The number of pitchers who have succumbed to needing Tommy John surgery this year is already over a dozen, and we’re barely two weeks into the season.
When Doc Gooden joined Evan & Tiki Friday to discuss his number being retired Sunday at Citi Field, Tiki remarked how Gooden never seemed to be injured, and the guys asked if Doc saw anything that might be an indicator of why the game is so injury-plagued
“Some of it's because these guys are just rearing back and throwing 99 every time, and it's obviously the lack of the sticky stuff and gripping the ball harder, but, when I think back to you, it looked effortless. It didn't look like you were like trying to throw hard,” Tiki said. “I wonder if that's a lesson for some of these younger pitchers who are now lifting more? Their body construction is different, and you have all these oblique issues. Are they trying or doing too much?
And this is not an old man rant, because both Tiki and Evan agreed a lot with what Doc had to say:
“You're right on with that. I was very lucky and very fortunate that my dad was very knowledgeable of baseball and mechanics and all that, and he taught me about pitching when I was nine years old. He taught me about mechanics, and how to throw a curveball – he felt like it wasn't what you throw but how you throw it,” Doc said. “He was real big on mechanics, and even when I got to the big league level, after every start, I had to call my dad and we talk about pitching. He always basically dissected my mechanics and made sure it stayed to a T.”
Now, however, that seems to have gone by the wayside.
“I think now, like you said, guys are bigger and stronger, they lift heavy weights, which in my time, we stayed away from that, and everything is about velocity and spin rate – and I blame a lot of this on the system,” Doc said. “Teams are doing that because these are they guys they are drafting; they're not teaching mechanics anymore, pitchers are throwing from the set position, so they're not going from a full wind-up position, and everything is about velocity and spin rate. You take a guy like Greg Maddux or Tom Glavine, they probably wouldn't even get drafted today because they didn't throw 95 or 96. That's where the game is going; it’s about power, strikeouts, and hitting home runs with a launch angle. The game has changed so much.”
Doc, as he noted, relied as much on guile and form as he did that killer fastball, but now, it’s max effort all the time…and here we are.
“I was big on mechanics; I’d add and subtract velocity, but I only had two pitches, fastball and curveball, and I would change speeds,” Doc said. “Now they're throwing less, they're throwing four or five innings and no more than 100 pitches, and they're not facing the lineup three times around, so they’re maxing out – and you can only max out so much before you're going to blow out. I think that's what's happening today, and that's why you see so many injuries, in my opinion.”