularly splitters--the worst pitch on your arm if you don't throw it with perfect mechanics.

 

Pitch counts really just matter on the team behind the pitcher as well as the pitcher. If the team behind you cannot field, you are going to throw more pitches to more batters. You could be a stud pitcher but have no defense behind you, i.e. Brandon Webb.

 

That's the real reason behind it. Fastballs do little to hurt an arm. A major league pitcher could throw 150 of those a game if he wanted to. The stress on the elbow from curves, sliders, splitters, etc., is what gets them injured.
And there is some logic to the "pitching makes 'em stronger argument." When Leo Mazzone was with the Braves, their pitchers threw hard just about every day between starts. And through the 90s, not too many of their core guys had serious injuries, as I recall. Smoltz did, but not until he'd been in the league 10 years.

 

And those three pitchers still are ticking in their 40s.

 

This is the common misnomer about building arm strength. The problem with young (and by young I mean kids, junior high and high school) ball players today is they don't throw enough. And I don't mean pitching. Generally speaking, all kids do is pitch if they're good enough to be pitchers. I had a conversation with Jack McKeon a couple years ago and he was disgusted by how little kids throw now-a-days.

Kids find out they're good pitchers and all they want to do is pitch. But in order to build arm strength, you have to throw — mainly sutained sessions of long toss — to build arm strength.

I think kids' arms are beginning to deteriorate more quickly today because of the emphasis on Little Leaguers throwing breaking balls. Glory-hogging, and win-hungry parents have these kids doing anything necessary to win. If a kid strikes out his first three batters using a breaking ball other 11 and 12 year olds cant hit, they're going to have them throw more of them.

It's a strong pet peeve of mine that breaking ball should be outlawed in little league and on a personal note, Id never let my kid throw one until he's at least 16. If I'm not mistaken, Nolan Ryan didn't throw one until then and it worked out pretty well for him.

 

^^I agree. If I had a kid playing little league baseball, he wouldn't start pitching until he's on a regulation size field and he wouldn't throw a breaking ball until he's prepping for HS baseball.

Tons of HS coaches don't know what they're doing with kids either.

You've got coaches up around this area (KY) making kids throw when (and even before) practice starts on Feb. 15, and two weeks into the practicing, kids are throwing off of a mound. And a lot of coaches are letting them throw without sleeves, without long-tossing first, without stretching properly, without working out their rotator cuffs on hoses and light weights, and then having them throw their full array of pitches. When it's 40 degrees, or lower, kids don't need to be throwing anything but fastballs and changeups.

It's a combination of parents, coaches and kids. Parents are pushing their kids too hard at too young an age in order to get that scholarship or contract, coaches are pushing them because they want to win and the kids are pushing themselves for both reasons and more.

I'm actually working on a story right now on arm injuries in college baseball. It's a semi-investigative story, trying to find out if the influx of Tommy John surgeries are more common because it's an improving procedure that's getting more publicity or if there really is a dilemma with how kids are being brought up.