Very good article about arm injuries and pitchers

[KB21]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2080837-baseballs-pitching-dilemma-too-hard-too-fast-too-much-too-soon?is_shared=true%3Fis_shared%3Dtrue%3Fis_shared %3Dtrue?is_shared=true

[drunkernhelldawg]

Great article.

[SallyStansbury]

Read that one the other day and agree 100% with Drunkernhelldawg and KB21. Thanks for posting, lots of parents should read this.

[Coach34]

"You'll hear of kids pitching 12 months a year. You'll hear of kids playing for multiple teams during the summer so that they can pitch multiple times per week. You'll hear of kids throwing in a high school game one day and then visiting a private pitching coach and throwing more just two days later. You'll hear of kids visiting private strength trainers, lifting weights and then pitching in a game the very next day."

Had that same very thing going on with my Ace back in 2004. Kid transferred out after that season cause Daddy didnt like the way we made him lift weights- so he went to another school that didnt. They had the kid pitching on 2 summer teams- a local one and a travel team. Tommy John surgery in 2006.

[Randy]

"You'll hear of kids pitching 12 months a year. You'll hear of kids playing for multiple teams during the summer so that they can pitch multiple times per week. You'll hear of kids throwing in a high school game one day and then visiting a private pitching coach and throwing more just two days later. You'll hear of kids visiting private strength trainers, lifting weights and then pitching in a game the very next day."

Had that same very thing going on with my Ace back in 2004. Kid transferred out after that season cause Daddy didnt like the way we made him lift weights- so he went to another school that didnt. They had the kid pitching on 2 summer teams- a local one and a travel team. Tommy John surgery in 2006.

That's insane. I've never heard of anyone doing this though.

Maybe it just doesn't happen where I live.

[Todd4State]

What's astounding to me is that you would think that most of this is common sense. Not pitching every single day? What a novel idea.

There are a lot of people at fault with this issue. The parents for allowing their kid to do that. The travel ball team coaches for allowing the kid to pitch- and you can't tell me that those coaches have no idea that their players are on different travel teams and have been pitching the day before. And then the high school coach that doesn't keep a pitch count- that's just gross negligence. Get your team manager or a sophomore who isn't going to play a piece of paper and tell him to write down every time Billy throws a pitch. And then there's the idiot judge who ruled that it's the parent's "right" to have them pitch as much as they want. Well, I guess it's their right to beat the hell out of their kid too then- because both instances are clearly child abuse. And then there are the pitching instructors who should tell these kids if you have pitched within the last two days, we're not having a lesson. Come back to me after 3-4 days rest and we'll do it then.

What blows my mind about it is IT'S COMMON SENSE. Or it should be.

The only solution that I see is education. MLB needs to come out with a big initiative on HOW to train pitchers at the youth level and what to do and what NOT to do. ESPN needs to get in on it too, and Little League baseball, and anyone else. The more the better. MLB and baseball in general needs to put out more stories about guys like Zach Wheeler to show people what happens when pitchers are managed correctly, and then they probably need to find some horror stories for a lack of better words as well.

And I know despite all the education out that they might put out there, there are still going to be idiot parents and coaches throwing little Billy 180 pitches so that they can win the D'Lo Water Park 15U tournament.

[Todd4State]

That's insane. I've never heard of anyone doing this though.

Maybe it just doesn't happen where I live.

Oh yeah- it happens ALL the time. Everywhere. You don't hear about it because usually the newspaper has better things to report than the action over at the youth league fields not to mention you have better things to do with your time. You hear about it in high school especially come playoff time. I remember Will Cox throwing 150 pitches for Amory and guess what? He's out with Tommy John surgery right now.

And then there's the Kirk Presley American Legion Tournament saga.

[Tbonewannabe]

Baseball needs to go after this like the NFL has taken to the correct tackling issue to prevent head injuries. It is damaging the kids and then hurts MLB. You would think MLB would do whatever they could to protect their future inventory.

Looking at it from the business side, a pitcher like Strasburg who is a hot name sells jerseys. When he disappears for a year you lose name recognition and also people buying tickets and jerseys. It is simply intelligent to invest in protecting your inventory.

[Randy]

Oh yeah- it happens ALL the time. Everywhere. You don't hear about it because usually the newspaper has better things to report than the action over at the youth league fields not to mention you have better things to do with your time. You hear about it in high school especially come playoff time. I remember Will Cox throwing 150 pitches for Amory and guess what? He's out with Tommy John surgery right now.

And then there's the Kirk Presley American Legion Tournament saga.

Man. That sucks. That's the problem, you can easily hide it. The paper does not want to waste its time, and I don't really keep an eye out for every single high school pitcher.

[TopDog58]

Man. That sucks. That's the problem, you can easily hide it. The paper does not want to waste its time, and I don't really keep an eye out for every single high school pitcher.

Todd's right, it happens every weekend. USSSA ball mandates that kids can't throw more than 3 innings per day and 8 in a weekend. But there is nothing about pitch counts in there. So if you have a kid on a bad team that makes errors in the field, they could throw 30-40 pitches an inning easily.

Then you have the dads on the competitive teams that get MAD when their son doesn't throw all 8 of his allowed innings EVERY weekend. And these are usually the kids that will sub on another team when their regular team isn't playing, play up an age group, etc. So you have some of these kids that are pitching EVERY single weekend from February thru July. And sadly, there are a lot of kids/parents like this in every age group. That's 1500-2000 pitches per year, easily.

My son is 12, and I know more than a handful of kids that have been doing this since 9 years old, and will do it again this fall at 13U. So multiply that out. You have a kid throwing 1500 pitches a season times 4 or 5, BEFORE they ever get into high school.