Elbow Injury Problem

This year, more than a dozen major league pitchers already have undergone Tommy John surgery which involves replacing the elbow ligament with a tendon harvested from elsewhere (often the non-pitching elbow or forearm) in the patient’s body.

The surgery forces a player to miss at least a full season, but many power pitchers including Chris Carpenter (2007), Stephen Strasburg (2010) and Adam Wainwright (2011) threw as hard with their repaired elbows as they did before.

James Andrews, one of the world’s top orthopedic physicians, will be meeting with a research committee Monday at Major League Baseball’s headquarters.

A 2013 survey showed 25 percent of big league pitchers and 15 percent of minor leaguer pitchers had undergone the procedure.

But for more than a century, pitchers came up with “sore arms” and “dead arms,” trying to pitch through pain.

“So I kept my mouth shut and just kept pitching, kept pitching, kept pitching.” An ASMI study published in 2011 examined 481 pitchers ages 9-14, and then checked with them 10 years later.

Those who threw more than 100 innings in a year were 3.5 times more likely to need elbow or shoulder surgery or were forced to stop playing baseball.

The USA Baseball Medical/Safety Advisory Committee recommends limits of 50 pitches per game and 2,000 pitches per year for 9- and 10-year-olds, and 75 pitches per game and 3,000 per year from 11-14.

Tom House, the former big league pitcher and pitching coach, has advocated strengthening muscles in the kinetic chain involved in throwing.