Illinois high school baseball players will face pitch count limit next year – Chicago Tribune
High school baseball players in Illinois will be subject to a pitch count limit for the first time next year after a sports rule making organization made such policies mandatory nationwide.
The National Federation of State High School Associations, which creates the rule books for 16 high school sports, announced this week that every state will have to create a pitch count policy before the start of the 2017 season.
Until now, just a few states have established such a rule, while others have capped innings instead of pitches. The Illinois High School Association has had one of the most permissive policies — limiting pitchers to seven innings a day only in postseason games — but said earlier this year it wanted to craft a more robust regulation.
The details will be hammered out next month when IHSA officials meet with the Illinois High School Baseball Coaches Association, said Dr. Preston Wolin, director of sports medicine at the Chicago Center for Orthopedics at Weiss Memorial Hospital and a member of the IHSA’s sports medicine advisory committee.
“Those of us who are more in favor of this, it’s going to make our job a lot easier,” said Wolin, who also serves as the baseball pitching coach at Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Skokie. “I have no doubt there will be people who don’t like this, but we’re beyond that now.”
The baseball coaches association’s president, Paul Belo of Palatine High School, said he had questions about how the rule will be enforced. Will coaches be on the honor system, or will they have to report pitch counts to a central database? And what will the penalties be for coaches and players who go over the line?
“A lot of other things will figure into it besides just the count,” he said.
Elliot Hopkins, director of sports, sanctioning and student services for the NFHS, said the pitch count mandate has been in the works for about two years. The organization looked at data showing rampant overuse injuries among young pitchers and decided new safeguards were in order, he said.
The federation did not come up with a hard limit for all states to follow because of climate differences that force schools in some regions to be more conservative, he said.
“In Minnesota, they start the season shoveling snow off the mound,” he said. “They’ll start with a smaller (pitch count) in the early part of the season, and it’ll get higher as the season goes on.”
Wolin said he favors the “Pitch Smart” guidelines drafted by MLB and USA Baseball, which set maximums according to age. Players who are 17 or 18 are capped at 105 pitches in a day, to be followed by four days of rest.
Hopkins said he hoped that mandatory pitch limits would prompt coaches to use more pitchers instead of relying on just a few strong arms.
“Most teams have three or four pitchers who can really throw,” he said. “Now they’ll need to develop more arms, give more kids a chance to play. It shares the workload of a season among more bodies.”
Twitter @JohnKeilman
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