Do Inning Limits Help?

Do Inning Limits Help?

            This is going to be a short one but one that is going to be more and more relative.  With the injury to Matt Harvey this week it’s bringing up the question again that limiting the innings of a pitcher, not just young arms, to save their arms for the future.  The question really is not if they should do it or not since a team is going to do it if we want them to or not, the real question is does it do anything?

            When it comes to my opinion, I believe that we should always stand on the side of caution and doing what we can to limit the injuries of all players not just pitchers.  In an interview done by Ben Lindbergh of Baseball Prospectus, Glenn Fleisig of the American Sports Medicine Institute had this to say

            “Trying to keep things simple, our science and our medicine here at ASMI has shown some things. It’s not just the velocity, but the pitcher with better mechanics and sharing the load more with the whole body, whereas the pitcher with worse mechanics is putting a bigger share of the load on your elbow or shoulder. So not all 90-mph fastballs are the same. A 90-mph fastball with proper mechanics is less stressful on the elbow and shoulder, so mechanics is definitely one factor.

The other thing is—this is a big concept that people are overlooking—the arm, the elbow, the shoulder of any of these pitchers—these are living people, they’re not pieces of metal or plastic or whatever. So you can’t just count things up. In other words, you’ve heard the analogy: people say ‘You have so many bullets, and you don’t shoot all your bullets,’ you shouldn’t always just blow it on one game or season or this or this or that. That analogy works with bullets, because if you had a case of bullets and you shot them all, you would be out. But an arm, or pitches in an arm, is not a proper analogy, because a pitcher doesn’t have a certain number of throws in his arm. That’s true because pitchers are living, breathing, and their arm is repairing. The arm is breaking down and repairing.”

I like what Fleisig says here.  Pretty much saying that its not just a it’s not so much that the player throwing over and over and over that hurts a player.  Yes this plays a factor but the more important thing is the mechanics of the pitcher that will determine his health.

            In the end it’s going to be the teams who decide what they want to do with a pitcher.  Me I think there’s no “harm” in watching a pitchers innings but if he is properly managed by the manager and bullpen coach I don’t see the harm in letting him go.  If you’d like to see more of the interview, after all that is a small bit of a larger interview but I didn’t want this post being another novel, here’s the link.  http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=17517

I suggest taking a look if your interested.