White Sox Top 10 Prospects (BA)

[Y2Jimmy0]

  On 2/19/2025 at 3:21 AM, caulfield12 said:

Fine, how confident are you that Schultz, Smith and Taylor won't get hurt in the next 5-7 years?

I suppose there's some study out there that PTAC has access to that we can put an actual number to it...if we can agree to an official date when "max velo" pitching actually started.

 

Then in July of 2013 Will Carroll came out with an article stating that 33% of opening day Major League pitchers had undergone the surgery. I, however, found the study problematic, which I discussed in my previous article.

In March of 2014, Jeff looked at players who threw a pitch 100MPH or harder and found that 25% of them had the surgery. And finally at this year’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Dr. Glenn Fleisig found that 16% of all pitchers had Tommy John, 15% of Minor Leaguers had Tommy John, and 25% of Major Leaguers fell under the knife.

So how does this relate to velocity? Well in my previous article I found that 32% of pitchers who threw 95+ MPH on average had the surgery. If we are to believe Will Carroll’s findings then really there isn’t any significant risk of throwing harder. If we, however, choose to look Dr. Fleisig’s results then throwing harder does increase your chances of having Tommy John.

https://community.fangraphs.com/velocity-and-the-likelihood-of-tommy-john-surgery/

That was almost a decade ago...so the numbers surely have increased from that isolated point in time..

 

"Since the introduction of pitch tracking in 2008, Major League fastball velocities -- and the velocities of other pitch types -- have climbed higher and higher. That increase in velocity has correlated with the increase in pitcher injuries over the same time period."Dec 17, 2024

 

But it's not just fastballs. Pitchers are now chasing "stuff" -- velocity, spin and movement -- on all their pitches, especially with all the tracking technology now available to them. Teams value pitches with higher stuff grades, so pitchers work to attain certain measurables, both during the year with their MLB team and often in the offseason with independent pitch development labs. That also might be increasing stress on pitchers' arms.

"With all the modeling of pitches that goes on now, it’s very binary that higher velo with a better shape is going to yield more positive outcomes. It’s hard for guys to step off the gas because it’s me versus you, and if I’m going to give less than my best effort, and if you hit it over the fence, I’ll be kicking myself because I know I could’ve done more," said a pitching development executive from one MLB team.

Pitchers throwing as hard as they can, or their nastiest breaking ball, with maximum effort every pitch is the combination that the experts surveyed agreed was the likeliest cause of arm injuries. That consensus will help MLB focus its research going forward.

"If we interviewed 200 people, I was concerned that we'd get 200 different answers," Fleisig said. "The fact that there was agreement in this report -- that most people think the No. 1 issue is velocity -- is great. The survey does not prove what the issues are, but it shows us what people [in baseball] think the issues are. So it gives us a gameplan or roadmap for what we should try to solve."

https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-releases-report-on-pitcher-injuries-2024

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It's very likely that all of these pitchers will get hurt at some point because pitchers inevitably break. Hagen Smith and Grant Taylor have both already had Tommy John though. 

[caulfield12]

  On 2/19/2025 at 2:15 PM, Y2Jimmy0 said:

It's very likely that all of these pitchers will get hurt at some point because pitchers inevitably break. Hagen Smith and Grant Taylor have both already had Tommy John though. 

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Didn't realize that about Smith.

Well...Cole Ragans is the test case here. Two TJS's in his past and one of the best pitchers in baseball last year.

Usually the second was a death sentence for starters and led to no more than 3-5 final years pitching (more often in relief).

Ohtani will be another.  He's already changed his delivery to be smoother and exert less pressure on the elbow.

 

And of course we went through it with Rodon (multiple injuries) and Kopech.  Dylan Cease, otoh, has pitched with incredible stamina/durability since his TJS very early on.  Giolito now with his second major injury.  Reynaldo Lopez has been pretty resilient too with how hard he throws...although he was nicked up a bit last year if I recall with ATL.

Danks was a shoulder injury...that's still the hardest to overcome.

Edited February 19 by caulfield12