JCR: Fernandez to Undergo Season-ending Elbow Surgery

[Namaste]

Jose had to be worth, what, 6-8 wins for the remainder of the season?

This team is not taking things to the next level without him, dim.

[Madman81]

well fuck

[dim]

Jose had to be worth, what, 6-8 wins for the remainder of the season?

This team is not taking things to the next level without him, dim.

6-8 wins seems a bit overboard. 4-6 MORE wins than what he's already given us seems more likely.

As long as we find somebody who can be replacement level (and we should even out a bit whenever Heaney's called up), we should be able to remain somewhat close to .500 and compete. Not saying we have even a realistic chance at a playoff spot, but we could potentially be .500, but it'll take quite a lot to go right.

This team was always expected to be a 2016 contender rather than 2014 or 2015, so to be even respectable at this point is a win in its own right. 2012 was a mess of a season, so this is all part of the rebuild.

[BigGameFish]

This hasn't been mentioned yet I don't think but you got feel horribly for Jose. A guy that's done everything right since he's been up. Only 21 years old. I feel really sad for him.

[Madman81]

Really glad we shut him down last September and were so careful with his pitch counts.

[emkayseven]

Really glad we shut him down last September and were so careful with his pitch counts.

don't say that around bobbob

[Madman81]

don't say that around bobbob

oh, i kind of passed right over your exchange with him. i would add inning counts to your original statement about pitch counts.

i think this is a pretty good example showing that we can't control shit. so, fuck it, let em throw.

[Miamarlin21]

Once he's back around the team he's gonna be the biggest cheerleader ever.

[Party]

Once he's back around the team he's gonna be the biggest cheerleader ever.

I feel better now.
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I could make some comment discussing how this team still can compete this year despite how much the Fernandez injury sucks. How this team will still be fun to watch, and hopefully the team uses the injury as motivation to take their game to the next level rather than give up just because our lead pitcher is gone.

But then I saw Party changed his name to Party's Over. That is hilarious.

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Once he's back around the team he's gonna be the biggest cheerleader ever.

[Mainge]

I'm with MiamiHomer, MLB needs to start throwing money at studying this to come up with definitive answers on how to prevent this. I wonder how much of it is related to players in general reaching the human body's limit to put that kind of stress on an arm.

I'm willing to bet it's, at least in part, something to do with the baseball schedule these kids have now in high school and earlier. If you have any modicum of talent, you're playing on the fall school team, and on a fall showcase team. Then you're playing on the winter showcase team. Then in spring you're playing on the school baseball team where you practice or play literally 6 days a week. Your parents might bring you to college camps and showcases on Sunday's as well.

Then in the summer you're on at least one team. Often times other teams will invite you and fly you all over the country to play with them if you're good enough.

Pitchers are literally pitching twice a week for the entire year. I think this is a fairly recent development that's happened in the last 10 years or so. They start them super young. My brother started playing travel ball when he was 10, but it's even earlier now. And there's many more teams and events now then there was back then.

[Madman81]

mainge, i think if you track the number of position players who have gone down with elbow injuries over the last ten years, you'd probably see a similar trend.

it's kind of tough to tell a kid he's playing too much baseball, though.

i also had shoulder surgery the summer after 9th grade. there was a lot more mileage on my video game playing hands than on my throwing arm at that stage in my life. at the end of the day, it's a game that forces you to routinely perform the unnatural motion of throwing a ball overhand.

[Blackout Pact]

Derrick Rose, Spencer Dinwiddie and Jose Fernandez.

I need to stop watching sports.

[Mainge]

mainge, i think if you track the number of position players who have gone down with elbow injuries over the last ten years, you'd probably see a similar trend.

it's kind of tough to tell a kid he's playing too much baseball, though.

i also had shoulder surgery the summer after 9th grade. there was a lot more mileage on my video game playing hands than on my throwing arm at that stage in my life. at the end of the day, it's a game that forces you to routinely perform the unnatural motion of throwing a ball overhand.

It stands to reason that doing that very unnatural motion of throwing a ball a lot while your body is still developing would be detrimental to your arm health.

There was an article I read a while ago that talked about the number of TJ surgeries that Dr. James Andrews does on high schoolers has increased by a ridiculous amount in the last however many years.

[Bobbob1313]

I think it's totally reasonable (though kinda morally questionable) to say that, since the baseline level of risk with any pitcher is so high, you should wring whatever value you can out of them while they are healthy.

I don't agree with that position, but I think it's a reasonable enough one to adopt in the world of sports, which generally doesn't give a shit about the health of the people participating anyways.

But I think to say "pitch counts [or other reasonable attempts to keep pitchers' arms healthy, like limiting innings increases from year to year] don't mean shit" is just dumb. I think it's dumb to suggest that throwing 140 pitches and throwing 120 pitches and throwing 100 pitches all amount to the same level of stress on the joint.

I would say pitch counts obviously matter. Reducing the amount of wear and tear on a joint obviously matters. However, there is no perfect approach to keeping any professional athlete healthy, because these are inherently difficult and dangerous tasks to undertake; if they weren't a lot more people would be able to do the things these athletes do.

I don't think "we'll never keep everyone healthy" is a good enough reason not to try.
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I will say, if there's some research that indicates that I'm wrong, I'd be interested in seeing it.

My hunch is that the number of significant arm injuries this season is more of a statistical anomaly than anything else, but I'd be very interested to see some causation thrown out.
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Also, for all the talk of how well built he is, and how great Jose's mechanics were, Jose threw his breaking pitches more than nearly any starter in the league.

Maybe that's not anything meaningful, but there's a lot more to this shit than just "they didn't let him pitch in september"

[emkayseven]

I'm willing to bet it's, at least in part, something to do with the baseball schedule these kids have now in high school and earlier. If you have any modicum of talent, you're playing on the fall school team, and on a fall showcase team. Then you're playing on the winter showcase team. Then in spring you're playing on the school baseball team where you practice or play literally 6 days a week. Your parents might bring you to college camps and showcases on Sunday's as well.

Then in the summer you're on at least one team. Often times other teams will invite you and fly you all over the country to play with them if you're good enough.

Pitchers are literally pitching twice a week for the entire year. I think this is a fairly recent development that's happened in the last 10 years or so. They start them super young. My brother started playing travel ball when he was 10, but it's even earlier now. And there's many more teams and events now then there was back then.

I think this likely has something to do with it.

But with Fernandez, who wasn't in America until he was 15 and didn't play for a few years in Cuba while he was in jail, probably not.

I think the bottom line is it's an unnatural motion. My opinion is that they don't increase arm strength by pitching repetition the way they used to, hence more injuries now than there used to be. There's no data backing that up, but that's also no (literally zero) data backing up the idea that pitch or innings counts save a pitcher. We've seen quite the opposite happen with pitchers who were babied (Strasburg, Harvey, Fernandez).

At least Jose gets to spend more time with his grandma now?