Current Events > Teenage pitchers now make up 57% of Tommy John surgeries.

(+) Yeah! (+)

But there is a worrying trend in baseball these days. While both Koufax and John, and a host of pitchers before them, were in the middle of professional careers, both over 30 years old, more and more these days, the surgery to repair blown out arms is being performed on children.
According to a study by Chicagos Rush University Medical Center, the biggest age group needing Tommy John surgery in the country is between 15 and 19 years old. Kids whose arms have not yet fully developed now account for 57% of all surgeries nationwide.
The son of the pitcher whose name graces the procedure, Dr. Tommy John, now practices sports chiropractic medicine in San Diego. Im seeing an injury rise in young athletes and its getting younger and younger and more severe. This most absolutely is a national problem, and its something thats bigger than one sport. In the past, we were dealing with common youth injuries, like broken bones and bruises, but now were seeing pediatric ACL reconstructions, concussions, Tommy John surgeries and stress fractures in spines. Quite simply, kids are being pushed beyond their limit.
What is causing this rise in Tommy John surgery?
As in any situation where surgery is on the rise, there are several overlapping factors, but the principal one seems to be the rise in year-round training.
With the stratospheric rise in sports salaries and MLB salaries in specific, parents and coaches find the temptation to try and find the next prodigy too great to ignore. But lets not lay the blame all at the parents feet. Often they are given advice by coaches and trainers who see these kids as cash cows, funnelling more and more kids into their multi-billion dollar industry for nothing more than quick profit. Children as young as eight are being encouraged; and I only say that so as not to say coerced or forced; to play baseball all year.
Summer leagues used to be a short wind-down from prep baseball, lasting two months at most. Kids were encouraged to play all sports; baseball in summer, but then football and basketball in the winter, plus tennis, golf, swimming, and in fact any other athletic endeavor on offer.
No longer.
With the rise of travel ball and winter ball leagues since the 1990s, young kids are carrying a workload that leads them to have the worn out arms of ten-year MLB veterans by the time they hit their mid teens.
Tommy John, the former MLB southpaw, who managed to come back after his surgery to pitch even better than before says, This is about more than just baseball and elbows. Its about the way we are raising our children. The nations youth-sports industry is a $15 billion business. And more and more, that business pushes children to make decisions early about which sport they want to play, and then to pursue that sport to the exclusion of all others. And kids bodies are paying the price.
The quest for speed
So you want to work on your kids pitching? With ample rest and within the bounds of safety, still you want to train that young arm the best way? Stop looking at how fast they throw.
The incessant focus on speed and speed alone is not only damagingly myopic in a baseball sense, it is dangerous and adds to the stress on young, underdeveloped arms.
The best thing to focus on is control. Pinpoint accuracy. Once they become masters of control, and their arms are intact, a good college or minor league pitching coach can squeeze the best out of them. But for now, 85mph with good movement is better than a 95mph four seamer with no ride.
One of the greatest ever, Greg Maddux, once said that when he found that he was losing control, he slowed down. Not just the process, but the pitches themselves. He worked on control, control, and then more control.
Lets be brutally realistic. If your twelve-year-old cant throw a strike, another five mph wont help. And if he can throw strikes, teams will use him, scouts will love him, and best of all? His arm wont fall off.
So what can you do right now? First of all, stop playing baseball all year. Take a break. Play basketball, or soccer, or swim, or skateboard, or whatever else your kid likes to do.
And then, when you go back to baseball, just focus on strikes. Try to hit a spot at the top of the zone, the bottom of the zone, inside, outside. All two seamers, all control.
And if your coach tells you that that your kid needs to play more baseball? Get another coach.

I dont know shit about baseball but I grew up in adjacent circles as Bryce Harper and from what I've heard the shit they put that kid through growing up was straight up child abuse. Dunno if he ever had this injury tho.

Americans are so hyper capitalist they see their children only as assets to be leveraged

I dont know shit about baseball but I grew up in adjacent circles as Bryce Harper and from what I've heard the shit they put that kid through growing up was straight up child abuse. Dunno if he ever had this injury tho.

Americans are so hyper capitalist they see their children only as assets to be leveraged

hate to break it to you but the most common reason in history to have children was so you could have more hands on the farm

hate to break it to you but the most common reason in history to have children was so you could have more hands on the farm

I mean that's a little different than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to try and force your kid into becoming a sports phenom.

Americans are so hyper capitalist they see their children only as assets to be leveraged

I played baseball when I was a kid and you were always taught to throw as hard as possible as long as you can control it.

my right shoulder has been fucked up since I was 16

So the decline in multi sport athletes is causing more injuries to teenage pitchers?

Yeah because they throw all year now.

Americans are so hyper capitalist they see their children only as assets to be leveraged

Don't college and professional pitchers rest their arms in the off-season?

For a lot of families their kid getting a good scholarship is the only way theyre going to a good college.

Kids are also very competitive and want to be the best too. Im not saying that we should force kids to throw their arms off, but this is just the reality of becoming a top tier athlete in the modern day.

We're not talking about the same thing.

The families that are trying to turn their kid(s) into a sports phenom from a young age do not need their kids to get a "good scholarship" to go to a "good college". They can afford it, just like they can afford sending their kid(s) to all these camps and tournaments across the country year-round.

Tennis is also particularly bad with shoulder injuries.

I fucked up both my knee and my shoulder, playing tennis, before I even actually made it to college. I lucked out in that I suffered an injury in my senior year after I had already accepted a scholarship, and my college decided to honor the scholarship, anyway, even though I could barely play.

Granted, this was likely because my college was Kent State, who have barely ever been a major competing college in... Any sport, so they allowed the athletic director to actually be a good person.

Yeah tennis is brutal on the body. Crazy how the pros will have hip and knee replacements and then just keep playing for several years

Glad your school let you keep the scholarship tho

Yeah tennis is brutal on the body. Crazy how the pros will have hip and knee replacements and then just keep playing for several years

Glad your school let you keep the scholarship tho

So is basketball the American sport with least injuries?

As in with a major league.

Theres a lot of the freakishly tall people who havent got the musculature to be playing in the NBA. Also foot problems are ubiquitous.

My guess is baseball though.

Tennis is also particularly bad with shoulder injuries. I played tennis from about 8 until the end of college and my right knee and shoulder are done

Yeah it's now expected of every pitcher to consistently throw over 90mph. It's an extremely unhealthy standard, to the point where tearing your UCL is pretty much guaranteed to happen, and any time a young pitcher comes up who hasn't gotten Tommy John surgery, everyone's just waiting for the inevitable injury and hoping it happens sooner rather than later.