In one of today’s tournament games, a starting pitcher threw over 160 pitches. In a single game.
Guess what? He’s probably going to start the team’s next game as well.
Now, as a guest in someone else’s house here I’ve learned to try to reserve judgement about certain ways the game is played that might differ from how it’s played back in the states. The handling of pitchers at the amateur level has been what it is here for quite a long time, it’s part of the baseball tradition here. Pitchers aren’t kept on strict pitch counts or handled the way they are in the US.
Also, to be fair to the coaches who are leaving pitchers in games to throw this many pitches, many small schools have only one or two competent hurlers. Coaches are under heavy pressure to win, their jobs are often at stake, and guess what, if you don’t throw your team’s star pitcher, you might not have your job next year and your bosses will find someone that will.
However, it’s interesting to note that coaches, journalists, and fans of HS baseball here in Taiwan have been commenting about the diminishing pool of pitchers that can hit 90 MPH or better. Case in point: One pitcher here considered a prospect generally sits around 83-84 miles an hour in games. He pitches nearly every game for his team, usually the whole game. Due to a minor injury, he was forced to sit out a few games, and lo and behold he came out throwing 90 MPH the next game, sitting on 85-87.
It didn’t last long of course.
In recent months I’ve been talking with various officials about the possibility of installing an innings pitched limit for high school pitchers in order to help preserve their arms. After all, it’s not an accident that every pitcher from Taiwan to make the majors has required major surgery after arriving. Throwing a baseball hard is a violent action that puts stress on the arm and without proper rest a pitcher is just bound by physical laws to get hurt.
A cap on innings pitched during tournaments would help preserve pitchers for their professional careers after their amateur days are over. Unfortunatety, this is where the Catch-22 sets in: Put the innings limit in place and you preserve kids’ arms, but the smaller programs lose out on the already small chance they have of winning.
One idea that might make things more equitable would be to have stricter limits placed on better schools, forcing them to use a deeper rotation than smaller schools. The better the school, the less innings a single pitcher can throw. But reality dictates that so long as the emphasis is placed on winning, this will never happen.
I’m at a loss with this one, so any suggestions from readers please let me know a way out of the maze…
10 responses so far ↓
1 Chady // Dec 3, 2008 at 6:24 am
This is a pretty serious problem even here in Illinois. I’ve worked with at least two guys, one scouted by the Marlins and the other had a college scholarship, who both threw their arms out during or shortly after high school. They came from small teams who relied heavily on them to compete with the bigger schools, who recruited and had deeper pitching staffs.
Given the circumstances you’ve laid out, I’m not really sure. I’m curious, how much do Taiwanese pitchers throw outside of games? From what I’ve read Japanese high school pitchers and professionals throw an absolutely obscene amount during practice. Is the same true in Taiwan? Maybe having pitchers throw less outside of the game could spare their arms at least a little.
2 Shinsano // Dec 3, 2008 at 9:35 am
They do in Korea. Even between innings they’ll sometimes throw a bullpen.
I wish it could be monitored, but it’d be awfully hard to do. I think the coaches need to come under a direct threat. But that’d be hard to do as well. Arms are just too mysterious.
3 FRED KNOWS BEST // Dec 3, 2008 at 5:02 pm
This is very interesting to me. Multiple Catch 22 situation. How about this thought process.
Attend a school that has a coach that will monitor such things and not get fired as a result.
It seems as though the future of Taiwan baseball hinges upon it.
Back a generation or so ago, many pitchers such as Ferguson Jenkins, regularly pitched in excess of 300 innings and completed as many as 30 games in a season.
Has specialization in baseball been the thing to put an end to this?
And these pitchers were doing this prior to the miracle of modern day science. IE Tommy John Surgery.
Perhaps once the players mature, then such things are possible. In this case, I think the players have not matured yet prior to heavier pitch counts.
Interesting case study.
I believe the recent Cy Young Award winner Mr. Lincecum also pitched many pitches in his college days.
Seems to be a hit and miss thing and possibly attributed to overuse at a younger age moreson than anything else.
Perhaps the tendons in Asians are different than in other cultures.
4 simon // Dec 3, 2008 at 6:29 pm
It’s also just genetics/mechanics sometimes and pitchers like Matsuzaka have rubber arms.
I reckon the more brittle pitchers used to get washed out earlier back in the day of 4 man rotations and 300 inning workloads. We just don’t hear or read about them, instead mostly what we hear and read about are the successful survivors.
5 Chady // Dec 4, 2008 at 1:05 am
I agree with you guys that it’s a wash as to how much any one pitcher can throw without getting hurt. Tim Lincecum is a genetic freak, I really don’t care what SI has to say about his mechanics. Sandy Koufax, who Lincecum’s ‘perfect’ mechanics are based off of, pitched for several years with the kind of severe pain that would make a pitcher today blanch.
Bob Brenly once suggested that the reason players from the carribean seem to suffer arm injuries less is because they spend almost every day, from the time they can pick up a ball, just throwing. He argued that this throwing over a protracted period of time, not pitching mind you just throwing, built up strength in the arm for future strain.
I’ve read of a similar philosophy in horse racing, which if I recall is termed “loading.” Essentially, a horse is given a large workload while still young in order to prepare the body for heavier weights and longer races in lucrative stakes races later in life. However, I feel rather uncomfortable comparing humans to thouroughbred horses.
6 Korea Beat // Dec 4, 2008 at 1:32 am
The problem is the emphasis on winning as the only important thing. The same mindset that allows schools in Taiwan to damage their students’ longterm health and job prospects also allows schools in the US to let football players repeatedly get away with rape and other crimes.
7 FRED KNOWS BEST // Dec 4, 2008 at 5:01 am
This is perhaps getting off track with the USA football references no? I sense something at the root of this but do not care to uncover what is perhaps lurking. It is certainly not a punishable crime to ask a young man to throw a baseball alot of times in a short period of time and certainly not anything on par with the crimes that KOREA BEAT mentioned, but again, lets stay on subject here.
WIN WIN WIN for the HOME TEAM
8 Chady // Dec 4, 2008 at 6:21 am
I think that Korea Beat was referring to the wanton disregard for safety and lack of responsibility fostered by coaches whose sole motivation is winning. I think putting a young pitcher in physical danger and ruining his arm in order to get more wins is in many ways similar to American coaches who look the other way when their young athletes commit crimes.
They don’t look the other way out of the goodness of their hearts. They simply would rather not know that their star running back has serious problems and needs help. Part of the responsibility of a coach should be to approach their athletes as whole people, not just tools to win. This concept, which I think Korea Beat was raising if I’m not mistaken, certainly applies to both.
9 Westbaystars // Dec 4, 2008 at 11:58 am
Musashi-ism. Miyamoto Musashi, a master swardsman, wrote The Book of Five Rings in 1645. In short, his philosophy was “win at all costs because to lose is to die.” I believe that this was the philosophy that Japan used in their imperialist expansion, and it was reflected in the game of baseball which they brought with them to Taiwan and Korea.
On my retreat to Izu this past weekend, one of the guys asked me about my Mac as he was thinking of buying a new computer and didn’t want to deal with Vista (he’d had enough of it at work). So I was explaining the benefits of dumping Microsoft’s inferior operating system while still being able to access Office files, either with Microsoft’s Mac version of Office or Open Office.
Another person in our group, a department head in his company, said that Apple will never succeed in Japan because they aren’t a winner like Microsoft. He said, “Japanese like winners. And Microsoft is a winner.”
I pointed out that much of Microsoft’s winnings were had by dubious business and marketing while the products were inferior in every way to their competitors. “Wouldn’t it be better to use the best product for a job?”
“No!” he declared. Then, making the hand sign of money, he said, “Microsoft knows how to take care of its partners.”
There is a very strong cultural bond in Asia to winning. Musashi-ism dictates that winning is all that matters - by any means. These coaches see that not in the long term but season to season and tournament to tournament. If you really want to change the way these kids are being overused, you’re going to have to convince these coaches that winning in the long run is possible without overworking their ace. That is the core problem that must be addressed, because convincing them that winning at all costs isn’t important isn’t going to work.
(The other alternative would be to raise a generation of people who don’t subscribe to Musashi-ism. But that would be a project on a much larger scale.)
10 IronChef // Dec 4, 2008 at 2:15 pm
They’re only afraid to lose because the coaches are probably betting on the games.
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