John Smoltz on Tommy John Surgery, Pitch Counts and Sports Specialization | USA Today

(Photo: Dale Zanine, USA TODAY Sports)

Well, well, well. Smoltz, Glavine and Maddux all against pitch counts. That's good enough for me. Leo Mazzone probably not a big fan of them either, nor is he likely to be in favor of a schedule that favors a lot of rest over a lot of throwing between starts.

It sounds decidedly "old-school" nowadays, but Smoltz is correct in that it has led us in the wrong direction as far as number of injuries. I'm not sure the bail-out from medical science is such a great thing either and I can't wait for Smoltz to use the Hall of Fame as a platform to get folks to re-think what we're doing and the direction we are going.



from USA Today:
John Smoltz worries he may be last Tommy John pitcher in Hall of Fame:

The problem with baseball today, and the reason for the soaring amount of Tommy John surgeries, Smoltz and famed orthopedist James Andrews say, is that pitchers and ball clubs have fallen in love with velocity. These players have never learned to really pitch. So when they blow out, they come back too quickly, throw as hard as they can, and are soon back on the operating table.

"We're not developing pitchers the right way,'' says Smoltz. "We're asking them to go as hard as you can, and as short as you can, and that's not good enough.''

"So when they come back from this, that's all they really know. It looks sexy,'' Smoltz said. "It feels good. And we fall in love with it. But these guys are not given the balance, or they're not given the proper time to figure out what kind of pitcher they are. I'm fearful and feel bad for a lot of these guys.''

The rash of surgeries and the neglect to teach the art of pitching leaves Smoltz incensed, and his passion will be reflected in his Hall of Fame speech.

"I really want to really capture how it happened for me, not just getting to the Hall of Fame, but how many different things I had to do to survive,'' says Smoltz, the only pitcher in baseball history to win more than 200 games and save 150 games. "People don't realize what's going on out there. I'm blown away with people not having a clue.

"We've asked kids to do too much, too early, and at a high velocity at a young age, and you're just not able to handle that over time.

"It's like RPM-ing your car. If you red-line it enough, you're going to blow your engine.''

...

 Smoltz, who had his surgery in March 2000, will ask parents to stop having their kids play year-round baseball, advising them to take a minimum of two to four months off a year, just as Andrews prescribes. He'll implore teams and the Tommy John patients to take at least 14 months off before returning to action, perhaps reminding them of Oakland A's pitcher Jarrod Parker, who has undergone three elbow surgeries before the age of 27.

Why, 276 players have undergone Tommy John surgery since 2000, according to MLB statistics, including 13 this year. There were 31 performed last year, including 11 who had their second surgeries within three years of their original procedure. Most alarming, says Stan Conte, the Dodgers vice president of medical services, a research study revealed that just 67% of those patients undergoing reconstructive elbow surgery return to even pitch another 10 games in their career. New York Yankees pitcher Chris Capuano is the only two-time Tommy John patient to make more than 10 major-league starts after his second procedure.

"The younger professional pitchers that we're seeing now at such an increased rate of injury,'' Andrews said on a conference call, "you'll find out that most of them had some type of elbow injury when they were playing youth sports. …The pitchers of today are throwing harder. They're bigger and stronger. And they are doing more, as I said, at a younger age. So their wear pattern on their throwing arm is greater before they get to that level.''

The trouble, Smoltz says, is that they only learn how to throw hard. Smoltz and former Hall of Fame teammates Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine feel like choking the folks responsible for implementing the idea of pitch counts.

'via Blog this'