May 16, 2016

Pitch Clocks and Fatigue

Devon sent me this link to Science Blog on how using a pitch clock could increase injuries to pitchers:

Using a computer model to predict muscle fatigue, researchers simulated baseball games for 72 American League starting pitchers from the 2014 season. They simulated pitching performance using both the players’ typical rest time between pitches and the enforced 20-second limit.

The simulation showed that using the pitch clock caused greater arm fatigue -seven per cent more.

Increasing muscle fatigue, which is already known to be one of the primary causes of injury to pitchers, can reduce the natural stiffness of the elbow joint, leading to greater strain on the ulnar collateral ligament, or UCL, the ligament which is torn and repaired during the so-called ‘Tommy John Surgery.’

There certainly are pitchers who seem to work quicker than 20 seconds. The current average time is 22.6 seconds between pitches. Maybe they should make it a 23 second pitch clock and just knock down the players who take forever.

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