Brian Snitker: 'I hate it for him'

The Atlanta Braves manager discussed the injury to Spencer Strider, but doesn't know what can realistically be done to prevent it from happening.

Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker isn't happy about the pitching injuries plaguing baseball / Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

"I feel really bad for him. The kid loves to compete, does everything right, loves to compete, the whole - everything."

Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker was referring to starting pitcher Spencer Strider, who the team had just announced had suffered damage to his ulnar collateral ligament in his right arm last night and would be going in the coming days for an assessment by Dr. Keith Meister in Dallas.

When asked if there was a possibility for getting good news from the specialist, Snitker was pretty blunt. "No, I don't think so really. I mean, the good news is he'll get whatever it is fixed and come back and he'll have a really good career."

Gulp.

If Tommy John surgery is where this is heading for Strider, it'll be his second, a much more daunting prognosis than getting one. Almost 40% of current major league pitchers are estimated to have had Tommy John surgery, an astronomically large number in the grand scheme of things.

And so many of those pitchers are having it earlier and earlier in their careers. If Strider does require a 2nd Tommy John surgery, he'll not only have had to get the procedure twice, they'll both be prior to him turning 26, something that's hard to believe.

Snit has an idea of what's causing the injuries. "Guys are throwing the ball harder than ever and spinning the ball more than ever." But it's not just how hard pitchers are throwing now, it's when they start doing it. "The kids are playing more now, younger (and) I think pitching more, they're throwing harder. Pitching year round, and things like that."

But it's also the fact that pitchers are using max effort on every pitch, which Snitker acknowledged is an issue as well.

There's a lot of disagreement over what's causing this increased prevalence of injuries - Strider himself pointed to the pitch clock be reduced this season way back in February, telling USA Today that when it comes to the league's various rule changes, "all those things are making pitching harder and potentially, I think, making health more difficult to manage."

So, how do you fix it?

Teams attempt to manage workloads, but there's not a ton of evidence that it works. When looking at pitchers that were exclusively starters, made more than 10 starts, and had above-average performance (as measured by FIP), the two extremes on the chart were both Miami Marlins: Sandy Alcantara and Eury Pérez.

Sandy, who won the 2022 Cy Young in the National League, was the #1 pitcher in that dataset on average innings per start, with 6.6. Pérez was the lowest, at 4.8 innings per start. Both pitchers will miss the 2024 season with UCL injuries.

Is it velocity? Because then a problem arises, and it's something we're familiar with when talking about Spencer Strider: Faster is better. In that same USA Today article that Strider was quoted in, they also talked to biomechanist Glenn Fleisig, who was part of MLB's working group that studied pitcher injuries and the pitch clock prior to its implementation.

And Fleisig points to the velocity as a main culprit: "The chase for the velocity certainly seems to be one of the factors,” he told USA Today. “The injury rate increase in pitching pretty much mirrors or is the same as the increase in velocity. If you plotted those two (data points) against each other, it’s not proof, but it appears fastball velocity has been increasing at the same rate as injury rate."

Honestly, it's probably a combination of everything - pitchers throwing with max effort too often, starting from an earlier and earlier age.

But one thing's for sure - it sucks.

"It's something that needs to be looked at," remarked Snitker, when discussing Strider's injury. "I think the industry (baseball) does look at it, because as an industry, we don't want our players breaking down, that's for sure."

And as far as Strider specifically?

"God, you just watch him - he's so dedicated to his craft, and I think he's one of the guys that enjoys everything about this. Does everything right, from being a great teammate (and) person to the dedication to what he does."

"I really hate it for him, because he enjoys it so much."