Cleveland Guardians ace Shane Bieber is one of several MLB pitchers to get bad injury news this year, which many have started to blame on the implementation of the pitch clock. Bieber isn’t so sure that’s the case, though.
The Guardians announced Saturday that Bieber will undergo Tommy John surgery to repair his torn UCL, the same day Atlanta Braves ace Spencer Strider was also announced to have damaged his UCL. Those injuries, along with others earlier in the year like Gerrit Cole, led to dueling statements from the MLB Players Association and MLB over the pitch clock.
Speaking Monday ahead of the Guardians’ home opener, Bieber indicated he believed the pitch clock hadn’t affected pitchers as severely as its critics believe.
From the Associated Press:
“I’m not ready to say that that’s the reason that it happened,” Bieber said. “From a conditioning and cardiovascular standpoint, that hasn’t affected pitchers, I don’t think. So it’s hard to say what’s going on in the inner workings of the elbow and the arm. We’ll see what’s to come of it.”
It was an emotional day for Bieber, who choked up when talking about how much he was looking forward to this season, saying “I was falling back in love with pitching.” He went on to receive a standing ovation from the Progressive Field crowd during his introduction.
MLB implemented its pitch clock last season after years of experimentation in the minor leagues, with pitchers allowed to wait only 15 seconds between pitches with the bases empty and 20 seconds with men on base. It made the restrictions more strict last winter by unilaterally changing the men-on-base timeframe to 18 seconds.
Bieber isn’t the only former American League Cy Young Award winner to be skeptical the current spate of injuries can be laid entirely on the feet of the pitch clock.
Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander, currently on a rehab assignment with the Triple-A Sugar Land Skeeters, gave a lengthy answer when asked about the injuries. Instead of focusing on the pitch clock, Verlander noted how every pitcher is throwing maximum effort now and how changes to the baseball have incentivized a focus on chasing strikeouts:
“I think the game has changed a lot. It would be easy to blame the pitch clock. I think in reality, you put everything together, and everything has a little bit of influence, the biggest thing is the style of pitching has changed so much. Everybody’s throwing as hard as they possibly can, spinning the ball as hard as they possibly can.”
“Something needs to change. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, it is what it is, I think the data is out there at this point. When the ball started to change back in 2016 and they started flying out a bit more frequently, I know, myself personally, that started to change how I approached pitching. You have to start approaching the batter as ‘I want swing and miss, I can’t let him put the ball in play.'”
Verlander also mentioned the downstream effects of such changes on college, high school and youth pitching.
Pitchers have been complaining about MLB’s tinkering for quite a while, and not just with how the ball flies out of the yard a bit more often. Some fans this week dug up a 2021 interview from current Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow, in which he blamed a recent UCL tear and flexor strain on MLB’s crackdown on sticky stuff.
Glasnow claimed he used to use the common combination of sunscreen and rosin to get better grip. When he went cold turkey on the stuff for a start, he said he could feel significant after effects on his arm and described how he had to change his pitching:
“I switched my fastball grip and my curveball grip. I had thrown it the same way for however many years I’ve played baseball. I had to put my fastball deeper into my hand and grip it way harder. Instead of holding my curveball at the tip of my fingers, I had to dig it deeper into my hands, so I’m choking the s*** out of all my pitches.
“I can’t hold the ball light anymore … I’m taking a fastball, I’m squeezing the ball twice as hard, I’m recruiting all these muscles and throwing the ball.”
It’s hard to deny MLB has significantly changed what it takes to be a pitcher over the past decade. We might be seeing the effects of that now.
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