Some things to talk about instead of how infuriating it is to lose to teams you dislike…
What’s with all the pitching injuries?
Folks, we have our first Storyline of 2024. It’s pitcher injuries.
Over the weekend, Shane Bieber shredded his UCL. Spencer Strider also went down with an injured elbow. They join an extensive list of baseball’s top arms who are out of action for 2024.
Joe Sheehan’s joke that if you name ten pitchers, seven of them are injured seems funny cuz it’s true.
In it, Lindbergh talks to doctors who are helping MLB form a task force to look at why pitchers are getting hurt and what can be done about it.
The upshot? It’s real. Pitchers are getting hurt at a higher rate now than 100 years ago. Bill James even did the research, reversing his own cranky position on the matter in the process.
So what can be done? Lindbergh doesn’t offer solutions because there aren’t many solutions. Doctors and administrators seem to want starting pitchers to be tasked to pitch longer into games, reversing a decades-long trend of shorter outings for starters.
They argue that this will lead to starters saving their stuff and not throwing as hard pitch to pitch, thus reducing strain on their arms.
How do they accomplish these longer outings? By reducing roster sizes. MLB teams are already limited to 13 pitchers on the active roster, and proponents want to drop it more, with rules in place so teams can’t flip minor leaguers into the bullpen to gain fresh arms.
Whatever the solution becomes, it’s going to get ugly. The players union is up in arms about pitch clocks, believing they have caused these injuries. MLB has gotten just as angry, proving their new clocks do nothing of the sort. From the Athletic:
The subject prompted sniping between Major League Baseball and the MLBPA on Saturday, as the two sides argued through press releases about the effect of the pitch clock, which was introduced in 2023 and shortened for 2024. MLBPA chief Tony Clark painted the league’s insistence on cutting time off the clock before the 2024 season against the wishes of players as “an unprecedented threat to our game.” MLB countered by citing unpublished analysis from Johns Hopkins University that found no link between the introduction of the clock and the surge of injuries.
That study by Johns Hopkins was not peer-reviewed and was requested by MLB. So it’s not exactly objective third-party work here.
To me, there is no great solution here. Sports training has evolved to such a degree that we know how healthy pitchers can gain miles on their pitches. When Billy Wagner was pumping 100 for the Astros, he was an aberration. Now, even the scrubby bullpen guys (looking at you, Montero) can hit mid to upper 90s.
Velocity and spin get you noticed. They get you drafted. They get you to the majors. With generational wealth on the table for those lucky enough to reach that high, why wouldn’t you push the limits of training to gain that edge?
And how on earth do you limit that? Get rid of trainers who offer weighted ball work and guys will just do it themselves in their back yards. It’s a problem without a great solution or any solution at all.
But we know MLB is trying to fix it. Which should lead to some terrible solutions and fights with the union that will make baseball that much less fun for the foreseeable future.
What’s with all the private coaches?
Of all the players or coaches that have left the Astros during this golden era, the one I miss the most is Brent Strom. He was such a fun personality, a great quote, and a brilliant pitching mind.
So when this article from Defector opened with an anecdote about him, I was all in.
Things were not working for Brent Strom. It was late June of 1973 and the young Cleveland left-hander was slumping. The Yankees had just handed him another loss, dropping his record to 1-8 and raising his ERA to 4.95. Fortunately, he had a Hall of Famer for a pitching coach.
In a matter of weeks, Warren Spahn would be in Cooperstown, where his 363 wins, 2,583 strikeouts, and high-stepping delivery would be enshrined in bronze. But immediately in front of Spahn was a 24-year-old who needed help. Spahn had just the solution, one quite conveniently drawn from his own experience on the mound.
“He fucking told me I had to kick my leg up higher,” Strom recalls, “and I about pulled a hammy doing it.”
The thrust of the article is the rise in private coaches, both for pitchers and hitters, and what it means for the game. As the article goes into detail, some of these private coaches have made their way onto major league staffs, but in general, major league coaches have gotten used to working with these outsiders to better their players.
It’s a weird situation. An understandable one, to be sure. Teams don’t always have the players best interest in mind. An outside coach will always be supportive of the player themselves, but as Dave Magadan says in the article, sometimes they may not have the expertise to be doing the coaching.
The thing that stood out most to me was the discussion of Driveline Baseball, a place we talked about and covered a bit at TCB, but has grown in prominence over the years. The founder, Kyle Boddy, has worked with major league teams in the past as a consultant, and his organization’s rise feels like a good barometer for how this private coaching has shaped the game.
But, as we discussed in the item above, sometimes this kind of private work can lead to injury risk. Think about this paragraph from an excellent Baseball Prospectus article on Shane Bieber and Triston McKenzie, and how Bieber was working with Driveline to recover his fastball.
Bieber went to Driveline throughout the offseason and completely refined the grips on all of his pitches, with special attention given to his four-seam fastball, changeup, and curveball. He also looked into the idea of doing an entire overhaul of his mechanics, but it was deemed unnecessary. Based on data released by Driveline from his final session, Bieber revived his fastball and curveball back to their level of vitality and effectiveness from the 2020 season, his magnum opus. He threw more fastballs over 93 mph during the session than he did for the 2023 season. His changes with the curveball grip were concentrated on inducing more drop and cutting the horizontal movement back to find a more consistent 12-6 shape. Another priority was increasing the velocity by a few ticks. He’s hit 94 on the gun in every Spring Training appearance he has made thus far.
We don’t know whether Bieber would have had trouble with his elbow with or without these gains. We do know velocity hurts the elbow. Was his decreased velocity a sign of damage? Did the winter work speed up an injury that would have happened anyway?
We don’t have any way of knowing. But all three of these article sort of flowed together in my head, showing how big and sticky and messy this problem is.
What’s with the new bullpen catcher?
Javier Bracamonte has been a staple in Houston’s bullpen for years. He and Stretch Suba formed a duo out there through much of the 2000s. Bracamonte is jovial and always seems willing to sign autographs for fans before games. In short, he seems like good people.
His most recent partner in bullpen catching duties was Michael Collins, a catching coach. This year, new Astros manager Joe Espada has moved Collins to the dugout to help both Yainer Diaz in his new role as the starting catcher, and to help Victor Caratini transition into his new role with the team. Houston called up a new bullpen catcher, Caleb Nunes, to replace Collins and help Bracamonte out.
So far, the move for Collins seems to be a success. Yainer has settled into the role, seems to be framing better than last year, and generally running the staff well. He seemed to have helped Ronel Blanco tremendously through his first two starts.
In this article from the Houston Chronicle, Espada has been complimentary of Diaz’ work so far.
Espada offered a positive evaluation of Diaz’s work in game planning and game calling in the early going: “I think he’s been good,” Espada said. “I think the feedback I’m getting from Diaz has been good. Michael helps him kind of keep an eye on things that can go unnoticed. But I think it’s been very helpful.”
Baseball Savant loves his framing work this season, putting him in the 98th percentile for all catchers so far.
In addition to this defensive improvement, Diaz has been worth 0.5 fWAR this season, which is second on the team. Houston’s former starting catcher, Martin Maldonado, was worth 0.5 fWAR in his last three seasons combined.
But we knew that. We knew Yainer would be significantly better at the plate. The way he’s handled the staff is a great sign. Combine that with his good arm, his blocking skills, and Houston may have its first franchise catcher since Brad Ausmus was in town.
I’d also like to point out that one of the reasons Yainer has been successful at the plate in the early going is he’s been more selective. His rate stats will take some time to normalize, but right now he’s walking five percent more than in 2023 at 7.4 percent and he’s cut his strikeouts down about five percent too, falling to 14 percent.
His chase rate is way down, and he’s seen declines in his outside zone swing percentage, his inside zone swing percentage, and his whiff rate has been almost cut in half.
Oh, and while we’re at it, he’s hitting the ball a bit harder, as his exit velocity is up two mph. Lots of caveats about the season being young, etc etc etc, but it appears Houston has another superstar hitter at a premium position.