2 pitchers combine for 347 pitches !!

[JJA]

First, you do exactly what you would claim not to. You use one single example to try and prove the point that "guys with pronounced inverted W's like Drysdale turned out to be some of the most durable pitchers in baseball history." Second, the argument would be that more "inverted W guys" than the norm. If the norm is "50%," then an argument that mechanics like I suggest lead to a "75%" rate would still make compelling evidence that it would be worth looking into. I also believe that the "50%" rate you quote comes from an SI article that was written to show that relievers, who throw far fewer pitches actually exceed the rate of starters when it comes to going on the DL. The very article you quote, not only doesn't back up your conclusion on overuse, it actually contends that that may be wrong. You're very right concerning quantitative numbers. I can't believe that by now we haven't seen more. Of course overuse is dangerous, but studies like ASMI's which simply show a difference between those who throw more than 100 innings a year and those who throw less, do very little in helping we ground troops make informed decisions on what exactly is "too much." Again, there is a difference between empirical proof and observation that raises a question.

I'm not claiming that the inverted W or any other arm action is more or less healthy than others. There is simply no quantitative data to support any claims one way or the other. O'Leary's "research" never gave quantitative numbers to anything, simply said that the inverted W was bad based on guys like Prior, and the fact that the inverted W looks stressful visually. Guys like Drysdale show that the inverted W is not ALWAYS bad, so what am I supposed to do if a kid shows up for practice with an inverted W? Is the kid going to be a Prior or a Drysdale? Should I change his arm action to something conventional, which now results in a 50% DL rate for MLB pitchers? How do I know that changing a natural arm motion for a kid to something else isn't actually more likely to get the kid injured? None of these factors were remotely considered in O'Leary's "research". Sorry, I view his "research" as nothing more than unsubstantiated, non-quantitative opinion which is of zero value to me as a coach.

No, I wasn't basing my opinion on overuse based on the single SI article, but rather on studies and papers over the years like ASMI's that indicate overuse is a big factor in pitcher arm injuries. The sad part is that all we really know today, and as you stated it gives us very little help as coaches of young players. The doctors have been no help at all in some of the questions I raised above, which are fundamental to my role as a coach. I know I can change the batting form for a hitter and know he won't get injured. Can I do that with a pitcher and know he won't get injured? Right now, I don't have any quantitative data from the doctors as to how to keep a pitcher healthy other than not letting him pitch a lot. It's pathetic, frankly.

-JJA

[scorekeeper]

Just curious, where did you ever come up with the notion that HS coaches are "interested in developing as many pitchers as possible"?

I didn’t come up with any notion. I was expressing many years of experience on these boards where a lot of people believe in their hearts that once the kids get to HS, they’re gonna suddenly find great coaching that develops pitchers.

My personal sense if things, is that it would behoove coaches at every level to develop more pitchers than they do, especially HS coaches. My personal experience is, the number of coaches at ANY level who truly have the capacity to develop pitchers much beyond what their normal maturity does for them, is few and far between.

In the end, I don’t think people in general, and surprisingly a large percentage of people in the game, realize just how difficult it is! Anyone who’s tried to do it knows full well that its one of the most difficult things to teach in sports. And anyone who’s pitched knows, the development never ever stops because the body changes, and the game changes.

Unfortunately, HS coaches and above, keep their jobs by putting competitive teams on the field, which is inevitably, judged by their W/L records.....not how many pitchers they can show on their roster.

I know that’s another generally accepted TRUTH in baseball, but I don’t know that its nearly as true as many would have us believe. There are waaaaaay too many teams that don’t have and haven’t had winning programs for a long time, but the coach stays rooted like a tree. We have a guy up here who’s been coaching something like 50 years, and his claim to fame isn’t winning, but developing great young men.

And, for every top notch program that wins most of the time, there’s one that loses most of the time, but you don’t see every losing coach getting canned.

Same can be said about the more kids that hit, the more hitters will be developed......but at all levels of the game (at least on the "big fields"), coaches are expected to send their nine best hitters to the plate, and all of the others sit, unless the game gets out of hand one way or the other.

True. But it isn’t as though every HS team is loaded from the top of the lineup to the bottom with sluggers who bat. 500 and hit 10 bombs a season, or like ML and college programs can go seek out talent to bring into the fold. Many would think, me being one of them, that development beyond just what capacity the players they got by chance just happened to have, and what their natural maturity gave them, would be a priority.

Now I'm not condoning over-throwing young HS pitchers, and we very rarely take a pitcher past 85 pitches (although I did have a well developed freshman, whom I'd known for five years prior, throw 101 four years ago (he's now signed a nice scolly to an NAIA school for next year, so I don't think we damaged him), but to think a coach is going to replace a pitcher that is throwing well, and keeping his team in the game, just to "develop" another pitcher is just not going to happen.

Well, it really isn’t about YOU or what YOU do. It’s a given that you know what you’re doing and have the good sense to use good sense. Its about tens thousands of coaches at tens of thousands of schools, and what they do. I don’t know what the percentage of coaches is who would do something as absurdly stupid as what the 2 morons in the OP did, but I’d suspect its less than 1%. When you’re talking about 30,000 to 50,000 HS teams, that’s not a number that should just be shrugged off.

Keeping a pitcher in the game who’s keeping his team in the game understandable. Trouble is, what that means varies tremendously from coach to coach and person to person.

At least not IMO, and from what I seen from others over the years......

What you or I have seen or experienced doesn’t make it the right or best way to go. In fact, if anything it’s the wrong way to go because the game is constantly changing. Hey look. I really don’t care because it ain’t my kid being asked to throw until his arm is shot, so some wannabe ML manager can win a HS game in some backwater little HS with 120 kids in it. All I do is watch what’s going on, and express my opinions about it.

One of those opinions is, everyone would benefit from the development of more pitchers. Sure, a few more games may be lost, but to me that’s not a big deal. But while I know there are a lot of really great coaches out there, to me, if I see even one like the guy we saw last week who went ballistic after his team lost a game in the 7th inning, kicking everything he could reach, and knocking over and throwing bats and equipment, that’s one too many, and tells me the W’s and L’s mean too much.

[scorekeeper]

I look forward to you educating me. Please show me a link to read about 'improper' grips causing injuries.

Who said anything about an improper grip causing injury?

[Roothog66]

I'm going to agree with SK's contention that not enough pitchers are developed. Now, at the high school level, I didn't worry about it. As a pitching coach, I was basically told who the pitchers were and my opinion was that they were substantially developed and it was my job to get production out of them. At the youth level, I take a lot of time and pride in developing pitchers. However, I'll admit that much of it is self-serving. Starting at nine, I teach and encourage almost all of them to pitch. Many of them rarely get a lot of time on the mound, but I've developed the following strategy to move it along. I think it is important to realize that the kid you're teaching to pitch at 9 or 10 may not be of a whole lot of use, but at 12 and 13, as bodies develop, that kid that you taught who was of little use on the mound at 10yo can suddenly grow a foot overnight and put an extra 15+ mph on his fastball and it sure is nice when you realize he already knows how to pitch, hold runners on, etc. because you taught him even though he wasn't much help when he was younger. I do two things to help. First, even though we are a travel team, I compete in a local league of travel teams who play only one game per week. My four best tournament pitchers do not pitch in league. League is the time to give my developing pitchers their time on the mound. Second, I've developed a strategy of focusing on one and only one pool game that I target for a win. the other poll game(s) are for developing pitchers. We may not get as good a draw in brackets as we could, but I figure I have to beat the best teams to win it all anyway, if I have to do it in the quarterfinals instead of the finals, so be it. Of those top four pitchers, two of them cam around directly from this strategy. At 10, they didn't have the velocity or the stuff to be very productive. Two years, 10 inches, and 70 lbs. later, they are studs and I didn't have to start from scratch teaching them to pitch.

[scorekeeper]

What Root advocates is exactly what I’m talking about. Baseball in general rewards effort, but without opportunity, all the effort in the world is wasted. I’ve never advocated equal reward regardless of effort, but I do advocate equal opportunity regardless of skill, for precisely the reasons he stated.

I know there will be those who argue otherwise, but the truth is, every time a kid is pushed to the back of the queue because he’s seen as not being a big contributor, you’ve pretty much lost all chances of having access to him later on when instead of being a skinny little dweeb who couldn’t break a pane of glass either swing a bat or throwing a ball, he’s some stud who has his pick of sports.

People complain that baseball loses a lot of athletes, but the truth is, the attitudes of many coaches drive many of the future athletes away, for the sake of winning a trophy. That’s why I’ve said over and over again through the years, the best thing baseball can do for itself, is to keep as many kids playing for as long a possible, hopefully until they mature both physically and mentally.

[JJA]

I know there will be those who argue otherwise, but the truth is, every time a kid is pushed to the back of the queue because he’s seen as not being a big contributor, you’ve pretty much lost all chances of having access to him later on when instead of being a skinny little dweeb who couldn’t break a pane of glass either swing a bat or throwing a ball, he’s some stud who has his pick of sports.

People complain that baseball loses a lot of athletes, but the truth is, the attitudes of many coaches drive many of the future athletes away, for the sake of winning a trophy. That’s why I’ve said over and over again through the years, the best thing baseball can do for itself, is to keep as many kids playing for as long a possible, hopefully until they mature both physically and mentally.

All true SK, but in my area it's a lot more like what mud is describing than your longstanding (and logical) belief. In our area, guys get pitched until their arms fall off. Player development is most definitely a secondary concern. MOST definitely. It's only in the case of injury that some kids get off the bench. I wouldn't do it I were in charge, but then again it's not my job on the line.

[scorekeeper]

All true SK, but in my area it's a lot more like what mud is describing than your longstanding (and logical) belief. In our area, guys get pitched until their arms fall off. Player development is most definitely a secondary concern. MOST definitely. It's only in the case of injury that some kids get off the bench. I wouldn't do it I were in charge, but then again it's not my job on the line.

My longstanding and logical belief has never been one that says it happens on anything like a majority basis. I totally understand and know that what you describe is very likely the “norm”. All I’m saying is, I think it’s the wrong approach and offers the least long term benefits to the either the players or the game.

And once again, my personal opinion is, the number of jobs depending on W’s and L’s is far far overblown. Are there coaching jobs that depend on winning and losing? Absitively! But you have to remember how many head coaching jobs there are. Every Fr and JV coach is a HS coach, and my guess is there are very few of them where a coach gets canned because the team’s record isn’t very good.

As for VHC jobs that are dependent on it, there’s definitely a higher percentage, of them, but where are those jobs? Again, this is only a guess, but that guess is the private schools where mom and dad are dropping $10 grand or more is likely where the highest percentage of those jobs are. After that, chances are if a program has been successful for a decade or more, it wouldn’t suffer losing very well. But after that, who’s gonna get all bent out of shape if the baseball team isn’t the division champion?

Heck, in a league like ours with 6 teams, and only 3 of them get to go to the playoffs, 3 of those teams are gonna be losers almost every year, So why would a school fire a HC who’s team never gets into the playoffs because half of the teams in the league have outstanding programs with high profile coaches, and one of them is one of those private schools?

I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m saying it doesn’t happen with the frequency people think it does. If it did, half the HS coaches would get canned every season.

[Jake Patterson]

All true SK, but in my area it's a lot more like what mud is describing than your longstanding (and logical) belief. In our area, guys get pitched until their arms fall off. Player development is most definitely a secondary concern. MOST definitely. It's only in the case of injury that some kids get off the bench. I wouldn't do it I were in charge, but then again it's not my job on the line.

Here's what I see in baseball.... (I do believe it's different in football and basketball)

Most states have gone to certified coaches and have a difficult time filling spots, mostly because fewer teachers are coaching. Also the stypends given are not that great so those who coach usually do so because they love to coach... Coaches typically get fired because they can't coach or are idiots on the field, not because their W/L is below .500.

[mudvnine]

Coaches typically get fired because they can't coach or are idiots on the field, not because their W/L is below .500.

Interestingly enough, from what I've seen, 90% of the guys that "can't coach or are idiots on the field", are typically the ones with W/L records below .500 on a pretty consistent basis.

[CircleChange11]

Here's what I see in baseball.... (I do believe it's different in football and basketball)

Most states have gone to certified coaches and have a difficult time filling spots, mostly because fewer teachers are coaching. Also the stypends given are not that great so those who coach usually do so because they love to coach... Coaches typically get fired because they can't coach or are idiots on the field, not because their W/L is below .500.

I would posit that more coaches get fired because of how they talk to or treat players, how the players act off the field (even or especially when the coach is not around), parent complaints, etc than actual W-L record.

[Baseball gLove]

Less than 99% will make it to the pros. Is it better to have pitched at a younger age or to have never pitched? I threw a lot but for some reason the bursitis is in my glove side shoulder. I have had a lot of injuries and I do not regret a single one. My older boy is playing college ball and he is currently playing with a hairline fracture of his glove side forearm. With this injury he went 2 for 2, scored 2 times and was walked 3 times in In his last game. I can tell him to shut down, but he won't listen.

[Jake Patterson]

Interestingly enough, from what I've seen, 90% of the guys that "can't coach or are idiots on the field", are typically the ones with W/L records below .500 on a pretty consistent basis.

I get your point... not certain if 90% is the right number.... I've seen great coaches with poor win/losses in any given year.

[scorekeeper]

I would posit that more coaches get fired because of how they talk to or treat players, how the players act off the field (even or especially when the coach is not around), parent complaints, etc than actual W-L record.

I think baseball dogma has a lot of people believing a lot of things that just aren’t true or are blown way out of proportion, and I’m betting that more often than not, the coaches are judged by the caliber of young men they turn out, rather than their W/L record, and that’s exactly the way it should be. And to add to that thought, I’d bet the farm that all but a very small percentage of coaches turning out a lot of young men everyone can be proud of.

:applaud:

[skipper5]

I would posit that more coaches get fired because of how they talk to or treat players, how the players act off the field (even or especially when the coach is not around), parent complaints, etc than actual W-L record.

Very true, from what I've observed in my town and surrounding towns as well.

However, I'm sure you'll agree W-L record is a factor.

Least likely to be fired is a winning coach who treats players well.
Most likely to be fired is a losing coach who treats players poorly.
Etc.

Our HS has fired two HS bb coaches in the past 15 yrs.
Coach A treated players poorly, had a miserable W-L record, and was dismissed after two years.
He was replaced by Coach B.
Coach B treated players poorly, had an excellent W-L record, and was dismissed after six years.

If a HS baseball coach wins year after year and most of his starting players despise him year after year, then he probably "treats his players poorly".

[JJA]

If a HS baseball coach wins year after year and most of his starting players despise him year after year, then he probably "treats his players poorly".

My experience has been that it's rare that a high school baseball coach treats his players poorly yet wins year after year. I've seen it, but usually poor treatment and a poor win-loss record go hand in hand. It's kind on counter intuitive in a way that this should be true (many people believe that "toughening up the kids" Marine-like style should make the kids better ballplayers), but from my experience it doesn't work quite as well as the Marines. to say the least.