4 Tiers to Why I See PITCHING INJURIES on The Rise

Piggybacking off the previous Episode in which we talked about the rise of Pitching related Injuries in baseball. Frickin injuries man.. such a passionate topic to discuss for me being someone who has personally dealt with numerous pitching related injuries throughout the course of a little over a decade in professional baseball. This has equipped me to share insights with you in hopes that you’ll be better prepared in your journey in this game to help mitigate the risks of any potential devastating arm injuries.  
In Episode 6 of Season 9 here on THE Robby Row Show Baseball Podcast we’ll be diving into 4 tiers that I believe are influencing a rise in pitching related injuries over the course of the past decade. If you'd like to watch this episode for no reason but to see that my ipad in the background has clash of clans going you can do so by clicking this link - Watch Episode on YouTube 

The 4 Tiers we’re going to be discussing are as follows: 
Velocity - If you have dreams and aspirations of making it to the highest level possible in this game then there’s a dire need to enhance your Velocity. This truth has influenced a drastic change in how athletes in this sport (mainly pitchers) are preparing their bodies to accomplish this goal. This new age “Velocity Development” has taken a toll on how much the body/arm can take before it just breaks down. 
‘Do Less’ - We’re not just seeing more injuries at a professional level but also at an alarming rate amongst the youth. It baffles me to hear of 10-12 year olds having to get surgery from a pitching related injury. This IMO can slightly be attributed to a “Do Less” approach in youth throwers. Brake Pedal approach means you restrict the volume of throws in an effort to mitigate the risk of hurting your arm by not throwing a whole lot. But what we forget to mention is the importance of stress adaptation. Even at that age. 
Design - We’re all pretty familiar with what “Pitch Design” is now that it’s gained a huge popularity within the Baseball performance industry. We can also attribute potential injuries to this dynamic due to a few different factors. Most importantly is how ‘Design’ days are being factored into the individuals work week. Another factor at play is the actual practice of ‘Design Days’ - Meaning I do believe there’s an efficient practice as well as there’s an inefficient practice. How you practice these specific days play a huge role in how your arm is going to respond. 
Performance - This one can be tricky. There’s a whole conversation to be had pertaining to the way individuals are now perceiving their “development time.” Meaning back in the day it was more about kids just going out and playing games/competing throughout the summer. Whereas now we’re seeing kind of the opposite where kids are not playing games instead electing to spend multiple months ‘training’ - now I don’t want to say this in and of itself is inherently ‘BAD’ but I do believe this can be a factor when looking at the “WHY” these injuries are occurring throughout the sport and at a somewhat alarming rate. 

If you've dealt with injuries in baseball or have thoughts on how young players can stay safe, I'd love to hear from you. Visit therobbyrowshow.com/ask to share your ideas and join the conversation. Let's work together to make baseball safer and more joyful for everyone. 


CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Instagram | @robbyrow12
TikTok | @robbyrow12
Twitter | @RobbyRow_12
Website | www.therobbyrowshow.com
Facebook | www.facebook.com/robbyrow12
LinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/in/robbyrow12

MORE LINKS FROM ROBBY ROW
Click .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We're gonna be talking about arm injuriesand baseball, especially pitching injuries. I
have four tiers for watching this onYouTube. You see my little sticky notes.
Four tiers to what I perceive andagain like this is not to be
right, this is not to bewrong. I'm just giving my take.
I think there's valuable insights for maybeparents to hear. So we're just going

(00:21):
to get into it. Four tiersof why I see injuries these days kind
of on the uptick. One velocity. You want a job, you gotta
throw hard. The secret's out.You gotta throw hard. If you want
a job, you gotta throw hard. I see it even in somewhat in
college these days, but obviously lessin college more so an affiliated ball professional
baseball. Velocity matters. It's justlike, you know, no, don't

(00:42):
let numbers hurt your feelings in thesense of you gotta throw hard if you
want opportunities, because statistics show manlike, the less time you have to
react to the pitch as a hitter, harder it's going to be. You
know what I'm saying, harder.The numbers go down when the velocity is
going up. So it's no secretwe have the data, that's use that
to our best benefit. It's outthere second, this break pedal approach,

(01:03):
the do less approach. Right,I'll never forget the year I got drafted.
It was the first time I heardthe quote of savior bullets and your
arm only has so many throws andall this stuff, and it was like,
that was my first realization of howthis industry is kind of confused.
I would say in terms of developingthe best possible thrower, the best possible

(01:26):
baseball player. Pitching is the onespecific task in all of sports where it's
like you're expected to be better atit by doing less. To me,
that doesn't make sense. The doless approach, to me is something that
I see as a tier that's goingto influence injuries because I think when it
comes to the adaption and it comesto the preparation or break pedal approaching,
a lot of these kids coming up, even like ten, eleven, twelve,

(01:48):
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen year oldswith pitch limits and throwing restriction and
limitation and scheduled throwing programs and Xamount of throws at X amount of feet
and for X amount of time.And again I shouldn't say like putting everyone.
You know, obviously, no,not every single freaking academy or team
does this. But I see ita lot of times where you put these

(02:09):
training wheels on these kids and youdon't allow them to adapt. You don't
allow their bodies to just slowly butsurely adapt to the physical stresses of throwing.
And I've said this for years now, and I know it sparks a
good debate, but it's like themore you do something, like the more

(02:31):
your body does something, the betterit's going to be at adapting to that
to be able to continuously do thatover time. So that goes for like
hard throws, rainbow throws, pulldown throws, you know, like any
drill progression, sliders, catch play, freaking flat ground mound. It doesn't
matter, right, Like, themore you do something, the more you're

(02:53):
just going to be able to adaptto it over time. Write whatever that
stimulus is. I see it nowwith like obviously the pitching injuries that are
happening at a youth level, likea really youth level, it's to me,
it's it's a byproduct of telling thesekids like do less, go throughout
their day, don't blow it out, and then they get into a game

(03:15):
with all this adrenaline and it's like, all right, let's go, and
they're not quite adapted. A reallygood example of this, too, which
kills me, is like the collegeWorld Series and Major League Baseball playoffs,
cause it's like you go all seasonwith these set kind of schedules and these
routines of like starters, they startthe game and they go X amount of

(03:36):
innings, bullpen comes in, andyou know, the bullpen comes in closer
or seventh inning guy, eight inthing, guy nine inning guy, They're pretty
much going to be one inning.I saw Clay Holmes last night go one
and change that's going to happen forthe closer, and then all of a
sudden, like playoffs comes around,and now you're going back to back to
back to back. I saw aguy I think it was last year of
Sports Texas, right, I thinkhe threw in like six straight games and

(03:59):
then and the work stimulus, rightlike, the workload, the tolerance,
all that like that just goes toa totally different level when it's the most
important time of the year for theteam, which never makes sense to me.
You're asking these guys to do Yeah, it's doing their job, but
it's kind of doing it in adifferent matter, and me being someone that
looks so detailed at the process andthe preparation, right, the preparing of

(04:25):
your body and your mind for performance. Like when I really look into that,
that's one thing that's never made senseto me in the game when it
comes down to like the most importantgames, we get it. We get
these guys out of the roles,we get starters that go into the bullpen.
And that's not me being you know, sugarcoating it, not me saying

(04:46):
that they shouldn't be able to dothat. Obviously they should, but it's
like something that I believe that weshould practice and we should train and adapt
our bodies to being able to dothat the six seven games in a row.
The fascinating thing that I always lookat is a good conversation too,
is like the old timers, Right, we always talk about the old timers
and how like they didn't get hurt. They threw billions of innings a year,
and they threw billions of pitches agame, and they just went out

(05:09):
and smoked a cigarette and they werefine. And the thing that I look
at that and go, shoot,it makes sense is the truth behind like
the adaption that your body goes throughwhen it comes to throwing. You know,
everyone's kind of quick to say theoverhead throwing motion is not a regular
motion and we should be in fearof it because it's not something that we're

(05:30):
designed to do. No chance,what do you I don't believe that warrior
ancestors had to throw fricking spears toget food, right, like we can
throw and it's something that you canessentially manipulate it to be a natural movement,
right. I'll never say that I'veI don't like to say that I
speak from absolutes and really anything,but the one main thing that I found

(05:53):
when I look through my entire careerand again, everyone's experiences are going to
be different. But the reason whyI am passionate about a particular subject like
this because when I looked at mycareer, it's just night and day.
Like the times in my career whereI wasn't good, I wasn't feeling good
mentally and physically, it's just becausemy throws. You know, we're down.
Everything was regulated, everything was controlled, there was no freedom, there

(06:14):
was no natural athletics movement, andeverything was you know, timed. It
was x amount of throws at thisdistance, don't go past this distance,
And it was just confinement and restriction. And I fear that as we keep
going as a sport and we getin more fear of injuries and trying to
prevent injuries, we put up thesesafe guidelines of like limiting workload and tolerance

(06:36):
and all. Again not saying I'mright, but I fear that that alone
is going to be what makes theproblem worse. So far, we have
velocity, the do less approach,the brake pedal approach. Now moving on
to the third tier, as Isee as the design, right, that's
a very popular terminology to throw aroundin today's baseball industry, is talking about

(06:59):
design, pitch design. We aresetting aside time now whereas like in the
past it was like when you threwyour bullpens and you had a specific emphasis
on a breaking pitch, right likeit wasn't necessarily You're getting a bunch of
slow mo cameras and like really finetuning the movement and the manipulation of the
fingers and the wrist on the baseballand looking at data to see if you
can put feel versus reel together tosee how that correlates to a specific spin

(07:25):
efficiency or horizontal movement profile or whatever. Back in the day, it was
like you throw a bullpen, You'relike, all right, I want to
work on my breaking ball today.We're gonna start with breaking balls, you
know, early in count Flip itup. Boom boom boom. All right,
let's go to the dirt boom boom. With the design aspect of it.
Nowadays, I see a lot ofguys that are spending a lot of
time on throwing twenty seven thought slidersin a row and manipulating their wrist to

(07:50):
see if they can hit a certaindata point that they want. I'll just
be honest and say that, like, I think I fear that the constant
manipulation of things, right when itcomes to the movement of your pitch,
when we break it down in superslow mo video and we use all these
data analytics sources, like that's onlygoing to add into the fact that,

(08:13):
like a slider is probably not thehealthiest thing on your elbow. I know
there's new studies coming out about likesupernation versus pronation and force behind your fingers
technically, like the fastball should beI get it. I just think that
when it comes to the youth guys, they want to be like the pros.
They see the design, they seethe usage and all that and they

(08:33):
go boom, let's do it.Now. We have twelve year olds ripping
sliders, fifty of them in arow, in a design setting, all
these things. Man, So Ijust fear that with the design aspect of
it, we're getting away from justthe ural, the natural throwing motion of
someone just coming up with being infielderor outfielder, a position player, just

(08:56):
a kid just being a kid andthrowing an experience and seeing different types of
stimulus as you go throughout that journey. Now, what you're doing is you're
kind of taking that away and you'regoing, you're a pitcher. We have
to design things now, and itgets put in this box and you don't
allow for the durability of those ligamentsand tendons to take an effect. Right.

(09:18):
Piggybacking off the design would be myfourth here and talking about performance,
and that just is a bullet pointfor me to remember that nowadays pitching,
the way that we approach pitching isjust different. Let's just be honest.
The way that guys go out andpitch it's different, dude. Like when
I got drafted in twenty ten,Like the big mo dude was pitch off

(09:39):
your heater. You're gonna throw yourfastball sixty seventy percent of the time.
You're gonna throw it early, andyou're gonna throw it often. You're gonna
command it. If you didn't havefastball command, you were not going to
be a starting pitcher. That wasjust the reality of it. And then
it was always regulating the control ofyour breaking ball usage, making sure that
your breaking ball usage was drastically lowerthan the heater. And even when at
points in time time when I wasin specific organizations that really preached the change

(10:03):
up, it was like, nope, we throw the change up first time
through the lineup as opposed to throwingthe breaking ball. Never forget man,
one of my years when I wasstruggling there, it was like the only
thing I had to feel for waslike the breaking ball. I felt better
superinating the wrist, feeling it comeoff the fingers. And they wouldn't let
me throw a breaking ball. Theywould not let me throw a breaking ball

(10:24):
until i'd throw them like the changeup first. It was fastball change up
like first time through the lineup.It was so regulated. Dude, this
is just like that freaks me outjust talking about it. I'm a fricking
peacock. I gotta fly anyways,wouldn't let me throw the slider, So
like then you get this restriction oflike, man, now I got to
force the change up and all thesethings. The fourth and final tier to
this injury aspect, in my opinionon this injury thing, is the way

(10:48):
that we approach performance. Right.It's like the old school approach to pitch
off your heater has kind of beenoutdated. Now it's like, hey,
this game's hard, these guys aregood. There's talent everywhere. You gotta
do whatever you gotta do to goout there and like do good. And
if that's throwing ninety percent sliders,because your slider is a freaking eight percent
bullet Johnson late nasty pitch you're gonnathrow a seventy percent of the time,

(11:13):
that's probably not that healthy for theligament itself, right, especially when we
start talking about the age I'll insertin this video if you're watching this on
YouTube, I have a few tweetsthat I screenshoted and saved and I thought
they were super interesting. I'm surea lot of you guys listening to this
are very familiar within the topic,so you probably have seen these things.
But doctor James Andrews was asked aboutthe increase in injuries. So i'll quote

(11:39):
this is I'll read off a quote. I started following the injury patterns and
injury rates in the year two thousand. Andrews says, back in those days,
I did about eight or nine TommyJohns per year in high school and
younger. The large majority of TommyJohn's were at the major league level and
the minor league level and the collegelevel, and then just a handful of
high school kids. In today's situation, the whole thing is flip flop.

(12:01):
The largest number of his youth baseballyou've surpassed what's being done in the major
leagues. That's a terrible situation.So what he's saying is that back in
the day, it was major leagueguys were the most Tommy john guys.
Now, back in the day itwas major league guys had the most Tommy
John's. The youngest guys right likehigh school, even the Little league were

(12:22):
the lowest amount of Tommy Johns.He's saying it's flip flop now where the
major league guys are probably the lowestand the fricking high school kids are the
highest. So he says, that'sa terrible situation. Andrews says, the
obsession with velocity and spin at theyouth level is having a devastating impact on
arms and games itself. So Iwas saying, with like the design too.
We talked a lot about like thedesign when it comes to the slider.

(12:45):
We didn't even really talk about thespin rate aspect of it, but
we do have to consider in thatthird tier of the design the idea behind
spin rate, spin efficiency. Isee a lot of times kids will often
tend to force manipulation when it comesto like trying to see numbers that the

(13:05):
instructor wants to see, or theirbuddy has, you know whatever. Back
to this quote, these kids arethrowing ninety miles per hour their junior year
of high school. He says,the ligament itself can't withstand that kind of
force. We learned in our researchlab that baseball is a development sport.
The Tommy John ligament matures at aboutage twenty six in high school. The

(13:26):
red line where the forces go beyondthe tensile properties for the ligament is about
eighty miles an hour. So he'ssaying at eighty miles an hour, you're
getting into that upper echelon of likethe force potential that that ligament can have
is not equipped with how much forceit's going through for that throw. Now,
does this mean that if you're ahigh school kid you start throwing slow?

(13:48):
No, This to me is justa simple like understanding of how just
development works. It's a line oflike continuous progression. There's some out liars
that will like progress at eleven yearsold super quick, right, and then
stall out to where the rest ofthe guys catch up. There's some guys
that you know, will hit asuper late growth. I'll never forget.

(14:11):
I played with my boy, TylerGlass now in Pittsburgh when I first got
traded over there twenty twelve, andhe was six' six kind of similar
to my height at the time.Through ninety one ninety two, fast forward
x amount of years later throwing onehundred. You know, like, there's
the outliers that kind of do that, But more often than not, it's
just a constant linear progression for development. And the reason you have that development

(14:35):
like that over the years in thepast was because you know, kids were
playing multiple sports, they were justlearning about their bodies. They were learning
spatial awareness, body awareness, forcepotential, movement, potential capacity, all
these things man about their bodies withoutit being a conscious thing mentally, they're
just learning as they move. Andnow I think there's this idea of like

(14:56):
pitching specific stuff. Guys fall inlove with it, they enjoy it,
so they're going to want to goavitate to doing it more when it comes
to pitching, and then you tryto be super specific within that task because
you enjoy it, which I understandit's tough. Then you get stuck with
like only doing that one approach.I'll never forget with having a Randy Sullivan
on my podcast back in twenty nineteentalking about like I remember he used the

(15:20):
analogy I'll find it. If Ican find the clip to that, I'll
just insert it in this YouTube videoin this podcast. But he was talking
about the tensile properties of the actualligament itself and how that can be not
the word what's the word, notmanipulated, but it can adapt to certain
different types of throwing. He said, like it's very similar to if you

(15:41):
were driving in a car. Ifyou're driving in a car, you get
uncomfortable with one posture, you're gonnaswitch it slightly just to kind of get
out of that one specific posture tobe comfortable again, to drive another one
hundred miles until you got to switchit up again. It's kind of like
throwing the weighted balls. It's adifferent type of stimulus. Long tosss a
different angle, it's a different stimulus. It's kind of all of these different

(16:02):
variations of a throw are then amplifyingthe need for the ligament and the tendons
to adapt, and when they adapt, they become what stronger, Right,
But if you continuously do the samething over and over again, the same
throw level, shoulders, same weightedball, five ounces, whatever you do
that over and over again, there'sno football usage in there. There's no

(16:25):
basketball freaking cuts or anything like.Now, the adaptation for those ligaments,
those muscles, they're only going througha set movement. You're going to limit
the amount of adaption that you canhave to that to then increase the resiliency
right of that tendon. And again, I'm not trying to sit here and
sound like a dang doctor. ButI've seen this over and over again,

(16:48):
and when you kind of sit hereand talk about it and bring it to
light, it just I think.I don't know. You tell me,
but a lot of the things thatI'm saying, I've said this for a
long time now, like it makessense, I don't know. That's what
I got. Those are four tiersto my opinion on it. Let me
know what you think. The robberreautshow dot com slash ask if you guys
want to want to chat. I'vebeen getting a lot of questions from parents.

(17:10):
I appreciate you guys reaching out.I wish I could be of more
help when it comes to designing likethrowing programs or what I know. A
lot of people want to get meto write up a throwing program for their
kid, And that's not really whatit's about. That's not what I'm trying
to say either. I'm not tryingto even say, like, hey,
like use me to make sure youdon't get hurt. That's not at all
the message. The message is thissimple fact of it is important to adapt

(17:33):
to multiple different stimulus is, multipledifferent movements, and continuously force your body
to adapt, meaning the workload yes, I understand the regulation behind of it.
I understand why we put up thesebarriers and pitch limits and all these
things. But I'll never forget manlike being a kid. I was very

(17:56):
fortunate to have a father that playedin the big leagues. But being a
kid and just being encouraged to throw, man like, throw a long time
long toss field ground balls, throwfrom the outfield, I'll shoot. It
wasn't even until like my senior yearin high school, when you know,
scouts started talking to me a lot, that I realized that I should probably
like not throw in practice if Iwas like starting the next day, you

(18:18):
know, like when it came toinfield outfield stuff like that, because I'd
always just throw, boom throw.I always looked at it like this,
you get out what you put inright, so like your body's going to
give you back whatever you put intoit. So if you're you're only giving
it you know, like limited tolerance, limited stresses, very regulation and controlled
throwing programs, then like that's allit's going to really know. But if

(18:42):
you give it high stress, stimulusand variation, it's going to now like
adapt to the amount of volume.It's going to adapt to the volume and
it's going to adapt to the actuallike variations of the throw to be able
to do it. That's why Isaid, like when I did the whole
three arm slot thing, and I'mstill kind of doing it, but that

(19:03):
was one thing that was like,I need to do this because I need
to find out for myself if thethings that I'm talking about pertaining to like
arm health elbow health are accurate.And I will say it till I have
zero breath in my lungs that itis one hundred percent a benefit to be
able to deviate your arm angles andcomplete the task. That's just athleticism,

(19:27):
though, guys, it doesn't haveto be like super overcomplicated. Go out,
be a kid, have fun,but also at the same time be
mindful of like I'm not gonna graba sixteen pound rock skip it across the
ocean, even though that would besick too. We can talk about that
too, right like back in theday, I don't want to be that
guy. Though, I don't wantto be the guy that's like back in

(19:48):
my day we did that. No, I'm probably gonna turn out to be
that guy. Gosh darn it,that's what I got. Let me know,
the robberyro Show dot com slash ask. If you guys want to reach
out and ask me your questions,that is all I got. Love you
guys, God bless Until next timeI'm out see yo,