I recently ran across an article on Yahoo about professional baseball players running into shoulder and elbow problems. The researchers of the study found a MLB franchise had 44 players that had severe enough injuries to their shoulders or elbows to cause them to have surgery. The study found that only 18 percent of the players returned to their previous level of production. The full article is available here.
The reason why I post this is that we are starting to see student-athletes having Tommy-John surgery during their college careers or even in high school. Is this caused by the increased amount of stress put on the young arms of players today who are playing year-round youth baseball causing ligament problems and other issues with the pitching arms? What do you think the reason is?
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While poor coaching and poor mechanics can’t be discounted, I strongly believe that aluminum bats account for a lot of the strain on young arms today. Kids start throwing breaking balls much earlier than they did in my day because they can’t pitch to contact against aluminum. Even a kid with a live arm has to throw breaking balls to get outs these days.
It is such a shame that the college game has been bastardized by aluminum.
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