JCR: Fernandez to Undergo Season-ending Elbow Surgery

[Beef]

Pitch counts might mean something more than shif, but if we're saying its just the repition of an unnatural motion that causes the problem, even if its 85 pitches today and 90 pitches next time, that guy will eventually throw a bunch of pitches until it is surgery time. It will take slightly longer, but if there is some total number of pitches that will cause that elbow to explode, they will get there soon enough.

[emkayseven]

I don't think there's a magic number. I think pitchers are going to get hurt at different points. I do think working on building arm strength would help, but like I said, don't have anything to back that up other than the way pitchers were in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, which could be explained away by different things as well (poor diagnosis, lower velocity, etc.). No one knows for sure about anything, but it seems evident that pitch/innings counts are not doing the trick.

[Swifty]

I recall reading several years ago that a few HS pitchers and a few JuCo pitchers were actually opting for an almost "preemptive" TJ surgery. I'm curious to know if any of them actually followed through and the results of that.

If Stras had to have the surgery and now Jose needs to have the surgery, and those two have been brought along in as carefully a way as possible, I really think a drastic redesign of the way to properly nurture a pitcher is needed. Because those two, between their physical builds and the way their parent club handled them really turns this conventional logic on its ear.

[HUGG]

I think it's one of those things where you just don't know, there's no way to prevent these injuries from happening. I just can't buy into the "they're gonna get hurt anyway, so fuck em" strategy of just doing whatever you want with them. I still say you err on the side of caution and see what happens.

[Nick]

I agree with Hugg, and I have no problem with the way Fernandez has been protected from game to game. (Not letting his pitch count get too high)

I do think the days of arbitrary season inning limits need to come to an end. There's no magic number in this regard. If you wanna be safe with a young pitcher, monitor him game from game. If he's losing velocity, showing signs of fatigue shut him down, but saying we're not going to let him go past 160 innings in the season is foolishness and hinders the development of the pitcher IMO.

[Swifty]

I'm not championing a run them into the ground and let their next club deal with it mentality.

I'm more on the line of we know absolutely nothing about how to protect these guys, because Exhibit 1 and 1A on how to protect them (and the ideal build) are now both going to have undergone TJ.

Maybe it's the between starts work? Maybe it's the warmup throws? Maybe it's pickoff throws? Maybe for a high velocity guy it's having to work from the stretch?

My point is, it's clearly not an innings thing, no matter how much we'd like to make that the golden standard for nurturing a pitcher.

[Beef]

Also, just because limits didnt work for a few guys that were used "safely", doesnt meet that flat out doesnt work. We don't know. I don't know.

[Swifty]

Also, just because limits didnt work for a few guys that were used "safely", doesnt meet that flat out doesnt work. We don't know. I don't know.

I think it's safe to say that it's an underlying issue rather than the innings themselves.

There's a reason the innings jump (like Prior) means pitchers fall apart, and there's a reason that the carefully monitored innings (like Jose, Harvey and Strasburg) don't work either.

[Miamarlin21]

So if he has Tommy John next week I am sure the Marlins would be very cautious with him so I don't expect him to pitch for the Marlins until June at the earliest.

[Mainge]

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 don't know though. There were articles that came out when he was drafted that talked about him working with Orlando Chinea everyday and also made references to the different travel teams he was on.

He clearly was on that same circuit as everyone else during his 3-4 years here.

[emkayseven]

Sure, but he also wasn't doing it since he was 10.

We just don't know. We don't know anything about arms and how they work, really.

[Mainge]

I'm not saying it's the reason, I just think it's a factor.

[Bobbob1313]

I'm more on the line of we know absolutely nothing about how to protect these guys, because Exhibit 1 and 1A on how to protect them (and the ideal build) are now both going to have undergone TJ.

Maybe Exhibit 1 and 1A on the ideal build of pitchers is wrong.

I'm not really sure 6'4", 240 pounds should necessarily be the ideal build of a pitcher for keeping their elbows safe. Maybe it's the ideal build for generating the velocity and torque necessary to throw the ball really effing hard and generate tones of strikeouts and stuff, but that's not necessarily going to have a positive impact on the pitcher's elbows.

[Miamarlin21]

The first doctor Jose talked to (Dodgers' guy) said he has a torn UCL and he recommended surgery.

[Mainge]

From Fangraphs. You can see exactly where the injury happened in the velocity hart.