Keith Meister is nervous. The 63-year-old orthopedic surgeon feels as if he’s screaming right into a void, his knowledgeable opinion falling on deaf ears.
Meister, whose slight Southern twang sweeps into dialog by means of his 20-plus-year profession within the Lone Star State because the Texas Rangers’ group doctor, is a number one voice in baseball’s pitching-injury epidemic. Meister desires the game to err on the aspect of warning and create change to avoid wasting pitchers’ arms. The pattern, Meister says, stems from the industry-wide push to extend pace, spin and break in any respect prices.
Whereas MLB and the Main League Baseball Gamers Assn. bicker about what’s inflicting the issue and easy methods to resolve it, the physician offers his perspective. He simply desires the 17-year-old excessive schooler, the 23-year-old faculty pitcher, and the 32-year-old MLB veteran to cease displaying up at his workplace.
“It’s not going to change at the lower levels until it changes at the highest level,” Meister mentioned in a telephone interview. “I don’t see a motivation within Major League Baseball to change anything that would enhance the level of safety.”
MLB requested Meister to take a seat on a committee inspecting the expansion in pitcher accidents about 18 months in the past, he mentioned. Meister says the committee by no means met. (MLB didn’t reply to a request for remark in regards to the committee.)
Harm is among the many largest dangers for youth pitchers searching for the all-too-sought-after quicker fastball. Their quest to emulate their heroes, resembling hard-throwing veteran starters and stars Justin Verlander and Jacob deGrom, has triggered them to want the identical surgical procedures as the professionals.
Trickling down, it’s {the teenager}, the budding pitching prospect determined to land his Division I scholarship, who’s damage probably the most. MLB groups wave round multimillion-dollar signing bonuses for the MLB Draft. Those self same pitchers damage their elbows after pushing their skills to the acute, calling into motion surgeons resembling Meister.
“It’s an even bigger problem than it appears,” mentioned David Vaught, a baseball historian, creator and historical past professor at Texas A&M. “This goes back into high school or before that, this notion that you throw as hard as possible. … It’s so embedded, embedded in the baseball society.”
Tommy John surgical procedure saves careers. However as pitchers throughout baseball push for increased velocity, extra hurlers are going underneath the knife — for a primary time, a second time and in some cases, a 3rd or fourth process.
MLB pitching velocity steadily rose from 2008 to 2023, with common fastball velocity going from 91.9 mph to 94.2. Based on Meister, the overall variety of elbow ligament surgical procedures in skilled baseball in 2023 was higher than within the Nineties altogether. A 2015 research revealed 56.8% of Tommy John surgical procedures are for athletes within the 15- to 19-year-old age vary.
“It’s like the soldiers on the front lines — they come into the tent with bullet wounds,” Meister mentioned. “You take the bullets out, you patch them back up and you send them back out there to get shot up again.”
“It’s like the soldiers on the front lines — they come into the tent with bullet wounds,” Orthopedic surgeon Keith Meister mentioned about performing Tommy John surgical procedures. “You take the bullets out, you patch them back up and you send them back out there to get shot up again.”
(Tom Fox / The Dallas Morning Information)
MLB launched a report on pitcher accidents in December 2024. The much-anticipated research concluded that elevated pitching velocity, “optimizing stuff” — which MLB defines as motion traits of pitches (spin, vertical motion and horizontal motion) — and pitchers utilizing most effort have been the “most significant” causes of the rise in arm accidents.
Meister was interviewed for the report. He knew all that years in the past. He was yelling from the proverbial rooftop as MLB took greater than a yr (the league commissioned the research in 2023) to conclude what the physician thought-about primary data.
“Nothing there that hadn’t been talked about before, and no suggestion for what needs to be changed,” Meister mentioned to The Instances Wednesday.
Though pitching growth labs resembling Driveline Baseball and Tread Athletics present recent concepts, Meister mentioned he doesn’t solely blame them for the epidemic.
It’s primary economics. There’s a requirement for throwing more durable and the {industry} is filling the void.
Nevertheless, Meister sees the dramatic enhance in velocity for youth pitchers, resembling a 10-mph increase in velocity inside six months, as harmful.
“That’s called child abuse,” Meister mentioned. “The body can’t accommodate. It just can’t. It’s like taking a Corolla and dropping a Ferrari engine in it and saying, ‘Go ahead and drive that car, take it on the track, put the gas pedal to the metal and ask for that car to hold itself together.’ It’s impossible.”
On the opposite finish of the arm-injury epidemic is the participant mendacity on his again, buzzing alongside to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” as an air-cast-like gadget engulfs his arm, pressurizing the forearm and elbow.
The noise of the enormous arm sleeve fills the room of Beimel Elite Athletics, a baseball coaching lab based mostly in Torrance — owned by former MLB pitcher Joe Beimel. It generates Darth Vader-like noises, compressing up and down with a Krissshhhh Hhhwoooo… Krissshhhh Hhhwoooo.
Greg Dukeman, a Beimel Elite Athletics pitching coach whose 6-foot-8 body towers over everybody within the facility, quipped that the elbow of the pitcher present process remedy was “barking.”
For skilled and youth gamers alike, this expertise, together with red-light remedy — a non-intrusive mild remedy that will increase mobile processes to heal tissue — and periodic ice baths, is only one instance of how Beimel makes an attempt to deal with athletes as they tax their our bodies, hoping to heal micro-tears within the arm with out surgical intervention.
With little to no analysis publicly accessible on how high-velocity-and-movement coaching strategies are hurting or — albeit extremely unlikely — serving to pitchers’ elbows and shoulders, Meister mentioned, it’s typically free rein with little — if any — guardrails.
Josh Mitchell, director of participant growth at Beimel’s Torrance lab, mentioned that’s not precisely the case of their baseball efficiency program. Beimel will solely work with youth athletes who’re able to take the subsequent step, he mentioned.
“You got the 9- and 10-year-olds, they’re not ready yet,” Mitchell mentioned. “The 13- and 14-year-olds, before they graduate out of the youth and into our elite program, we’ll introduce the [velocity] training because they’re going to get it way more in that next phase.”
Beimel makes use of movement seize to supply pitching suggestions, and makes use of well being expertise that coincides with its athletes having to self-report each day to trace overexertion and decide how greatest to make use of their our bodies.
Their aim is to supply as a lot help to their athletes as doable, utilizing their services as a fitness center, baseball lab and pseudo well being clinic.
Joe Beimel pitched for eight groups, together with the Dodgers, over the course of a 13-year profession.
(Ted S. Warren / Related Press)
Mitchell is aware of the pleasure and ache of modern-day pitching growth. The Ridgway, Pa., native’s skilled profession was waning on the Single-A stage earlier than the Minnesota Twins acquired him within the minor league portion of the Rule 5 Draft.
The Twins, Mitchell mentioned, embraced the cutting-edge strategy of pitching velocity, seeing enhancements throughout the board as he reached the Double-A stage for the primary time in his profession in 2021. However Mitchell, whose bushy beard and joking persona complement a perpetually smiling visage, turned critical when explaining the tip of his profession.
“I’m gonna do what I know is gonna help me get bigger, stronger, faster,” mentioned Mitchell, who jumped from throwing round 90 miles per hour to reaching as excessive as 98 mph on the radar gun. “And I did — to my arm’s expense, though.”
Mitchell underwent two Tommy John surgical procedures in lower than a yr and a half.
Mitchell grew to become the wounded soldier that Meister so passionately recounted. Now, partially due to superior coaching strategies, youth athletes usually tend to go to that proverbial medic’s tent.
“There’s a saying around [young] baseball players that if you’re not throwing like, over 80 miles per hour and you’re not risking Tommy John, you’re not throwing hard enough,” mentioned Daniel Acevedo, an orthopedic surgeon based mostly in Thousand Oaks, Calif., who largely sees youth-level athletes.
In MLB’s report, an impartial pitching growth coach, who was unnamed, blamed “baseball society” for making a velocity obsession. That velocity obsession has turn into a profession route, an {industry}, successful story for baseball growth firms throughout the nation.
Driveline focuses on the unending “how” of baseball growth. How can the pitcher throw more durable, with extra break, or spin? And it’s not simply the pitchers. How can the hitter change his swing sample to hit the ball farther and quicker? Since then, baseball gamers from throughout ranges have flocked to Driveline’s services and people prefer it to learn to enhance and stage up.
“Maybe five or six years ago, if you throw 90-plus, you have a shot to play beyond college,” mentioned Dylan Gargas, Arizona pitching coordinator for Driveline Baseball. “Now that barrier to entry just keeps getting higher and higher because guys throw harder.”
MLB gamers have even ditched their golf equipment midseason in hopes to unlock one thing to enhance their pitching repertoire. Boston Pink Sox right-handed pitcher Walker Buehler left the Dodgers final season to check himself on the Cressey Sports activities Efficiency coaching middle close to Palm Seaside Gardens, Fla., earlier than returning to finally pitch the ultimate out of the 2024 World Collection.
Driveline isn’t alone.
Ben Brewster, co-founder of Tread Athletics, one other baseball growth firm based mostly in North Carolina, mentioned high-school-aged gamers have been interested in his efficiency facility as a result of they see the outcomes that MLB gamers and teammates obtain after continued coaching classes.
Tread Athletics claims to have a task in additional than 250 mixed MLB draft picks or free agent signings, and says it has helped greater than 1,000 highschool gamers earn faculty alternatives.
Kansas Metropolis Royals left-hander Cole Ragans achieved a 4.4-mph enhance from 2022 to 2023, the biggest in MLB that yr. With the speed enhance after his work at Tread Athletics, Ragans went from a league-average reduction pitcher to a postseason ace in lower than a yr.
Kansas Metropolis Royals left-hander Cole Ragans achieved a 4.4-mph enhance from 2022 to 2023, the biggest in MLB that yr, after his work with Tread Athletics.
(Charlie Riedel / Related Press)
So what makes Ragans’ growth totally different from that of a teenage prospect reaching out to Tread Athletics?
“Ragans still could go from 92-94 miles per hour to 96 to 101,” Brewster mentioned. “He still has room, but relatively speaking, he was a lot closer to his potential than, like, a random 15-year-old kid throwing 73 miles per hour.”
Meister is aware of Ragans nicely. When the southpaw was a member of the Rangers’ group, the orthopedic surgeon carried out Tommy John surgical procedure on Ragans twice. (Ragans has additionally battled a rotator cuff pressure this season and has been out since early June.)
“These velocities and these spin rates are very worrisome,” Meister mentioned. “And we see that in, in and of itself, just in looking at how long these Tommy John procedures last.”
Throwing laborious isn’t an in a single day expertise. Brewster shared a stern warning for the pitching growth course of, utilizing weightlifting for instance. He mentioned weightlifters can attempt to squat 500 kilos each day with out days off, or try and squat 500 kilos with their knees caving in and buckling due to horrible type. There’s no 100% protected method to carry 500 kilos, similar to there isn’t any fail-safe means of throwing 100 mph. There’s all the time danger. It’s all within the type. Lifting is a science, and so is pitching — discovering the most secure method to prepare to extend velocity with out damage.
“The responsible way to squat 500 pounds would be going up in weight over time, having great form and monitoring to make sure you’re not going too heavy, too soon,” Brewster mentioned. “When it comes to pitching, you can manage workload. You can make sure that mechanically, they don’t have any glaring red flags.”
Brewster added that Tread, as of July, is actively creating its personal knowledge units to discover how UCLs are affected by coaching strategies, and easy methods to use load administration to skirt potential accidents.
MLB admitted to a “lack [of] comprehensive data to examine injury trends for amateur players” in its December report. It factors to a scarcity of school knowledge as nicely, the place most Division I packages use such expertise.
The Andrews Sports activities Medication & Orthopedic Heart based mostly in Birmingham, Ala. — based by James Andrews, the previous orthopedic surgeon to the celebs — offered in-house knowledge inside MLB’s report, displaying that the quantity of UCL surgical procedures carried out for highschool pitchers of their clinic has risen to as excessive as 60% of the overall since 2015, whereas remaining above 40% general by means of 2023.
Meister mentioned baseball growth firms might look nice on the periphery — sending youth gamers to high faculties and the skilled ranks — but it surely’s value noting what they aren’t sharing publicly.
“What they don’t show you is that [youth athletes] are walking into our offices, three or six months or nine months later.”
