Pitch Perfect
It's a blustery January evening and snow is spitting outside of Slippery Rock High School.
Inside, though, members of the Rockets' baseball team are hurling baseballs from baseline to baseline on the basketball court in the old Rock Box gymnasium.
They are pitchers, limbering their arms in the winter for the rigors of the spring, when one day it can be 40 degrees, cloudy and windy and the next 70 and sunny.
Most high school baseball programs start a throwing schedule for their pitchers in January. It's an absolute necessity to strengthen and loosen the arms for the number of pitches that will pile up from late March until June.
“You have to build up arm strength and it's a slow process,” said Butler baseball coach Todd Erdos, who spent five years in Major League Baseball as a pitcher with the San Diego Padres, New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. “January is the time to get the arms in shape.”
There has been an increasing scrutiny on the amount of pitches and innings hurlers are permitted to throw, from the Little League level all the way up to the Major Leagues.
High School coaches are caught in the crossfire. How many pitches are too many? How many innings should a pitcher log before the plug is pulled?
There are no easy answers.
Pitch countsThe PIAA doesn't put limits on the number of pitches a player may throw in a game or week.It does, however, limit the number of innings. It also has requirements on the amount of rest between outings.Coaches, though, take more stock in pitch counts than innings logged, especially early in the season when arms are weaker and the weather is colder.“The whole month of April, no one will throw more than 60 pitches,” said Grove City baseball coach Pat Forese, who is in his 26th season at the helm. “No one gets close to the 100-pitch mark until playoff time.”Erdos has a similar philosophy, limiting his hurlers to between 60 and 65 pitches in the first months of the season.“I'm not going to get anyone up to 100 pitches until at least mid-season,” he said.Pitch counts are an inexact science, however.A pitcher who throws 50 fastballs doesn't have the same toll taken on his arm as one who throws 50 breaking balls.Then there is the individual factor. Some players just have “rubber arms” as the old Little League taunt goes.“Every kid is different,” said Seneca Valley baseball coach Eric Semega. “Some kids can throw 1,000 pitches and not have an issue. Other guys need a lot more rest.”However, most coaches agree there is no guaranteed way to measure overuse in pitchers.More difficult still is reconciling the old and new ways to think about pitchers.
Coaches BalkKnoch baseball coach George Bradley admits he is “an old-school guy” when it comes to pitching.The former Butler High pitching coach believes arm problems aren't a result of overuse during the season, but under-use before it.“I came from a day when you could throw rocks. We threw all the time, whether it was a baseball or a football,” said Bradley, 65.Bradley comes from the philosophy of “use it or lose it.”While some coaches, from the Little League level all the way up to the majors, have the belief that there are only so many bullets in the gun, Bradley believes most guys have unlimited ammunition as long as they train their arms wisely.He's a big proponent of long-tossing — the practice of throwing a baseball in an arc as far as 300 feet to build up arm strength. He also has his pitchers lift weights, do shoulder exercises and stretch using elastic cords.And, of course, they throw.Bradley said he thinks it's foolish not to. Pitchers need to, well, pitch, he says.“When you're training for a marathon, you don't run a few hundred yards and stop and say, 'Well, that's enough for today. I don't want to overdo it,'” Bradley said. “A weight lifter doesn't lift 100 pounds a few times and stop because he doesn't want to overdo it. It doesn't make much sense to me to limit the amount you throw.”That debate is even raging at the Major League level. The Washington Nationals, locked in a pennant race, infamously shut down ace Stephen Strasburg after he threw his 159th inning last season for fear he could injure his already surgically repaired arm.An unnamed MLB pitching coach scoffed at the way teams baby their pitchers.“If Michael Phelps trained his body the way pro baseball people train arms, he'd drown,” he said.Slippery Rock baseball coach Nate McCollough said there is an inherent problem with the PIAA pitching restrictions.The 2003 Karns City graduate and a pitcher himself at La Roche College, McCollough said the PIAA rules do little to curb pitcher abuse.“Doing it by innings is the worst possible way to do it,” McCollough said. “I hate coaches who will pitch a guy three innings and then take him out so he can use him for three or four innings the next day. That's harder on the arm than if he just went seven innings. That's what some coaches don't get.“I understand why,” he added. “They want to win. I get it. I want to win more than the anyone, but I won't do it at the expense of the kids.”McCollough said he never had arm problems. But he didn't pitch many innings at Karns City, and at La Roche, he was the team's closer.Later, he became an assistant coach at La Roche and saw first-hand what happened when over-used pitchers in high school came to college.“Their arms were dead,” McCollough said. “They couldn't throw any more.”In his second season as Slippery Rock's coach, McCollough changed his philosophy.He got his pitchers in the gym earlier to build up arm strength and he plans on handling his staff differently during the regular season to make sure their arms are healthy long after they leave the Rockets.“Some coaches pitch their ace every other game,” McCollough said. “I don't want to do that. The kids who don't long-toss are missing out. It's so important. It builds up strength and velocity. There are just so many variables and so many ways to handle it. But the one thing you have to do is look out for them first. Most kids don't understand what it means when the arm is hurt and not just sore. It has to start with that.”
