Major League Baseball Has An Epidemic On Its Hands
BOSTON (CBS) - Jose Fernandez of the Miami Marlins may be the latest young pitcher to require Tommy John surgery.
CBSSports.com's Jon Heyman spoke with 98.5 The Sports Hub's Gresh & Zolak about Major League Baseball's growing epidemic.
"It's pretty alarming. I think it's very unfortunate that we're up to 32 [Tommy John] surgeries at this point. It's happening to very good pitchers and very young pitchers. It could just be that guys are throwing harder nowadays. You're seeing sliders at 90mph. You're seeing a lot of guys throw fastballs 97, 98mph -- maybe that's it.
"Maybe it's the specialization of guys who are baseball players and turned into only pitchers and not playing other positions, or not playing football or basketball and just playing baseball year round on these travel teams and throwing too many pitches. I'm not sure. Baseball needs to look into this because this is becoming a real problem."
Heyman has covered baseball for a long time, but he can never remember a year quite like this that's just been riddled and devastated with arm injuries.
"This is really the most unfortunate year I've seen. It's happening to the best and the brightest shall we say," said Heyman.
The Boston Globe's Dan Shaughnessy joined the guys in studio on Tuesday and he made an interesting point about elbow injuries for catchers are not occurring at the same clip in comparison to pitchers, who throw the ball the same, if not more so than pitchers.
"You don't see catchers with sore arms, Matt Wieters might be the exception, and they throw all the time," said Shaughnessy.
Listen below for the full discussion on baseball's growing problem:
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