In Baseball Pitching Counts Do Matter

Today’s teams participating in Little League Baseball produce tomorrow’s future athletes, and rules that govern baseball hitting and baseball training have changed in the past few years to protect the kids who play. Approximately three million boys and girls get involved in this sport, and almost a million adults take part in coaching, managing, officiating, equipping, or otherwise supervising them.

Evaluation of baseball hitting leads to recommendations for specific brands and models of baseballs, softballs, mitts, and both wood and non-wood bats. Baseball training focuses on keeping the kids safe by getting them more involved in their own conditioning and also by evaluating which aspects of the game are potentially detrimental to their health.

Baseball pitching counts came under scrutiny several years ago, and in 2006 Little League Baseball established limits for those who pitch. This followed a 2002 study of 400-plus pitchers ranging in age from 9 to 14. The study showed that the more pitches they threw in a season, the more likely they were to sustain an injury. Those who threw 200-400 pitches had a 63% chance of sustaining some kind of injury or chronic pain; the numbers graduated to those who threw over 800 pitches developing injury or pain 163% of the time!

Medical researchers also studied the effects of various types of pitches on the incidence of injury. While some increase was noted with boys who could throw a slider or a curve ball, it was ultimately noted that the real impact was the actual number of pitches thrown. Body mechanics used in pitching, particularly overhand pitching, caused the growth plate at the elbow to fail.

Many parents and coaches took an attitude that this type of injury would not happen to their kids. It was easy to turn a blind eye to the problem, because top performers in Little League, just like those in football or basketball, earn college scholarships and field lucrative career offers. This was just one of many examples, common in all competitive sports for children, when the parents were witnessed to behave more shamefully than the children.

But this particular problem came to a head when officials realized that more and more boys, at the behest of either parents or coaches, were seeking corrective surgery. In fact, parents began approaching orthopedic surgeons before any real injury was done, seeking the surgery for the sole purpose of strengthening the arm. And the boys, taught from their youngest days the importance of baseball training and athletic success, were just as eager as their parents.

This surgery was a procedure first performed on Tommy John, formerly a star pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 1974, when he was 21 years old, his surgeon undertook this corrective action with an estimated one percent chance of success. John had to sit out the game for a year and undergo physical therapy, and then in 1976 he returned to professional baseball and played until 1989.

John’s procedure was an ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, in which the surgeon harvests a tendon elsewhere in the athlete’s body and uses it to replace the ligament in the elbow. Today, surgeons put the success rate at up to 92%. When done successfully, a pitcher can throw harder balls for longer periods of time.

These days, many surgeons are rebelling at the thought of performing this operation on juveniles. Their reasons are multiple: First, they point out that parents are mistaking a growth plate failure for a ligament injury. Second, many of these sore or injured elbows can be rehabilitated through physical therapy alone. And third, surgeons cannot justify surgery just to prevent future damage that might or might not happen.

There are other factors that make this injury more prevalent today. More of the Little Leaguers are learning how to throw breaking balls, and even though the pure number of pitches provides the most harm, the change in body mechanics does play a role in injury. Also, seasons are longer than they used to be, so the boys are playing more. And with changes in equipment that affect baseball hitting and pitching styles, the ball is thrown harder than ever before.

In 2006 Little League Baseball® announced guidelines for pitchers at various levels of play on the little league teams.

* Pitchers 10 and under must stop at 75 pitches.
* Pitchers 11 to 12 must stop at 85 pitches.
* Pitchers 13 through 16 must stop at 95 pitches.
* Pitchers 17 to 18 must stop at 105 pitches.

There are additional limitations, such as:

Pitchers under age 16 who throw 61+ pitches must wait three days between starts. Those throwing 41 to 69 must wait two days, and those throwing 21 to 40 must wait one day. Little League Baseball® clearly defines one day as beginning at midnight after the game and ending at 11:59pm the following day.

Pitchers who reach the maximum pitches allowed can play at other positions in the game. If they’ve pitched under the maximum number and they are used elsewhere in the game, they can return to pitch one more time only. Each league has its own responsibility for determining how the pitches will be counted, but the decision of the pitch counter is final. Violating this rule can cause a team to forfeit the game.

Still, there are parents and coaches who turn a blind eye and continue with baseball training and baseball hitting as if subjecting a boy to surgery were simply a minor imposition. Make no mistake that baseball pitching counts matter. So does teaching good sportsmanship. Fortunately there are coaches who advocate more stringent limitations.