Yep. Bring these two in: medical staff, scouting, strength and training coaches (is that a thing in mlb? Should be with all these injuries and poor conditioning). Audit them all.
Yeah, I don't see a problem with what he said. He's just being honest about his life - we hate when players talk in generic platitudes but then also complain when they are real. I don't even know the context of it - was it about why he was sucking, or just a question about how life has been in the US?
The dude is homesick He feels the pressure and is probably panicking. He misses Japan. Human reaction. How or if he pulls himself together is the true story here.
It's what they're being taught, a short sighted philosophy that's been burning arms on our staff for years now.
Until 2023 we were humming along just fine on the injury front. It's got progressively worse to the point we can barely even keep a guy in the rotation anymore. LMJ was always made of paper mache and every team is gonna have some injuries, I would say our starters held up better than most from 2015 to 2022
I have thought about this a lot. I think it is a number of things. First, I think that injuries to pitchers have increased across the board. The Braves the last 5-6 years have had devastating injuries to their young pitchers. The Dodgers also have had a high number of severe injuries, losing several all star level pitchers. So it isn't just the Astros, it has been most of the really successful pitching staffs. The Astros also have had horses like Cole, Greinke and Valdez that have histories of tremendous durability. Now all three are gone. I think that over throwing and max effort is part of the issue, but that is not unique to the Astros..... and I think some of it is bad luck.
I just wish we had more pitchers and less throwers in baseball. I'm sure I'm simplifying it, but part of it is how these guys are managed too. I just preferred baseball when a pitcher faced adversity in the face and kept going. Nope, you walked a guy after 62 pitches. on to the next guy standing. Guys just had to figure it out or they didn't make it . . . didn't mater what their stuff metric was . . .
Guys back in the day would take stuff off their pitches to make sure they had more in the tank to compete through the 6th and 7th. And even then, we have a mountain of data that "letting a guy battle through" was usually a bad idea and a fresh reliever would have been the better option. It sounds great on paper, but now that everybody is throwing 95 plus anybody holding back and throwing 91/92 looks like they are throwing BP. Unless you are one of the few insanely gifted arms, everybody has to supermax to be competitive now. At this point the old school "mediocre innings eater" may be the new market inefficiency.
Pitch counts weren’t a thing in the 70’s or much of the 80’s because you didn’t need as much torque and movement on the ball. You only needed a 2-3 pitches too (many had 1.5). Less stress on the arm.
Even then they had pitch counts -- someone kept track, but the number of pitches was higher, and usually collaborative between the starter and the pitching coach with no other real input. Tom Seaver in the 1970's had a pitch limit of 135 and Jerry Koosman had one of 140 pitches. Nolan Ryan would fight against his limit of 150 pitches. With the Angels, Nolan had his own pitch count. Someone kept track and he would check with that person later in games if he were fatigued. Nolan in 1974 threw 235 pitches over 14 innings to get the win, he blew past his limit because he wanted the win and next time out only went 6-7 hitless innings if I remember correctly.
Nothing like the nazi pitch counts today. And honestly there were definitely pitchers, like the ones you listed and many more that did not have one. It was a guide, not a rule, unless someone was rehabbing or stretching out to starter innings. It is much more of a standard “rule” across the league now.
Its going to be recorded into CBA before you know it. Maybe they even add pitchers to the roster as they reduce pitch count limit. If the owners learn from valid source that limits to 90 pitches or requiring 5 days rest, (or both) save them money by having fewer injuries its a done deal. But the savings has to be greater than the expense of paying more salary.
Maybe that will happen and that would suck because I really don’t think there would be less ligament damage/TJ surgeries. I’m no doctor though.
i wonder how much the pitch clock and removal of sticky substances play into the injuries as well....
