The Attrition War, Summary and Conclusions
The Mariners suffer more serious arm injuries than other major league teams. This is indisputable. From Ryan Anderson’s multiple shoulder issues to Jorge Campillo’s one-inning debut-and-shutdown (“Hello!” “Goodbye!”) we’ve seen the Mariner system decimated in recent years. This is not a perception issue that’s a result of being too close to the problem.
For this work, I looked at every team’s pitching prospects, as ranked by Baseball America, from 1995-2004, and attempted to find which prospects had serious arm or shoulder injuries requiring surgery that cost them a year of playing time. You can read the methodology notes, or go to the index page for links to all the team pages.
In absolute terms, the Mariners tied with the Reds with nine serious injuries. As a percentage of prospects, they were tied with the Brewers for second place with 32%. The average team was at 20%. Standard deviation was 2.4 (8%). The Mariners were two deviations from the mean. That’s significant, but it’s not huge.
Team # Shldr Elbow Total Inj. % Reds 25 7 2 9 36% Mariners 28 5 4 9 32% Brewers 25 5 3 8 32% Braves 27 4 4 8 30% Dodgers 27 3 5 8 30% Rangers 32 3 6 9 28% Cardinals 36 5 4 9 25% Cubs 37 3 6 9 24% Mets 29 2 5 7 24% Orioles 31 3 4 7 23% Yankees 26 2 4 5 23% Tigers 32 4 3 7 22% Royals 24 2 3 5 21% Astros 29 5 1 6 21% Diamondbacks 20 0 4 4 20% Indians 36 2 5 7 19% White Sox 33 2 4 6 18% Angels 28 2 3 5 18% Devil Rays 17 1 2 3 18% Marlins 34 3 3 6 18% Giants 31 2 3 5 16% Phillies 28 3 1 4 14% Rockies 28 3 1 4 14% Pirates 22 0 3 3 14% Blue Jays 24 1 2 3 13% Nationals 32 1 3 4 13% Red Sox 32 1 3 4 13% Padres 28 0 3 3 11% Twins 22 1 1 2 9% Athletics 32 0 0 0 0% Average 28.7 2.5 3.2 5.6 20% Total 855 75 95 170
I looked at “expected injury rate”, figuring that 1/5th of the pitchers would get injured. The Mariners were four pitchers above that, along with the Reds, with the Brewers at three. You would expect the A’s to have six pitchers go down during this period. They had none.
Here are the questions that have come up repeatedly:
Is a pitcher in the Mariner system significantly more likely to be injured than a pitcher in a good system, like the A’s ?
Yes. In a sample of 50 pitchers from both organizations, all nine to be injured would be Mariners. That’s not really fair, though, to compare the best to one of the worst. So:
Is a pitcher in the Mariner system significantly more likely to be injured than any pitcher?
Yes. In the sample, the Mariner pitchers were injured significantly more than their peers.
Is a pitcher in the Mariner system significantly more likely to have a particular kind of injury than any pitcher?
Yes. They are a standard deviation above the mean in shoulder injuries. They are not outside a standard deviation in elbow injuries.
Could this be luck?
Yes. An entirely random distribution of pitching injuries across teams, if the chance of an injury for any prospect is about 20%, would turn out a distribution about like this. It’s perhaps a little suspicious, but you would expect that there would be teams on the high end as well as the low.
Is it likely that this is entirely luck?
No. While a random distribution produces something like what we see, that requires you make the assumption that the rate of injuries is 20% and constant. That no team engages in behavior that increases the risk or decreases the risk, or that none of those behaviors raises or lowers pitcher injury rates. Further, I find the explanation that someone has to be unlucky unsatisfying, but I’ll get into that in more detail later.
Given that you’re looking at a set of 30 with values between 0 and 9, is standard deviation really the best way to look at this?
There are likely better ways to look at this, and I’m sure they’ll be suggested almost as soon as I hit the “Publish” button. If there are particularly interesting suggestions, I’ll add them here.
In particular, standard deviation’s not the best way to look at this because of the A’s. They’re way better than even the next team, and that gap’s almost twice as wide than between any other two teams. So deviation from the mean may not be as useful as I wish.
So what else is wrong with this survey?
There a lot, though I don’t think any of them are serious. You can read the Notes on Methodology for a detailed description of flaws.
Is there anything else interesting here?
The Braves, who are regarded as one of the best organizations at developing pitchers and have an outstanding record at the major league level, appear near the top, with a 30% attrition rate. I’ll talk about this later.
No matter how you look at it, the Mariners farm system has seen more injuries to their pitchers than is normal and enough that it is statistically significant.
The question then becomes “Why do pitchers get injured?”
I will discuss several theories commonly floated
Power versus finesse
Do power pitchers suffer injuries more frequently compared to their peers, because thier deliveries put so much stress on their shoulders?
Do finesse pitchers who throw an outstanding breaking ball suffer injuries more frequently compared to their peers, because thier deliveries put so much stress on their shoulders?
Here are the Mariner top prospects by what Baseball America thought they were good at, pre-injury:
Ryan Anderson, shoulder: mid-90s fastball, working on breaking pitches
Cha Baek, elbow: mid-90s fastball, “slider”
Travis Blackley, shoulder: Changeup. Several good pitches, “88-92″ fastball
Ken Cloude, elbow: pre-surgery 90-94mph fastball, slider
Jeff Heaverlo, shoulder: slider, low-90s fastball
Gil Meche, shoulder: fastball
Rafael Soriano, elbow: mid-90s fastball, slider
Aaron Taylor, shoulder: mid-90s fastball
Matt Thornton, shoulder: low-90s fastball, slider
There is no clear correlation in the Mariners system or overall for all pitchers between what a pitcher throws and what injury they came down with. Pitchers who throw “slower” get shoulder injuries, and pitchers who throw fast blow out their elbow.
There is a correlation between throwing relatively fast and being rated a top prospect. Few players make a list without being able to at throw a fastball in the low 90s or higher. Even players who get sneak onto the bottom of top prospect lists because they have outstanding breaking stuff and command have fastballs that are at least 85 miles an hour. However, players who can throw 100, even if they have terrible mechanics and are known injury risks, will still be thought of as a top prospect (Craig House, for example).
Therefore, an assertion that slow pitchers are less frequently injured is untestable, because those pitchers are not top prospects, and therefore useless.
We can compare the A’s to the Mariners. What did they cultivate? Take their big three: Hudson, Mulder, and Zito. Hudson had a sinking fastball in the low 90s and a change. Mulder had a “92mph” fastball and a change. Zito threw the curve and a “89-91″ fastball.
Or take the last two years of top pitching prospects:
Blanton: mid-90s fastball, slider
Duchsherer: curve, high 80s fastball
Harden: low-90s fastball (hits 95), change
Rheinecker: low-90s fastball, curve
Sullivan: drafted with a low-90s fastball, slider
Wood: sinker, mid-80s fastball
Valentine: mid-90s, slider
The A’s have some low-list guys where they’re taking a chance on a mid-80s guy with excellent control or a breaking pitch, but by and large, they have attempted to develop the same kind of pitchers as every other system: fastball up in the 90s, enough of something else to succeed.
The teams that have fewer pitching injuries have the same kind of pitchers, repetoire-wise, as the high pitching injury teams. There does not appear to be a clear connection between what a pitcher throws and what, if any, injury they might come down with. (The exception is the extinct screwball, which is a horrible pitch no one should attempt, and almost certainly destroys arms. I wince typing this.)
Further, pitching 92, 93 is not dramatically different or safer than either 95 or 90. But I’ll get to mechanics later.
The theory that type of pitcher cultivated determines organizational success can’t be considered credible.
Pitchers today are too babied
Do pitch counts and inning limitations result in weaker pitchers more likely to be injured?
This is a commonly circulated belief. Pitchers in the old days, they say, regularly got up to 200 pitches and threw complete games every other day. By watching pitch counts and pulling pitchers early, they don’t get to build up strength that helps them avoid pitching problems later.
This is a stupid argument. Imagine this in terms of a World War 2 combat infantry division. The survival rate for any single soldier through the whole war was next to zero: they fought until they died or were incapacitated and sent home. However, even given those long odds, you could find a few in the service who were drafted or enlisted early, served continously, and lived through to the end without major injury.
Would you then point to those few and say “Look at these fine men. It’s obvious that what we should do to young soldiers is put them through a pitched 4-6 year war. And if you want to find the really good ones, first you send them to Africa for a couple years to fight Rommel, then land them on a heavily-defended French beach, then…”
Of course not. But this argument is commonly used on pitchers. Anyone who wants to seriously look at literature of the time will see that pitcher injuries were far worse in those good old days. Pitchers went down all the time with “dead arm” or became ineffective for unknown reasons and left baseball. Some pitchers went through unintentional “rest-and-rehab” where they couldn’t pitch for year or so, but worked themselves back into the game later. The survival rate in general for the pitching population was horrible and undocumented. There was no diagnosis of tears, and shoulder injuries were entirely mysteries.
This theory is flawed even beyond the obvious error in reasoning. There is much anecdotal evidence that pitchers did not expend their full effort throwing normally. They would only crank it up against good hitters and when they were in jams. Modern pitchers will talk about how much it takes to “reach back” for a little extra velocity — a pitcher in the 1920s might only do that a few times a game, and work as hard as a modern pitcher does on almost every at-bat for a handful of at-bats a game. With the number of stressful pitchs far lower, it didn’t matter so much that they might throw 150 a game.
This raises an obvious question: why would that be true?
This deserves a short answer. Baseball players today are far, far better than baseball players once were, no matter what you might hear. This can be seen in the decline in variation of averages across baseball through time. The best hitters are not as good, compared to the league average, as their peers, and the worst hitters are not as bad. Teams once carried useless players on their rosters as mascots, but even the worst player on a major league roster today is an outstanding athlete in one way or another.
It is harder to detect, compared to sports with absolute barriers, like track and field, but baseball today draws from a far greater pool of talent than it ever did, it selects from that pool more efficently, it is better at keeping those players healthy, it is better at identifying promising talents, coaching them, and it’s better at advancing players who can succeed to the majors.
It is possible that if every major league team took the gloves off and ran their minor leaguers out to the mound every fourth day with instructions not to go to the clubhouse until they’d gotten at least 27 outs, there would be more pitchers who could go longer in their starts and more frequently. But at what cost would this be? If it meant that the injury rate went from 19% overall to 99%, revealing nine super-starters and destroying 846, is the game better or worse off? How many need to turn up to make it worth destroying the rest?
Genetics
Are tall pitchers more likely to be injured than shorter ones?
Are bulkier pitchers more or less likely to be injured than taller ones?
This is an area ripe for further study, but my preliminary research found that there is no clear correlation between pitcher height, weight, or body-mass index and injury. I may eventually look at all 855 pitchers in this study for more information, but this approach is severely limited by the nature of the data:
First, pitchers can put on a lot of weight over their development. This is not accurately reflected in press guides and other publically-available information. For instance, Felix Hernandez is listed at 170, which is laughable. Without accurate information, we would be measuring injuries against an hazy set of data that could impede our ability to draw conclusions.
A similar problem exists for height, as few pitchers below six feet fail to be measured at six feet, because of a long-standing and well-documented scouting quirk.
Second, setting up the criteria for survival/injury measurement starts to present problems of its own, which I’ll omit here.
If you hold that the few pitchers that were able to shoulder incredible workloads for long periods of time did so not out of luck but because they were physically superior, then this will strike your fancy.
Some players will, by gift of Nature or God, be better equipped to pitch longer and harder. They have super-tough labrums, and their ligaments are extra-durable. Every pitch does no damage to anything. They’re not going to get injured unless they endure some kind of severe trauma.
If you believe this, and there’s no way to disprove it without cracking pitchers open at a draft combine and looking at their ligaments and labrum for who-knows-what, then it’s all luck of the draw. If anything, you should draft pitchers who have been badly abused in high school and in college without being injured, believing that they’re able to take that abuse rather than worrying that the cumulative effects of so much pitching has brought them closer to an injury.
This view is undercut not only by what we know about physiology but also about pitching. Many pitchers thought to be superhuman prove only to have a much higher breaking point than others. Once we acknowledge that pitching does some kind of damage, no matter if the severity and when that damage is worst differs, then we must also acknowledge that we are again in a terrible dilemma, where while we know that the overly fragile will drop out, discovering the difference between a normal pitcher and a super-durable one, if they exist, would require you to drive all normal pitchers until they get hurt.
Origins of pitchers
Are pitchers from high school more likely to be injured as they advance?
Are college pitchers safer bets to remain healthy?
What happens to a player before they join an organization is an important factor in whether they’ll be an injury risk or not. However, evaluating responsibility is nearly impossible.
For instance, Jorge Campillo spent years in unaffiliated leagues. In his first season with the Mariners, he blew out his elbow. It seems unfair to credit such an injury entirely to the team. Even if the Mariners gave him a good medical work-up and determined his arm was sound — and suppose they were wrong to do so, misreading the elbow pictures or whatever — Campillo will have pitched more than half his life outside the Mariners organization. Unless he banged his elbow up in an accident this year, it seems the most you could blame the team for is poor scouting work.
Similarly, players are exposed to abuse by aggressive coaches from Little League through college. Almost all organizations are taking steps to limit pitcher usage, but for a lot of these guys reform comes too late. No team can have a scout at every game for the vast majority of the pitchers they’ll acquire, so every team to some extent looks for kids out of programs known for not running pitchers into the ground, and cross their fingers.
To this end, it does not follow that drafting high school pitchers is for certain better or worse than college pitchers. High school pitchers are young and may be coming off abuse, but a team is then able to watch them closely and control their workload. College pitchers are older and closer to being in the clear, but they will have spent those years with teams less concerned with the long-term possible effects of heavy workloads than a drafting organization would be.
International recruits face the same problem. Hopefully in the Dominican and other countries a young pitcher wanders into an academy young and has a major-league team looking after them, but the professional leagues in other countries can ride their best pitchers far harder than a major league team would push a prospect. International professional players, like those coming from Japan, potentially have much more milage on their arms. Japanese pitchers in particular go through training regimes that border on the insane (see Kazuhiro Sasaki, among many others) and regularly rack up very high pitch counts.
A good follow-up would be to look at injury by method of recruiting:
- Drafted from college
- Drafted from high school
- Undrafted free agent
Even this would potentially confuse the issues, mingling good programs with bad ones. College may look good on the whole even as individual universities may have a horrible attrition rate.
Take the Mariner injuries:
High school draftees
Ryan Anderson, shoulder
Ken Cloude, elbow
Gil Meche, shoulder
Aaron Taylor, shoulder (by the Braves)
College draftees
Jeff Heaverlo, shoulder
Matt Thornton, shoulder
Undrafted free agents
Cha Baek, elbow
Travis Blackley, shoulder
Rafael Soriano, elbow
There’s no clear pattern here either. However, this is potentially rich research.
Organizational pitching philosophy
Do teams teach their pitchers to throw in a certain way which encourages a certain kind of injury?
It is possible we could measure this. We would need to find a team that, from rookie ball through the majors, taught only one kind of throwing from 1995-2004 for all pitchers in the system, and compare it to all other teams. We could then group similar schools.
I don’t know of any team that does this. Without being able to measure and evaluate systems in such a way, evaluating organizational philosophy is beyond us.
Similarly, we can’t evaluate any one coach, or manager (and this also gets into the issues of shared responsibility) for the same reasons. These issues are tied together with many threads that make simple explanation of seeming contradictions hard to explain.
For instance, take the Braves. Are the Braves helped in general by the general Mazzone “throw-more but not full-speed” philosophy, and how deep is its adoption in the system? Does the team’s perceived reluctance to trade prospects they know will turn out to be something tie into the flaw, mentioned above, that punishes teams for holding on to listed pitchers? Or does their high-school-centered draft have something to do with it?
Organizational injury philosophy
Does an organization’s approach to player injuries affect their players’ suspecptability to injury?
I believe the data is clear that it does, but also that this is unprovable.
The Mariners have for many years had a “pitch through the pain” philosophy, the failure of which is likely best exemplified in Gil Meche’s struggles and the organization’s dim view of his complaints. They have in general seemed reluctant to shut a pitcher down and slow to diagnose serious problems, as with Rafael Soriano’s rest-and-rehab, the push to have him return early, and the eventual surgical outcome of that course. The Mariners have one of the worst records with keeping their pitchers healthy.
Contrast this with the Athletics, who take nearly the opposite approach, it could not be more stark. The A’s have experimented with different pitcher development approaches, they attempt to apply advances in medicical research, do “prehab” and invest what little money they can on aggressive work to prevent injuries. The A’s have the best record keeping their pitchers healthy.
However, defining and measuring this presents the same problems we have with organizational pitching philosophy. If an organization had a pitcher who was both injured and a whiner, they would look bad instead of the kid who cried “tear!” Similarly, a team that opted for rest-and-rehab frequently may not be dumb to make surgery a course of last resort.
There is work that could be done in this area:
- measuring time from initial shut down to a decision on a course of action
- how often are pitchers shut down, and for how long?
- how often does the team opt for rest-and-rehab against surgical options?
- how often is rest-and-rehab successful, and how often does it end up in surgery anyway?
Further research into this area could yield interesting results.
What do we know?
“All I know is that I don’t know nothing.” — Operation Ivy
We know little for certain about what causes pitching injuries. Here’s what we know that’s supported by current research, especially Woolner’s 2001 work:
Throwing over a 100 pitches in a game is associated with a short-term decline in performance by that pitcher.
Arm injuries are correlated with the number of stressful pitches a pitcher throws — that is, pitches in a start over 100.
Additionally, we know that trauma like a blow or a fall can cause both tendon and rotator cuff tears. Cumulative wear is not the only cause.
Players conceal and lie about their injuries when they believe it is in their best interest.
What is highly likely
Given the risks involved with disclosure of injuries (don’t want contract voided) it is almost certain that some injuries are due to activities outside of baseball though no definitive diagnosis can be made.
Similarly, given the rewards for a player when they make the major leagues, and organizations that punish players who are perceived not to be “gamers” by not promoting them or giving them the opportunities to play, it is almost certain that player concealment of injuries is responsible for some preventable injuries, the strange course of treatment taken by teams in some cases, and other odd events.
It appears that the years before 25 are particularly critical. Serious abuse of a pitcher before they’re 25 is where careers are cut down before they begin.
Stressful pitches are bad. The 100+ pitch game research finds this. It follows that there may be another source of stress we haven’t seen enumerated yet (and I’ve argued for this for years, along with a lot of pitchers): inning pitches. If, as almost everyone agrees, it is pitching tired, when a pitcher’s mechanics deteriorate, that is the cause of most wear-and-tear, then it follows that if a pitcher throws many pitches within an inning and grows tired, that can be as harmful as the end-of-game tired pitches. No research has been done on this that I’m aware of.
Mechanics play a large role in a pitcher’s durability. While definitions of what an ideal delivery should look like differ, and there is still much debate about what different parts of a delivery even mean (though the biomechanical work of teams like the A’s helps)
It is folly to predict than any pitcher is injury proof. Any time you read a statement like “There’s no reason to worry about Pitcher X because his mechanics are so smooth” you should stash that away. No one knows. No one can predict any of this.
What do we do?
The Mariners have, as an organization, looked into this. Their conclusion was that it was bad luck. I disagree entirely. Even if you believe their high injury numbers aren’t the team’s fault, the success of others at driving their rates down means that no team even at the average should be complacent. Average luck and good luck aren’t enough — there is much to be done to ensure that your organization is lucky as the result of hard work and investment.
The Mariners must make an organizational commitment to prevention before they can improve. To even say that it is luck and only luck, to not look for root causes and try to find things that can be improved. Good luck might get the Mariners to a respectable injury rate, like the Angels, say, to pick a divisional rival. Why should that be enough? Why is “luck” an accceptable answer?
The Mariners have immense resources. There is nothing any other team can do that they cannot. The A’s have enjoyed immense success in this area as the Mariners have failed, but there is nothing in Oakland’s approach another team cannot steal and use for themselves. The Mets, who had only a run of elbow injuries outside the realm of luck, have former A’s pitching coach Rick Peterson making over their system. The Brewers, who have gone through much the same problems the Mariners have, are looking inside and out for ways to improve. The Reds have made tremendous investments in facilities and medical care even on their modest budget. The Mariners are one of the only teams at the top of this list not making great efforts to rework themselves to address their problem.
The Mariners run a smart and ruthless business, one of the finest in all of baseball at extracting money from fans. They’re building a massive scouting operation, and they’re at least consulting a stathead. I don’t understand why they would not invest money and effort in the kind of injury prevention work that so clearly has paid off for other teams.
Comments
104 Responses to “The Attrition War, Summary and Conclusions”
Great work, Derek — not least in the fact you pushed it through; I’m not surprised by any of your conclusions, but it’s one thing to have a vague sense and another to actually know. Here’s hoping Bavasi sees your work and takes it seriously; after all, if adopting the A’s approach resulted in a significant reduction in injuries to our top pitching prospects, that would be a huge amount of money saved down the road for a small initial investment, which has to be something our bean counters can understand.
Great stuff, Derek. One thing I’d like to see is if there’s been a movement in the ratio of shoulder-to-elbow injuries. ie – has one grown more prevalent over the last few years, and might there be something specific in player development strategies that causes it.
Likewise, what about the Reds’ farm system leads to so many shoulder injuries while elbow injuries are actually better than average? That’s obviously beyond the scope of this study, but it’s something that needs to be studied in Cincinnati.
Thanks again, Derek.
Good work on looking at these factors. But, as they say, the hard work is only beginning…
One thing to ask the Mariners is what factors THEY looked at when they determined it was “just bad luck.” When you’re talking 2 standard deviations, you really ARE talking about something statistically significant; there should be something that can be sniffed out…
GREAT Work!
When is the job offer from the Ms coming? Seriously, consultants get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for this kind of analysis. (I know I’ve paid that kind of cash for much less intellectual horsepower than this.)
In a way, this isn’t surprising. Nearly every business/organization has an outstanding, identifiable, acknowledged problem of one kind of another, that they simply lack the will/vision to solve. Not to throw the M’s training staff under the bus, but usually these seemingly intractable problems are solved by bringing in an aggressive, competent manager to solve it.
That was incredible work. Perhaps you wrote about it elsewhere, but I’d be very interested in seeing the correlations between pitch counts and injuries, from total number of injuries to recovery time to reinjury frequency. I wonder if there is a magic pitch number associated with a high positive predictive value of shoulder injury. How can an organization deem something so significant as being all due to bad luck? I’m curious as to what their research methodology was and as to what the questions they were asking were.
Derek, seriously, amazing stuff. Thanks for taking the time, and for someone who actually understands what a standard deviation is, it is even MORE interesting.
Really interesting stuff. Given my (evidence-free) guess that the A’s preference for college pitchers is at least one variable that explains their superior record, allow me to float a hypothesis. Couldn’t it be the case that the simple, brute fact that a college pitcher has surivived an extra 3-4 years while still being able to pitch something that increases the odds in his favor ceretis parabis? Given how vulnerable pitchers are between 18-22, it would seem to me that simply getting a pitcher who’s gotten to 21 or 22 without blowing out his arm has to increase your odds, as one factor among many.
Monumental work, Derek. Kudos for the huge time and effort, as well as the keen insight.
How soon will the executive summary appear in your P-I column?
It’s amazing what the A’s have accomplished in keeping injuries down, and staggering that the M’s can’t do the same thing with a vastly higher budget.
As you say, it may be due to a “pitch through pain” mantra, poor coaching, etc etc. If so, heads should roll, starting with top management. The M’s set the tone for all the minor-league affiliates, so the buck ultimately stops at the top.
I’m not holding my breath, though.
I have nothing to add, just another chiming in to say thank you for putting in the time to do this. It’s both fascinating and frightening to see the overall results.
#7, that may be part of it, but as Derek outlined two of the injured M’s were college picks (although Thornton hadn’t thrown much), so even if college is one of the keys, the M’s have till managed to screw up the safer bet.
BTW, I should add. . .Derek, you are the freaking man. Great, great, GREAT stuff. I can’t fathom the hours this took. Seriously, you should let us chip in to compensate you for your time on this. Phenomenanl report.
Evidence. I like it. The range of injury rates is much larger than I expected, and I wholeheartedly agree that this is not due to luck. Great work.
Excellent work. Really appreciate the effort.
I hope you’re considering a distilled, more pointed version of this for the PI column. “King” Felix got picked up by the informed public and the media at large; likewise, this deserves far wider exposure. If this town had any sports “reporters” worthy of the name they’d be taking this work and running with it (though I’m not holding my breath). We should not rest until the average boob on talk radio is asking why the Mariners have more pitching injuries than everybody else (even if that’s not exactly what’s going on).
Most excellent! This is good progress. I’ve found a few articles around about the A’s practices, specifically the effort to analyze the mechanics of their pitchers by using video cameras from various angles and then comparing them over time. For this to produce results, I assume it’s closely tied to their coaching program throughout the minors. Know any more about their practices or those of any of the lowest injury clubs? If the M philosophy boils down to “throw through the pain,” it’s time for a wholesale firing in management. may the pitching gods smile on the King — he’s gonna need all the help he can get…
Dr. Glenn Fleisig, of AMSI, did an excellent interview at Baseball Prospectus on the work they’ve done that touches on the A’s. AMSI.org has some excellent information on what that organization’s been doing.
In general, there’s a ton of information on this floating around, and that’s just a good starting point.
I think you should do further research into the college vs non college pitchers. Just looking at the M’s, 7 of 9 injuries to non-college pitchers. While the A’s had 0 injuries, prefer college pitchers AND have the preventative measures philosophy. Meanwhile, Atlanta for all their success, rate high in injuries and prefer high school over college pitchers.
I’m betting there’s a strong correlation there.
I think you should do further research into the college vs non college pitchers.
The data are out there. Go to it.
Well, I don’t have a blog to disseminate the information, nor do I feel as qualified at it as you guys most obviously are. But thanks anyways
I cannot express how jealous I am of the As’ organization.
7 of 9 of the M’s might have been non-collegiates, but I don’t think that’s a fair conclusion, since the M’s have hardly had any college arms to work with. The fact that two of them ARE college arms says more to me than the fact that 7 of them are not.
Certainly, I think acquiring older arms can limit some of the risk, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near the most important variable. Look at Campillo, for instance. He was 26 when we got him (and damaged goods, most likely). I think what we do with them is a bigger factor than how old they are when we get them.
Good work, but it could still just be bad luck.
I doubt there will ever be enough true data to really prove it one way or another 50, or 800 isn’t really that many in the grand scheme of numbers.
Great analysis. (Okay, gotta go back and read the individual teams, but great work nonetheless.) Now you’ve got me racking my brain to remember the conversation I had with one of the trainers or clubhouse guys at a FanFest in February 2002 or 2004. He talked about what the team REQUIRED pitchers (players or pitchers? like I say, can’t remember) to do in the weight room on a regular basis. I know that you aren’t supposed to lift with the same muscle on consecutive days (because lifting tears the muscle, which needs time to heal, thus making it bigger). I also know from being a runner that the day after a race isn’t the same as the day after a hard workout. Race days are harder on the body. Maybe the M’s are making pitchers do too much the next day or two after a game, not realizing the recovery needed after a game versus a hard workout? ’shrug’
I can’t believe I’ve been reading this site for 4 more than years now and with the quality of work you guys do that you’re still here and not getting big money working for major league team, and that it’s still free.
I think this is the best blog I’ve even seen.
Therefore, an assertion that slow pitchers are less frequently injured is untestable, because those pitchers are not top prospects, and therefore useless.
What does that say about this investigation? That the M’s go after more power pitchers than teams like the A’s and Braves?
Thanks DMZ.
It’s interesting that at the top of the list are a lot of the organizations that, at least to my mind, had a reputation for not really having a guiding organizational philosophy over the past 5-10 years: Seattle, Texas, Cincinatti, Milwaukee, LA. These were wandering organizations. I’d say Milwaukee and LA, at least, are starting to figure things out. Anyway, luck is a factor, but when I look at this list, I have to believe it is not the only factor.
First off, A+ for effort.
In my opinion, 28 pitchers is still too small a sample to conclude anything meaningful from (except to say that ‘from 1995-2004, 9 out of 28 Mariners pitchers…’).
Amazing post.
This is great work. I wonder if using a fixed effects regressor would shed some light. STCOX in Stata can give you odds of failure in any particular time period. This way you can control for fixed variables, college, team, lefty, righty, etc. while at the same time applying the changing regressors such as pitch counts, innings, and age. This tool will tell you what increases odds of injury, and of course its statistical significance.
I hate to nitpick here, but the signficance levels reported here aren’t very significant (only 10%, less significant for the individual injury types)–and two standard deviations from the mean would be 36%, not 32%. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the difference between being a random chance of 1/10 vs, a random chance of 1/20. #26 is right–it’s a great project, but it’s an awfully small sample size to say the M’s are bad at this as an organization.
However, it is big enough to say that we’re worse than the A’s, and that we should figure out what they’re doing right!
Way over the top, great stuff!
In addition to the 100+ pitch level, a 30+ pitch/inning study is quoted on the post game show when evaluating pitching arm stress.
Very interesting work, Derek. Your data does back up our collective feelings that the M’s pitching prospects do get injured far more often than is normal for an MLB organization.
However, from a purely statistical point of view, are the individual sample sizes for the various teams large enough to draw a conclusion for an individual team? Certainly the overall league-wide sample size (855 pitchers) is large enough that we can safely conclude that from 1995-2004, there was a 20% chance of a prospect getting a serious arm injury. But is the average of 28.5 pitching prospects per team enough to give statistical significance to the chance of a particular team’s prospect to develop a serious arm injury?
The numbers are similar to the number of at-bats that a MLB hitter might get in a season (total pitching prospects for all teams) and in an individual week in a season (pitching prospects for an individual team). Let’s substitute the words “chance of getting a base hit” for “chance of developing a serious arm injury”. If in one week a hitter got 9 hits out of 28 ABs for a .320 BA in one week (the M’s had 9 out of 28 prospects develop an arm injury), would you say that it’s statistically likely he’d hit .320 for the whole season? If you concluded that, you’d be wrong, since his BA for the season was below the Mendoza line (166 of 855 prospects league-wide developed an arm injury).
If the weekly fluctuations in a player’s batting average do not have a large enough sample size to accurately forecast that player’s batting average for a season, why would the fluctuations between the chances of pitching prospects getting injured also be stastically significant. The sample sizes are roughly the same. Perhaps if we knew the standard deviation of batting average for a player between weeks, we could answer this question.
Anyway, as I said at the top, your data does “feel” right, given that it matches what we’ve observed over the years, but I’m wondering if we’re seeing what we want to see here. The data points for an individual team are scattered over 10 years rather than one week for a player’s batting average, but does that longer period some how make the data more statistically significant given the roughly equivalent sample sizes?
Derek, I can’t believe I get to read this for free. That’s just outstanding work, well researched and well presented. Next time you’re in Coeur d’Alene, your drinks are on me.
Can I ask about the methodology. I see percentage of prospects, but over what time period? and who is considered a “prospect”? And what is considered a “serious injury”?
I can tick off a bunch of Phillies minor league prospects who lost time to elbow/shoulder injuries in the last few years(off the top of my head, Cole Hamels, Zach Segovia, Darin Naatjes, Taylor Buchholz, Brad Baisley, Lee Gwaltney . . .)
If you are using different definitions and applying them consistently, that is fine, but I’d like to know what they are, because seeing “2″ next to Phillies pitchers injuries made me aspirate my coffee.
Derek,
Great work, of course.
With regards to the statistical significance, it just doesn’t exist. Here’s how you can start off. Assume that the population mean is actually 19.4% (which is really the sample mean). The Reds had 25 pitchers that you looked at. Given that, you expect one standard deviation, given n=25 and mean=.194 to be sd=.079. Their actual .36 is 2.1 standard deviations from the mean. That’s the z-score. Calculate the z-scores for all the teams.
If this distribution of injuries was random, we expect 20 to 21 of the 30 teams to be within 1 SD. In fact, 20 of the teams are within 1 SD. As well, if you take the standard deviation of all the z-scores, we expect a value of exactly 1.00 if the distribution was completely random. That actual number is 1.09. So, this shows something a tiny bit less than random. However, given your small sample (30 teams), I’m sure your uncertainty level is high enough that 1.09 might as well be 1.00.
So, it could very well be possible that the injury distribution is not random. However, you cannot assert such a claim based on the data you presented.
Tom
I hate to nitpick here, but the signficance levels reported here aren’t very significant (only 10%, less significant for the individual injury types)–and two standard deviations from the mean would be 36%, not 32%. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the difference between being a random chance of 1/10 vs, a random chance of 1/20. #26 is right–it’s a great project, but it’s an awfully small sample size to say the M’s are bad at this as an organization.
and
many words about batting average
I agree in the larger sense that it is not conclusive, and that it could be luck. A long example about how it could be luck using different objects doesn’t change that.
Average team would have 5.6 injuries out of a group of 28.5. One deviation is ~2.5. So the total number of injuries are two deviations off (again, with the warning that deviation may not be the best way to look at this because of the A’s).
With individual injury types, the deviation makes it much harder to draw conclusions on any specific injury.
So again — could this be random variation? It is possible. But it is also unlikely, given the data before us.
Phillybooster wrote some stuff.
Check out the methodology post. Or any of the individual articles.
Oops. Thanks.
Assume that the population mean is actually 19.4% (which is really the sample mean)
I believe the mean is 19.6%. But anyways…
However, you cannot assert such a claim based on the data you presented.
I have not asserted such a claim. There’s a clear distinction made between my opinion and what the evidence supports.
I am, essentially, unwilling to believe that the state of pitcher injuries is the best it can be, and that a team should accept its position as one of the worst because it could be bad luck. That reason could certainly be a defensible position for a team if you believe one in five pitchers will go down with a severe injury, that those injuries are randomly distributed, and that there are no preventative measures teams can take to lower that number, and no risky behaviors they can engage in that raise it — or that no team can systematically engage in either effective preventative measures or risky behaviors.
I do not hold that position.
And again, I also believe that the outliers may throw standard deviation off enough that I should have discarded it entirely, and other methods might be better suited for this.
Derek, I get 166/855, for .194. Maybe I cut/pasted wrong?
Your statement here:
Is it likely that this is entirely luck?
No.
The answer is “yes” (which is why I said that you can’t assert otherwise), it is likely that the data presented is entirely due to luck. However, is it likely that the injury pattern is entirley due to luck? Well, no, but that answer applies to virtually any possible question involving humans interacting with other humans.
Nothing involving people is luck, everything is not random. But, the data itself doesn’t show anything.
If your assertion was based on my second point, then fine. If your assertion was based on the data presented, then not fine.
As well, using SD was fine. No need to throw out outliers, since it is those outliers that will make or break your significance. Nonetheless, seeing that 20 of 30 teams are within 1 SD, it wouldn’t matter if you threw out the outliers or not.
This is a monumental study. The most amazing statistics relat to the A’s. What an amazing franchise. I hope they win the division this year, since the M’s are out of it.
Derek, I get 166/855, for .194. Maybe I cut/pasted wrong?
No, this is my fault, you got caught between updates: people are updating more injuries on the team pages now, which is trickling into here. There are 168.
But, the data itself doesn’t show anything.
That’s not true. There are absolutes: the M’s have a terrible record relative to their peers. About one in five of the sampled pitching prospects got injured. There are teams that are good, and bad, and most are within what you’d reasonably expect given a set of assumptions about the nature of injuries (random, can’t be prevented, can’t be made more likely). Those that aren’t aren’t that far off what you’d expect.
I feel like we’re arguing over the distribution of property damage after a massive fire. Did one piece of property suffer particularly? Yup. But not more than luck could explain. There’s an area undisturbed, which is statistically normal. But does the area have to burn at all? Should we note, perhaps, that the undamaged property installed all the lastest in fire-fighting equipment and sent their own firefighters to train in water-fog attacks?
My argument is not over whether or not the distribution of pitcher injuries could be explained by standard random distribution. I agree that it could.
My belief is that the one-in-five is too high, and reflects poor industry-wide practices in protecting player health, as well as potentially poor choices in player acquistion.
Wow, just wow! Awesome piece of work. Nicely done and as all of have seen over the course of the season, a great deal of work has been done to even get to the point of writing this article.
To me this says volumes about how the Mariner’s FO goes about the business of baseball. It would seem that this is nothing but a revenue stream for the FO and the game is simply a means to an end. To that end, the players are expendable despite the high cost of treatment of non-contributors.
Makes me wonder if the A’s simply cannot afford to have injuries due to medical costs so they work differently to avoid injury? They don’t have the salary room or endless pocketbook to allow them to carry 3-6 rehabbing players on a consistent basis along with their medical costs. MRI’s are not cheap even on the frequent flyer program. It would seem that Oakland simply thinks differently about the game and players then us and that their philosophy is one that works.
Very interesting and much needed distraction to extend my lunch break a few extra minutes. Nice work Derek. It was great to read, but depressing at the same time. Seriously-where’s the job offer M’s?
You brought up Rick Peterson and his overhauling the Mets. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on what role Brian Price has played in all this. Also-it’s clear that you think this is an organizational problem, but are there individuals within the organization that are taking the “right” (which can mean many things) approach to fixing this?
I am so jealous of the A’s.
I’m going to write something up about Price in a different post, since it’s a popular topic, and I did mention pitching coaches and the difficulty of attributing anything in this study to them, either positive or negative. Also, I promised Ernie I would.
My belief is that the one-in-five is too high, and reflects poor industry-wide practices in protecting player health, as well as potentially poor choices in player acquistion.
Derek, you’ve hit it on the head. Instead of the fatalistic “Oh, it’s bad luck, we’ll keep doing what we’ve done before because that’s the way it’s done according to The Book” attitude the M’s have, WHY NOT try what the A’s are doing if it seems to be working? What the hell does an organization that is looking at two years of awfulness they haven’t had in 25 years have to lose?
(Well, of course, the answer to that is “people have jobs they might lose”…but still…)
Excellent post, just an amazing piece of reading, it’s hard to believe it’s free. Love the OpIvy line as well, seems like a fitting song for so many reasons.
Derek,
I agree with your fire-damage analogy.
As is evidenced by the posts in this thread, readers are already trying to explain the discrepancy, when the data doesn’t support them. There is nothing that they can read into the data that people should take that the Reds and Mariners did a bad job, or that the A’s and Phillies did a good job. There are only three statements that the data supports:
1 – About 20% of pitchers ranked in the 95-04 study got seriously injured
2 – Mariners and Reds had more injuries than any other team
3 – The distribution of the fires occurs randomly
It could very well be that the Mariners and Reds have some bad programs that leads to more injuries. Again, you won’t find that in this data.
Going back to your fire analogy, maybe some areas got hit harder because it was bad luck where they were situated. Or, they were made of more combustible material. You simply can’t tell by looking at the data.
However, if a person were to study each team, one at a time, and look to see the kind of “combustible material” or “flame retardant” that was used, then you could make stronger assertions with the data.
In short, your excellent article has nothing to do with the data, but some Mariner readers will take away from this thread that the data presented supports your analysis/opinion.
Awesome stuff, Derek. Thanks!
Question on Coaching impact…
I have this hazy memory from a few years back (98,99?) where the Mariners had been espousing two different methodologies between the Minors and Majors. ie, They were teaching “Drop and Drive” in the minors, and then teaching “Over the Top” in the Majors (or vice versa). There were a few murmurings that changing the pitchers when they came up was a) contributing to injury, and b) contributing to their general suckiness. If I remember, Bryan Price was lauded for changing to a single organizational philosophy.
Anyway, any idea if that was true? And if so, how that could have impacted attrition rates? Etc.
Thanks,
-r
Man, Derek, you’ve put in considerable, admirable work on this project, and in the process raised enough valid questions to set the stage for a thesis project. Great job not just in compiling and analyzing these statistics, but for asking the thoughtful questions that need to be asked (and at some point, researched and answered) in terms of finding a way to prevent pitcher injuries.
I think the data DOES support DMZ’s conclusions and here’s why:
If the Oakland A’s were a football team and they’d just gone 32-0, no one would be arguing they weren’t the greatest dynasty of all time and knew how to win. Small sample size? No.
This is no different. We aren’t talking about batting averages for one week compared to a season, we are talking injuries over a TEN YEAR SPAN. Football wins and losses are far more analogous to this situation than weekly BA’s.
What DMZ shows and the data backs up, is that the A PHILOSOPHY of PREHAB over REHAB works. The fact that Peterson has taken the A’s philosophy to the Mets and it’s had an impact over there only further proves DMZ is onto something.
You can use statistical analysis wisely or you can abuse it. DMZ has used it wisely, I think those that get too carried away with just the numbers and forget what the numbers are ABOUT don’t have the correct perspective on this issue.
Oakland A’s, 32-0. That’s one heck of a team!
Here is something of interest that Oakland used, not that long ago, concerning their minor league pitchers at the lower minor league levels. They used to employ the eight man tandem starting rotation. Here is how it works:
Day 1: Jones starts and goes 4 or 5 innings max – Smith relieves and goes the final 4 or 5
Day 2: Hendrix starts and goes 4 or 5 innings max – Thomas relieves and goes the final 4 or 5
Day 3: Jackson starts and goes 4 or 5 innings max – Peterson relieves and goes the final 4 or 5
Day 4: Kline starts and goes 4 or 5 innings max – Rankin relieves and goes the final 4 or 5
Day 5: Smith starts and goes 4 or 5 innings max – Jones relieves and goes 4 or 5
Day 6: Thomas starts and goes 4 or 5 innings max – Hendrix relieves for 4 or 5
Day 7: Peterson starts and goes 4 or 5 innings max – Jackson relieves and goes 4 or 5
Day 8: Rankin starts and goes 4 or 5 innings max – Kline relieves and goes 4 or 5
The other pitchers on the roster are designated as relievers. If someone in the tandem got into trouble or reached a pitch count, they’d bring in a reliever or they would bring in a guy in the 5th to “close†before the guy on the back half of the tandem came in for his four innings of work. They would also use a second “closerâ€Â, if needed, to finish out the game.
I noticed that other than their Arizona Rookie league team, they have abandoned this philosophy. I wonder why they changed? It would seem “If it isn’t broken, why fix it?†It will be interesting to see if they continue to have a low rate of pitching injuries.
tangotiger,
You said: “In short, your excellent article has nothing to do with the data, but some Mariner readers will take away from this thread that the data presented supports your analysis/opinion.”
Derek seemed pretty clear in stating at the end of the articles that the M’s were not unlucky. You seem to be saying that the data don’t show this in any statistically significant way. If the data don’t support this, what leg does Derek have to stand on? Without that, he’s just a guy with a prejudice against pitching through pain and in favor of programs like Oakland’s “prehab.”
That you have concluded that it is likely the spread in injury rates is due to luck would lead us to believe that the data can’t even support that teams have control over their injury rates. If they don’t have control over the rates, then there would be no reason to take the steps that Derek suggests at the end of the article.
It doesn’t seem consistent to me to claim that Derek’s data don’t tell him anything and his analysis/conclusion were excellent.
See what I mean about readers jumping the gun?
No, it is not like football. And whether it was 10 years or 10 months, makes no difference, as it is still 30 pitchers.
The average “won-loss” record is .800/.200. So, you expect to “win” 24 pitchers and “lose” 6. If you expect to be 24-6, and you are actually 30-0, does that mean anything? No!
The chance that a team will have a 30-0 record is .00124 (or .8 to the power of 30), meaning the chance that a team will be 29-1 or worse is .99876. The chance that all 30 teams will be 29-1 or worse is .964 (.99876 to the power of 30). So, 3.6% of the time, you expect at least 1 team to be 30-0.
That’s a far cry from your football example. In your case, you expect every team to be at best 29-1 0.99999997 of the time. Essentially, 1 in 36 million times. If a sports team does go 30-0, it wasn’t by luck.
Derek seemed pretty clear in stating at the end of the articles that the M’s were not unlucky.
This isn’t the case, and perhaps I should have been even clearer.
My contention is this: it’s entirely possible that if you accept that one-in-five pitchers will go down, and there’s nothing a team can do in either direction to influence the outcome, the Mariners’ bad showing can be luck, and the A’s showing can also be luck.
I do not accept any of those. Luck should be accepted as a possible explanation, but it should not prevent the team from doing everything they can to move from worst to first, by imitating the best.
#53
Not since a JC post has my head aspolded like this…
Mat,
It’s almost self-evident that some doctors/trainers are better than others, and that some will help more than others. The problem is that the data presented sheds no light whastoever on this. Derek’s analysis/opinion, without reference to the data itself, stands fine on its own. Any data-based conclusion he makes, though, does not hold water.
There’s nothing inconsistent with what I’m saying, though perhaps I’m not being clear enough. Not all of us are the writers DMZ is.
Note on tandem pitching: This concept was solely invented by pitching coordinator Bob Cluck. Cluck is now working for the Reds. I think this is his first or second year with them. I see the Reds are using it at their lower minor league levels. It will be interesting to see if the rate of pitching injuries are slowed.
Does anyone have any knowledge of how many pitching injuries the Reds have sustained at the lower minor league levels in the last year or two?
Derek,
Thanks for the clarification. It appears I was a bit confused on your position.
tangotiger,
I assume, as you do, that it is self-evident that teams can have an effect on their injury rates. However, with this assumption understood, I think the data support Derek’s conclusion to a degree.
Suppose we think that hitting is a skill, and that we think Ichiro is good at hitting for average. Now suppose we decide to convince someone of this at the end of April next year and he’s leading the league in batting average. That early in the season, his batting average wouldn’t be statistically significantly over the league average. However, it tells us that Ichiro has, over the course of the month, hit well, and that supports our conclusion.
Similarly, here were are claiming that teams can affect their injury rates, with the supposition that pitching through pain is a bad idea and the M’s have put that idea to use. Looking at the data over the last 5 years, which isn’t statistically significant, we see that the M’s have been poor at avoiding injuries. On its own, the data might not tell us anything, but together with our intuition, it leads us to believe our intuition is correct. Thus, I would say the data support our conclusion.
“…though perhaps I’m not being clear enough. Not all of us are the writers DMZ is.”
I’m still working to be as clear as he is, and I have a long way to go.
And Mat:
That you have concluded that it is likely the spread in injury rates is due to luck would lead us to believe that the data can’t even support that teams have control over their injury rates.
Just because the specific presented data does not support that teams have control over injury rates doesn’t mean that they don’t have control. This is the whole point I’m talking about, about drawing conclusions. This data doesn’t tell you one way or the other.
Thank you Derek. This post should be required reading for everyone in the M’s front office.
What a fantastic job of research! I think your conclusions are reasonable, as well. (Like I needed another reason to be jealous of the A’s)
You are introducing a prior, like Ichiro is a great hitter. Given that he is a great hitter, then his league leading April *is* significant. On its own, it’s not. But, if you tell me *before* April that he is a great hitter, than that April performance is significant.
If I say that 6′4″ guys hit alot of HR and 5′8″ guys don’t and Ecstein is leading the league in HR after 1 week (or 1 month), then, you would say that it was luck. (This is just an illustration.)
Now, if someone comes in and gives you a prior on injury patterns, say that the specific things that the Mariners are doing should give you an expected injury pattern, and if you get that pattern, they yes, it’s significant.
But, this after-the-fact analysis doesn’t work. You are starting from an endpoint, and trying to come up with your prior. The A’s do “prehab”, the Mariners are not careful, the Reds do whatever, etc. All of these things are being brought up after-the-fact. What if the Braves, Dodgers, and Reds also do “prehabbing”? Then what?
Priors are part of the data. Present those first. That’s what I mean about looking at each team, one at a time, and seeing what it is they are doing.
Derek – I have two points.
1. I’m disappointed that you refer to the Expos as the Nationals in your chart, given that they were the Expos throughout the entire period of your study.
2. Please don’t try to use BMI to measure anything without first recognizing what an awful tool BMI is. According to BMI, your optimal weight is proportional to the square of your height. That’s idiotic, because we’re not two-dimensional. While I’ve heard arguments that the exponent shouldn’t be 3 because tall people should be thinner than short people, all the math I’ve done clearly puts the exponent closer to 3 than 2. You just don’t notice most of the time because the system works pretty well for people between 5-8 and 6-0, which is where most people are. But for extremely tall or short people, BMI produces visibly absurd results.
1. Expos v Nationals: yeah
2. I just threw BMI out there. I’m not arguing its usefulness.
But, this after-the-fact analysis doesn’t work. You are starting from an endpoint, and trying to come up with your prior. The A’s do “prehabâ€Â, the Mariners are not careful, the Reds do whatever, etc. All of these things are being brought up after-the-fact.
This is all well-considered. I would argue that this is not at all after-the fact. There were several specific views on teams before I started the study:
- The A’s were far ahead of most teams with a longstanding organizational commitment to pitching health
- The Mets had started, with Peterson’s hiring, to follow the same plan
- The Braves were a good organization at keeping their pitchers healhty, by focusing on frequent throwing
- The M’s, largely because of a long standing “rub dirt on it and get back out there” philosophy that encouraged pitchers to throw hurt, were doing badly
Some of these existing statements can be supported by the data. Others cannot. Before writing the first Attrition War article, perhaps it would have been better if I had set out a number of what I believed would be testable assumptions, and what we thought knew, thought was likely, and so on at that point. But when I first looked into this, I did not, because I didn’t anticipate that I would end up writing this whole thing.
I’m just an anti-BMI zealot.
I’m with you Derek.
***
Another note, as someone else noted: “years of service” would be a good number to show as well. I would guess that given the sample size, that it works out even for all the teams, but maybe I’m wrong. But, the more years in service, the more likely something will happen (as Derek noted).
As well, how old (and years in service) do the injury occur? These datapoints could lead to something the is statistically significant.
thanks for the big job of work on this, Derek — the success Peterson has had certainly would lead one to think that an overall look at the individual pitcher and his mechanics would help any team. And hopefully the Yankees don’t suceed in stealing Mazzone (as the tabloids hope) when Stottlemeyer retires
“The Mariners have for many years had a “pitch through the pain†philosophy, the failure of which is likely best exemplified in Gil Meche’s struggles and the organization’s dim view of his complaints.”
FWIW, contrary to the one quote that everyone seized upon this spring re: “pitch through the painâ€Â, that is not what has come out of Price’s mouth through the years. He has talked through the years about the importance of the young pitcher to learn how to differentiate between pain and soreness. Now I suppose there could be a difference between what is said & what is done, but they have talked a good game:
from 2001, after Meche & Anderson were both hurt–
“There absolutely is a point where a young pitcher learns what is normal pain and what isn’t,” said Price, whose career in the Anaheim system was wrecked by shoulder surgery in 1987. “The important part is learning the difference. After every outing there usually is stiffness. But the first time a pitcher feels that extra stiffness sends up a red flag.”
Managers and coaches now never even suggest a youngster pitch with a sore arm.
“Pitching coaches, including me, have gotten ultra-conservative,” Price said. “There is no talk of the investment teams make in young pitchers. There doesn’t have to be. It is part of the situation, as much as one throwing mid-90s or another having a late-breaking slider.”
Nor is it a matter of bubble-wrapping an organization’s top prospects.
“As good as Gil and Ryan are, they are no more important to me than any other guy in our organization,” Price said. “When it comes to health concern, you don’t push kids from the Latin countries or in the instructional league any more than you do a high draftee. The universal feeling in this organization is that kids shouldn’t pitch if they don’t feel right, until they learn the difference between normal soreness and stiffness, and abnormal.”
from 2003– On the “organization’s dim view of [Meche's] complaints”– here’s Price on Meche between having the first (Dr. Andrews) surgery & the 2nd (Pedegana) surgery that finally cleaned up his shoulder:
“I know there were times when there was a question over the legitimacy of his injury. That certainly wasn’t an overall organizational feeling, but some questions were unanswered,” Price said. “But I didn’t feel he was the type of kid who would just make it up.”
from 2005– the ‘pitch through it’ quote in context:
“Meche, meanwhile, is a puzzle, if not a conundrum. He’s got electric major-league stuff — he was a 15-game winner in 2003 — but rarely since then has he been able to convert that into sustained performance.
Now the team is trying to figure out what to make of his elbow problems, which he says have been contributory to his erratic start — twice unable to make it through five innings, and a 7.88 ERA.
While pitching coach Bryan Price said the Mariners will “honor” the fact he has tenderness, it is clear they believe he needs to learn to pitch through such discomfort.
“I’d hate for anybody to have to go through the year with any type of a chronic problem, soreness,” Price said. “Even if it wasn’t career-threatening, it’s still tedious, and it works people over mentally. You feel like you’re not going out there with your best stuff. But experienced pitchers understand they’re not going to go out there every time with their best stuff, and they still have to compete and give us a chance to win.”
and 5 days later, from Gil:
“The Mariners insist that Meche’s arm is structurally sound, and he said it is a relief to know he can “go out and let the ball go. Once you go through surgeries before, like I have, you know what your body is telling you. You know what pain is, you know what soreness is. I’m dealing with soreness. That’s all it is.”"
and FWIW, this year from Pat Rice:
Rice said the Mariners run into problems when pitchers don’t disclose an injury right away, opting to try to pitch through the pain.
“That’s a big problem for us,” Rice said. “We try to tell them that if your arm is bothering you, let us know. I know that’s tough. I remember my last year my arm was killing me. I kept thinking I needed a few good games to get back in the big leagues. That’s the wrong mentality. Now, if these guys come to us and say they’re sore, we shut them down.”
msb: fabulous research. This is what needs to be done in conjunction with Derek’s work.
I wonder if Price would be willing to come to a Feed, with the Bavasi ground-rules in effect…
tangotiger,
You said, “This data doesn’t tell you one way or the other.”
Right, so if someone believes in the first place that all teams are equally good at avoiding injuries, they have no reason to change that belief. Like I said, without the data, I don’t see that Derek has a leg to stand on here. All he has is his untested proposition against the Mariners’ untested proposition that they are just unlucky and their methods are sound. Without the data, we can’t even say the Mariners’ have been good or bad, or even lucky or unlucky. Throwing the data out wholesale is not the answer.
tangotier,
In regards to priors: Yes, I’m introducing a prior. The whole study was based on the feeling that the Mariners’ have been bad at preventing injury to their pitchers. I don’t see that it is dishonest at all to bring that feeling up now when it is exactly what motivated the study in the first place. No one made a quantitative statement about it, but the expectation that the M’s would turn up at the bottom of the list was there. I agree with DMZ that this would have been better if it was all clearly stated ahead of time, but the fact that it wasn’t doesn’t mean we can simply dismiss it as after-the-fact reasoning.
If 1) I was Internet-savvy enough to read this blog, and 2) I were a draft-eligible high school pitcher or college pitcher likely to go high in the first round next June, and the Mariners happened to call my name, I might be inclined to say, “thanks but no thanks, I’ll finish my education”…anything to avoid the shooting gallery that seems to be “the Mariner Way” with pitchers.
Considering MLB organizational philosophies seem to move at the speed of a glacier if no other changes (like new ownership) have taken place, Derek’s report doesn’t bode well for any immediate changes in pitching/training practices by the Mariners.
Excelllent, Derek, thanks for summarizing them all together. However, now I am duty bound to email this to my brother-in-law who is an A’s fan. He isn’t too big a gloater, fortunately.
I wish they’d get some new pitching people to call the shots lower down in the organization, and some new medical people throughout. If you’ll pardon the expression, it couldn’t hurt.
In regards to posts #51 and #57, about pitching tandems…
Some of the reason that this has failed to catch on elsewhere (part A) and to keep hold within Oakland (part B) can be traced to the way this pitching scheme affects most of the statistics that govern popular opinions (and with that, or related to it, salaries).
First, the 4 or 5 inning stint is long enough that you can’t really get demonstrably more starts out of a pitcher over the course of a season if he were pitching a more typical schedule. In these tandems, the starters often switch order within the game, but still work on a rotation of 4 or 5 sets. The system does help prevent wear and tear, but it doesn’t add overall games started.
While not adding any additional games started, it does limit overall IP (this is part of the purpose), which limits counting stats (think K’s) and often, the starter is not eligible for the win (and we can show that he has a far lower chance to earn the win pitching no more than 5 innings than if he were to pitch a more “typical” schedule).
The reduced win total and strikeout totals (two of the big three in the traditional pitching triple crown) has an adverse effect on how a pitcher is viewed by the public. In general, pitchers tend to be considered less valuable as a result, and of course, they’re not very keen on that.
Often, at the age in question (low minors) the pitchers are more concerned with improving their chances to make the MLB team than they are with the perceived decrease in injury likelihood. We can say that they should of course be worried about injury, but having pitched their whole lives on a “typical” schedule, they are prone to the “if it isn’t broken…” mindset.
Just my thoughts.
On another note, great work Derek. I think the statistical clarifications are important, and sensible, but they don’t seem to change the overall implication–our pitchers aren’t as healthy as they could be, and we should be trying as hard as we can to get them healthier.
I forgot to add to #76 that if the pitchers in the tandem do swap positions every start (A then B, five days later, B then A), then you are effectively halving both pitchers’ chances at wins (which sadly drive a lot of valuation still).
Of course, with 8 or 10 guys in this tandem rotation, you’ve got more guys getting chances to pitch, and you balance the work load more evenly, which seems to help in things like durability over the course of the season and health over the long haul of a career.
As near as I can tell, Derek is saying that a 20% average injury rate for pitchers is just too high. But what is the basis for this statement? Too high compared to what? What we think it should be? But — should be based on what?
The task of pitching includes putting mind-boggling torque on a bunch of mostly soft tissue over and over and over again. Personally, I’m amazed that anyone can pitch in the major leagues year after year and not have paralytic injuries. I certainly know that guys who work construction wind up with crippling injuries frequently and minor stuff like dead arm or tendinitis all the time. Even house painters get their arms turned to stone over the years.
So what is the baseline for injury rates? All we have is how things happen here on earth. Perhaps it is higher than it could be, but, honestly, we have no way of knowing that.
And I appreciate tangotiger’s analysis. This looks like a normal distribution curve to me. It just sucks to be on the wrong skinny end of the bell curve.
Perhaps it is higher than it could be, but, honestly, we have no way of knowing that.
Unless there was another team, using different methods, had a dramatically lower injury rate than the Mariners. That might be a good piece of evidence that the average rate can be lower, and that there are things a team can do to minimize their risk.
And we have that.
I see what you mean, Derek. The combination of different methods and a lower injury rate is suggestive. If I were a pitching coach or a GM I’d say it was worth investigating. But I think we can probably agree that there’s no way that the average injury rate, even with improved methods, should be 0. Clearly, the A’s have been lucky to some extent.
The credit given to the A’s just sounds too much to me like the explanations hitters offer when they’re on a hot streak: they close their stance, they dropped their hands, they were inspired by their brother’s illness, they got good advice from a coach, etc. They may in fact believe that those reasons explain why they’ve hit .381 in the first month of the season. But they’re probably just riding a random crest.
Are the A’s — or, on the flipside, the M’s — riding a random crest? As (I think) tangotiger demonstrates, the numbers themselves don’t contradict that explanation any more than they endorse the opposite. I give some credence to the claims made about the A’s methods, but not enough to convince me that the league averages in injury rates are dramatically skewed higher than they ought to be. And I remain agnostic on the issue of what the injury rates ought to be.
Still very interesting work. Thanks for giving us data to rattle around.
Clearly, the A’s have been lucky to some extent.
I don’t see how you can argue at once that we don’t and can’t know what the true injury rate is, and then argue that the A’s were — even a little — lucky. If you really are “agnostic” about injury rates, if you really believe that it’s impossible to confirm or deny any of this stuff, I don’t understand how you can make a determination about anything. In fact, if you’re really agnostic about it, wouldn’t you think that the whole issue of injury rates is meaningless to a team? Why even argue it? Never mind, that’s not important.
It may be true that given a normal team’s philosophy and actions that 20% is normal. It may also be that a team acting well can reduce that. We have seen a team, acting well, reduce that. Is your natural rate 20% then, or how low a team can get if they adopt this new approach?
At earlier points in baseball history, extremely high casualty rates would have been looked at as normal and shrugged at. Progress has continually reduced this ignorance, even as the difficulty of the act of pitching has increased.
In ten, twenty years, I have great hope that the one-in-five number will look barbaric.
Hey, anyone know if Travis Blackley is healing and going to be a factor next Spring???
I can say with certainty that the A’s have been lucky because their injury rate over this period was 0%. I think we can both agree that even in the earthly paradise pitchers will sometimes be injured. Were they therefore a tiny bit lucky or a lot?
I never said, as you said I did, that “it’s impossible to confirm or deny any of this stuff.” I just said that I’m not convinced that this particular data set accomplished that task. I am not thereby saying that you’re a toad or ignoramus; I think there’s a lot of value to putting the numbers out there. As I said, some of the numbers are suggestive. But that’s about as far as I would go.
Please tell me you’re not hoping that a single data set such as this one is going to “confirm or deny” anything major.
In ten, twenty years, I have great hope that the one-in-five number will look barbaric.
That would indeed be a great outcome. My hunch is, however, that the phsyically brutal act of pitching as major league pitchers do is always going to injure an appreciable number of pitchers. Any attempts to minimize that number, including following suggestive data, are welcome.
The issue that everyone has with this article is Small Sample Size. There is a solution to that, but it would require a lot more work. That is to look at ALL pitchers in different organizations, and not just top prospects, or perhaps focus just on Pitchers in their first 5 or 6 years in an organization, or up to the age of Twentey Five or Twentey Six, for example. But, you also run into the quandery of trades, but I assume you have a solution for that. The results could be much different.
Also, maybe as a follow up article, a comparison between the Mariners/Reds and the Athletics/Phillies? What they do at an organizational level from the Rookie League to the Majors. Do they emphesize what they do at the minors as they do in the Majors?
Maybe you can press a reporter to go the whole nine yards? Question the Managment, and those in the minor leagues? Or if you’re forced, do it yourself.
Ben Murphy,
Maybe I missed the point I was trying to make. My point is not to use the tandem system in the Major Leagues but rather uses it in the lower minor leagues like from the Rookie League all the way through High “A†ball as Oakland did and as the Reds are currently doing.
Stats, especially won/loss, shouldn’t matter in the lower minor leagues. Developing Major League talent should be the main focus, not stats. At the AA level Oakland, when they used the tandem system, had their pitchers go back to a conventional five man rotation and I believe the Reds are doing the same thing at AA.
A few years ago I read Bob Cluck’s reasoning behind the tandem system. He said that instead of lower level pitchers throwing a heavy bullpen between starts it was better to have them throw in game situations while limiting the number of consecutive innings and/or pitches thrown. He is a firm believer that throwing a young pitcher no more than 5 consecutive innings in one outing in a week reduces the fatigue factor on a pitcher’s arm while building up arm strength. He said that it was during the period late in a game, when a pitcher starts to fatigue, that a young pitcher’s arm is at the most risk of injury. I think there is plenty of anecdotal evidence (and common sense) to support his claim.
Prior to Cluck coming over to the Reds last season Cincinnati had the worst record of pitching injuries in all of baseball and according to the research stats compiled by Derek, still holds the number 1 spot. However, in the two years since the Reds have gone to the tandem rotation I am not aware of any major arm injuries at the lower minor league levels during that time frame. If the Reds have indeed cut their major arm injuries, even in half, evidence would certainly suggest that the tandem system has merit at prevention of major arm injuries. It’ll be interesting to follow the Reds system over the next two or three years to see how many pitchers signed over a five year period (from ‘04 when Cluck came on board until ‘08, if he is still with the team)wind up with major arm injuries.
The issue that everyone has with this article is Small Sample Size
Everyone? Really? I think in the wider view, it’s a pretty large sample. The issue is “can we draw team-specific conclusions?”
The problem with your proposals is not that they’re bad, but that it’s impractical: the information was hard enough to get for relatively high-profile guys. Finding out what happened to who in the low minor leagues is well-nigh impossible, especially for historical transactions.
That said, you’re welcome to go for it.
Again, you did good work on this but the sample size IS too small. There is no way around it. I enjoyed reading all the updates, and all the numbers were interesting but it doesn’t prove anything.
I’m also willing to bet that not all the info you got was 100% accurate.
Assertion does not make it fact.
As for the information, feel free to go read the methodology post, where I talk about the data issues in some detail.
DMZ: I think you’re missing Tango’s point here. You’re acting as though the data is backing you up, when in fact it’s not. Given this distribution, the worst team _has_ to have a dramatically worse record than the best. In fact, since neither the worst or the best depart noticeably from the overall distribution, you really can’t say anything. The fact that you’re dissatisfied with the Mariners and like the A’s is irrelevant. If anything, you might have shown that the Mariners aren’t so bad as to totally separate themselves from the rest of the league.
The trouble with this study, from the perspective of what you’re trying to prove, is that it can’t distinguish a hypothetical perfect training regimen (one with no injuries ever) from the rest of the distribution.
I enjoyed the analysis but I would be inclined to also use something like a chi-square test. This allows you to use all your data points and not average 35-40 numbers into one per team. For example using the “exact unconditional test” http://www.stat.ncsu.edu/exact/tables.html the Mariners difference from the rest of the majors is p=0.083. (The Mariners had an 8.3% chance that the difference was random). The A’s come out p=0.002. For the Mariner’s my 2×2 table was 9 injuries and 19 healthy over the rest of the league 159 injuries and 668 healthy.
However you do the math, there is a great difference between the teams with the most injuries and the teams with the fewest. My questions: are the Mariner’s using modern conditioning techniques for their pitchers arms (think Mike Marshall) and how can they improve diagnosing shoulder and elbow injuries? It seems like the players have a lot of damage to their arm before they get shut down.
Thanks for all your hard work on this important topic, the Mariners need to decrease the arm injury rate if they are to compete for division titles.
The probability for the A’s in particular to have no injuries may be .002 using the chi-square test. But if we set that as the probability for any team to have no injuries, the probability that at least one team will have no injuries is 5.8%. There are five teams besides the A’s with three or fewer injuries. I just don’t see how they’re separated from the pack.
You’re acting as though the data is backing you up, when in fact it’s not.
I am not. How many times do I have to re-state this? This is ridiculous. Just cross-apply my previous arguments in 38, 41, et cetera.
In fact, since neither the worst or the best depart noticeably from the overall distribution, you really can’t say anything.
Noticeably. Two standard deviations isn’t noticeable? Whether or not you want to argue this is a standard distribution for a randomly distributed injury rate, or even that this is just luck, you can’t argue that the Mariners aren’t noticeably different.
The fact that you’re dissatisfied with the Mariners and like the A’s is irrelevant.
Heyyyyyy, way to ascribe motives to no action. I could also be arguing against a 20% “true” rate because I like turkey and don’t eat ham. Why not?
And comment #91 mentions Mike Marshall. I had figured it’d be under 40.
The Mariners, along with every other team, don’t follow Marshall’s principles. I don’t believe that not doing so means they hate pitchers, and there are alternate paths teams are pursuing to get to the same goal of better supporting their pitchers.
Two standard deviations aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. The probability for any given team to be two standard deviations away from the mean is ~2.5%. The probability for at least one of thirty teams to be two standard deviations away from the mean, given a totally random distribution, is 53.2%.
I wasn’t attributing motives when I said that the fact you like the Mariners is irrelevant; I was saying that the data don’t support picking out the Mariners in isolation from the rest of the distribution. With a totally random distribution of injuries, somebody has got to be in last place, and the Mariners are not so separated from the pack as to make it improbable that at least one team would have such bad luck.
Given the massive amount of work Derek has done on this topic, perhaps it would be worthwhile for USSM to cross-reference previous articles or third-party sources that provide empirical evidence (non-statistical) that the M’s are abusive to their young pitchers.
Wow. I was one of the people asking if you wanted to consider working on something like this, but I did not imagine the depth and quality work that you went to. The M’s should be paying you for this. I am proud (seriously) to frequent this blog.
After looking at this distribution a bit in Excel (by “distribution” I mean a binomial distribution with a mean of .80 and 30-player “teams”), what stands out to me is not the Mariners’ poor performance but rather the A’s excellence. Tango’s huge caveat that the data is basically indistinguishable from random data definitely applies, but there are still some conclusions that can safely be drawn. First, because of the location of the mean, one of the tails will be much longer than the other – the tail with more injuries. The shorter tail is bounded at 0 injuries, whereas the long tail stretches all the way to the other side of the distribution, even if reaching those extremities is unlikely. The end result is that outliers on the “long tail side” are much more likely.
I simulated the equivalent of 1000 “teams” (i.e. groups of 30 players, each with binomial injury p = .80) and looked at the resulting histogram. The number of injuries per team ranged from 1 (10 times) to 14 (1 time). There were no “teams” in the sample with 0 injuries. The median value was 6 (as expected). 120 of the teams (12%) had 9 or more injuries (injury p >= .30), while 42 of the teams (4.2%) had 2 or fewer injuries.
I hope people with more statistical training than myself can augment or criticize my mini-study. And all the caveats Tango mentions definitely apply. But the question of the hour (in my eyes at least) is not “What did the Mariners do wrong?” but rather “What did the A’s do right?”
Kyle,
Your example does jibe with expectations. Assuming the “win” (non-inury) rate is .800, and you have 30 “tries” (pitchers), then the chance that all 30 pitchers will be healthy is .8 ^ 30, or one team out of 808. Since you simed 1000 teams, I expected only 1 team, on average. That you got zero teams isn’t out of line. If you were to make it 8000 teams, you’ll probably get 10 teams with 0 injuries.
The statistical question to ask is: if we expect one occurrence per 808 trials, what is the probability we will get one occurrence with 30 trials by chance alone?
Tom
Tom: I’m not sure; isn’t that your area of expertise? If I had my college econometrics notes handy, I could figure out the proper distribution to use (Poisson? Chi-square?), but I can’t remember any more.
Nevertheless, it does seem improbable (more improbable than the Mariners result) that the A’s would have zero injuries solely due to chance. So I agree wholeheartedly with DMZ’s conclusions in that respect.
I get 3.65%, which is what I reported earlier. So, if you have a 3.65% chance that something is going to happen by luck, and it actually happens, that tells you its significance. Some people look for a 5% threshhold, and others for a 1% threshhold.
Derek,
You’ve outdone them all! You have weighed all the facts, and as I read this, your conclusion is, they could do a better job of caring for the young guns. I agree 100% with you. The pitchers have concluded that if they sit they get forgotten. I believe that the reasons they continue is fear. Instinct has alway’s been my yardstick, mostly it’s been right. My conclusion is that protecting the youth is simply double speak.
Ernie
As we continue to get more information smoking out the unknowns, it’s worth noting that the team rankings will change. As noted in the methodology post, I suspected that we’d find those guys got cut down by injury.
The good part is that it makes the Mariners look better.
The bad part is that it makes it ever more obvious something’s afoot with the A’s.
What never seems to be considered in the issue of pitching arm injuries (or lack of better pitching performance) is that baseball pitchers at all levels are simply not “fit to pitch.” They routinely waste too much time on activities that do not help them perform as pitchers such as long toss or weight room training. Or throwing on flat ground in order to reduce arm stress which actually increases it.
These other activities mentioned interfere with the pitcher’s ability ability to do more specific training for pitching.
The idea that baseball pitchers only have so many “bullets” in their gun or only so many pitches in their arm is ludicrous. Andrew Agassi at 35 still has more bullets in his gun and he hits many more balls than pitchers throw more often and for much longer periods all year long at high intensity.
The problem may be that reducing the number of pitches thrown in the course of a week or in the preseason along with too much recovery time does not allow the pitcher to be fit to pitch. The best form of pitching fitness, once the pitcher has trained and conditioned his body – is pitching and pitching a larger volume of pitches from the mound rather than less. Most bullpens of 40-50 pitches are thrown in less than 15 minutes. Spacing a larger volume of pitches in a bullpen over the course of an hour will allow the pitcher to not only be more effective with each pitch but will allow his body to recover while he is pitching.
The arm is the delivery device of the body. In 1983Dr. Frank Jobe, noted orthopedic surgeon, did EMG studies on the pitcher’s arm while throwing. The study confirmed that there was very little muscle activity going on in the pitcher’s arm during the acceleration phase of pitching, that is, from front foot contact until ball release. Since there is little muscle contraction forces going on in the arm it would indicate that the arm is “along for the ride” with the body supplying the kinetic energy and the majority of forces. The pitching arm is accelerated by stored elastic energy not but muscle contraction forces. The pitching arm does not supply power to the ball but acts as the control device of the pitch. I know this will be a difficult fact for most pitchig coaches to swallow but the evidence is out there for all to see.
The problem we have today is that baseball instruction is mainly dominated by belief based coaching rather than evidence based.
The arm is not the problem. The body is not fit to deliver the arm and because the connective tissue (ligaments and tendons) are not taxed they are not conditioned.
Starting major league, minor league, college and high school pitchers are all expected to pitch 100 pitches during each outing. In order to train the body to do that these pitchers are encouraged to save their arms by throwing normally less than a 50 pitch bullpen many times at less than full game intensity, only once between starts.
Should we expect pitchers to throw 100 pitches if they are only training to throw 50 at less intensity? No other sport that I know of has that philosophy.
When pitching coaches and teams stop ignoring the principles of sports science that relate equally to baseball as they do to all other sports training then pitchers will have a much better chance of training intelligently, reducing injury risk and performing to their true capability.
Statistical analysis, while extremely useful in many regards, does not address the simple questions, “WHY OR HOW ARE THESE PITCHERS GETTING HURT?” The only people who are ever going to answer these questions are those doing viable scientific research in biomechanics.
The American Sports Medicine Institue, while currently working for at least some professional teams, does not conduct true scientific research, in my opinion. (I have a background in a scientific field.) They are simply reporting on what pitchers currently do under controlled laboratory (non-game) conditions. I would likewise wish to see Dick Mills (comments above) validate his opinion with PROOF. He cannot.
From the get-go I will tell you that I have a dog in this fight. With the impetus of tearing up my shoulder in college, ending my hopes of continuing to pitch, then having a stepson drafted in the 2003 MLB draft, I have invested well over 1500 hours investigating pitching injuries. I am quite certain, positive actually, that the only meaningful research into pitching arm injuries has been conducted by Dr. Mike Marshall.
You will recall that Marshall won the Cy Young in 1974 (Dodgers). Dr. Marshall also holds a doctorate in Exercise Physiology, with numerous minor fields of study. Doc’s opinions are controversial. He is telling everyone that the way we currently throw baseballs is incorrect, in fact broken, based on the way the human body is designed. I think he is correct.
My son is currently training with Dr. Marshall, has pitched every single day, seven days per week, since the 12th of June, 2004. He will continue this training regimen until at least late May, 2006, when we hope he is ready to compete again at a very high level. I have also trained a high school pitcher, using Dr. Marshall’s mechanics, who has now thrown every single day, seven days per week, since Sept. 11, 2004. This young man won a state Legion baseball title for our local high school summer team this summer (2005). These young men, and others, are doing this without structural injury. (Meaningful training discomfort, because muscles are stressed beyond current physiological capacities, is yet another topic.)
My conclusion: Until professional baseball insiders realize that they are personally and corporately responsible for teaching and encouraging pitching mechanics that damage pitching arms and shoulders, the injury scenario will not change. My conclusion illustrates to you why Dr. Marshall is not popular. This does not diminish the reality that he is correct. The status quo is always more comfortable, and the mentality behind it continues to rack up needless injuries.
Call Dr. Marshall. He loves to speak of this. It has become his life’s work of over 40 years.