how youth specialization in baseball is hurting young pitchers
It was a Tuesday night in the summer of 2016 and Sal Mignano, the Town of Brookhaven baseball director, was sitting on his couch with his iPad, checking statistics on the league games that were being played live. One statistic, as Mignano described it, “set off a light bulb in my head.”
“I just could not believe I was seeing a 12-year-old throwing 95 pitches and it’s the third inning,” Mignano said. “The numbers blew me away.”
At that moment, Mignano decided that the Town of Brookhaven would start limiting pitch counts for players ages 8 to 12, starting that fall, and that the town would enforce the rules league-wide come summer.
That instant decision made the Town of Brookhaven part of a growing trend among baseball organizations to protect and monitor young pitchers’ arms in hopes that they stay healthy and avoid an injury that requires major-league surgery.
That’s Tommy John surgery.
Baseball players who throw too much, too hard and too often can stretch the elbow’s ulnar collateral ligament so far that it tears. That’s when the procedure comes into play. Tommy John surgery, first performed in 1974 by physician Frank Jobe on Major League pitcher Tommy John, fixes the ligament in the elbow by replacing it with ligament tissue from another part of the body.
Experts say the surgery works almost 80 percent of the time, allowing athletes to play baseball at their previous level of competition.
But the surgery, which for years was performed mostly on Major League pitchers who have 162 regular-season games, is now being performed on more young kids than ever before. A study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine found that 57 percent of Tommy John surgeries performed in 2015 were on patients ages 15-19.
Dr. James Paci, an orthopaedic surgeon who trained at the American Sports Medicine Institute and performs Tommy John surgery about 20 times a year, said the increase is “a volume-related phenomenon.”
“Single-sport specialization has really changed the paradigm,” Paci said. “With all of these throwing academies and indoor centers available to throw, these kids are throwing year round.”
And many of them are throwing in hopes of a future in college baseball. But the more they throw, the more vulnerable they are to elbow pain. According to Paci, if an athlete is being recruited by colleges and has to sit out for a year to recover from Tommy John surgery, it could mean the end of their career playing baseball.
“It’s just too much,” Paci said.
And it was too much for one of Paci’s patients, 19-year-old pitcher, Andy Garcia.
The June after his senior year of high school baseball at Longwood, Garcia went under the knife.
When he learned he needed Tommy John surgery, “I was upset, I was depressed, I was ready to quit,” Garcia recalled.
But after he let the reality of an overused arm sink in, Garcia decided to look at this injury as a blessing and take it as motivation to work harder than he had ever worked before.
“By the time I had the procedure, I was ready,” Garcia said.
And now, almost a year later, Garcia has started to throw again. It’s been a tough time for someone who relied on, what he calls, a “natural talent” for the game since he was 5 years old.
“I took that for granted,” he said. “I never worked out. I never made sure that my arm is in the best shape possible, so that definitely all comes down to it because you’re playing how many games a year and every summer?"
“Eventually,” he said, “your arm is going to break down.”
The State Takes Action
Starting this season, the New York State Public High School Athletic Association set pitch count guidelines at the varsity and middle-school levels for the first time in state history. This big change came after the National Federation of State High School Associations ruled in June 2016 that each member state association must develop pitch-count rules based on innings pitched and time of rest between games.
Robert Zayas, executive director of the New York association, said that the baseball committee looked at every other pitch count in the country when developing the state’s guidelines. “They kind of blended all of those together in what they perceive to be the best fit for our state and our student athletes,” he said.
The new guidelines state that at the varsity level, a pitcher can throw a maximum number of 105 pitches per game. A pitcher who throws anywhere from 96 to 105 pitches in a game must rest for four nights before throwing again, including at practices.
The maximum threshold for middle-school teams is 61 to 75 pitches with four nights of rest.
And players at any level who throw just one pitch in a game must have at least one night’s rest.
If these guidelines are violated, then the school must forfeit the game. But there is no state rule against players joining other teams during the season, and throwing for other teams would not violate the state association’s guidelines.
“If we have a pitch count for high school baseball, we have to make sure that the parents and student athletes understand that it’s a safety issue and that it’s not just for high school,” Zayas said. “We’re going to completely negate the effect of having a pitch count if they pitch on a Monday night and then go throw with their club team on a Tuesday.”
These guidelines become a little more lenient during the post-season at the varsity level.
Mike Canobbio, who has been on the coaching staff for the Lindenhurst varsity baseball team since 1977, said it was “about time,” that the league got mandatory pitch counts.
“I’m in favor of anything that protects an athlete’s arm,” he said.
Like Zayas, Canobbio is concerned about kids pitching too much with their club teams during the school season. He said this is even more of a problem at the middle school level.
“Their arms are even more vulnerable, and you do have a problem because middle school starts in March and their games go to June,” Canobbio said. “They coincide directly with the Little League schedules, and that has been definitely a problem for us.”
For 12-year-old Dylan Govin, who as a seventh grader is just starting his school baseball career, this is something he’ll now have to be aware of.
Dylan said his coach for his current club team, Team Steel, always keeps track of how many pitches he throws and will take out a pitcher once he has thrown too many.
“I don’t know the number,” Dylan said. “But it’s because he doesn’t want you to ruin your arm for the future.”
Dylan said his arm can get sore but that he feels like he’s protecting himself enough by following the coaches’ rules.
“I ice it, and I’ll run after to release the lactic acid in my shoulder,” Dylan said. “I take good care of it.”
And that’s a good thing because Dylan, who started playing at 5 years old, sees a future for himself in baseball and pitching.
“I think about that all the time,” he said. “I want to play in the Major League.”
His mother, Jenine Govin, said her son didn’t always see himself on the mound.
“Dylan never wanted to be the pitcher because he was shy,” she said. “The coaches would beg him.”
That all changed when he was 10. His coach put him on the mound during a game because the team had no other kids who could pitch.
“Dylan said, ‘Okay,’ and he pitched five out of six innings, won his team their first game of the season and never looked back,” she recalled.
And as Dylan’s baseball career moves forward, Jenine said, she isn’t counting on scholarships, although she does see a possible future for college ball.
“We hope he gets recognized, but for us, it’s about Dylan having a sport that he’s really good in, and pretty much, it could be over after high school and that’s okay,” Jenine said. “Don’t get me wrong. If Dylan got recruited for college or majors I would be over the moon and back, but for now we are just happy to see him so happy.”
That’s the attitude officials like Mignano wish all parents had.
“I think a parent, wanting the best for their kid, with all good intentions, see dollar signs at the end of the rainbow—that their kid is going to be a college kid or a pro kid,” Mignano said.
But dreams are one thing, reality another. Only a few kids with Major League dreams make it onto college teams, let alone the MLB. According to the NCAA, the probability of a high school baseball player competing in the NCAA is 7.1 percent and the probability of those NCAA athletes making it into the MLB is 9.1 percent.
Mignano said that although parents are trying to do the right thing, they should seek out the “sound advice” for what is the best thing for their kid.
“I think the sooner a parent realizes the ability of their son, the best situation can result from that.”
Ultimately, it’s a team effort among the leagues, athletes, parents and coaches that will result in the best situation for a young pitcher’s health.
Brian Anderson, who coaches 12-year-olds in the Long Island Titans baseball organization and had Tommy John surgery himself as a catcher in college, said he believes that knowing the player’s ability is the responsibility of the coach. He also said that coaches’ knowledge of their players is one of the main factors that should go in to determining how much a pitcher should, and can, throw. At the high school level, he said, whether a kid will actually pitch in college should be considered when determining how much he should throw.
“You’re implementing a rule in high school baseball that affects 1 percent of the kids. That doesn’t make any sense, and to me you’re almost penalizing some kids,” Anderson said. That's because, for some players, high school baseball is “the top of the pyramid.”
Although Anderson said he understands the difference between use and abuse of an arm, he argues that pitch-count rules are restricting players who may not make it any further than high school varsity. “Now you’re taking that ability from a kid that, maybe he threw two days ago and he wants to come in and close the game. And maybe he’s your No. 3 pitcher, and he’s not going on to play college baseball. He can’t do that now,"Anderson said.
"What’s he saving it for?”
But for others in the world of baseball and youth sports, guidelines are not necessarily about what the athletes are saving it for.
It’s about what the guidelines will save the young athletes from.
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About
Brittany Garguilo is a Stony Brook University graduate, where she double majored in journalism and sociology. Between classes, campus involvement, and internships, she has found her passion in sports journalism and production.
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Since graduation in May of 2017, she worked briefly as a freelance associate sports producer at News 12 Long Island before getting her first full time job as the Production Coordinator for Creative Services at CBS Sports Network.
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For Brittany, it's not about the numbers on the scoreboard, it's about the athletes and their stories.
Sports are more than just a game.