Time to protect pitchers' arms: Editorial
States now have to set rules for pitch-counts and how much rest teen pitchers need
A growing awareness about concussions and head injuries has brought sweeping changes to high school sports. In New York, a 2012 state law required that athletes who may have sustained a brain injury be removed from their game and not allowed to compete until they have been symptom-free for 24 hours and evaluated by a doctor. Some schools do more, hiring full-time trainers or conducting concussion tests. Health officials are continuing to produce best practices based on research.
School systems still need to develop uniform approaches to head injuries suffered in football, hockey, soccer and other sports. But steady progress is being made in an area that was largely ignored a decade ago.
Now a similar and welcome enlightenment appears to be underway in baseball, aimed at reducing arm injuries for pitchers. While elbow and shoulder injuries may not be as serious as concussions, they can be plenty debilitating for teenagers who have to cope with day-to-day aches and pains or the growing numbers who are forced to have surgery.
A group that oversees policy for high school sports — the National Federation of State High School Associations — has called on its state affiliates to adopt their own rules for how many pitches a student-athlete can throw in a single game and how much rest pitchers must have between appearances in games. In response, the New York State High School Athletic Association plans to have a proposal by October and new rules in place for next spring.
Currently, as hard as it might be to believe, high schools in New York are not required to track pitch counts. Instead, pitchers are limited to 12 innings in a day — a badly outdated rule that could allow for dangerously high pitch counts — and 18 innings over six days.
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To be clear, most high school coaches already track pitch counts and look out for the well-being of their players. But it's common in suburban communities to hear stories about players who were over-used on the mound, especially during competitive games and key stretches of the season. Plus, having statewide pitch count rules will send a message to coaches, parents and players themselves that over-pitching is unhealthy and must be avoided.
Throwing too many pitches is not the only reason that teenage pitchers get hurt. Another factor is likely the growing emphasis across baseball on throwing fast. High school pitchers are throwing harder than ever, dreaming of a college scholarship. But Dr. James Andrews, the renowned orthopedic surgeon who has become one of the best-known figures in American sports, told lohud's Vincent Z. Mercogliano that the elbow ligament in young pitchers may not be developed enough to withstand fastball after fastball. "Their physiological age is 16, and their anatomic age is say, 13," he said. Andrews said that so-called "Tommy John" surgeries have increased seven- to ten-fold since 2000 at all levels of baseball, an alarming trend that should have the attention of coaches and parents.
Anyone who's involved in youth sports knows how seriously sports are often taken. Child athletes often use professional-quality equipment and work with full-time coaches or at training centers before they even try out for JV ( meanwhile, many school districts have cut middle-school level "modified" sports because of budget constraints). We all know parents who can recite their kids' statistics, and we've heard the stories about parents and coaches mixing it up over an athlete's playing time or some other overwrought conflict.
When it comes to kids' health and avoiding injuries, though, coaches and other school officials, certainly at the high school level, have to do what's in the best interest of teens' bodies and not the scoreboard. Since the National Federation chose to allow states to adopt their own rules, we hope that New York's high school officials will craft the smartest, safest guidelines based on the best research available and will explain the basis for their rules to the entire baseball community.