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Youth Baseball Pitch Counts Are Failing Young Pitchers — What College Programs Do Differently | EMD Shorts · Dugout Dish Baseball Recruiting Podcast powered by EMD Baseball

• 0:02
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• 1:10
  Speaker B: welcome to this week's edition of in the Clubhouse with EMD Baseball.
• 1:14
  Speaker C: I'm Andy Kiri Kitties, joined by my
• 1:15
  Speaker B: Wonderful Co host, Mr. Keith Glasser. How we doing, sir?
• 1:18
  Speaker C: Great.
• 1:19
  Speaker B: How are you? Got a wonderful topic for today's discussion. This time of year, it always seems to rear its head and I think it's a good time to talk about pitch counts as we get towards the summer. Seen some outrageous tweets about kids throwing 120 pitches on Monday and then coming back and throwing 75 on Thursday and got us diving into some of these state policies around pitch counts. And I think we both have our issues with it and I think we both have our thoughts on some things that people need to consider. So where do you want to start with this one, coach?
• 1:59
  Speaker D: Absurd pitch counts on short rest?
• 2:02
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 2:04
  Speaker E: I mean, I just don't, I'm at a loss, honestly. We don't.
• 2:16
  Speaker D: Generally speaking, at the highest level of
• 2:18
  Speaker E: baseball in the, in Major League Baseball, we don't. Those guys are throwing every fourth day. Now the flip side to this is we're talking about grown men who this is their job to do this. They're built up to do this. There's a reason that pitchers and catchers report in February long, you know, a week before pretty much everyone else, you know. And a good portion of these organizations have actually started doing stuff earlier in January with certain guys depending on where they are in their throwing programs and what they need to be able to do in order to build themselves up for the season. Season. There's a reason that they're, they're on strict pitch count limits going into Spring training, You know, they're throwing split squads there. There's a lot going on. So we're talking about grown men in their 20s, mid-20s, late 20s, 30s, some 40s that are out there who've been doing this for a really long time. And their bodies are built to do this. And let's be honest, they're the less than 1% that can go do this. And we have kids that are 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 years old that are not built to do this. And we're throwing them 100 pitches on a Monday and then turning around and throwing them for 75 on a Thursday because technically Monday counts as the rest day. So they had three days off. No, they didn't. They threw on Monday. They had two days off after throwing 100 pitches. We ran them back out there for another 75. To be very clear, there are not, I would venture a guess, to say, and on this podcast, if you listen enough, I very rarely will speak in absolutes when it comes to this. I would almost guarantee that there's not a college coach in the country that is doing something of that nature with any arm on their staff. Now, the flip side to that would be because I know there's going to be chirpers if you're talking about playoff push or in the playoffs. Different argument. The other side of that is at that point in the year, we're also talking about more physically talented human beings. Guys are older, they're more mature. They've been in the weight room for X amount of years. They've also been built up to be able to handle that. They've been built up with that workload. They can go do that. You're not going to see that. It's. It's infrequent in college. That's why I think when you see it in college, everyone, like, blows their mind. You'll see it all over Twitter. That or X that Everyone, like, this guy threw 130 pitches. Remember, remember the first. It was opening weekend or second weekend. That kid went like CG against. I think it was Arkansas. Yeah, Like a senior who, like, belted out. Then they ended up almost losing the game. He went like eight and two thirds, like 135 pitches.
• 5:16
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 5:17
  Speaker E: He's a senior who is built up. He's probably not playing professional baseball. And the kid is dealing against Arkansas. Let it roll. What's the worst that happens? And that.
• 5:32
  Speaker B: But that, that.
• 5:33
  Speaker E: That's a coach knowing his player and knowing what his kid is capable of doing. It's a completely different argument in the youthful game because it happens in high school, it happens in summer ball where like you're going to throw 50 on Saturday and then you're going to come back or 50 on Monday, Friday and you're coming back and throwing another 60 on Sunday. What are we doing? You had a day off. Like we're not built up to do that. We're like, what's your throwing program look like throughout the course of the week? Are you even throwing? Are you long tossing? Are you doing your arm care? Like, what does that look like? And I just think we're, you know, we blame a lot of, of arm injuries on once they get to where they are. Right. And I think there's a, there's a very strong argument to be made that a lot of the stuff that I think is happening at the younger levels and it's not just baseball, it's not just the games. Right. I don't want this to make it sound like it's just the high school coaches or just the travel. Like it's the facilities too. It's the not shutting down. I mean there's 14, 15 year old kids that are throwing for 12 months a year for two, three years at a time. Like the wear and tear that's putting on a young body is eventually going to be irreversible. So like at some point, like it can't just. And I know we're going to talk about pitch counts, but that has to factor into the equation as well is that we have, we're asking kids to do things that they're physically not capable of doing yet and then being like, oh, I don't know why I got hurt. Well, I could probably give you a pretty good guess as to what happened, you know. So yes, it's pitch counts, but I think it's a multitude. I think it's a multi, multi layered, multifaceted argument that you can make. But I, I think the, the, the, the center and the crux of this podcast before we get derailed like we did in last week's, is that some of this pitch count stuff does. Like, it needs to be legitimately followed, tracked, whatever it is.
• 7:42
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• 8:44
  Speaker B: yeah, and I, I think what I come back to is that 10 years of coaching in college, high school coaches travel, ball coaches ask their players to do things that we wouldn't ask our college guys to do with turnaround times, pitch counts, rest days, playing multiple positions. And I think that that's kind of the crux of it for me is, is is seeing it and being able to kind of go back and be like, well the rules say that he threw like I'm looking at the rules right now. I'm looking for every single state like California. If you throw between 31 and 50, you have to take a day off. If A guy threw 50 pitches on Friday, there's a really good chance that kid doesn't throw for the rest of the weekend in college. Maybe he comes back for a short outing on Sunday. But you're also talking about 18, 19, 20 year old guys who have been
• 9:52
  Speaker C: training to be bullpen arms, right?
• 9:54
  Speaker B: The bounce back. I think that's where I have the biggest issue is these short turnarounds where kids, you know, you throw 30 on, you know, you throw 50 on Tuesday and then you come back and throw another 50 on, on Friday because the rules say that he got enough rest. Well, I think the rules are piss poor when you take a look at it where in California if you throw 110 pitches, which is the cap, you're technically allowed to come back and throw three days later. There's no big leaguer on the planet who throws on three days rest. College guys, college starters who throw 100 pitch, college starters throw every sixth day and they will throw anywhere from 85 to 110 ish pitches in an outing. If you get to 110 you probably dealt it out pretty good.
• 10:55
  Speaker E: Just to add context to that, like two parts. One, your bullpen arms that are, are going back to back in college. Whether it's back to back days or you know, a day off it, you throw on Friday, you're off Saturday, throw Sunday. That's a known thing. And what I mean by that is We've done that in practice. We've gone and been like, okay, we're going to throw. You know, it's a light tempo, whatever it is, but it's more like, let's see if we can do this and see how we feel. I'm not going to put you in a position to throw 50 pitches on Friday, and I'm bringing you back tomorrow to throw another 50. Hey, let's throw 15, 20 pitches today. Let's see how our arm feels tomorrow. If it, if it feels good and you throw like you want to get off a bullpen and see what it feels like. Let's see. Let's see what it feels like. If it's sore, hey, man, we ain't doing it, but maybe we'll try again on Sunday and see if we can do it. Because, like, there are people, there are guys who can do that. So we, we work within those kind of that realm and work with that to see what. Who can and who can't do it. And the others part I want to add context to is let's say our Friday guy, Andy, you and I are coaching. Our Friday guy goes 110, deals it out. He's supposed to start again on Friday, let's say on Thursday. He's like, yo, I'm kind of sore. Like, could I get an extra day? And our Saturday guy was, you know, through 85 and feels great, like, amen, we'll flip it for this weekend. Well, you can get an extra day. We'll throw you on Saturday and we'll, we'll start him on Friday. Is it perfectly ideal? No, depending on the situation that we're in. But the priority is to keep your arms safe. So if he needs an extra day, we're going to do everything it is to get him an extra day and work with it so that, hey, if you need one extra day, yeah, man, we'll. You'll throw on Friday. You'll throw Saturday instead of Friday. And the hope is that we can, you know, he can deal it out again. We have a big lead and we can get him out of there a little bit earlier so that we can get him back on track to throw on Friday. But, like, they're. You're always worried about keeping your arms safe. I mean, you're seeing, you get to the collegiate level.
• 13:13
  Speaker B: You're seeing it in college baseball this past week, right, when you got all these conference tournaments. If you're name, whatever. Like what? Virginia Tech. Right. They played early in the ACC tournament. Coach Chef didn't bring Their Friday guy back on three days rest so he could throw game one in the ACC tournament. Like, no, you know, so we're doing this stuff at the college level where you're trying to keep guys healthy and they have. It's fine tuned. Those guys know exactly what they're going to do every single. Every single day. They have high intensity today, low intensity days leading up to the days they're going to throw there. You cannot convince me that a high school kid or during travel ball that these kids are doing that.
• 14:01
  Speaker E: And I think the other side of it, too, is a peak, another peak behind the Valley. You're talking about the SEC and acc. And you know, of all the tournaments started on Tuesday, none of those Friday guys came back. And I don't know this for a fact, but I'm assuming none of those Friday guys came back and threw on Tuesday. My point is that, like, they were having conversations leading up to. Into that last conference weekend of like, okay, depending on how this weekend goes, this is, this would be our plan on Tuesday. So, like, I would like to not throw Andy if we don't have to absolutely win a game, because I would prefer that he starts on Tuesday if we have to. Then. And you run all these scenarios out to be like, okay, if this happens, then we go like, I, Andy is penciled in as our starter unless we absolutely need him this weekend. And then we're going to try to not use you so that we can throw you on Tuesday, and then Wednesday we would throw whoever. And like, you plan all of this stuff out so that you act like it's not a fly by the seat of your pants. Okay, we're playing on Tuesday.
• 15:10
  Speaker B: Oh, we are? Yeah, we're here, there's there. Nobody's winging it. You know, you know, you go into a game, you, you got. And this is a little peek behind the veil, we'll get back to the pitch count stuff. Because I kind of, I kind of have like a, like a request that I want to make to the, to the. To the universe out here, but when you go into a weekend and you go into a Friday, you have a game plan before you get in there. It's not just like, you're not flying by the seat of your pants in the fifth inning, like you've sat down with your coaching staff and going, all right, if so, and so gets us into the sixth and we have a lead, who are we going to? Yeah, who's got the 8th? Who's got the 9th? Are we willing to burn our closer until Sunday and give him the 8th and 9th. If we got a chance to win this game, if our starter goes out early, who's going to wear it? Like, who's going to come in and need to bridge the gap until the 7th and see if we can get back in the ball game? And then maybe like you, you game plan all these scenarios throughout the weekend. So Friday you do it, and then on Saturday it's like, all right, well, this guy's red. He's not throwing. He doesn't get up. He's not going down to the bullpen. He's not even putting his freaking spikes on today. He ain't throwing. These are the guys that are hot. These are the guys that threw in the bullpen the previous day but didn't come in the game. So that dude warmed up and threw 26 pitches in the bullpen yesterday. He's probably only good for one inning today. This isn't. These coaches aren't flying by the seat of their pants. Players are throwing in very specific situations. Their workload is being monitored very closely. And obviously the goal is to win the game. But the other side effect of it is like, you need to keep your guys healthy. You can't. You can't be burning guys out, especially if you think you're going to play for a little while. And I see it happen every summer with travel ball, where coaches try too hard to win. And it hurts me to say that, because winning is fun and winning is like, what this should all be about. But the reality is, for 95% of the games you play during travel, baseball, the goal is to get your kids exposure and help them get better at baseball and not to try to win the Firecracker Classic on fourth of July weekend. Parents if you've ever felt overwhelmed trying
• 17:45
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• 18:09
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• 18:11
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• 18:24
  Speaker B: if you can win that tournament, awesome. Like, good on you. But if winning that tournament comes, comes at the expense of starting a guy on Thursday and having him throw 75 pitches and then bringing him back on Sunday night to try to win the championship game and having him throw another 40 pitches like you've missed the point. And that kid might not get hit hurt in the moment, and he may not get hurt that summer, but at some point that's going to catch up to that kid. And you're likely hurting them in the evaluation process. Because if a coach comes and sees him throw on short rest and his velo is down four miles an hour, there's some coaches who just going to go, hey, man, I'm not coming back to see that kid. He wasn't sharp, he didn't command the ball, Belo was down. And that's your first impression of a kid. So I think that, I think the travel ball coaches have a responsibility to make sure kids aren't being overthrown. And there's some organizations that do a fantastic job of it, and they will not waiver. And they'll, they'll send out their rosters and their, their game plan for the first four games of a tournament. They'll say, hey, so and so's throwing three, another guy's throwing three, and then another guy's throwing one. They're throwing on Friday. They're not coming back for the rest of the tournament. So if you want to see them, that's when you're going to see them in, in hats off to those organizations because I think they get it and I think they understand they have a responsibility to these kids for their development and their health. The rules and the regulations for pitch limits and tournaments and at the high school level, for me, I think they're flawed. And if you have experience in this game, you shouldn't be leaning on the rules because of the rules. You should be leaning on what you know, anecdotally is the right thing to do. If a kid throws 50 pitches, he needs more than a day of rest.
• 20:28
  Speaker E: Yes.
• 20:28
  Speaker B: If a kid throws 100 pitches, he needs more than three days of rest. I don't care what the rules say, and I don't care about your, your high school state championship. I don't care about, you know, whatever random tournament that you're playing in during the summer. If A kid throws 100 pitches on Friday, he shouldn't throw until the next tournament.
• 20:48
  Speaker E: Nope.
• 20:49
  Speaker B: And full stop, end of conversation. That kid doesn't get brought back on Monday night, period. And parents, I think they need to have some feel for this. I think they need to understand this, and it's not hard to find pretty good information and just kind of back it out and have like an understanding of what volume looks like, what stress looks like, and be able to read kind of the tea leaves and like, hey, if your son throws 75 pitches on a Friday, that coach shouldn't ask him to come back and throw in that tournament again. And if he does, shame on that coach. But as a parent, you need to understand enough that, like, trust me, that second outing isn't going to move the needle.
• 21:38
  Speaker E: Nope.
• 21:39
  Speaker B: Having full rest and being able to throw well the following weekend is how kids get better. It's how they enjoy it. And you're not even factoring in that some of these guys are going to throw 100 pitches on Friday, and then they go out and play freaking shortstop on Saturday.
• 21:56
  Speaker E: Yeah.
• 21:58
  Speaker D: And then you wonder why your velo's
• 21:59
  Speaker E: down and you wonder why, you know, every time I, you know, I've seen him 85, 87. Well, he's 78 to 81 right now. How many pitches is he throwing? What's he been doing? You know, it's, it's not state that you can't play multiple positions, but it's
• 22:17
  Speaker B: just, yeah, like, give that a day off. Let him dh.
• 22:20
  Speaker E: Like.
• 22:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. I just think for travel ball in high school, too, yes, you're trying to win games and winning is important. Right. And in college, winning is the only thing that matters, but your responsibility is to do right by the kid. And I think some of the, the parameters have been put in place. I don't think that they're effective in. Coaches need to be able to make reasonable, logical, informed decisions on how they handle kids. And, you know, you might have to punt that Sunday game and get rolled because you ran out of pitching. I'm sorry. You know, go find more pitchers to throw for you. I don't know what to tell you, but I really hope I don't see much of it this summer. I do think it's gotten better, broadly speaking. I do think it's gotten better, but I'm sure we'll definitely run into it where we're, we're out watching guys, and we'll see a guy on a Thursday throw a bunch of pitches, and we'll come back to the field and be like, that kid's throwing again. But, sorry, so box it a little bit. But I, I, I'm passionate about this because I think that, I think it's such an easy fix. I think egos need to get set aside, and the only thing that should matter is the health of the kid and the success of the kid and the development of the kid, period. That's it if you start there. These are all really easy decisions. Anything else you want to add to that, Coach? Do you want to say that when you're not on mute?
• 24:15
  Speaker E: Yeah, I do. Not for sure. I was not on mute. I haven't been on mute all night.
• 24:25
  Speaker B: All right. Yeah. So parents, pay attention. Travel ball coaches, high school coaches. If you're listening, the players health and development's got to come first. I think it's really that simple. So, yeah, tune in next week. We'll have more to talk about. Thanks, everybody for listening. Thank you for listening this week.
• 24:44
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• 24:48
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• 24:50
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• 24:52
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• 24:54
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• 25:01
  Speaker B: and players navigate the recruiting process, go
• 25:04
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• 25:12
  Speaker B: Thanks again for listening.
• 25:13
  Speaker C: Check in with you next week.