Thread by @Awood45

Thread: Something being overlooked with the amount of arm injuries recently is the fact that a huge number of players now throw @ moderate to high intents close to year round. When I first came into professional baseball in 2012 as soon as the season ended I usually wouldn’t

touch a baseball until at least December and I definitely wouldn’t be off a mound until at least sometime in January. I knew a few veteran players(All Star types) that wouldn’t even throw their first bullpen until they got to spring training in February!! If you told a young

player today that they had to take 8-10 weeks off throwing in the offseason and couldn’t touch a mound until at least the middle of January they would think you were crazy. Part of the reason for the year round throwing is speculation out there that this can actually be

beneficial with regard to injury prevention. Whether that’s true or not idk. The other aspect is the competition part. Guys are pushing the envelope like never before. When I first came into the league if you were dedicated and hardworking

it was an advantage bc imo not everyone was. Now if you aren’t hardworking/disciplined/completely dedicated to the game YOU ARE NOT LASTING. And with that the level/amount of training has grown. Now guys have tangible blueprints to be able to try and increase velocity.

They have tangible blueprints to create new pitches. But most of this is done ON THE MOUND. And the more you’re on the mound throwing at higher intent levels the more risk you’re taking in the long term right?

And the crazy thing is that all of these guys pushing the envelope like this probably not a single one of them would change a thing bc they’re doing what they think they need to do in order to have a long impactful career.

So how do you fix it? I’m not really sure there is or ever will be a concrete answer. My only thought is that muscle fatigue has a major correlation to injuries. So at a minimum during the actual season how does the league and how do teams maximize recovery and reduce fatigue?

A few things from a player perspective would be the current schedule of random day/night game times probably doesn’t help. We just played our first 3 road games on the east coast after being on pacific time the last two months. Effectively playing 3 games at 10am in the morning.

Lastly, the fact that not one game mound in all 30 ballparks is the same. They all have different dirt/different clay/different slopes/different mound heights. Some are hard. Some are soft. It has to have some type of impact on your throw when all the mounds are different right?

Anyways thanks for reading along! Looking forward to people covering more on this subject moving forward!