MLB: Will New High School Pitch Limits Help Prevent Injury?

MLB helped to push the National Federation of State High School Associations to institute a pitch count limit mandate for the 2017 season – but is it enough?

Last spring, Wichita West High School junior Colby Pechin threw ten innings and 157 pitches in a regional championship game. Both Pechin and team coach Jeff Hoover were suspended for violating a state rule that limited pitchers to nine innings per day, but the association had nothing to say about the astonishing amount of pitches thrown by the teenager. Until this year, Kansas – like most states – had no rules governing the amount of pitches a player could throw in one outing.

Those rules are changing, as Baseball America reported earlier this week. In July, the National Federation of State High School Associations announced that each state federations would be required to implement pitch count rules, including restrictions on days of rest following long outings. The NFHS did not offer specific guidelines for what the limits should be, just a deadline: the restrictions must be in place prior to the 2017 season.

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On Monday, the Georgia High School Association announced its limits: no more than 110 pitches in any outing, unless the pitcher crosses that threshold in the middle of an at-bat. Pitchers are also required to having varying amounts of rest based on how many pitches they’ve thrown in their outings, although anyone who throws less than 35 pitches can pitch the following day.

As Baseball America points out, these restrictions – which are similar to the rules that other state associations have established – fall short of the “Pitch Smart” guidelines that are recommended by USA Baseball. In addition to overall-lower limits, those guidelines offer an important component – varying pitch count recommendations based on age. For younger students ages 15 to 16, a 95-pitch limit is recommended, while the group says that 17 to 18-year-olds can throw up to 105 pitches per outing. USA Baseball also suggests that four days’ rest should be given to any teen who exceeds 76 pitches thrown in one day.

While the NFHS’s conversion from innings limits to pitch limits is a good step, it’s still infuriating to see how reluctant high school associations and teams are to fully embrace healthy behavior.

The problem, of course, isn’t the athletes themselves – the problem is that too few coaches and parents are willing to use common sense.

Although there’s plenty of evidence from sports-medicine experts that explains exactly why having a high school junior toss 157 pitches in a high-stress game is not good for the health of his arm, it should also be common sense. And yet, that coach allowed it to happen and saw nothing wrong with it – and there are plenty of other coaches just like him, willing to win at the expense of their students.

Parents, coaches and athletes are often uneducated about the risks and rewards of Tommy John surgery. Because professional baseball players often return to the level they were pitching at or better following the procedure, many amateurs believe that they will have the same experience.

In reality, MLB players have the best medical staff and trainers in the world working with them to aid in their recovery, and even still, a significant portion of them re-injure their arm during their career. Tommy John surgery is not guaranteed to make a pitcher throw harder or better, and even if it does have that effect in some cases, it certainly isn’t an easy path to recovery. This is one of many misconceptions that young athletes have about the risks of overuse, and those responsible for mentoring student-athletes must do a better job of presenting them with accurate facts.

When Yahoo Sports columnist Jeff Passan tried to ask Wichita West’s principal, Joel Hudson, about his thoughts on the Pechin incident, Hudson passed the buck – stating that the school would follow the state regulations regarding the existence of pitch counts, rather than creating common-sense limits of their own. At the time, Kansas had no statewide pitch limits – and few high school or college programs are willing to institute their own.

On one hand, sure – instituting school pitch limits or mandatory rest periods can result in less competitive balance. If one school’s ace is permitted to throw 130 pitches every other day, and another school restricts their ace to 105 pitches every fourth day, it’s easy to see why schools would feel that they’re hurting the competitiveness of their program with self-governance.

But at some point, coaches and parents need to stand up for their student athletes and use some common sense.

These new pitch counts are a step in the right direction, but they aren’t as strict as they could and should be, and it is the health of students that will suffer as a result.

The problem doesn’t end when students leave high school, either. Colleges frequently overuse their pitchers, even those that have already been drafted by MLB teams. Both high school and college programs rely on winning to attract the best players, who see a competitive team as their best chance for exposure and, consequently, a ticket to the majors.

In reality, athletes and their parents should pick programs that use strict guidelines meant to preserve a player’s health. MLB teams are taking the amount of pitches thrown and the amount of rest between outings into consideration when deciding who to draft where, as players with excessive pitch counts are going to be at a much higher risk for injury.

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If school athletic administrators, coaches, parents and student-athletes all make the decision to prioritize arm health over meaningless high school wins, everyone will be better off. Until then, guidelines like Georgia’s really don’t do enough to protect vulnerable young pitchers from their coaches.