Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Mini-bombs’ blowing up the elbows of baseball’s top pitchers

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 51 posts

Re: ‘Mini-bombs’ blowing up the elbows of baseball’s top pitchers

#31

Post by _fat_santa »

walthamstow wrote: post #12

Is this a new thing? When was the pitch clock introduced? The article doesn't say. Sounds very similar to the knees and other parts of cricket fast bowlers. They get up to top sprinting speed then come to an immediate halt at the crease to deliver the ball at 90+ mph while keeping their arm straight, like a human trebuchet. Only one pace bowler in the history of the game seems to have cracked it, James Anderson, now…

The pitch clock got introduced in September 2022 [1]. Their reasoning back then was that games would take 3-4 hours (or longer) and that fans were loosing interest by the bottom of the 9th. I remember being pretty exited when it got introduced as the general sentiment was "no more 4 hour games!". But it seems to me this is just another symptom of the problem of player injuries, I heard a podcast where they said the age of players getting the "Tommy John" surgery (UCL / Elbow Reconstruction) is going down. Before they said it would be rare to see a player in the MLB get the surgery, now they said even players at the high school level are getting it done.

[1]: https://www.mlb.com/glossary/rules/pitch-timer

Re: ‘Mini-bombs’ blowing up the elbows of baseball’s top pitchers

#32

Post by PeterisP »

willcipriano wrote: post #23
automatic6131 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't see why athletes over say 30 can't do some mild oral steroids Because you've never met an athlete, I guess. None of them would stop at "mild".

Then why would they stop at none?

Because we can try to test for the difference between "mild" and "none", and the risk of disqualification does motivate many athletes to stop at none.

Re: ‘Mini-bombs’ blowing up the elbows of baseball’s top pitchers

#34

Post by gibspaulding »

Loughla wrote: post #4

I care less about pro players who hurt themselves, and more about the 16-21 year olds. Anecdotally, our area has a ton of travel baseball teams, which start at kindergarten. Highly competitive leagues. These kids tend to have daily practice starting in kindergarten. There are three local high schoolers who have had Tommy John surgery. It's like they're proud of it. An it's terrifying. If the pitch clock comes into th…

Does anyone know of any studies on the long term health of children who go through programs like this? I see this sentiment a lot, and can even think of annecdotes of people this describes in my own life, but haven't seen much attempt at quantifying it.

A quick search is just showing studies on sports participation and children's health while they are still children (which seems to be resoundingly positive).

Re: ‘Mini-bombs’ blowing up the elbows of baseball’s top pitchers

#35

Post by cornholio »

gibspaulding wrote: post #34
Loughla wrote: post #4

I care less about pro players who hurt themselves, and more about the 16-21 year olds. Anecdotally, our area has a ton of travel baseball teams, which start at kindergarten. Highly competitive leagues. These kids tend to have daily practice starting in kindergarten. There are three local high schoolers who have had Tommy John surgery. It's like they're proud of it. An it's terrifying. If the pitch clock comes into th…

Does anyone know of any studies on the long term health of children who go through programs like this? I see this sentiment a lot, and can even think of annecdotes of people this describes in my own life, but haven't seen much attempt at quantifying it. A quick search is just showing studies on sports participation and children's health while they are still children (which seems to be resoundingly positive).

I don't know how you would even approach that due to the huge selection bias.

Any kind of relevant metric, such as future injury of health, academic success in a non-sports-scolarship program, future propensity to crime etc etc. are strongly influenced if you simply are the kind of person that is likely to enroll into sports.

Re: ‘Mini-bombs’ blowing up the elbows of baseball’s top pitchers

#36

Post by willcipriano »

Etheryte wrote: post #24
willcipriano wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is doping and there is doping. I don't see why athletes over say 30 can't do some mild oral steroids to bring them back to the testosterone levels of a 25 year old. Would help with recovery and probably lessen the severity of injury.

Medical studies agree that steroid use reduces life expectancy, it's one of the core reasons why they're highly regulated. Not only does it reduce life expectancy, but time spent healthy is reduced as well, meaning that not only might you die a number of years earlier, you'll run into age related illnesses a number of years earlier as well.

Studies don't show that for mild oral steroid use after 30, I also gave reasons I suspect it would be net beneficial for health.

Men have lower testosterone levels than their grandfathers, there are many possible causes but the treatment I'm talking about only really brings you to a bit above where grandpa would've been.

Re: ‘Mini-bombs’ blowing up the elbows of baseball’s top pitchers

#37

Post by [deleted] »

Loughla wrote: post #7
willcipriano wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have this weird system where if you aren't good enough to become a doctor purely on academics we will also consider how good you are at baseball. It's quite insane on its face but it's how lots of midwits end up with "advanced" degrees. Those dad's are probably trying to make that happen.

I'm very confused by your statements. Maybe it's too early but I legitimately don't understand what you said. Can you please explain a little?

[deleted]

Re: ‘Mini-bombs’ blowing up the elbows of baseball’s top pitchers

#38

Post by BoxFour »

willcipriano wrote: post #5
Loughla wrote: post #4

I care less about pro players who hurt themselves, and more about the 16-21 year olds. Anecdotally, our area has a ton of travel baseball teams, which start at kindergarten. Highly competitive leagues. These kids tend to have daily practice starting in kindergarten. There are three local high schoolers who have had Tommy John surgery. It's like they're proud of it. An it's terrifying. If the pitch clock comes into th…

We have this weird system where if you aren't good enough to become a doctor purely on academics we will also consider how good you are at baseball. It's quite insane on its face but it's how lots of midwits end up with "advanced" degrees. Those dad's are probably trying to make that happen.

> we have this weird system where if you aren’t good enough to become a doctor purely on academics we will also consider how good you are at baseball

This is not how any of it works. At all.

Re: ‘Mini-bombs’ blowing up the elbows of baseball’s top pitchers

#39

Post by antasvara »

threetonesun wrote: post #30
elijaht wrote: post #21

This has really impacted my enjoyment of baseball. It feels really hard to get invested in a pitcher when you know there is a large chance he’s just gone for a year+. Not sure what the solution is here

Raise the pitching mound? Make the ball dead? The back and forth between "keep the game interesting" and "make the game easier for pitchers" has been going on for decades.

Do any of these make make players throw the ball softer or with less spin? Because that's largely the issue. The severity of the pitching motion seems to be the main culprit; gameplay adjustments that don't address this won't help.

Re: ‘Mini-bombs’ blowing up the elbows of baseball’s top pitchers

#40

Post by willcipriano »

PeterisP wrote: post #32
willcipriano wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why would they stop at none?

Because we can try to test for the difference between "mild" and "none", and the risk of disqualification does motivate many athletes to stop at none.

I would dose based on testosterone levels, if they took steroids out of program that would show in the blood work and the dose adjusted to zero, after that you test for the now prohibited steroid use.

The goal isn't to get them to a superhuman level, just to level the best genetics produce.

Post reply on HN