It’s about that time, isn’t it? The short period of time where we notice the rash of elbow and shoulder injuries to pitchers and look for answers in the usual places, like Tom Verducci’s columns (never mind that the Verducci Effect has been thoroughly debunked) where the “experts” are interviewed and say some variation on the following: Travel ball is evil Showcase ball will cause you to kill your arm, damn those people at Perfect Game Latin players grow into their velocity Americans put too much focus on velocity etc Let’s not forget: If a pitcher is going to be injured, it is most likely at the beginning of the year. The reasons for this aren’t necessarily clear, but as Dirk Hayhurst pointed out in his latest book, when he hurt his shoulder in the gym, he was tempted to nurse it to the beginning of Spring Training and hope to blow it out on the mound there so medical insurance would be picked up by the team. It is not inconceivable that this is a significant contributor. Additionally, players are often allowed to do whatever they want in the offseason by their teams, and are not given specific workouts to train their arm. I’ll always remember Matt Diaz doing P90x in the 2008-2009 offseason, which is probably one of the worst possible “training” (I use the term loosely) methods you can employ for a baseball player. A lack of a sound throwing program with specific prehab exercises probably contributes to both the velocity drop at the beginning of the year (in addition to weather of course) as well as increased risk of injury in the early months of the year. So, with all that out of the way, let’s cover some major […]
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