IHSA looks at limit on pitches thrown in baseball – Chicago Tribune
Genoa-Kingston High School baseball coach Roger Butler triggered a blast of Internet scorn last month with a managerial decision so provocative that an ESPN writer tweeted, “Fire this coach.”
His offense? He allowed Brady Huffman, a right-handed fastballer and Illinois State University recruit, to throw 167 pitches in a game — more than any major leaguer has thrown in almost two decades, and far more than the maximum recommended for a high school player.
“He told me that he could keep going,” Butler told the Daily Chronicle after the game. “I trust him when he says that he has something left.”
In other states, rules governing a high school pitcher’s workload would have gotten Huffman pulled long before reaching that mark. But the Illinois High School Association has no such policy, even as some evidence suggests that young aces are injuring their arms as never before.
That may soon change. IHSA officials are mulling a rule that would cap the number of pitches a player can throw in a game while also establishing the minimum amount of rest he must receive afterward.
“We’re facing an explosion of injuries in youth baseball, and I think that the IHSA definitely has a role to play,” said Dr. Preston Wolin, an orthopedic surgeon who serves on the association’s sports medicine advisory committee and favors a 105-pitch limit. “The longer that I go, the more I see that makes me believe we have to have rules for this.”
IHSA officials said a similar effort several years ago stalled out because of coaches’ criticism, and some remain skeptical. They say pitchers are more likely to hurt themselves in travel leagues or high-pressure scouting showcases, and that implementing the new rule would be thorny.
“Who’s going to decide who’s actually following the protocol and who’s not?” asked coach Rich Pildes of Chicago’s Taft High School. “Beyond that, what’s the number going to be? Not every pitcher is the same. You have to depend on the credibility of coaches to do what’s right for each pitcher.”
Tommy John epidemic
As team doctor for the Chicago White Sox, Dr. Charles Bush-Joseph annually looks at the medical records of more than 1,000 players eligible for the Major League Baseball draft. A decade or so ago, he said, the worst injury he typically saw was a broken ankle.
“That’s not the case nowadays,” he said. “The incidence of Tommy John surgery is astounding. It’s probably 10 times what it was.”
Tommy John surgery replaces the elbow’s ulnar collateral ligament with a tendon harvested elsewhere in the body. The procedure, named after a former major league pitcher who was the first patient to receive it, is performed on players who have overstressed their arms until the ligament is frayed or torn.
Teens are now the majority of patients receiving the surgery, and while many successfully return to the mound — Tommy John himself won 164 games after his operation — that comes after a long and taxing rehabilitation. Players who sustain the injury are also more likely to get it again, Bush-Joseph said.
Assigning blame for the epidemic is tricky. Some point to early specialization, where young athletes focus on baseball to the exclusion of other sports. Others say the culprit is an overlong season, in which spring high school games are followed by summer leagues and fall ball.
Still others point to the rise of showcases, mass gatherings where teen pitchers try to impress professional scouts and college recruiters by throwing as hard as they can.
“A lot take place in the winter, and kids are not in their top form with conditioning,” said St. Rita coach Mike Zunica. “If they want a college scholarship, there’s no way they’ll go and throw three-quarter speed. I think kids get hurt in the winter all the time.”
St. Francis High School senior Ryan Hodgett attributed the torn elbow ligament he suffered just after his sophomore season to bad luck and ambition.
“People are throwing a lot harder than they used to,” said Hodgett, 18, a Bradley University recruit who returned to the mound this spring after Tommy John surgery. “As a sophomore in high school, I was throwing in the upper 80s, and at that point your body is nowhere near developed. It shouldn’t handle that kind of stress.”
Whatever the cause, baseball officials have been trying to stem injuries by limiting how many times a pitcher can throw during a game.
MLB and USA Baseball, which governs the amateur level of the sport, developed a model called “Pitch Smart” that sets maximums according to age. A player who is 17 or 18, for instance, should throw no more than 105 pitches in a day, and should follow such an outing with four days of rest.
“I think it basically makes a statement to coaches that the health and safety of the athlete is more important than winning one game or a championship,” said Rich Janor, coach at Montini Catholic High School and a regional talent spotter for USA Baseball.
Yet while some youth organizations such as Little League have adopted the Pitch Smart recommendations, most state high school athletic associations have not. A few, like Illinois, have scant rules about how pitchers can be used, while others cap the number of innings a pitcher can throw.
But high school pitch counts are starting to catch on. Alabama recently created a rule that pairs a 120-pitch ceiling with serious enforcement.
Starting next year, a school and its opponent must record every throw, while a neutral official will keep track as well. The pitch counts will be reported electronically to the Alabama High School Athletic Association, and if a school allows a pitcher to throw too much or rest too little, it will have to pay a $250 fine and forfeit the game in which the pitcher appeared.
“It’s all centered around the safety of the kid’s arm,” said Greg Brewer, the association’s director of officials. “When the doctors say this is good for the kids’ health, you don’t go against that.”
Hard sell
Wolin has a similar system in mind for Illinois, though he’s leery about requiring teams to forfeit. He said his committee will present the pitch count idea to the Illinois High School Baseball Coaches Association in August, hoping for feedback and an endorsement. The IHSA board will make the final decision on the rule.
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