Why 2-3 Tommy John surgeries could be new reality for some pitchers - SI.com
Another ulnar collateral ligament blew out last week, this one belonging to Chase Whitley of the Yankees , who will become the 16th major league pitcher this year to undergo Tommy John surgery —roughly one a week since spring training began. Whitley is a former college pitcher and, primarily, a reliever who is 25 years old and in six professional seasons has thrown just 423 2/3 innings. Baseball clubs have spent a generation scaling back on the workload of pitchers. On this date 15 years ago, in the 2000 season, pitchers had thrown 120 pitches in a game 93 times. ?Pitchers work less and break down more. While teams have fixated on workload as the most preventable and root cause of blown elbow ligaments, they have missed the more frequent problem: poor mechanics. Of the 16 pitchers who have blown out their elbow this year, half of them, including Whitley, raise their throwing elbow higher than the shoulder before rotating the ball to the loaded position. A pitcher may get away with this flaw if he has superb enough timing to get the baseball to the loaded position (hand raised, as the upper arm and forearm form an angle less than 90 degrees) as his front foot hits the ground. The extreme risk, however, is when the raised elbow is linked to another flaw: misaligned shoulders, known as “crossing the acromial. Source: www.si.com
