The Pitching Fiasco
Baseball is back. The trains are packed with New Yorkers on their way to a Yankee game. Chavez Ravine is stuffed with Dodger fans donning their freshly bought Shohei Ohtani jerseys. The 7 Line Army stands in their usual position of center field at Citi Field, chanting, “Let’s go Mets! Let’s go Mets!” Philly fans are back at Citizens Bank hearing the chime of the bell every time Harper and Schwarber go deep. The loud siren shakes the Trop when a Ray puts one over the wall. And in Oakland, well, not too much is going on. Regardless of all the idiosyncrasies surrounding the many baseball teams, one issue is shared by all of them. Pitchers are getting hurt.
Pitching in baseball, and perhaps more specifically, the expectations of a pitcher in baseball, have changed drastically over the course of history. In the very early days of the game, pitchers didn’t pitch to strike out batters. Their goal was to get the ball in play; that way, the ball could be fielded and the batter thrown out. This style of play is similar to a slow-pitch softball league of today.
Once the new rules of baseball were implemented in the 1850’s, those rules being balls and strikes, the goal of the pitcher changed, and the art itself revolutionized. The pitcher went from being a gentleman and letting the batter get a hit to being a master of deception by doing his utmost to strike the batter out.
Everything was going well for pitchers until those in charge of baseball realized that people came to see hits and not batters getting struck out. This realization prompted the owners to introduce a new baseball, a ball made of cork at the center.
The new baseball completely flipped how the game was played. Averages went up while ERAs blew up. And hitters weren’t just getting singles. They were slugging balls out of the park, especially one man by the name of Babe Ruth.
Shortly after World War II, pitchers once again changed their style in order to deceive batters. Notable changes that occurred during this time were high leg kicks and emphatic windups. These windups allowed for crazy arm angles, and hitters never knew what was coming. The mechanics of pitchers changed rapidly, and many had their own distinct style.
Over time, baseball followed very similar patterns. It would go from pitchers dominating the game for a stretch of years to hitters slugging homers and having averages over .300. This swing has much to do with the change in how the baseball was manufactured, or, as some refer to it the baseballs becoming “juiced.” The most recent incident of these so-called juiced baseballs occurred in 2019, when 6,776 home runs were hit in a season, the most in major league history. This is rather remarkable, as there were more home runs hit in 2019 than in any year during baseball’s steroid era.
Just like hitters, pitchers wanted to become more powerful. They wanted to strike the guys out. They wanted to be in the commercials and on the billboards. They wanted to strike fear into other teams just by the sound of their name. And the way to do that, in the minds of pitchers, was to throw the ball really hard. In 2002, the fastball average was 89 mph. In today’s game, a fastball that doesn’t start with a 9 doesn’t get you into the major leagues.
This obsession with throwing baseballs at blazing speeds of up to and over 100 mph takes an incredible toll on the human body. Backs are popped, hips are torn, lats are pulled, and most commonly, arms are blown. It’s rare for a starting pitcher to not receive Tommy John surgery in today’s game, and if they haven’t, it’s not an if. It’s when.
Pitching is an art of deception. It’s incredibly hard to hit a ball from a pitcher who throws a 100-mph fastball and an 80-mph curve from the same arm slot. But the value that we have emphasized with velocity is taking and will continue to take a toll on the pitchers of America’s pastime. No more 76-pitch complete games. Heck, it’s not even a guarantee for a star pitcher to be in the game longer than six innings. What is a guarantee, and what is an unfortunate reality, is that every pitcher will get hurt. Every. Single. One. It’s just a matter of time. It’s a pitching fiasco.
