Recently came across a link to a video of the Yankees team MD, Chris Ahmad, speaking with Al Leiter on MLB Network about arm injuries, Tommy John surgery and some of the challenges the medical community is facing while trying to reduce the impact of these injuries on players and baseball in general. Thought I'd pass it along for any who might be interested.

 

https://www.mlb.com/video/mlb-tonight-pitcher-injuries/c-2521312683?tid=49502912

I saw part of this on tv. The scary part was that Dr. Ahmad was doing surgeries on middle school kids. The kids were putting so much stress on their elbow, that they were breaking the growth plate on the bone.

I'd like to see more about the correlation between complete games and injury. One thing to be controlled for is that only highly accomplished pitchers are permitted to complete a game. Somehow a controlled comparison of levels of accomplishment, except that some pitchers are permitted to go 9 innings while others aren't, would be needed to really draw a conclusion, I would think. Except that I have no idea how to conduct such a study.

 

I saw part of this on tv. The scary part was that Dr. Ahmad was doing surgeries on middle school kids. The kids were putting so much stress on their elbow, that they were breaking the growth plate on the bone.

This is actually somewhat common. Even in a cold weather state like MN, I probably fix 2 or 3 of these every year. Some are repetitive stress and others are a single, traumatic event. Some are probably a combination of the two. The good news is they typically do very well with long term issues being relatively rare. 

 

I'd like to see more about the correlation between complete games and injury. One thing to be controlled for is that only highly accomplished pitchers are permitted to complete a game. Somehow a controlled comparison of levels of accomplishment, except that some pitchers are permitted to go 9 innings while others aren't, would be needed to really draw a conclusion, I would think. Except that I have no idea how to conduct such a study.

To me, the take home from this is 'fatigue is a big deal'. There are very few biomechanics studies that assess how fatigue affects mechanics, but logically if the stress on the UCL is significant under ideal conditions, it's only going to become greater once fatigue sets in. Once muscles that normally share the load begin to tire out, a greater proportion of the stress is transferred to the UCL itself. This = trouble = injuries. 
I was also shocked by that statistic, btw. Hadn't heard that one before.