The pitch clock has destroyed pitching

It’s just tougher to get these hitters out in today’s game. Pitchers need to throw harder and with higher spin rates and crazy action on breaking pitches.

 

The pitch clock may be part of it.

It's still too new to have any definitive studies.

I think max effort, max spin and pitchers stressing their arms for 12-15 years before even making The Show is more likely.

 

When you consistently push the human arm to the breaking point, it's more prone to break.

Teams want to supermax arm ability, and if a player doesn't want to, there will always be another guy behind him that does.

Pitch clock has nothing to do with it.

 

I do think the pitcher should get a timeout just like the batter does once per inning or so. When an at bat goes 10+ pitches that’s just brutal on the pitcher having to immediately keep throwing.

 

I have to agree. I'm no medical expert but you can't tell me reducing rest between throws doesn't have an effect on the arm, whether its injury or just fatigue.

 

I'd say the pitch clock may have a part of it, but yes the trend towards pushing pitchers to the breaking point is the primary problem.

 

Counter point...pitchers are going to push themselves to the edge relative to how much rest they have between pitches. If they have more rest, they will be able to push harder more often canceling out the benfit of the additional rest.

I suspect some pitchers may not have adjusted to less rest between pitches causing a temporary spike as they pushed themselves like they had more rest. I'd guess as pitchers adjust to the clock, they will pace themselves accordingly. MLB should have really done some grandfathering to ease the clock in.

 

Among the extensive studies conducted leading up to the pitch clock implementation included watching games from the 1980s, when the game moved much faster, and pitchers often worked within what would have been the pitch clock timing. And there weren't extensive injuries in those days.

The difference is the max effort, spin, etc - the pressure being placed on the arm. Getting an extra :20 of rest between pitches isn't going to make that less impactful.

 

The pressure to succeed, driven by ever increasing competition in all areas of society, plays a significant role in what the world at large is becoming.

 

Yeah, it's a myth that baseball is suddenly being played at a breakneck pace. All the pitch clock did was return the game to the pace it had for a whole century. Pitchers got the ball and threw, and they would throw 250-300 innings like that.

 

This was posted early in the season when eveybody was blaming the pitch clock for a rise in TJ

 

I think it's the emphasis of spin rate in the modern game without the benefit of the sticky stuff.

 

it's the curve balls and sliders that kill the arm. If you threw fast balls like Nolan and Clemens, then you can throw forever.

 

The game of baseball and advanced science have finally collided.

The pitching coaches, including the Astros two headed monster understand advanced physics and science very well.

They know that velocity, deception and rotation make a baseball harder to hit - and pitchers more successful.

The Astros have primarily had success with drafting and developing pitchers for that very reason -

Javier, Valdez, Brown, Arrighetti, Garcia, McCullers - they all fit that model of taking a guy, teaching him to throw as hard as possible by changing his mechanics - and then hoping his control improves enough to be good. Then apply some spider or other "okay" substances to the fingers for rotation and hang on and see what happens.

I am not even sure that the teams ARE going to adjust back to the way it was, I think they will either tandem start or they will start treating starters like running backs in the NFL, they get big but short-term contracts.

 

McCullers may become the new model for MLB pitching careers. I think that we are soon to find out how TJ surgeries a pitcher can have, before his career is over.

 

I dont know if the pitch clock has anything to do with it but the numbers tend to sway that way on the small sample size, one thing about the Astros is we have played like an extra month + for the last 7 years, the additional stress but a shorter off season might be catching up to us

 

With him - it comes down to how many times is he willing to rehab before he retires. There have been some 3X TJ surgery guys, but most of them had one in college or the minors, another early in their career and one late.

Right now we don't even know how long these new guys will be able to pitch career wise. Verlander wasn't always a spin rate guy - he did that once he joined the Astros.

 

Yeah - there is no doubt that the extra month really impacted Javier, Verlander and Valdez. I firmly believe that we did not win the World Series last year because he won it the year before and our starting pitchers were physically impacted.