Where have all the Nolan Ryans gone? What's up with all these catastrophic pitching injuries? How has Max Scherzer stayed on par? Will Stephen Strasburg ever be the same - or even functional again?
"The Pain Guy," aka baseball scientist and pitching instructor Chris O'Leary, jumped on with the Sports Junkies this morning to discuss all of the above - and he's not exactly a fan of the "tricks and shortcuts" taught by some places?
"They're tricks and shortcuts, and they work, but they're tricks and shortcuts," O'Leary said. "There's no such thing as free lunch."
Nor was he surprised, after seeing Strasburg's rehab starts in the minors this year, that the righty is already back on the injured list.
"Not as soon as I saw video and saw he wasn't even doing what he was doing in 2019, where he made some changes and improved his timing," O'Leary said. "He wasn't doing the 2019 stuff when I saw him in the minors coming back up, and I assume it's because it wasn't allowing him to throw as hard, and we're just so fixated on velocity that throwing hard is viewed as the only thing. It's such a stupid, BS macho thing."
Maybe that, sadly, is ingrained in Strasburg's brain based on past success?
"There's a certain logic to it, and being successful in baseball at the highest level, thinking is not an asset - you just have to be a doer," O'Leary said. "I think he's surrounded by people who are just saying, 'Throw hard, throw hard, throw hard.'"