- Will Carroll

It's not intentional, it's not insidious, and it's not conspiratorial, but it is simple. We are ruining pitchers. Simple, in this case is not easy, but understandable and pragmatic. Pitching seems simple to the untrained eye, but there's obviously more to it. The people in the stands see a motion, an explosion, and a result, but not much more and usually they don't care.

It's not the fan's place to care until the result isn't what he likes. Too often, that result isn't that his pitcher on his team gave up a few more runs or a few dingers. It's that he's not on the mound at all. He's on the disabled list, an operating table, or on his way back to his hometown, just another ex-pitcher who never quite made it.


There is a axiom among analysts so clichéd at this point that an acronym suffices: TINSTAAP. "There is no such thing as a pitching prospect." Even among scouts, they realize the truth of TINSTAAP. Jim Hendry of the Cubs says "if you have twenty pitchers, you might get five to the majors. They end up injured, flaking out, or failing. It always seems to be something besides success."

It is the lucky few that make it this far. What used to be an experimental operation, Tommy John surgery, is being done on high school age hurlers. Worse, the damage we see in professionals is likely done years earlier. We've all heard the tales of some hot-shot schoolboy pitching both ends of a doubleheader or leading three different travel teams.

These are simple things, but if no one is listening, is it the medium or the message? Are we saying the right things to the wrong people? Are we sending the wrong messages or worse, canceling each other out? Coaches have had a supply of information - some good, some bad - for years. The approaches have been distilled and studied, but no matter the supply, we have done nothing to create more demand. The pitchers are out there, hurting themselves as amateurs and uninformed coaches ruin their arms.

The answer, I believe, is to find the proper approach to pitching by following the principles of sabermetrics: objective analysis in a quest for the best possible answers. Sabermetrics has been applied to pitching for years, from Branch Rickey to Craig Wright and finally with Rany Jazayerli and Keith Woolner's landmark Pitcher Abuse Points.



I'm not a pitching coach in the traditional sense. Instead, I took a year to read all the research I could get my hands on ≠ every book, every technical journal, every biomechanical breakdown, every piece of tape, every coach I could interview ≠ and distilled it based on the principles of sabermetrics. I took everything I'd learned in three years while I watched some of the best pitchers in the game head to the DL, and applied it to my writings.

What did I learn? Plenty. Mostly, I learned that the research and techniques taught by the top pitching coaches have not trickled down. We've created plenty of supply, but have done little in the way of creating demand. Pitchers get interested in injury only when they themselves are injured. Parents don't get interested until their son can't take the mound. Talk until you're blue in the face about external rotation, scapular loading, and kinetic forces, but most kids, most parents will tune you out.

Worse, most coaches will get lost. One of the more surprising things I learned in the process is that baseball coaches at all levels are inadequately prepared. This is worst at the Little League level, where the volunteer nature makes it difficult to educate. Even so, how many elite pitching coaches have taken it upon themselves to serve this important market? Guidelines from USA Baseball, the result of a comprehensive study at ASMI, are ignored for the most part. The explosion of travel and all-star teams are creating an epidemic of pitching arm injuries. In the quest to get better or get noticed, pitchers are ending their careers before they start. Being in a Nascar city, I often reach for a racing analogy. Pitchers can be like automobiles; they need the right fuel, the right tires, and the right driver to win. Yet it's not enough. The fastest car might end up in the wall or break down before seeing the finish line.

At the high school and college level, things get better, but not by much. Coaches know the basics and can occasionally articulate some of the more advanced concepts, but few are up to date. Only one out of sixty high school coaches I spoke to had a drill that worked on hip velocity. One! I'm not sure if it's worse that ten knew the correlation between hip velocity and didn't have a drill or that forty-nine didn't know about hip velocity at all.

Hip velocity, as noted by Dr. Glenn Fleisig of the American Sports Medicine Institute, is among the most important biomechanical events in pitching. His disciple, Rick Peterson, has pushed hip velocity into the major leagues with great success. It is scientific, indisputable fact - yet almost no coaches make use of this fact.



One source has written for years on the Newtonian principles of physics as they relate to pitching. I'm no physicist, but last time I checked, Congress hadn't repealed Newton's Laws. I don't expect pitching coaches or pitchers to be physicists either, but few recognize the importance of a basic understanding of these Laws as they relate to pitching.

While we concentrate on pitch counts and its derivatives, they are all just proxy measures. What we want to know, but cannot truly measure at this point, is how fatigued a pitcher is at any given point. As yet, we do not have a clear picture on how fatigue affects pitchers. We know that it is an individual response ≠ for some pitchers, 75 pitches is a warmup; for others, that's dangerous.

Recognizing fatigue is still outside the realm of science and lies in the hands of the coaching staff. A watchful coach can pick up signals from his pitcher like altered body language, higher effort, or a noticeable loss of velocity.

Loss of velocity is, perhaps, both the easiest and most accurate way of measuring fatigue. While my study on velocity loss is still two years away from completion, early results show that the system should work. Even with the naked eye, a loss of velocity can be apparent.

Why is velocity such a good measure? It is easily measurable, readily apparent, and works on both an outing and seasonal level. It is easily indivualized, works for both starters and relievers, and immediately provides it's own context. While 100 pitches means something completely different to Curt Schilling than it does to a 20 year old college pitcher, a pitcher that loses five percent off his baseline fastball is either fatigued or injured.

I could go on about situations similar to these. There are far too many answers that we have that have not gotten out to the consumers. Instead of continued debate over technicalities that even coaches barely understand, a sabermetric approach to pitching is overdue. Take a question and find answers. Take what is known and prove it. Take what is proven and teach it. Take what is taught and perfect it. Take what appears perfect and form a new question.


I completely disagree with using significant weight through a normal pitching motion. I don't advocate the use of weighted baseballs for one simple reason: usually, it alters mechanics. Any practice on any surface needs to concentrate on consistent, repeatable mechanics, so any benefits from weighted balls - heavier or lighter - is all too often offset by the change. Even with proper mechanics, there's an added weight that needs to be decelerated by the rotator cuff when using a heavier ball that seems to offset gains. Weights, including kettlebells, should not be used as they add stress to the rotator cuff.

Pitching, we know, is a destructive activity. Muscles, tendons, and ligaments are all stressed by it, even when done properly. People often wonder why pitchers aren't significantly out of symmetry. It's the destruction that keeps a pitcher from building significant muscular gains.

Instead of weighted balls, I think most of the gains we seek can be made with increased throwing - not pitching! - using drills that focus on mechanics and remove as much of the stress from the arm as possible. Things like throwing from the knees, towel drills, and interval throwing programs give additional results.

If all someone is concerned with is increasing velocity, then weighted balls are probably the best tool. I'd still rather see someone work on their mechanics. With younger athletes, I've seen impressive gains in just small mechanical changes to stride, glove location, etc.

As far as non-mound throwing, I do think this should be an integral part of any training program. Again, pitchers must focus on mechanics. Too often, long toss where mechanics are altered significantly is used. At the Injuries in Baseball Conference, there was a great study done on the differences in mechanics from flat ground to mound work.

I think a properly supervised interval throwing programs as well as just asking our players to throw more - just play catch, kids! - will increase the functional arm strength as well as giving them more consistent mechanics.


I don't have all the answers and don't pretend to. There is no book with every answer and no pitching coach that knows it all.

There are many teachers out there that are working towards saving pitchers and for each of them, you may or may not find things you like or can appropriate into your own teachings. I've done the same - looking at each of the many out there and trying to take what's provable in the lab and on the mound.

The dynamic nature of baseball and the exciting new research being done are giving us new facts every day. I believe the time has come to lead pitchers away from the damage that we are inflicting upon them. If it saves one pitcher, it was worth it, don't you think?