Major League Baseball is conducting a vast study in response to pitching injuries, according to Ken Rosenthal and Eno Sarris of The Athletic. A league spokesperson told Rosenthal and Sarris that the study includes "approximately" 100 interviews with a wide-ranging assortment of subjects, including doctors and former pitchers, and that the league intends to form a "task force" once the study is completed.
It's unclear if the task force will have any great input or authority beyond offering recommendations to the league's teams and pitchers based on their findings.
Interestingly, Rosenthal and Sarris cite a theory proposed by Dr. Keith Meister, the head physician of the Texas Rangers, who places the blame on the rash of arm injuries on two pitches in particular: the sweeper and the hard changeup.
"What I've talked to MLB about is, look, we have all this data on performance. We also have all this data on health. We have to marry these two metrics," Meister told The Athletic. "I'm not going to sit here and tell you to never throw a sweeper or never throw a hard changeup. But at some point, you have to say, 'OK, when we see a pitcher throwing that pitch more than 15% of the time, the likelihood of him having an injury to his shoulder or elbow goes (up), whatever, tenfold."
The sweeper is the trendy pitch in the majors. It's essentially a modified slider, with an emphasis placed on horizontal movement and, oftentimes, velocity. Our Mike Axisa wrote the following back in April 2022:
The sweeper is just the latest example of weaponized analytics. It's a pitch that technically has been around for decades, but only recently have clubs figured out how to hone it and teach it. In the end, pitchers are always going to be (at least) one step ahead of hitters. The sweeper is the latest example.
It should be noted that Rosenthal and Sarris could not find any factual evidence that supported Dr. Meister's theory on the sweeper and hard changeup being the culprits. That doesn't mean Dr. Meister is incorrect; rather, the reality is that it's hard to isolate a single variable as the cause for injuries. Even so, league-provided data referenced by The Athletic indicated that pitchers are getting hurt more often now than they did in the previous decade.
Multiple pitchers have been sidelined with arm injuries this spring, including Kodai Senga of the Mets and Lucas Giolito of the Red Sox.
