Let's Talk Pitch Counts!!!!

Hello everyone! I thought I would tackle one of the biggest hot button topics in the game today and that's pitch counts. There are very few things that I have read on forums or Facebook or other social media platforms that stirs up more emotions, name calling, and frankly, inaccurate information, than the topic of pitchers and how many pitches they throw.

I believe that part of the reason that there are such "intense discussions" about the topic is that there is mixed information out there and it confuses people because there is just a lack of understanding. I'm going to share some of my thoughts and reasoning behind this top, but first I should state that 1. I am not a medical professional and 2. these are just my opinions from not only years of experience but from several hours of research and reading that I have done from professionals on the subject. My personal stance is that pitch counts or innings restrictions are EXTREMELY overrated!

Now that I have probably made you believe I'm crazy, let's dive into what I mean by that statement. With any question or thought provoking topic, I always like to start with what just seems logical. With pitch counts, it's just not logical that there is a "magic number" that says "no 10 year old should throw more than 80 pitches in a week". Here's what I mean, what we need to keep in mind is that's just a suggested breaking point that says if you push past that number you are potentially putting a kid a risk. What I find more concerning though is that's just for an average. While one kid might be 80 pitches before he's at risk the next kid might be only 50, while some other kid might be ok to go 90 or 100 pitches. There are just too many other factors that go into injury risk to say that there is a specific "shut down" number.

Those risk factors, again in my opinion, are far more telling than just a number of pitches thrown on GameChanger that I see people go completely nuts at on the internet. Factors like - What are the pitchers mechanics like?, When was the last time he threw?, Has he built up his pitch count to handle the number of pitches he has thrown? How hard is he throwing (free and easy or max effort each pitch)? To me these are the things a coach or parent should both know and be concerned with as much or more so than an hard and fast pitch count number.

I want to take a little time to talk about some of the things (and give reasons why) that I see teams, coaches, and parents have players do that I think we should be far more worried about than throwing a fit on Facebook or hear people complaining about at the ballpark when they see someone threw 92 pitches on GameChanger.

One of the first ones that I see starts before the game even takes place. I still routinely see teams at the 9u, 10u, 11u, 12u, and even older levels that do not do a proper warm up before even allowing their kids to throw a baseball. ALL muscle and ligament injuries occur from from tears due to some type of tightness. That makes proper warm ups important. Yet I can promise you that if you go to any youth baseball tournament on any given weekend in American that you can find multiple teams that do not do any agility work or stretching before they play catch or even before they play a game. This is a huge miss and it's putting not only their pitchers at risk but all of their players. I attended the ABCA Baseball Coaches Convention this past January and I was fortunate enough to hear the pitching coach from the University of South Carolina speak and he discussed their injury prevention tactics. His first and foremost rule was that their players did NOT throw a ball whatsoever without a proper warm-up. He described how they did a 15-20 minute full body warm-up before ever throwing a ball. I'll never forget his quote as he said "we want our kids sweating before they ever throw a ball". Their warm-ups included agilities, stretching, J-band work (I'll post a link to this at the end of the article as I just purchased some for my son and they are GREAT), and some weighted ball work (I think these are ok for HS and above I don't recommend at the youth level).

The next part is that beyond stretching, you can usually watch and most kids that start the game, or for that matter, enter in the middle of the game do not go through a proper pitching warm up in the bullpen. I see kids throw 5-10 pitches in the bullpen and declare themselves read for action, usually with no guidance from a coach. You also see a kid who has spent the last 4 innings and over an hour standing in left field having not thrown but maybe a couple of between inning warm up tosses with the kid on the bench come straight to the mound and start chucking it as hard as possible. Improper warm-ups or not being warmed up at all are way more important than the kid that has done all those things properly but goes over the pitch count of 80 that's recommended.

Another thing that you see all the time at the ballpark that doesn't get near the attention that it needs is these kids pitching mechanics. For me this should be every coach and parents #1 priority. Clearly, having good pitching mechanics is going to be vital for injury prevention. I don't think there is anyone out there that would disagree with that statement. Of course, having good mechanics typically also leads to more control and therefore more outs, so even if as a coach you don't care about injury prevention we all know you care about getting people out. The mechanics are just about the actual strain put on a pitcher on an individual pitch. Most kids don't have such a terrible throwing motion that just one pitch with bad mechanics will tear something up, but this is again where I go back to the fact that a set pitch count isn't as significant as we make it. Go back to the logic part I mentioned earlier. Logically, we can all agree that someone who throws with bad mechanics, that is putting additional strain on their elbow, for example, is far more likely to tear or injure something at a lower pitch count number, let's say 50 pitches, vs a pitcher with great mechanics that isn't putting near as much strain on his elbow even if that pitcher throws 95 total pitches. Once again, pitch count is not the most important factor.

Those two things, improper warm-ups and poor mechanics are things that I think just come from a lack of understanding the "right way" to do things. I understand at the under 13 level that the vast majority of coaches are dads that have some experience playing, maybe in high school or youth leagues and maybe they just don't know. I'm not here to knock those guys, they are trying their best and their intentions are usually in the right spot. What I would encourage you do to if you are one of those people is look around your area, join a coaches association like the ABCA or attend clinics in your area to find people that do know those things and learn how to help your players or your child. Reach out to professional coaches with a solid verified background. My experience is, if you do that, the vast majority of those coaches are going to not only be willing to help you, but excited to help you. REAL coaches love to "coach" and "teach" they don't care if you are a 8 year old beginner, an 18 year old D1 prospect, or a dad that just wants to help his youth team.

Now, let's get on to these coaches that are not as concerned with injury prevention and more concerned about winning. It's funny to me how people will get up in arms about a kid who throws 98 pitches in a game. The other team (most of the time the losing team) jumps on the internet or starts mouthing at the park about how that teams coach just wants to win and I've even heard and read people calling it child abuse, etc. My initial response is two fold - 1. It's not child abuse to have a kid throw XXX amount of pitches. I personally can't think of a number that any coach would go to that I'd consider it child abuse. I don't want to get down the road too far on how we, by exaggerating something like that, then we ultimately minimize something that truly is abuse like physically hitting a child, but come on we all know there is a major difference between bloodying or bruising a child and having the kid put a little extra strain on his arm by throwing 110 pitches. 2. It's really not any of your business on the other team where his pitch count went. That's between that child, his coach, and his pitchers. You only sound like sour grapes complaining about such things.

Where I actually do see coaches go to the extreme of win at all cost and truly put their players at risk is those teams that throw their ace the allowed 2 innings on Saturday and then bring them back for the other 5 or 6 innings on Sunday. See USSSA tournaments (and other sanctioning bodies do as well) allow coaches to throw a player up to three innings on Saturday and still have 5 innings left on Sunday. So many many many teams I see teams throw their top two pitchers a couple innings on Saturday and then have them for 6 innings on Sunday. They can throw 80 pitches in that Sunday game - I mean the MLB Pitch Smart Rules say 80, but what about the 30-50 pitches that they threw on Saturday? Technically, the way the pitch smart guidelines read it says 80 pitches in a week. Here is where I will challenge the number again, however. A kid goes out and throws let's say even the 5-10 (poorly warmed up pitchers) pitches and then comes in and throws two innings at an average of 15 pitches per inning giving the pitcher 40 total pitches for the day not to mention all of the balls he threw during warm ups, between innings, and during the game action. Without a doubt that much use of the muscles in the arm is going to result in a buildup of lactic acid and cause tightness and at least some fatigue in the arm. Then he comes out and throws 40-60 more pitches on Sunday with that tightness in his arm. How is this ok or safe? This - again just logically - HAS to be worse for a arm than throwing just the 85-95 in one day that gets everyone up in arms, but yet we don't hear those complaints. It's WIDELY acceptable from both coaches and parents. Think about it this way, trained, fully grown, adult MLB players don't do throw that much back to back. Why is it ok to throw a 11 year old that much? You see MLB pitchers throw 30 pitches on one day and then come back and throw the next day, but it's almost always just for an inning. It's rarely, if ever, for 2 or 3 innings and 50 or 60 pitches. I challenge you to go through the MLB stats and find where a MLB pitcher threw 80 pitches combined on back to back days, other than maybe in the postseason, over the last ten years. If there are there is less than a handful and it's ONLY because its not good for the players arm! We, as coaches and parents, have to STOP this practice!

The last point I want to bring up in discussing things that are more important than pitch count is the players conditioning to hit that kind of higher pitch count number. When I say conditioning, I mean two types of conditioning. First I mean, what type of physical shape is the pitcher in. Is he overweight, is he skinny and lacking strength, are his legs conditioned for endurance, and does he have good balance as indicated by core strength? These conditioning factors all play a huge role in the amount of strain a pitcher is putting on their arm, especially as the pitch count goes higher and they begin to fatigue. Fatigue can cause your mechanics to break down (see above about mechanics), and it often causes players to use their arm more, therefore, putting more strain on it, therefore increasing the risk of injury. As I wrote in a previous blog, having a performance or conditioning program is essential to all players nowadays in my opinion, but it is especially important for pitchers. Having a strong base (read legs) to drive will take much pressure off the arm and allow for increased velocity and having a strong core allows a pitcher to maintain their balance through the motion deep into games helping repeat mechanics.

The next piece of the conditioning is where I think there is also a HUGE miss in youth baseball and that's building up the pitchers arm strength to be able to handle a heavy pitch count. It doesn't matter if that "heavy" pitch count is 60 or 90 pitches, if you haven't built yourself up to that number. Here's what I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've heard a kid or parent say at an early season tournament "well, little Johnny hasn't thrown since our last tournament in June". As a matter of fact, I actually just heard this twice at our teams first fall tournament of the season. Yet what did at least one of the little "Johnny's" do that weekend? He went out and threw 68 pitches on Saturday in one game during practice play after throwing 11 in one inning of work earlier in that same tournaments pool play. So, little Johnny was at 79 total pitches on Saturday. He was under the pitch smart recommendation of 80 pitches and well within the tournament rules. He and the coaching staff were all good right? No risk, no one got outraged, or anything even said. This is NOT a safe way to work a pitcher. Think of it this way, you might be capable of going out and running a marathon without training for it, but would you? Should you? Of course the answer is no. You'd build up to it, maybe start with a 1 mile or 3 mile run, and then a 5, 10, 15 mile run and you'd let your body and your muscles get use to it. The same should be done, without question every season, with your pitchers.

I'll share what I do with my son for example. We try our best to shut him down for multiple weeks during the winter and again during the late summer. That in itself is important for arm injuries, but since we are talking about pitch counts I'll stick to that part. When we start back up usually the first weekend of the New Year, for example. We start out by just playing catch from a short distance at first, usually starting on a knee and slowly working our way back to long toss (when I say long toss I mean throwing the ball on a line from a distance where it's taking one long hop to get to your partner). We do that and only that for a couple of weeks. Usually 5-10 minutes of throwing every other day. After a couple of weeks we begin a "pitching program". We throw a short bullpen of 15-20 pitches on flat ground, usually on Tuesday and Thursday, that is focused strictly on mechanics and location. Then on Sunday (he pitches bracket games so we get him on a routine and in a habit of throwing that day) we throw off a mound and throw a "full bullpen". When I say full bullpen I mean, on a mound, game like motion and effort, and go through his secondary pitches. Week one we start with 25-30 pitches. We then repeat the same flat ground bullpens 15-20 pitches, mechanics and location on Tuesday and Thursday and then on Sunday we throw another full bullpen this time adding roughly 10 pitches. Meaning week two he's throwing roughly 35-40 pitches. We rinse and repeat this process each week until we have built him up to the 80-90 pitches we want him to be able to throw in a game. We do this by working the timeline of all of this backwards from our schedule first tournament. As his pitch counts get higher in this process we often back off the two short bullpens and just move it to one short bullpen on Wednesday to give him the extra days rest after the extensive full bullpen. This simulates what we do in season. Pitch on Sunday, full day off on Monday, light throwing on Tuesday, and a short bullpen on Wednesday. I share this to hopefully help the coaches and parents get an idea of what this process looks like and what the conditioning of a pitcher is to even be able to throw just the recommended amount of pitches. As you can see, this is not an insignificant amount of time and effort put into this process. It's a good 6-8 weeks of prep for the season. (Sidenote: the reason why I use numbers like 35-40 is that we ALWAYS end every pen session with a strike right down the middle to re-calibrate the mechanics to make sure they are good after throwing to corners or maybe a breaking ball. This doesn't always happen on the first pitch so one day it might be 35 the next time it may be 39)

I will conclude with this....pitch counts do matter! Of course I'm not foolish enough to think that it's a good idea to run a 12 year old out to the mound week after week after week and have him throw 100-120 pitches for the weekend. There absolutely is overuse injuries in pitchers. I am actually a victim of that myself. My sophomore year in college the former Cleveland Indians team doctor performed shoulder surgery on my torn rotator cuff and labrum and after looking at my throwing mechanics and the damage done to my shoulder and the ligaments in the back of my arm he said "without a doubt you were overused". So, I know it can and does happen. What I am here to say is a couple of things. First, pitch counts are not one size fits all and they are only a recommendation not a guarantee. People should not freak out and go crazy saying it's abuse of a child when someone throws their kid 100-110 pitches in a game. It may not be a good idea for that kid. Maybe he hasn't built up for it, maybe he doesn't have the proper mechanics, etc. etc., but maybe he has and maybe it was just this one tournament and he was still looking good and strong. It's possible and it's OK! Second, I firmly believe that pitch count talk is hurting as many kids as it's saving because it gives parents a false sense of security. Well, coach kept little Johnny under 80 pitches for the week he won't get hurt if we do that every week. That simply is not true either. Johnny might not have proper mechanics, maybe he didn't warm up at all before going out and throwing max effort, maybe he went from throwing 20 pitches to a couple of batters in practice the week before to throwing 75 pitches in a tournament on Saturday. Whatever the case may be, those factors put him at just as much risk or more risk than the kid that has all of those things done correctly in his lead up to the 100 pitch game.

Coaches and parents, let's just be smart about this whole thing. Let's get our players the correct support from a physical standpoint - mechanics and conditioning - and let's make sure that the pitchers are being used correctly and not throwing them several pitches on back to back days etc. We owe it to our kids! I can tell you I don't remember being very devastated after many losses in a regular season little league game I pitched at 10 years old, but I promise you I remember being devastated when my arm injury ended my playing career and I went almost a full year without even watching a baseball game on TV because I couldn't stomach it.....

As always, let me know your thoughts, concerns, or questions. I'm always happy to help! Good luck to so many of you as you start your fall seasons!

Here is the link to the J-Bands I mentioned! Get them! They will be worth your money I promise. The even come with a laminated card explaining each of the exercises you should be doing!

https://www.jaegersports.com/