Win at all costs?

Today I watched a player throw 118 pitches in a playoff game. And before you say…”well…it’s a playoff game…” let me also tell you that this same player threw 63 pitches in yesterday’s pool play game. And if that isn’t bad enough, let me also tell you that this player is only 10 years old.

The father of this player was overheard today saying “don’t worry about pitch count - he’ll tell you if he’s not feeling good.”

So the coach left him in. They won the game in extra innings. But at what cost?

The rise in Tommy John surgeries in players under the age of 18 is alarming and should serve as a wake up call to anyone who is responsible for fostering and developing young players.

Full transparency (as I always am here) - my son had an elbow injury at 12u that took him out of the game for 6+ weeks before his long awaited Cooperstown trip. Long story short, the bones in his elbow were rubbing together, causing excruciating pain. All from overuse. What’s worse is that I thought we had been on top of his pitch counts, too. But a little bit here, a little bit there…it all adds up. He was on a rec team plus a travel team that summer. We tried not to pitch him in rec, but sometimes the coach would put him in to “get the last out”. Ok…that’s maybe 6 pitches? Pitches that I never used to “count”. But if that happens 3 times in a week, now you’re at 18. On top of the 1 or 2 travel games he started in the last 7 days (even though we capped him around 75 per game). And all the warm up pitches. Next thing you know, he’s over 150 in a 7 day period at 12u. And it broke him. This kid I saw today? He was over 180 in a 24 hour period!

We were lucky that my son’s injury at 12u was just overuse - no surgery or long term effects - just PT 3x per week for almost 2 months before he could throw again. But again, this was coming from someone who thought they had it under control.

So what do we do about this?

I believe the primary responsibility falls on the parents and the coaches. However, as witnessed today, they cannot always be relied on to properly care for young players. So that means the leagues and tournaments need to get involved.

Tournaments usually have a “site manager”, but that person is typically only responsible for managing the physical location, making sure games are moving at pace, foul balls are retrieved, things like that. I know because I’ve been a site manager at numerous tournaments. What they really need to consider is having a manager for each individual game. Someone to document every pitch and every play. And yes, that comes at a cost. But I believe parents would be willing to pay the nominal increase if it meant their own players were being taken care of.

And pitch limits need to be strongly considered at the youth level. Because it’s becoming increasingly clear that parents and coaches can’t be trusted to handle it on their own.