Major League Baseball (MLB) has seen an unprecedented number of injuries to starting pitchers to begin the 2024 season, and many players and fans are connecting the rise directly to the league’s new pitch clock.
For years, MLB partner leagues, minor league baseball and college baseball have played with a timer, but in 2023, the MLB implemented a pitch clock of their own, among a slew of other new rules, to speed up the pace of play. Initially set at 15 seconds between pitches with the bases empty and 20 seconds with at least one runner on base, the timer did just what it intended to do. According to Baseball Reference, the average time for a nine-inning game was three hours and three minutes in 2022 and two hours and 39 minutes in 2023, reducing the average game by 24 minutes.
Even with the almost half an hour saved per game, those in charge in the MLB were still unsatisfied, reducing the clock with runners on base to 18 seconds before the start of the 2024 season. This change was much to the Major League BaseballPlayers Association’s (MLBPA) chagrin, with executive director Tony Clark stating, “We just had the biggest adjustment this league has ever seen in regards to length of game and how the game was affected, by including a clock. Rather than give us another year to adjust and adapt to it, why are we adjusting again, and what are the ramifications going to be?”
Clark’s concerns have been on full display from the beginning of Spring Training and throughout the season’s first few weeks. It began on March 11 when the Yankees manager told reporters that 2023 American League Cy Young Award winner Gerrit Cole was receiving an MRI on his pitching elbow. The “precautionary” MRI revealed no tear in his UCL. Therefore, he would not require surgery but, after multiple doctor’s opinions, would still be out for 1-2 months. Cole is one of the “lucky” ones, avoiding going under the knife for Tommy John surgery, which would require a pitcher to miss over a season.
Since the beginning of Spring Training, 107 pitchers have had some sort of injury or issue with part of their throwing arm. Of the 107 injuries, 58 are in association with the elbow. Fortunately, of the total injuries, 84 of the pitchers are expected back at some point this season. However, not every pitcher avoided this luxury, with 23 out for the season and the majority again associated with their pitching elbow. Typically, such an injury requires the three worst words in baseball: Tommy John surgery.
Star pitchers like Shane Bieber, Framber Valdez and Spencer Strider were added to this list in the past two weeks alone. Of the three, Valdez is the only one who avoided going under the knife. Bieber and Strider are out for the remainder of the year after already undergoing Tommy John. For Bieber, the injury couldn’t have come at a worse time as he is in his contract year and was looking forward to a big payday next offseason. The former AL Cy Young Award winner was off to an incredible start, pitching 12 innings, yet to allow a run and striking out 20 over his first two games, winning both for a Guardians team looking to compete for the AL Central title. Strider came into the year as the NL Cy Young favorite and is on a Braves team eyeing to make it back to the World Series. Valdez is not out for the season but will miss an extended period of time for a team also with World Series aspirations.
The injury epidemic has hurt not only players but teams as a whole. With the rate of starters and star players getting injured, teams will have to dig deep into their farm systems to find players from whom they can get quality innings out of.
So, what is the reason for all the injuries? As mentioned before, the MLBPA is pointing to the pitch clock, stating that it is rushing pitchers and, therefore, putting extra unnecessary strain on their arms. Clark and the MLBPA issued a statement on April 6, right after Strider and Bieber went down. The statement calls out, “The league’s unwillingness thus far to acknowledge or study the effects of these profound changes is an unprecedented threat to our game and its most valuable asset — the players.”
In response, MLB issued its own statement pushing back against the allegations that the pitch clock was increasing the number of injuries. Instead, it noted that velocity and spin increases are highly correlated with arm injuries. It also cites a not-yet-published study conducted at Johns Hopkins University, which supposedly says no evidence has been found relating injuries to the pace of play.
Though the problem with pitchers getting injured is rising, it is by no means new, with several players succumbing to injuries each year, with some always requiring Tommy John. Therefore, as most pitchers and fans of the game agree, there are various contributions to the rise, with no clear-cut answer. That being said, decreasing the pitch clock anymore, as beneficial as it may be to the length of the game, surely will not help the matter.
Even if injuries and the pitch clock aren’t directly correlated, if there is any suspicion from either side, there should not be another change, and if anything, go back to how it was in 2023. The players’ health and ensuring they can perform at the highest level should always take precedence over shaving off another 5-10 minutes.
