Latest / The Layback Podcast / Casey Mulholland's Response to the MLB Report on Pitcher Injuries (Ep. 59)

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Casey Mulholland's Response to the MLB Report on Pitcher Injuries (Ep. 59) · The Layback Podcast

0:00
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Layback Podcast.
0:02
Joining us today is Casey Mulholland.
0:05
No sense doing a long intro for him since you guys could go
0:08
check out. Gosh, I don't even know which
0:10
episode it was, but I, I think it was in the 1st 10.
0:13
Maybe you were #11 something like that.
0:15
But Casey is a second time guest officially recurring.
0:19
He answered the call as he knows it is mandatory to come back on
0:23
whenever I ask after appearing once that that's just the way we
0:26
do things around here. And today we really want to get
0:30
into Casey's response to the MLB pitching injury report.
0:36
Hopefully I titled that properly.
0:38
I know it seems like the people that were responsible for
0:42
authoring the report seem to be very finicky about what the
0:45
report actually gets called. It was not a study, it's a
0:49
report. I've heard that time and time
0:50
again, but Casey took plenty of time in a fine tooth comb to
0:57
write a 58 page response to I think the 64 page report that
1:03
they came out with. So it seems like he might have
1:05
gone pretty close to 1 for one with all of that.
1:09
Casey, I'll shut up and listen for a little bit.
1:12
I'd love to hear maybe what inspired you to get into it
1:15
before we really get into the details of what you actually
1:18
uncovered. Yeah, absolutely.
1:20
Well, thanks for having me back for a second time.
1:22
I appreciate that. And so, yeah, to be clear, I
1:24
mean, covering this report, I was one of the 200 that was
1:27
interviewed for the original report the MLB came out with.
1:30
I spent the day that I got the phone call from the MLB.
1:34
Remember, I spent like an hour and a half on the phone kind of
1:37
uncovering these topics and, and kind of discussing what other
1:42
people that had already been interviewed, what they had kind
1:44
of brought to the table as ideas.
1:45
Because remember, it's like all the responses, I'm not sure I
1:48
had a response that actually ended up in the report.
1:50
It was all of these people that had these responses.
1:53
They just kind of hand selected what what came from it.
1:55
So I'd imagine they spent an hour, hour and a half with each
1:58
of those individuals, 200 people over the span of a year,
2:00
etcetera. It was a great dialogue and I
2:02
really appreciated the detail at which the MLB was willing to
2:06
listen to, let's say like myself, facility owner just kind
2:09
of rant about what we were seeing and some of the issues in
2:13
baseball went down rabbit holes like you wouldn't believe.
2:15
So when the report came out, I was slightly disappointed with
2:18
the end because I felt this is spoiler for the actual response
2:21
that I have. But I really felt that the
2:24
answer to them was velocity and pitch design or creation of
2:27
stuff. And I felt like that was maybe
2:31
the thing that gets to the thing.
2:33
So it was modality, Like you could make arguments that it's
2:36
not just velocity and and pitch design that would cause fatigue.
2:40
You could throw a whole bunch of other things into the mix as
2:42
well and cause fatigue. So even generally acceptable
2:46
rule standards according to their paper, right?
2:48
Like let's say somebody who would throw 30 pitches in a game
2:52
and do that maybe once a week and for less than 8 months of
2:54
the year, like they're still susceptible to fatigue and
2:57
injury. And that's something to be noted
2:59
that we just don't talk about that much.
3:01
Again, I appreciate the ML BS support and findings.
3:04
I've been very clear about that. I tried to be very open about
3:06
that in my response. No way with this like a hate
3:08
paper of mine, like I was up at midnight, just like fuming and
3:12
writing way on this thing. I wanted to provide like an
3:14
educational construct and and basically say as a rebuttal, an
3:18
educational rebuttal to the MLB to say, hey, listen, I hear you.
3:23
I appreciate you wanna show you the way I see it a little bit
3:26
more and detail my findings. Like this is not just my
3:28
opinion. This is the opinion of Benny in
3:30
the game today. You know, kind of really get to
3:33
the crux of bringing baseball as a united front, bringing
3:37
baseball into at least awareness of a lot of the things I feel
3:41
have been in the dark for the last eight years.
3:43
And that's been fun. Great response or great response
3:46
across the board. Everybody from GMs of teams to
3:50
to sports science departments to MLB Network anchors and, and
3:54
I've had a bunch of message me and ask me questions about my
3:57
thoughts on things. I've also had a lot of people
4:00
respond with wild opinions about their beliefs in and the
4:04
injuries are occurring. Best one was somebody emailed me
4:07
the other day about the USDA is not strict enough on our food
4:13
and they're allowing in all of these bad chemicals.
4:15
Therefore the Ucls are weakening and we're getting injuries,
4:17
which I thought was fascinating. You know, I'm telling you
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probably would have been a three page paper that this guy wrote
4:23
on that, which is very interesting.
4:24
My point is all that this came about just because I really,
4:28
over the last eight years, I've had a heart for this.
4:30
And this is seemingly the moment that it's finally people are
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paying attention to this discussion.
4:35
And we need change. And I feel like we, we have it.
4:38
We've been doing it at KP for a while, but it's sort of a cry
4:40
out to the to the industry to say, hey, if you're willing to
4:43
talk about this, read this, understand my position, I'd love
4:46
to collaborate to find a solution and now's the time.
4:50
I knew you were interviewed. I did not know the interview was
4:53
an hour and a half and it was not my original intention to
4:57
talk a ton about the interview process, but that kind of
5:00
initially went over my head until you brought it up.
5:04
I just assume you got sent some e-mail survey or something like
5:07
that. Can you give us some quick
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detail on what that interview even looked like?
5:12
Do you know if everybody kind of got the same questions or were
5:15
they asking you about your personal expertise?
5:18
Yeah, So I'll say this, it started off pretty generic
5:22
questions wise. I think they're trying to feel
5:24
out like remember that I've never met them before or at
5:26
least the person that was calling.
5:27
And so, and it's pretty generic to start.
5:30
What do you feel are causing injuries in baseball?
5:32
What do you feel like? And as I started answering more
5:35
than more of those questions, and obviously I wasn't going to
5:36
be short winded on that, it became a much broader
5:39
discussion. So much so I'll tell you one of
5:41
the things I ended up discussing didn't make any report, kind of
5:44
shame didn't, but I said I remember distinctly kind of
5:48
getting a silence on the other side of the line for a minute
5:50
when I said this is how bad the system is.
5:53
Teams, these big organizations, big travel ball organizations
5:55
are buying smaller teams in the area to sign them up for as many
6:00
events as possible because they're getting kickbacks.
6:03
The big organizations getting a kickback for as many teams that
6:07
are submitted for every dollar basically like it's spent in the
6:10
organization. They're getting a kickback on
6:12
what they spend. And I'm like, so if I'm a big
6:15
organization travel team and I get 30% back and I'm able to
6:20
acquire a bunch of other teams, well, I'm going to sign all
6:22
these teams up for one specific event type.
6:24
I'm going to do that 12 weeks in a row, which may not be the best
6:27
thing for the kid, but it's great for my bottom line.
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And I go, do you blame the organization?
6:32
Do you blame the showcase group? Do you blame the kid and the
6:36
parent? Like who do you blame here?
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At the end of the day, the the event is providing this offer,
6:41
which I don't agree with, providing this offer to certain
6:44
organizations. These organizations are then
6:46
acquiring all these other teams and wiping out mom and pop
6:49
volunteerism into the industry. And then you're getting these
6:53
kids that are buying and they want to play for the best team
6:55
because they want to be ranked and all these other things.
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I'm like, so whose fault is this?
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I'm not going to put it on one person.
7:01
We went around around in circles for like 30 minutes on that, but
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it was great. Think about this like the MLB is
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listening to me rant about the travel ball industry and the
7:11
broken system that is a travel ball industry.
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And so much so that they were like, wow, we had no clue.
7:17
We'd like to investigate this further.
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Can you help us find information on this or whatever?
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And so it seems they're really putting their foot in it to try
7:25
to, for the first time, really fully grasp like what they're
7:28
trying to deal with. And with everything covered, I
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guess my main takeaways weren't even in the travel ball world.
7:37
And I, I was thinking back on the report.
7:38
Maybe I should have reread the 60 whatever pages plus you're 58
7:43
again to prep for this because I guess I'm a week removed, I
7:46
think from reading your report at this point.
7:49
But yeah, I, I guess I even overlooked the travel ball stuff
7:53
a little bit is I'm not as involved.
7:57
Yes, I work with players, but I don't see the underlying
8:03
grossness or nightmare scenarios that you're probably dealing
8:07
with constantly because so much of your battle is pitch counts
8:13
aren't enough, innings limits aren't enough.
8:16
What do we actually need to do? I know I am bastardizing
8:21
workload management in the sense by by saying that that's that's
8:24
your battle. But you and I have talked about
8:27
that a time or two the the kickbacks in the nightmarish
8:31
underworld of the travel ball circuit.
8:34
But that's incredible. So even the fact that you were
8:37
able to uncover that, and it sounds like MLB actually cares
8:42
from the conversation that you had, maybe it leads to a change,
8:47
which I think is awesome. Even even what I'm understanding
8:51
from what you just shared there is beyond what was published in
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a report. The MLB at least heard opinions
9:01
of 200 individuals. That gives them more leads of
9:05
things to look into. That might even be the greatest
9:08
take away from this report for forget about what they published
9:12
and what the ending was because I'm with you.
9:14
It it left something to be desired.
9:16
I don't think they really tapped into the fact of different
9:19
things that we can actually control it.
9:21
It's almost like there was a scapegoat for velocity and stuff
9:24
and the the things that we actually care about in this
9:27
game, or when I say actually care about things that really do
9:31
determine success in this game and they just got blamed for it
9:36
as opposed to finding all these other pathways that they can go
9:40
down to find what might be leading into this injury
9:43
epidemic. So thank you for uncovering
9:46
that. I'm glad you have a finger on
9:48
the pulse because I had no idea. Yeah, I would say so one of the
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things we clear like, and I write about this and the
9:53
official response that I had, which is for identifies the
9:57
problem, One of the problems with pitch counts is lack of
9:59
compliance. And so there's this assumption
10:01
that like, well, yeah, I clearly unfold like how pitch counts are
10:04
wrong according to research with Zamersky and all these other
10:07
people that I've written really great studies on pitch counts
10:10
and the problems with them where they they lack context.
10:12
But there's an assumption that, well, this would be better at
10:15
the amateur level if we just got compliance.
10:19
And so that was like, again, I have this conversation with them
10:22
about like, hey, do you understand?
10:24
Like you're kind of dealing with a much bigger beast than just
10:27
some dad out there who's like, oh, I accidentally went over
10:31
1015 pitches. It's again like tournament team
10:34
is getting kickbacks from tournament organizer.
10:37
Organizer is saying, hey, we're going to have eight games this
10:40
weekend to play to the championship.
10:42
Tournament team has five teams involved in this because they're
10:45
getting the dollar figure coming out of this.
10:46
Well, that tournament team is not going to make this
10:48
tournament organizer upset and pull their team out of the
10:51
championship game before it ever plays because they don't have
10:53
enough pitching. Like that's not going to happen.
10:55
So what happens is people just go out, whatever, we're just
10:58
going to throw kids. We got to win.
10:59
We have to win the championship game parents or well, Johnny's
11:01
got to be known as the the elite of the elite.
11:04
And so now this kids got to pitch like he's our guy.
11:06
We got to win this game. There's this whole thing, right?
11:08
So this whole culture has been created.
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And that's just a super small example of like all the stuff
11:12
that's actually happening out there.
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And by no way is this entire report that I responded to meant
11:16
to be about travel ball, but it's a good example of the MLB
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says, and they report that compliance is the problem that
11:24
should be evaluated. Well, again, you go back to my
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response, which was fully around fatigue and monitoring and
11:29
managing and understanding fatigue.
11:30
Like, even if you've got compliance, I showcased in our
11:33
official response that you're still not going to fully
11:37
understand fatigue because pitch smarts guidelines are designed
11:40
to make no, make no mistake about this, they are designed
11:43
around the ideas of fatigue, but they have no objective data to
11:47
fully understand fatigue. So you have this really massive
11:51
fundamental breakdown of pitch counts and and I'll say this,
11:54
listen, the MLB is still and we're still talking like they're
11:58
still having conversations with myself.
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I might be flying up there like at the end of the month to go
12:02
presents on my idea outside of pitch counts.
12:05
It's scalable, alluding to a lot of things here.
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But there's a lot of stuff happening down the pipeline that
12:10
MLB is looking at ways at which they can get involved.
12:13
I just, and and nor could they, but I just don't think they
12:16
fully understand the scope yet of like what they're really
12:19
trying to wade into. And we really won't for years to
12:22
come here. But yeah, you can make these
12:24
arguments for pitch counts and say, yeah, they're good, good
12:26
because X. And then, well, if parents would
12:29
just follow them, they'd be in a much better place.
12:31
So it's like, you can't blame the parent, like you can't blame
12:34
the organization for again, this this broken system that exists.
12:38
What you really need is you need to change this model.
12:41
It's fundamentally proven not to work and it's fundamentally
12:43
proven that not enough people are following it or paying
12:45
attention to it because they don't really understand it or
12:47
care for. The worst part is a lot of
12:50
people are using it as a Holy Grail that they need to, you
12:53
know, this kick and throw exactly 75 pitches.
12:55
And if you throw 76, hold on a second, but 75 pitches exactly.
12:59
And it's clear to come back on Sunday and pitch again that one
13:02
inning or whatever it's like or whatever the the rules are.
13:04
But there's so many layers to this thing, their report and how
13:09
it's been shown to kind of best to establish workload and or
13:15
sorry, workload principles. Because pitch counts are a
13:17
workload principle. I call them an inferior workload
13:20
model. I'd say they're subjective
13:22
regulations, innings limits and pitch counts.
13:24
But at the end of the day, again, credit thing, I'll be for
13:29
for listening and at least starting to consider maybe where
13:33
we can go on this into the future and potentially what
13:37
changes can be made that are they're, they're open to
13:40
creativity right now. And so some of us that like to
13:42
be creative, we're stepping in and trying to give it to them.
13:45
OK. So I I think that is a pretty
13:48
solid review and I know there is so much more than just the
13:52
travel ball piece. It is kind of funny that that's
13:55
just the initial tangent we went down.
13:57
But what for you do you think were some of the major call outs
14:02
or things that may have been missing or maybe just things
14:06
that didn't get enough attention?
14:09
Obviously you brought up fatigue.
14:11
So I assume that's a that's a large piece of it.
14:13
And we can definitely spend some time talking about that.
14:16
If you could highlight a couple of the bullet points or things
14:19
that you feel were left out because as we both discussed
14:22
already, it seemed like stuff in Velo got the brunt of the
14:29
accusation. And where you and I are both
14:33
deep enough in the industry to recognize that is unfair when
14:38
stuff and below are going to be what opens the door for
14:42
everybody to have a shot to play professional baseball.
14:45
So I'll step aside again and if you just call out some of the
14:49
things that you feel like you hit on or maybe that MLB may
14:53
have missed in highlighting in their importance.
14:57
Yeah, well, let's start with my like first contention, like my
14:59
biggest contention with this report and where I think it
15:02
potentially draws upon. Again, I've been talking and
15:04
I'll be like I, I, I'm very mindful and respectful for the
15:08
fact that they have said what they've said and been just open
15:11
to hearing the things. But one that really does concern
15:14
me is this report lays out when you first read it, if you're
15:17
going to, I'll say this way, if you're going to build an
15:19
injuries report, let's talk about injuries.
15:22
If you're going to build a how do we induce more offense in
15:26
baseball report, then let's build a report that talks about
15:28
how we're going to induce more offensive baseball.
15:31
Those two things do not work hand in hand.
15:34
I'm about helping pitchers next generation see a safer and
15:39
healthier game. That's the work that I do.
15:44
I want to change. I want to make sure that kids
15:46
don't go through what I went through in my career.
15:49
And when I look at the MLB report, it lays out the
15:53
framework to say he should, for example, have pitchers throw a
15:58
minimum of 6 innings as starting starting pitchers.
16:01
It makes a case for why the starting pitcher is dead in
16:03
baseball and why people are moving away from it.
16:06
And I go, that's really dangerous territory because now
16:09
we're starting to look at it and say, well, it's usher in these
16:12
new rules that will up offense because that's a positive.
16:15
And also like get pitchers to throw slower because here's a
16:19
report that contends that velocity is causing injury.
16:22
And I go, that's a really dangerous place to be.
16:24
If you want to up offense, you want to get butts in seats.
16:27
If you want to do all that, that's fine.
16:29
I'm happy to have that conversation and go down that
16:31
rabbit hole. It's not my expertise.
16:33
There's far smarter people in me on that one.
16:35
But I will tell you what I'm really good at and that is
16:37
understanding pitcher injury and creating systems that maybe
16:42
mitigate injury risk. So again, that was my biggest
16:45
contention or really were the crux of like why I started
16:48
writing the paper the way I did. And you'll see it in the
16:51
beginning. You'll see it in into I talk
16:54
about Nick Martinez. I've obviously trained Nick for
16:56
the last seven years now. I have every throw of Nick's for
16:59
the last seven years recorded. He's awesome at keeping things
17:03
tracked and working with me and make recommendations.
17:05
I think Nick is fundamentally broken the fabric of this new
17:09
age of baseball pitchers. The MLB report lays out that we
17:12
have this problem with starters. Starters today are not getting
17:16
as extended as they used to. They're not built up when they
17:19
make it to the league. And then you have relievers who
17:21
are on this like perpetual circle back to the AAA and back
17:25
up. That's the big leagues.
17:26
Unless you're just an elite level arm and teams are looking
17:28
at relievers as expendable. Nobody really wants to see iron
17:31
reliever step into a game. I mean, this is what at least
17:34
the report says. There was a study that nobody I
17:36
didn't get a sighting for. I didn't know where that came
17:38
from. They just said there was a study
17:39
done where they evaluated people and people said they want more
17:43
offense. But my point to that is that if
17:46
you call Nick, I say this in the in the official response, if you
17:48
call Nick a starter, he had more innings than Paul Skins did last
17:52
year. I had 141 Paul Skins at 1:39.
17:54
If you call him a reliever, he has like a crazy amount of
17:58
innings, more than the closest reliever to him.
18:00
If you call him a starter, he's the 89th most innings of all
18:04
starters in the big leagues last year.
18:05
If you again call him a reliever, you're looking at what
18:09
role does he really play as a reliever?
18:10
Is he a long reliever? Is he a closer?
18:12
Is he an opener? Is he, what is he like?
18:14
You don't know. So you can't really fit Nick
18:16
into the mold of any of these spaces.
18:19
Nick has more appearances than the closest starter in the
18:22
league last year anyway. So it's like, is he a starter?
18:25
Is he a reliever? We feel like we've created this
18:27
category. We're going to call it a hybrid.
18:29
And so like we we've joked around like KP is the home of
18:32
the hybrid. We've been doing this now with
18:34
pitchers like Indy ball guys and minor league guys to try to give
18:37
them shelf life. They came over and, and again
18:40
with the Padres, I was like Clevenger at the time with
18:42
Padres was down and he came back active.
18:45
So Nick moved out of the starting role for Clevenger and
18:47
then Clevenger went again and Nick came back in and he's just
18:50
kind of like back and forth in that role.
18:53
And they asked me, hey, do you mind doing this starting
18:55
relieving thing? And we did it like we, we build
18:57
out like workload model should be and he followed it.
18:59
So that's he and he's been healthy, knock on wood, he's
19:01
been been very healthy over the last number many years.
19:05
But the Reds, they pretty much brought him in to do that.
19:08
Like can you do this full time? And then this year the MLB sites
19:12
in their in their paper teams are not paying players because
19:17
they're they're relievers. And I'm like, well, Nick is
19:20
technically a reliever, but he just got paid the largest single
19:23
season contract as a pitcher in Reds history.
19:25
So when you start to look at the numbers and what Nick is doing
19:28
and how he's doing it, you go, man, this should be an
19:30
encouragement to any kid that can leverage workload management
19:33
from a performance standpoint. And we got out-of-the-box
19:36
finally of looking at work with management is this restrictive
19:39
thing. And that's the way that pitch
19:41
counts feel. That's the way that work with
19:44
management in the NBA feels. And I'm like, no, no, like,
19:47
listen, you want to talk about performance enhance, like you
19:50
use data the right way. Work with management can be
19:53
performance enhancing. And Nick Martinez is the perfect
19:55
example of that. So again, going back to this,
19:58
like things that I felt were maybe misrepresented and in
20:02
certain ways I get the point of what they're trying to say.
20:05
But if we're gonna talk about injuries, let's talk about
20:07
injuries. And if we're gonna talk about
20:08
workload and we're gonna talk about some of the shining
20:10
examples of what exists in the league, let's highlight the guys
20:13
that are doing something different and leveraging a
20:15
different model and are staying healthy doing it.
20:17
And Nick's just a great example of that.
20:20
I think your call out of separating offense and pitcher
20:24
injuries is a must. Very glad you did it.
20:27
And maybe I wish I could have tied my horse to that cart
20:31
sooner. And instead of just like getting
20:34
upset about the personal things of them, not talking about
20:37
fatigue or training or more proactive measures.
20:41
Because I would say from my side.
20:43
And I definitely want to talk to you about that piece of not just
20:46
citing what's wrong or what people aren't doing enough of
20:50
because my, my initial take from the original MLB report is
20:55
great. You guys made all these call
20:56
outs, but we offer no suggestions.
20:59
And I, I'm sure you have a different look into that given
21:04
your interview, your kind of hands on nature with the
21:08
process. But 100%, there needs to be a
21:12
separation from what generates more viewers versus what keeps
21:16
pitchers healthy. That needs to be done.
21:19
And maybe it's going back to do another iteration of the review
21:23
where offense is just in a completely different category.
21:27
Because what's the point of talking about offensive
21:29
statistics if we're talking about injury rates?
21:32
That, to me is the correlation of shark attacks and ice cream
21:36
sales. And just because ice cream sales
21:38
go up in the summer and more people go to the beach in the
21:41
summer, so more people are in the ocean, it doesn't mean that
21:45
ice cream sales and shark attacks have any causation.
21:50
There's just a loose correlation that we can draw because the
21:53
weather brings people to both of those scenarios.
21:56
So now, if you're comfortable with it, I do want to talk a
21:59
little bit about, I guess that theme that I brought up, what
22:03
MLB actually suggests we can do because it that's where I was
22:07
left in desire as a reader. So great.
22:11
You told me all this for 68 pages or whatever it was, it was
22:14
written well. I felt like I, I was reading
22:17
through my ideal baseball Twitter feed.
22:20
When I read the report, it was like, oh, I feel like I can
22:23
almost call out which guy I follow had had a given quote.
22:28
It was like, oh, that's that strength coach from that
22:30
facility that I know. That's that athletic trainer
22:33
from that team that I know and just from the the private
22:36
conversations. But maybe where do you think MLB
22:40
could make recommendations or where do you think you could
22:44
make recommendations that maybe weren't made in the initial
22:47
report? Yeah, I think they come down to,
22:49
and again, this is like going back to this offensive piece.
22:52
Like they make the recommendation that pitchers
22:54
need to throw 6 innings minimum unless there's like certain
22:57
criteria or whatever. And the idea is that pitchers
22:59
would throw slower or they hope the pitchers would throw slower
23:02
to maintain that longevity within the game.
23:04
I I don't think that's a good idea.
23:06
Again, I heard this somebody said today on Twitter, I think
23:08
it was we've trained pitchers a certain way for so long and you
23:11
expect an entire generation of arms to come through and
23:14
fundamentally change with the approach.
23:15
The game is probably not going to happen.
23:16
And I was like, well, that's pretty true.
23:18
We've taught these kids to throw hard and they're going to want
23:21
to throw hard and we have a hard enough time already governing
23:23
like frozen general. So that that may be may be
23:27
difficult. You hear like the new 6 ounce
23:29
concepts and again, like putting in a six ounce baseball doesn't
23:33
attack the more fundamental problem.
23:35
Whether it's 6 ounce, 4 oz or five ounce doesn't matter.
23:37
Kids aren't built up enough to handle what they're going to
23:40
face in season. We're still going to see injury
23:41
occur because they're not going to stop going the six ounce
23:44
baseball at full speed, whatever that speed is.
23:46
We're obsessed with this valgus torque.
23:48
Oh, it showed a A4 Newton meter drop in valgus torque.
23:52
And look, it's going to be safer.
23:53
It's like no, not not true. You still have kids not built up
23:57
to handle it. They're going to get fatigued,
23:58
they're going to get hurt. And so yeah, like again, it's
24:01
about curbing the Android since MLB's credit again at the end
24:06
they cite things they want to continue to study into the
24:09
future, one of them being fatigued.
24:10
Basically, they're alluding to the fact that there is no right
24:14
now sensor based throwing wearables are are fun Wearables
24:19
in general are not doing a great job of calculating vagus torque.
24:22
So we can't use Vagus torque. So if we're using vagus torque
24:25
to slight fatigue, we don't have a direct correlation with the
24:27
number of throws that we need to make that happen.
24:29
So there's just a lot of problems on that front.
24:31
They also kind of investigate like maybe redesigning pitch
24:34
counts. And that's something I think
24:36
that you hear from them pretty regularly is that we need
24:39
compliance and we need rethinking of pitch counts.
24:43
I still don't think that's right.
24:45
I still think that there is a better way to do it.
24:49
I have my own opinions and the official response.
24:51
I actually talk about who the I've been lucky enough to be
24:54
around or be a part of the really only two calculations and
24:57
sensor based throwing workloads out there in my time, which has
25:01
been awesome. The original modus calculations
25:03
and then the one that I built recently with our sleeve.
25:06
And I talked about both of those at length and how they work and
25:09
and why they work where they work.
25:11
But I'm not saying in my official response that we have
25:15
to choose one of those two things or that those are even
25:18
the scalable options. I think, and, and this is where
25:22
I'm not sure yet that the broad masses understand what I'm
25:27
saying, but what I'm saying is that we don't have a
25:30
philosophical problem. You and I can sit here and we
25:33
can have this conversation about workload management and you
25:36
could disagree with some part of my workload calculation or we
25:40
could go back and forth about the scalability of it.
25:43
But I don't think we have a philosophical issue.
25:45
You would agree a better workload model exists out there
25:48
today than pitch counts. A better workload model exists
25:51
to innings limits. Like you would say that pitch
25:53
counts are probably better than innings limits because of the
25:55
way by nature they're calculating all of the
25:57
individual throws. You would say that an RPE based
26:00
model is better than pitch counts because it accumulates
26:03
all the throws that you make in a day, in a game day or in
26:06
practice in general or throughout your throwing
26:08
schedule. And then you have like the
26:10
sensor base, you're like, well, that's probably the best thing
26:11
that's out there. Seemingly it's way better than
26:13
pitch counts. So we're getting some objective
26:16
data on it and I go great. So philosophically, you would
26:19
say there's a higher hierarchy of some of these workload
26:21
concepts that exist in the game today.
26:22
The problem is how do you scale the highest level workload
26:26
calculations to reach an 8 year old with their parents?
26:29
That's a technological problem, not a philosophical problem.
26:33
So technology has to be built, great technology has to be
26:35
designed to reach the masses. And it's not necessarily doesn't
26:40
have to necessarily be my calculation or another
26:43
calculation that exists out there, doesn't have to be an RPE
26:46
model. There's so many creative ways to
26:48
approach this and it's like what I'm really looking for when I'm
26:52
hoping happens from all this is the right people get in the
26:56
room, sit down and design something great.
26:58
What's maybe this is my virtuistic ideals of, of
27:02
baseball. But let's all not be greedy for
27:04
a second and try to create something that maybe makes sense
27:07
to help the next generation. Because right now 57% of all
27:10
Tommy John surgeries that are happening are happening between
27:13
like the ages 15 to 19 years old.
27:15
And that growth rate is at a 9% growth rate annually.
27:18
Like, that can't happen. We're not slowing down here.
27:21
We're speeding up and we're all sitting here debating whether
27:24
pitch counts are still good or not or whether we should refine
27:26
them to be a touch better. No, no.
27:28
We need a fundamental change in baseball.
27:30
And it starts with, again, kind of going back to this, who's
27:34
willing to sit down and actually have this conversation?
27:36
Do you like the doors open right now because of this report?
27:39
So I'm thankful for that. But I'm hoping people will at
27:41
least hear and start to explore maybe new steps to to a new
27:44
process. If you don't mind humoring me
27:46
here, I'd like to do some recorded brainstorming because
27:50
in the process of you talking about a better system, I started
27:54
running through some ideas in my head.
27:57
I'm sure these are likely the thoughts that keep you up at
28:00
night, but we obviously have some sort of governing body in
28:04
baseball, right? Players have to obey certain
28:08
guidelines, whether it's the drug testing that they do
28:11
regularly to ensure that they are following those guidelines
28:15
or gosh, any, anything else, whether it's team rules, league
28:19
rules, different things that they have to obey.
28:22
Do you think that there could ever be a system with, I guess
28:27
it would have to go through some sort of mandatory reporting of
28:31
internal throws made at a complex made in the offseason.
28:36
You probably couldn't go into players own personal training,
28:41
but at least the second that they stepped foot at a facility
28:46
site or a team owned complex and are there for mandatory team
28:51
activity. So something part of the
28:54
official Major League Baseball calendar.
28:56
Could we have a system where every throw plios on up are
29:02
tracked and then turned into a system within a in game pitch
29:10
count being set based on a more global workload schedule?
29:16
And then we just have to have some sort of agreed upon value
29:20
to what each throw or zone of throwing would look like.
29:24
Yeah. So I think the easy answer here
29:26
is it depends on the tech. So wearable sensors have been
29:31
widely adopted and accepted. Wearable throwing sensors have
29:34
not been. So things like whoop strap and
29:36
or ring and all these things like I mean, I wear a watch
29:40
constantly and track all my activity, never take it off.
29:43
I've had on my wrist for three years and we accept that.
29:46
But when it starts to become like restricting and it starts
29:49
to say like you can't do something because it might be to
29:51
the athletes betterment. But there's always exceptions to
29:54
the rule. And so I think it just starts
29:57
with better education. I know this is going to sound
29:59
really broad, but it it literally does just start with
30:02
better education to parents about why their kids not ready
30:06
for something. Or it starts with establishing
30:09
potentially, like you said, some some larger governance of like
30:13
all the throws that are being made, which is great.
30:15
But at the end of the day, baseball's not ready yet.
30:18
My opinion, could you get there? Absolutely.
30:21
Like I could show you how we scale workload to over what is
30:24
it probably 700 athletes a year. I can show you how we do it.
30:26
It's again a little bit invasive at times with the athlete.
30:29
That means us holding them accountable to putting stuff in.
30:32
It means us using different modalities for the different
30:34
environments that they're in. There's a way to do it.
30:36
Is Johnny in Nebraska and his dad?
30:40
Are we going to get upset because they went out and played
30:42
catch in the backyard for an extra 50 throws this weekend and
30:45
they were just want to have a father son moment.
30:47
OK, Well, that's probably a little different.
30:50
Not something that we should scold either because at the end
30:52
of the day, most Johnny's out there are not going to make it
30:54
to the upper levels. But we really find that Tommy
30:56
John surgery is relevant. Most Johnny and dad just have a
31:00
father son moment. We want to take that away.
31:01
Again, those are the things that I'm attentive to because I've
31:05
gone through the, I guess cycle in my lifetime of everybody
31:08
needs workload management and we need to have a sensor on
31:10
everybody and we need to do this.
31:11
We need to do that. So then OK, like, yeah, father
31:15
son moments are really great. Like kid playing at the park
31:18
this weekend and exploring skills and having fun.
31:21
Like, yeah, probably not upset with that one either.
31:24
I can get on the list. But the idea is I do think
31:26
there's a way to to do it. I do think there's a a better
31:29
model at pitch counts. But at the end of the day,
31:34
parents, players and coaches are going to continue to make the
31:37
same mistakes. If they're not, explain the
31:39
value of those mistakes. Ultimately travel baseball, the
31:43
social moment for the parents as well.
31:44
If mom and dad can't go hang out with another mom and dad because
31:47
a giant is not playing this week and they feel like they're
31:48
missing some of the gossip from the week, those are also really
31:52
true social pressures. And So what we don't want is we
31:55
don't want workload to be like this thing where it's like, hey,
31:58
you are sick for three days and you had the whatever flu and now
32:03
you can't pitch this weekend. I mean, should we have that kid
32:06
pitch this weekend? Should we not have them pitch
32:07
this weekend? Mom and dad are going to be
32:09
upset because they can't go hang out with the other mom and dad
32:11
and the kid not getting the ranking because he's not
32:13
planning enough events because he's got this thing that's going
32:16
on. A parent can't drive.
32:17
It's like, man, this is way bigger than what most people
32:20
would solve as a simple solution.
32:22
Instead of me being like, you have to have a chronic workload
32:25
of X and you have to have a daily workload peak of X and you
32:29
have to have a sensor on your arm at all time.
32:31
You just start to realize, like, this is a really hard and vast
32:36
problem to solve. But I think a lot of people,
32:39
majority of the population, would be very open and attentive
32:43
to guidance. And I know my dad and I are like
32:46
when I was playing high school ball, if somebody told me, hey,
32:48
like, this is probably not your best interest this weekend, it
32:51
was something or somebody that I trusted, I'd probably listen.
32:53
And I wish, I wish we had known more about injuries.
32:55
We just didn't. But it kind of has to start at a
32:59
younger age if we really want to clean this up.
33:01
And bigger picture, it has to be something that is digestible.
33:05
It can't be it takes 34 Newton meters, according to cadaver
33:08
studies to tear the UCL and your son throws at 70 Newton meters.
33:12
How do we do that? It can't be that dialogue.
33:14
It needs to be engaging, fun, entertaining.
33:17
And look, I'll say this last piece on this.
33:20
So I go on YouTube if anybody wants to ever do a deep dive of
33:23
weird topics, PBS has this like educational channel series.
33:29
I care of what it's called, but it's like these cartoon figures
33:32
and this one person that narrates it and it's this the
33:35
greatest educational stuff in the world.
33:37
They're talking about supercomputing and they're
33:39
talking about physics and they're talking about anatomy at
33:42
a high level and they do a great job of watering it down and
33:45
educating the masses and making it super entertaining.
33:48
Where the heck is that content? Baseball?
33:50
It doesn't exist. You have a YouTube video with
33:53
some guy who's showing an MLB picture and breaking down
33:56
certain mechanic of X, or you have some guy standing in a
33:59
facility and the lights are off and he's like being ominous and
34:03
talking about, you know, I fit matters in the space or
34:06
whatever. You're like, dude, this just
34:07
doesn't click. That's just not it.
34:09
So am I the person to bring that educational material?
34:12
Maybe, maybe not, but it needs to happen.
34:15
And that's where I think we start to partner with the right
34:17
people over time to drive the high level information to the
34:20
right people in the right way. The closest thing to it in the
34:23
baseball world now is probably the simple sabermetrics videos,
34:26
which I I think they do a good job and that's probably why it's
34:29
digestible because I feel like I'm a little kid watching all
34:33
the PBS programs again. Then another thing that I feel a
34:38
little bad calling it out. I was reading your report and I
34:41
even thought to it myself, like, Dang, Casey got screwed on
34:45
timing on this because Asmi released another study in
34:49
between the pitcher injury report from the MLB and your
34:53
response with a younger set of cadavers as opposed to the old
34:59
age people that they normally use.
35:02
But this time they did it with a bunch of a bunch of cadavers,
35:05
the average age of like 32 or 33.
35:08
And they then reported that the UCL didn't tear until like 43 or
35:14
44 Newton meters. So now we're we're just all
35:17
thrown off everything that we have ever claimed for all these
35:20
years. We have to add 10 more Newton
35:22
meters to it. And I or 11.
35:24
And now I have to go back through all our slides and do
35:26
that same thing and figure out, do I want to put an Asterix
35:29
here? Do I want to use a new number?
35:31
How do I talk about this? And I did think it was even kind
35:34
of funny, you know, you were on the Abbs Zoom as well when they
35:39
were going over all these different things just just a
35:42
couple weeks ago. But even Fleisig himself had two
35:47
different slides where he used two different values for where
35:52
the UCL tears because 1 he had the new like 4543 to 45 Newton
35:58
meter number and then he had another page where he used the
36:00
34 Newton meter number. And I was left more confused
36:04
because I didn't know what number to use if the guy that
36:06
did the research didn't know what number to use.
36:09
So just wanted to shout that out.
36:13
I got a nerdy laughing moment when I saw that in your report.
36:17
The Casey or three days late on publishing.
36:20
You know, it's funny, it's like I had some people respond back
36:23
to certain things that I had written and and everybody tries
36:26
to play gotcha and I'm like, all right, well, like that's cool.
36:29
Like where's your 58 page report kind of thing, right.
36:32
It's it's I think all that times we can say a lot, we can argue a
36:35
lot. Like the whole premise of my
36:36
report, which is this is like again, segue off of this, but
36:39
it's the whole premise of the report is just a call for
36:42
change. Like, hey, listen, here's a
36:44
different idea, here's a different model, Here's what
36:46
exists. The research is going to get
36:48
old, New research is going to appear, but the problem doesn't
36:51
change. Like if we're still using pitch
36:53
counts, I would say that the change in research to cadaver
36:58
studies, so change in research doesn't change our thought
37:01
process. It actually affirms once again
37:04
that the premise of the concept is still there.
37:06
Like it doesn't make it different.
37:08
Like the I found a study the other day talking about balgus
37:12
torque from a wearable and it's like 10% change of placement.
37:16
You know, it's gonna result in ex valgus torque changed.
37:19
I'm like, that's great. It doesn't change the premise of
37:22
the discussion like we need. I would rather have a slight
37:25
change in variance in the balgus torque readings that we have and
37:30
capture every throw, then not capture every throw and still
37:34
talk about these arbitrary values.
37:37
The real big picture here and the real again, going back to
37:41
like the the original question of like why did I write this in
37:44
the 1st place? Why does it really matter where
37:45
is this going? Like I'll be the first one to
37:48
acknowledge that workload calculations today should
37:51
change. Like they should be different.
37:53
They should be more broad in certain cases, they should be
37:55
more narrow in certain cases. Like we should give people
37:57
chances to use different workload values.
37:59
I wouldn't be the first one to tell you that the way we measure
38:01
fitness and workload management is maybe wrong.
38:03
That chronic workload maybe needs to model differently than
38:07
the way that chronic workload is set up for the original motives
38:11
calculations. Ben Hanson talks about it in one
38:14
of his research papers where he says that more lengthy chronic
38:17
workload might be more valuable. I agree with of those
38:19
statements. However, I can be super nerdy
38:23
and go off the rails and take this high level data and we can
38:26
consider and model and change and all that over time.
38:29
All good on all that. The problem still exists.
38:32
It hasn't been changed. And if we're going that deep
38:35
into into designing systems that nobody understands it and it's
38:40
not being applied at lower level, we left half a baseball
38:43
behind us. Yeah, in 5-10 years it might
38:45
catch up to some of that, but somebody still has to bridge the
38:47
gap. While I look ahead at a lot of
38:50
these calculations and designing some of these new things like
38:53
I'm also looking back and I'm saying to myself, what's more
38:56
applicable, what changes, what's better?
38:58
And how do we do this? How do we scale a smaller?
39:01
I'm OK with the smaller version being accepted at a much wider
39:05
pace. We have to start to take steps
39:07
toward the future and work with management's been around since
39:10
2000. And I mean, I'd say the Modus
39:12
team probably started bringing it in to baseball.
39:15
The full release, like a usable release in 2016, 2015 range.
39:20
I mean, we're almost 10 years into the future here and it's
39:24
taken that long to see that change happen.
39:26
Like a lot of the concepts and core understandings that we have
39:28
now of what workload management is like.
39:31
I was doing a lot of that back in 2017 and designing throwing
39:34
programs and having guys use it. But again, you're almost 10
39:37
years in the future and it's just now starting to slowly
39:39
trickle into the game. The benefits, the structure, the
39:43
hopeful changing of injuries in baseball all hinge around this
39:47
idea that we have to collectively find ways to scale
39:50
these new concepts, not get stuck for 20 years on pitch
39:53
counts or whatever just because some researcher out there is
39:56
getting paid money to say that he loves it.
39:58
Pretty much the way I look at it.
39:59
So what are some other pieces that we maybe haven't discussed
40:03
yet in your response? Maybe something that you think
40:09
kind of falls under the radar or maybe.
40:13
Like AB level point to an extent because the fatigue is number
40:17
one, right? I, I feel like we, we've
40:20
discussed that like crazy thus far.
40:22
We recognize that a better system needs to be in place.
40:26
So I I'm sure if we threw your entire thing into a ChatGPT
40:31
summary, we'd probably get something highlighting those
40:34
couple of points if we asked it to spit out A4 sentence review
40:39
of your 58 pages. So what would be something that
40:43
an AI summary might not pick up on that you think is really
40:47
valuable that we have not yet discussed?
40:51
Great way to ask that question. I love that.
40:54
I would say that one thing I didn't touch on too much because
40:57
it was really focused on the concept of workload was I didn't
41:01
really talk about the full scale of injury.
41:03
So at the end I kind of said it, we, we call our KP 3 model and
41:07
it's workload strength in the mechanics.
41:08
In our opinion, that's kind of how we handle things at KP
41:11
specifically, but it goes to Flex Pro.
41:13
So we'll talk about it. No transition there intended,
41:16
but we have like our Tiso unit which we've used for a long time
41:20
from our KP band set. We've looked at strength data
41:24
from that T cell unit for quite a while and we've correlated
41:28
that strength score for the T so unit to our daily workloads and
41:32
try to look at actual daily fatigue or readiness daily based
41:35
upon the T so score versus our workload scores and what we
41:39
would project fatigue to be. So after those that don't know
41:42
workload management, throwing workload management is a
41:44
predicted fatigue. So we have like Doctor Tim
41:47
Gabbits research and a lot of other research out there that
41:49
that says sometimes it could be a progression of a 1.3 or 1.4 or
41:54
1.5. We don't really know when that
41:56
fatigue state is going to be. We use these measures to
42:00
basically slope the throwing progression of an athlete to try
42:03
to manage the accumulation of load too quickly or too slowly.
42:07
We want to kind of keep it just right.
42:09
On the other side of that, you have actual strength outputs, so
42:11
you can do it from the forearm or from the shoulder, and it
42:13
looks at how ready is that musculature today to go out and
42:17
compete. And so where we see predicted
42:20
workloads being fine guys within the range we want them to be, we
42:23
still do see fatigue from athletes on our or on our TSO
42:27
score, or I know in this case for Flex Pro.
42:30
So one of the things I didn't really talk about at length was,
42:33
you know, yes, workload management's a great start and
42:35
firming up these workload concepts and getting better.
42:38
You know, ideas into the game are great, but you still have
42:41
susceptible athletes who are maybe very weak, who are maybe
42:46
not capable of of going out there and throwing at much
42:50
larger loads. We don't have all the research
42:52
there yet, but I think that's also made part of the next
42:54
frontier is establishing and valuing strength and something
42:58
that obviously, Adam, you and I have talked at length about and
43:02
continue to talk about, you know, there's some really great
43:04
people out there doing some really great things to try to
43:07
combine those measures. We've been doing that from the
43:09
shoulder on our side since 20, 19 and trying to evaluate what
43:14
all this means. The reality is though, we just
43:16
don't have answers to all of it yet.
43:19
And there are people in the game maybe trying to claim early
43:22
jumps to answers that this amount of throwing equals this
43:25
amount of fatigue and all this. We don't know that yet.
43:27
We just have kind of two best practices, 2 great systems out
43:30
there with what you guys are doing and are throwing.
43:33
Work with stuff, for example, and just throw out our stuff.
43:35
I want to say our stuff. Just work with management in
43:37
general, right? You can take, there's some
43:39
really great tech out there building great work with models.
43:41
You take that and you kind of put them together and you get
43:43
sort of this next level version vision of what an athlete's
43:47
doing. A lot of people are doing that.
43:48
So that's what I didn't really touch on just because of the
43:51
complexity of it. I did talk about how the forum
43:53
works a bit in the paper and the official response itself.
43:56
I did talk about balgus torque, which I didn't expect to get
43:59
into. My fingers just kept typing 1
44:01
morning and it kind of came up. And I do think that there are
44:05
some very interesting parallels that will be over the next
44:09
calendar year or two years. I think we'll start to unveil
44:13
and maybe change drastically the way that we look at our work
44:16
with calculations for throwing and what athletes are really
44:19
able to handle because who's to say an athlete couldn't handle
44:22
more than 1.3? And and if we do say that, how
44:25
do we know that? Give me another example of this.
44:27
Again, high level here, but why do all throwing programs start
44:30
off at the same place? Like we start all of our
44:31
athletes with this 30 throws that I don't.
44:34
But let's say we started an athlete off at 30 throws for
44:37
three days a week. Like why do we do that?
44:40
Some athletes can maybe handle a lot more than that to start now
44:43
you cut down the length of time it requires for a certain
44:45
athlete be prepared for season. So now maybe you see less
44:48
athletes under prepared for the season as they get in.
44:51
That's where the combination of strength and work would probably
44:54
go into the future answering some of those questions.
44:56
I'm all I'm here for it. I'm I'm excited, but that
44:59
probably be another 58 page paper that I'll have to embark
45:01
on here in the near in the near future.
45:03
Something to add on here that I think probably doesn't get
45:07
talked about enough, maybe because it's so obvious, but I
45:11
feel like, at least in my mind, it's one of those things that I
45:16
believe it's obvious. So I feel like I never surface
45:18
it, but maybe it should be discussed.
45:21
There's. Probably an overlapping theme to
45:24
everything we've talked about on this podcast today, everything
45:28
that gets mentioned in your report, everything that gets
45:30
mentioned in the MLB report, anything that we do would take
45:35
significant work. And that's not a bad thing.
45:39
And when I bring up the significant work, I don't just
45:42
mean to overhaul the system, I mean from the athlete.
45:46
It takes athlete buy in program adherence and effort to build up
45:52
a chronic workload to be able to handle the stresses that a game
45:57
puts upon them. Same thing with building up
46:00
their forearm or their shoulder strength to be able to handle
46:04
the stresses of throwing a 94 mile an hour fastball without a
46:10
detrimental result. And I don't think that gets
46:13
talked enough about. It should probably be screened
46:16
from the rooftops, especially given the social media age that
46:20
we live in. I think people forget how much
46:24
effort is actually required to be resilient as an athlete.
46:30
It takes so much work to be durable to actually get up there
46:34
every single day and perform your best.
46:38
So I, I don't know if you have anything you can add on to that,
46:41
but I'm, I'm sure you see it regularly based on the way that
46:45
you program for your athletes. Yeah, that consistency piece is
46:49
huge. We call it.
46:50
So our strength coach here, Garrett has his master of the
46:53
mundane. That's one thing He's always
46:54
walking around saying master of the mundane.
46:56
And it's, you know, it's true that the best athletes, they
46:58
have a buy in to to what we're doing.
47:01
They have a buy into their future career and how they're
47:03
going to get there and it makes it easier because of that
47:07
buying. I'm not talking about buying on
47:08
like just doing the thing like or understanding education.
47:12
I'm talking about buying to their own career, meaning that
47:14
they're driven to wake up every day and go do the thing.
47:17
It makes the mundane easier because they have a vision for
47:20
where it's going to take them or the success they're going to
47:22
have. I heard a really great quote the
47:23
other day like this on an Instagram.
47:26
I'm going to butcher it pretty bad, but I'm going to get the
47:28
point will come across. It was this older lady who
47:31
clearly been in the Olympics and her husband who'd also clearly
47:33
been in the Olympics. They talked about as a Team USA
47:36
Instagram ad. And I want to say this guy had
47:39
Parkinson's and they showed him on a bike.
47:41
And she, it's just the wife voicing over this discussion.
47:45
It shows the guy on the bike and you're like, man, that guy's
47:48
really struggling. You know, you can really tell
47:49
you had a hard time getting on the bike and all that.
47:51
And she says most time people think that athletes are in
47:54
pursuit of perfection, but reality is that athletes are
47:57
just in pursuit of better. And I was like, wow, like, what
48:01
a statement. What does it mean to be in
48:03
pursuit of better? Like that guy with Parkinson's
48:05
obviously isn't trying to be the perfect athlete anymore or like
48:09
set world records. He's just trying to get up and
48:11
personally just be better for himself.
48:13
Like that's a huge deal. And so when I talk about like
48:16
programming, and I think it's hard for a lot of people to be
48:19
consistent in programming. Look, we all struggle with it,
48:22
right? Like if you're a runner or if
48:24
you're trying to stay on a diet of some sort, or if you're,
48:27
these are things that we talked about societally that people
48:29
struggle with. It's, it's just being
48:31
consistent. And I'll give a shout out to my
48:34
wife real quick, like one of the most consistent individuals and
48:37
that I've ever met my entire life.
48:38
Like I realized that I'm not as consistent as I think I am
48:41
because she's doing the things that she does on a daily basis.
48:44
And that inspired me. So I think there's two parts to
48:46
this. One is that community is huge.
48:48
My wife and I like we work together as a great team.
48:50
Like she inspires me to do the things that I need to do
48:53
consistently. And she lifts me up and helps me
48:54
keep moving when I'm not. You know, that consistent,
48:57
right? When I look at athletes that
48:58
come into our gym, I hope that's their family.
49:01
I hope their family is inspiring them.
49:03
They're coming and do it. When you talk about the younger
49:04
age group specifically, you have to have great parental buy in on
49:08
some of this to to spur the kid to be consistent, to spur the
49:12
kid to do something better. When you talk about environment
49:15
within the facility, it's something we really encourage
49:17
with our athletes is listen, there's many days you don't want
49:19
to be here. There's days you don't want to
49:21
talk to me as a coach. But relationship and growing
49:24
that relationship with our athletes is is critical.
49:26
And it's so funny because this is so far removed from like the
49:29
normal dialogue of an acute kernel for weighted 9 day
49:33
average of the acute. But you hear me talking about
49:36
relationships with athletes and it's like, how do those two
49:38
things merge? Well, I look at it as a strength
49:41
coach builds a great program for an athlete to come in and it's a
49:45
train. But the mark of a great strength
49:47
coach is not the program they built.
49:48
The mark of a great strength coach is the art of coaching.
49:51
They get buy in from the athletes.
49:52
They get them to show up and do that program, execute it to the
49:55
NTH degree on a daily basis. And so the true art of being a
49:59
great pitching coach, yes, programming is highly important,
50:03
but if you, I would argue that if you don't have the structure
50:06
of a long term program in place, then you're ultimately showing
50:09
up every day with no plan. So for pitching coaches, we're
50:12
building the plan, we're governing it by some workload
50:15
model. And then there's still an art to
50:17
coaching on a day and day out basis to get the most from your
50:20
athletes to make sure they adhere to the value of every
50:23
single throw. If I have 5 throws in the day
50:25
where this athlete jumps in intensity to 40% higher than
50:29
where he's supposed to be, that's 5 throws at which I
50:33
didn't account for and substantially changed my model
50:35
for the long term. And athlete's not going to be
50:37
perfect. They're not going to nail every
50:39
throw right in the range that I want them to.
50:41
But you know what? The detail at which I can go
50:43
about doing that, that matters. And the athletes pick up on
50:46
that. So the consistency day in and
50:48
day out is curated by family, it's curated by coach, it's
50:52
curated by peers. The program that you design, if
50:55
it's not getting bought in with one of those three groups, you
51:00
could argue that it's it's going to be potentially a lot harder
51:02
for the athlete to execute on that for the long term.
51:05
This is where I think, again, communal agreement and movement
51:09
forward in the game. It has to start with governing
51:12
bodies being able to go, hey parents, this is what this
51:16
means. Hey, parents, This is why we do
51:17
it. If you think you're just going
51:18
to put rules on paper and expect parents to adhere to it, they're
51:22
going to think they know better and they're not going to do it
51:23
in some cases. And that's where I think pitch
51:25
counts are at some time. Some of this stemmed from me
51:28
asking you the what can we gather if, if we dig a little
51:33
deeper, what goes beyond just the initial summary?
51:36
And I appreciate you bringing up Flexpro Grip.
51:38
I appreciate you bringing up things that go beyond what your
51:42
general communication looks like because that consistency piece
51:46
does matter a ton. Is there anything else maybe
51:49
that kind of fell between the lines or maybe a a motive or
51:55
something that you hope somebody picked up on that again, might
51:59
not have been one of the main themes.
52:01
Yeah, I think. I talked about a little with
52:03
Nick in the performance piece, but, and I've said this, a lot
52:06
of said on the stage at Wake Forest, obviously I've said it
52:09
around it's workload should be looked at as restrictive.
52:13
It should be looked at as empowering, knowing where you
52:16
need to go and how you need to get there.
52:18
It kind of touches on all the things that we talked about, the
52:20
need for consistency, the need for community, the need for all
52:24
these things be in place. A lot of people have opinions on
52:27
what's right and wrong. And I think one of the biggest
52:30
mistakes that we make is trying to seek these gotcha moments on
52:34
Twitter, these gotcha moments on whatever it is, these idea,
52:39
look, we should be very open to having conversations and I am,
52:42
I'm very open to having dialogue with people.
52:44
I will tell you right now that what today's work with model is
52:47
for me as my best guess like, and I'm OK with that.
52:50
Like I know it leaves the door open for me tomorrow to continue
52:53
to iterate and to develop new things that matter again.
52:57
The MLB create a report that was to start dialogue and open
53:01
dialogue. I created a report that was to
53:04
start dialogue and open dialogue.
53:06
I think that there are a lot of people have never taken action
53:09
in something further than reading something and giving
53:12
their opinion or or writing a response as a reaction.
53:15
And I would encourage those people to you know what, like
53:17
sit down and write your own response.
53:19
Sit down and write your own detail.
53:21
You know, we have shameless plug.
53:23
We have our waiting with workload course on our website
53:25
where I talk about in detail our processes and action plans,
53:29
etcetera. I had this response online for
53:31
free. Like I put it out there just in
53:32
the open to expose an idea and hope that people would grab it.
53:36
I mean, very easy for me to put this behind a pay wall, but it's
53:39
something that I wanted people to dialogue on.
53:41
Again, something I didn't really open the conversation too much
53:44
on. Something I want people to
53:46
really understand and my heartbeat behind a lot of it is
53:49
if I'm a junior college coach and I can build a staff of
53:52
hybrid pitchers, and I get that idea because of this report, and
53:55
I have them doing work with management to accomplish that
53:58
because you can't really do a hybrid, can't really do a hybrid
54:00
model as a pitcher without doing work with management, then OK,
54:03
great. Like that was well worth it.
54:05
Colleges, I think should be looking into that to get more
54:07
inning other frontline guys and keeping top guys on the field
54:10
more often. Those are dialogues that I would
54:13
love to see from the ABCA stage. Those are dialogues I'd love to
54:16
hear from the the bridge in Wake Forest and more reason why
54:20
people would share these these concepts and and ways that
54:24
they're finding new approaches to finding success on the field.
54:27
It's something I'm passionate about.
54:29
I hope it changes the next generation.
54:30
And I think in the the big picture of the grand scheme of
54:33
things, there needs to be a lot more of these reports that come
54:35
out from other individuals that ultimately spur the game into
54:41
further dialogue about it, right?
54:42
I'm not saying I'm right, not saying I'm wrong.
54:44
Things will change overtime. As you pointed out already
54:47
cadaver studies are switching up on me.
54:48
But it's good, it's healthy, and it should continue to firm not
54:52
who's right and who's wrong, But as I mentioned before, like what
54:55
is better? That's sort of the goal.
54:57
Well that was my gotcha moment is just finding out that you
55:00
didn't have the most up to date study.
55:02
In your report. So obviously I I can't take any
55:06
anything you did seriously and you just truck stops here I'm.
55:11
Surprised you didn't tweet it. I'm surprised you didn't be
55:13
like, listen, this is this is completely invalid.
55:15
This whole report is completely nonsense.
55:17
He has an old cadaver study in this report.
55:20
We cannot accept it. Like what an idiot.
55:23
Exactly. That's I.
55:24
I should have done that just to follow suit, right?
55:28
That would have been the right move.
55:29
It definitely would have moved the conversation forward.
55:31
Maybe, maybe my final piece, and this is me saying it, not Casey,
55:37
because Casey has very sternly said multiple times he is
55:43
extremely impressed by the undertaking with the MLB.
55:47
So I will reiterate that once again, I think where I was left
55:54
feeling the desire, I know I mentioned some of that earlier,
55:57
was just wanting them to say great, these are the problems
56:01
for me. We know these are the problems.
56:04
These have been the problems. I just want someone to say, but
56:07
we think this is something that we can actually do as an
56:11
industry for an answer. That's what Casey did here,
56:14
which I think is awesome. He responded with what he thinks
56:18
an answer can be or what we can move forward to, which is a
56:22
model or a system to better track fatigue.
56:26
Now, what is actually scalable? We'll find out that.
56:30
That's why I tried to have that little thought experiment where
56:32
we created a governing body where everybody reports their
56:35
throws and MLB creates A restriction where on Opening
56:39
Day, Paul Schemes is allowed to make 76 game pitches, where
56:43
Chris Sale is allowed to make 64 and Dylan Cease can make 91.
56:50
And maybe that would be awesome one day.
56:52
I'm not sure fans would fully grasp it, but us fancy baseball
56:56
behind the scenes, people would think it's the coolest thing in
56:59
the world with strategy and who knows it it might decrease the
57:04
risk of injuries. So I think there's a lot to be
57:07
discovered. There's a lot of conversation
57:10
that will be had down the line. Plenty of people are doing
57:14
things in their different lanes, whether it's Casey with
57:16
workload, whether it's us with Flex Pro Grip and just trying to
57:20
get people very strong forearms to to ensure that they can
57:24
handle more extreme workloads or more extreme velocities and
57:30
volumes, different things. So I, I look forward to seeing
57:33
where this all goes. The 2025 season is still
57:36
unwritten. We'll see what it all looks like
57:38
and who knows, maybe it'll be the lowest injury season that we
57:42
we've seen. So maybe this is one last
57:45
question I can ask you different from the report.
57:48
Hopefully you feel like you you got everything out on the
57:50
report. What is the current injury trend
57:54
we are looking at in the 2025 season?
57:56
What is it 1 full week in, if you've even had an opportunity
58:01
to go through numbers thus far? Haven't had a chance yet.
58:06
I would say that one of the things I'm hopeful for is that
58:11
there is a decrease in injuries this year.
58:15
You are seeing a lot more usage of Flexpro.
58:19
RIP. You're saying a lot more usage
58:21
of other modalities to track readiness.
58:26
You're seeing a lot more usage of sensors and throwing athletes
58:31
seeking this out because they saw another athlete doing it.
58:34
It's become popularized and it's starting to gain traction.
58:38
I would hope that in some of that ideas or models were
58:43
changed or programs were altered this offseason to fit better
58:46
using of that technology. So, yeah, hopefully we see
58:50
something different this year. That would be amazing.
58:53
What ultimately gets the praise for that happening?
58:57
Maybe it's a torpedo bat. I don't know, Like people
58:59
started changing the way they throw in fear of a torpedo bat.
59:02
Who knows? I don't know.
59:04
But it it it should be a better goodness here.
59:07
I think that we probably have one or two more years still of
59:13
some sort of sinister numbers. Hopefully they just flatten out
59:16
on us. Would be awesome.
59:17
But a lot of the damage is done at a young age.
59:21
Last thing that I will note on the MLB's report versus what I
59:25
wrote, this is one thing I did want to note.
59:28
MLB makes reference to the idea that we have to start from the
59:31
top and bring it down to the bottom.
59:33
And I disagree firmly with that because most of the damage is
59:37
done at a younger age. If we know that 57% Tommy John's
59:40
surgery ever happened between that 15 to 19 years old range,
59:43
it's already very apparent that those guys are stepping into the
59:47
league and you're seeing even the MLB is showing in their
59:49
report a higher number of revisions happening now.
59:52
And so it's like, OK, well let's get they're having surgery at
59:54
191817 years old. They're getting a revision
59:57
within the minor leagues. That's why you're seeing those
59:59
numbers going up. It's the amateur level that's
1:00:00
causing that problem. So my point to that is I would
1:00:04
hope the numbers flatten out this year, but I think the
1:00:06
amateur problem is so big on such a wide scale right now and
1:00:09
getting worse that we need to kind of brace for the worst here
1:00:14
in the next couple of years. Well, we can brace for the worst
1:00:17
and hope for the best, and I am going to choose to believe that
1:00:21
2025 will be the turning point where we start to see that fall.
1:00:26
I hope so. Would I selfishly love to be a
1:00:31
part of the groups that get credit?
1:00:33
Yeah, that would be sweet. Do I expect to get credit?
1:00:36
No, not at all. But as long as baseball is a
1:00:39
better place and more people are playing more innings and out
1:00:44
there with the best stuff, I'm happy and I I can sleep at
1:00:48
night. So I I feel good knowing that we
1:00:53
are excited about the potential for 2025.
1:00:56
Who knows, We'll see. That's why it's excited about
1:00:58
the potential, not excited necessarily about the results.
1:01:01
We're excited about the potential.
1:01:03
So, Casey, before I let you go, is there anything else you want
1:01:06
to get off your chest? No, I appreciate the platform
1:01:08
and chance to hop back on and speak again.
1:01:10
There's always good dialogue with you on on the process and
1:01:14
hopefully we'll have some updates on some things, maybe
1:01:17
summer time this year on where some of this action planning and
1:01:21
etcetera will go and maybe a chance to come back on for 1/3
1:01:24
time. That's right, you know it.
1:01:26
You have to be careful what you wish for because you will
1:01:29
certainly get it. It's not a it's not a just my
1:01:32
get it. You will certainly get it.
1:01:34
Look forward to that, that third appearance.
1:01:37
We'll see. Currently fighting with some big
1:01:40
dogs. Gavin from our team has been on
1:01:42
twice. Miller Hogan, beloved story of a
1:01:47
of a player currently pitching the Mexican League has been on
1:01:50
twice. So you've got good company, some
1:01:53
good stories. Look forward to that third
1:01:54
appearance. It'll come soon.
1:01:56
So Casey, once again, thanks to ton for your time today and for
1:02:00
everything you provided. And of course, to the listeners,
1:02:03
thanks for laying back with us.