The impulsive decision to make changes after a negative outcome transpires often leads to more issues. Despite suffering a slew of major injuries to some of the game's top pitchers, Major League Baseball would be foolish to get rid of its pitch clock and neglect one of the best transformations to the sport.
With Cleveland Guardians ace Shane Bieber becoming the latest player slated to have season-ending Tommy John surgery, the league feels pressured to do something about it. Bieber joins a disheartened group of pitchers that already features 2023 strikeout leader Spencer Strider and up-and-comer Eury Perez, among others. As MLB's top arms continue to drop like flies, due to long-term ailments, commissioner Rob Manfred must intervene, somehow. Only getting rid of the pitch clock shouldn't be an option on the table.
An article from The Ringer last spring discovered that the league's pitch clock shortened games on average by 30 minutes, with some nine-inning matchups taking two hours to complete. Eradicating pitchers' unnecessary walks around the mound -- while batters exerted some nervous energy by adjusting batting gloves and spitting out seeds -- did wonders for the league.
Fan engagement and viewership increased when the league implemented its pitch clock -- people no longer had to commit significant amounts of time to watching on a daily basis. More importantly, the least spectator-friendly sport became arguably the most easy one to watch. Each pitch, inning, and bullpen change was now timed.
Ignoring clear benefits of the pitch clock, in an attempt to appease a grumpy players union leader in Tony Clark, would be imprudent. With a laundry list of complaints, Clark's become a thorn in Baseball's side, as the type of person who walks out his front door to blue skies and complains that he doesn't see any clouds. Plus the pitch clock became an easy scapegoat to a much larger issue at hand. The wide ranging advantages of keeping it can't outweigh an unprovable conspiracy theory that indicates downside.
Pitchers are now trained to throw as hard as they can for as long as possible, before burning out or requiring some reconstructive surgery to prolong their careers. Between the five-year span of 2017 and 2022, MLB saw more than a 300-percent increase in velocity, with 1,107 pitches clocking in at 100-mph or higher in 2017, compared to 3,356 in 2022.
A startling trend endorsed by teams emphasizing velocity to the human limits, and the long-term ramifications were ignored because pitchers were viewed as disposable labor, anyway. There's always a new up-and-comer willing and able to replace players for the opportunity to make life-altering money, right?
Only now, with the uptick in career-altering injuries to star pitchers, finding a viable replacement clearly isn't that easy. MLB analytics have leaned toward examining shape, size, and movement of pitches, which would lead one to believe that effectiveness has more to do with location than speed. Wrong. It's all about generating swings and misses. It's about throwing pitches that are seemingly unhittable to the batter. Velocity is still paramount.
What's even more disappointing is that, until the mindset changes, more of MLB's best pitchers will be sidelined with severe arm injuries. Upon further review, a shortened recovery time between pitches may be deemed to be playing a role, too, but it's far from being the main culprit. Realistically, the mass exodus should’ve happened a few years ago, albeit likely at a slower pace. Instead, this mess was created all at once, bringing the issue and its likely cause to the forefront of everyone's attention.
Looking for a different reason may be the simplest solution, since it enables teams to stay on course with their method of developing pitchers. But in the long run it’ll create even more disorder. Even injured Yankees ace Gerrit Cole had an interesting analogy when expressing frustration toward those blaming the pitch clock for pitcher injuries. "It's like, 'Okay, we have divorced parents, the child's misbehaving, and we can't get on the same page to get the child to behave,” Cole recently told reporters on the uneven blame of factors.
If MLB listens to the words coming from the horse's mouth, they'll conduct a deeper dive into the matter and get to the real bottom of it. Unfortunately, the league's track record of addressing some of these most crucial matters would indicate that the expectation is analogous to believing a newborn can go from crawling to running in a week -- just totally unrealistic.
Sadly, consistent with previous ignorance of issues related to the payroll and umpiring, we can expect MLB to make the least logical decision with this too. It'll be no different than watching a pitch right down the middle... called a ball.