Protecting pitchers

Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series looking at pitch count regulations in Indiana and Ohio. Part two will run Monday.



In the first start of the year, Levi Long held the Wapahani Raiders mostly in check.

He had given up four unearned runs, and his Jay County High School baseball team was tied with the defending Class 2A state champions 4-4 after seven innings.

It was April 16, 2015, at Don E. Selvey Field at Jay County.

Long, a sophomore, threw a 1-2 fastball to junior Zack Thompson, who squared up the pitch and sent it deep over the fence in right field. But it was foul. Thompson, who now plays for the University of Kentucky, fanned on the next pitch.

Two innings later, Thompson wasn’t fooled again, and hit a three-run bomb on Long’s 151st pitch of the game.

“He’s a competitor and I thought he could get the job done,” said JCHS coach Lea Selvey after the game.

A similar situation is no longer possible.

Because of new rules, Long would have never been on the hill with a pitch count north of 150 despite the fact he wanted another shot at Thompson.



Valuable commodity

There is nothing worth more in the sports world than a pitcher’s arm.

According to the book “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports” by Yahoo Sports lead baseball columnist Jeff Passan, Major League Baseball teams spend more than $1.5 billion per year on salaries for pitchers. Passan says it is more than five times the salaries of all NFL quarterbacks combined.

It’s an incredible amount of money spent on what is perhaps the most violent action in sports. Passan also says the arm rotates at approximately 8,000 degrees per second during the pitching motion.

The arm is not meant to sustain such a harsh beating repeatedly. And as baseball players in recent decades have begun to pitch year-round and put an extreme amount of emphasis on a number from a radar gun, the rate of arm injuries — especially damage to the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL)) — has risen.

“I’ve seen more kids at 11 and 12 (years old) having elbow pain than ever before,” said Shane White, a 1992 JCHS graduate and Redkey native who now lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. After being drafted 667 overall by the Chicago Cubs in 1992, White had a short stint in the minor leagues but battled knee injuries.

Since then, he’s focused on sports medicine, and helped build St. Vincent Sports Performance in Indianapolis. He’s been a consultant to the NFL Combine and trained a host of professional athletes in other sports. He currently works for Zimmer Biomet selling devices to fix sports injuries.



New policy

During his 2015 Baseball Hall of Fame induction speech, John Smoltz addressed the issue with arm injuries at the youth level.

“It’s an epidemic,” said Smoltz, who to date is the only HOF member to have Tommy John surgery, a procedure to replace damaged UCLs. “It is something that is affecting our game. … I want to encourage the families and parents that are out there to understand that this is not normal to have a surgery at 14 or 15 years old.”

So action was taken.

In July, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), which is the national governing body of high school athletics, had its baseball rules committee make revisions to a pitching policy rule to set limits on pitch counts.

The committee decided to require each state high school athletics association to set its own pitch count guidelines.

In October, the IHSAA adopted its policy. Two months later the OHSAA implemented its pitching regulations. As of February, 44 states have enforced daily pitching restrictions. Massachusetts does not follow NFHS regulations, and Connecticut has no daily limit but has required days of rest based on the number of pitches thrown.

Four states — Idaho, Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming — do not have baseball as a sanctioned high school sport.

The process to adopt the regulation happened rather smoothly in Indiana and Ohio.

“We met, it took about 15 minutes, to come up with limitations and days rest,” said Jerry Snodgrass, OHSAA assistant commissioner.

IHSAA assistant commissioner Phil Gardner said the it didn’t take much debate in the Hoosier state.



Differing decrees

Since the NFHS left it up to each state association to determine its own limitations on pitch count, that led to discrepancies from one state to the next.

It was a decision that left Snodgrass scratching his head.

“I think this puzzlement of letting each state adopt their own, I don’t like that,” he said.

The daily pitch limit for all varsity players is not to exceed 120 pitches in Indiana. (Fewer pitches are allowed for non-varsity teams). In Ohio, the limit is 125 regardless of level.

Both states also have required days of rest based on number of pitches thrown to help combat overuse and other injuries associated with the throwing arm.

In Indiana:

•1-35 pitches – no rest.

•36-60 pitches – one day.

•61-80 pitches – two days.

•81-100 pitches – three days.

•101-120+ pitches – four days.

The restrictions in Ohio vary slightly from its western neighbor:

•1-30 pitches – no rest.

•31-50 pitches – one day.

•51-75 pitches – two days.

•76 or more pitches – three days.

In both states, if the pitch limit is reached during an at bat, a pitcher may surpass the daily total in order to finish pitching to the current batter.

Under the new guidelines, Long would have reached his pitch limit with two outs in the eighth inning. The ninth-inning matchup with Thompson would have never happened.

State athletic associations are doing their part to help protect the most valuable commodity in sports.

How have the changes been received?

Coming Monday: Reacting and adjusting to the change.