The cautionary tale of Jacob deGrom

Yes, his need for a second arm surgery is also sad, but as I see it, just for him but even more, beyond him, it's cautionary more than sad, whether he needs a full second Tommy John or escapes with "just" a Brock Purdy type surgery.

Taking together several Reddit comments I've made, let's dive in.

First, how do we know the uptick in arm injuries is horrendous or whatever? Related, what's a person's time frame for horrendous uptick? It is last decade? Last 20 years? Last 30? 

Is part of the thinking the old "availability bias"? I mean, in pre-modern, as in, pre-integration times, whether live ball, semi live of the 1910s or fully dead, pitchers had serious arm injuries all the time. Some tried to pitch through it and failed. A few succeeded. More took a year or year-plus off for rest, then came back. A few succeeded halfway well or better, a few succeeded less well, and a few totally failed. A few, whether it worked or not, may have tried Pud Galvin's goat testimacles. A few just retired because, no matter how much they liked baseball, it just didn't pay that much.

And, in all of the above, because it didn't pay that much, contracts weren't guaranteed, and there were plenty of clamoring replacements, owners didn't shell out money trying to fix players. I'm not saying that this is all explained away by availability bias; I am saying that we should think more about things like that, though.

Second? I blame analytics as part of the problem. Pitchers have been taught, in response to the three true outcomes of batting, to increase spin on their pitches as a main tool back. This gets talked about all the time. Baseball beat writers and analysts, especially at the national level, compare different pitchers' spin rates. And, because today's baseball IS all about the Benjamins, pitchers spin, spin, spin. And, the only way you get more spin, assuming everybody's using the same grip for different types of fastballs, etc., is by snapping some part of your arm harder.

One Redditor talked about how today's pitchers can't do like Warren Spahn did, to mention an example. Well, whether a freak of nature, freak of training or bit of both, Nolan Ryan never had major arm problems. Nor did others of the same general era and same general velocity, like Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson. 

Given the plunging batting averages of the last decade or so, maybe it wasn't that pitchers were trying to be like Warren Spahn, or the above trio, but that they were trying to be better. A literal arms race, pun intended. And, kind of like the old USSR vs US on missiles, for many pitchers, it threatened to be MAD indeed — mutually assured destruction.

With this, all the precautionary habits adopted in recent years not only in Little League but at the high school level, like pitch counts, do no good if the pitching is more violent the higher up the ladder you go, as in minor leagues, college, both then majors. And, yes, violent, to keep with the military metaphor. For that matter, how much do pitch counts in high school, even without the "violence" at higher levels, preserve pitcher arms? (I know coaches hate them, and I recently saw a scoreless tie in a high school playoff game become untied after one of the two starters hit his pitch limit.)

Third? There's probably related factors. Another Redditor mentioned that this motion is not natural. Kind of sort of. Our Mesolithic, even Paleolithic, ancestors were throwing spears. They just weren't trying to "snap them off" like cut fastballs.

So, maybe more pitching coaches need to train more pitchers on more off-speed pitches. I don't know if a Jamie Moyer or Bartolo Colon would make it today, but maybe they would. If you have three different off-speed pitches with different movement, and 10mph different speed between the fastest and slowest, and add a decent fastball that's 5mph faster than the fastest offspeed and has some motion, you can probably get by. I mean, going beyond the above duo, Greg Maddux wasn't that fast. He wasn't slow, but he wasn't THAT fast. He also spotted his pitches well.

Third, part two? To the degree that throwing overhand may be less than fully natural, working on pitching mechanics may help. That can include dropping one's arm slot to three-quarters. Or five-eights. Or sidearm. Or submarine. Dan Quisenberry and Kent Tekulve made careers out of that in the bullpen. Eddie Feigner, the "King" of "The King and His Court," made a career out of it, too. And, back in its dark ages, everybody in MLB pitched underhand.

Larger mechanics? Walter Johnson never had major arm problems despite his speed.  Yes, a different era, but still. If you've seen the old clips of him, he pitched with his butt and his back as much as his arm. And sidearmed.

In short, to the degree the rise in pitchers' arm injuries is real, this issue has multiple causes, of which the above are part but not all, and the solution, or partial solution, will also have multiple angles.

Finally, because it is 2023 and not Walter Johnson's GOAT year of 1913?

There are $$$ to talk about.

If deGrom wants to keep pitching without changing his approach, that's on him.

If the stRangers want to sign him to a five-year contract without discussing that with him, and without working with him with their pitching coaching, that's on them.

If whoever insures the stRangers player contracts want to cut a check to do that without batting an eyelash, that's on them. (Update: Via The Ringer [no paywall], per Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic, the contract is NOT insured.)

If fans want to pay more for game tix, RSN subscription or whatever with all of that? That's on them.

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Sidebar: Without this injury, would he be a probable HOFer? Despite that Ringer piece gushing over his FIP, etc. I think not. Looking at his stats on BRef, everything since 2018 is "small sample size" on number of innings pitched. Given his nagging injury history after the first TJ, even, it's doubtful he would have hit another 20 WAR for 60.