At Home Plate - Warning Signs, Not Players, Signal Injuries

Warning Signs, Not Players, Signal Injuries

Written by Joshua Kay (Contact & Archive) on June 23, 2012

With the breaking news that Brandon Beachy has a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, it seems about the right time to begin discussing the Verducci Effect and how it has impacted baseball this season.

Essentially the Verducci Effect is defined as any pitcher under or around age 25 who pitches at least 30 innings more over the past year is likely to get hurt the following year.

We have already seen the Verducci Effect make its rounds on numerous young pitchers this year: Cory Luebke, Derek Holland, Michael Pineda, Jaime Garcia, Brandon Morrow, Bud Norris, Neftali Feliz, Kyle Drabek, Danny Duffy and now Beachy.

Photo by Keith Allison, used under creative commons license.

Furthermore, this has also been the year of the injured pitcher, regardless of “Effect” or age. Notable pitcher injuries involving an elbow or shoulder are Brian Wilson, Ryan Dempster, John Danks, Tim Stauffer, Scott Baker, Joakim Soria, Josh Beckett, Ted Lilly, Drew Storen, Chris Carpenter, Kyle Farnsworth, Sergio Santos, Mike Pelfrey and Chris Narveson. That is just the tip of the iceberg as many more pitchers have also been injured this year.

Of all of these players, many of them denied or played down the injury; which brings me to this. The Braves are the latest of many teams to be dumb enough to listen to their players when they tell them they “feel fine.”

Remember how adamant Roy Halladay was that “nothing was wrong during spring training” and even saying “how dare you?” Well, now he is out 6-8 weeks. You cannot ever listen to players, period! They will always tell you what you need to hear so that they can stay on the field and keep performing.

According to a Rotowire report, “Beachy was adamant that he's not experiencing soreness in his arm and said, ‘I'm not worried about anything. I'll be fine. There's nothing to speak of.’ Well, the Braves kept him in the rotation for his next start, and boom, he leaves the game in the third inning after re-aggravating the elbow. In my opinion, this is a fireable offence for a GM and manager. You must protect your assets, and Beachy should’ve been taken to Dr. James Andrews the minute he said he was experiencing discomfort in his elbow.

If you want another example of disastrous medical work and treatment of a young pitcher, look at what the Royals did with Danny Duffy. Duffy experienced pain in his elbow during a start in May, and then missed a start, but then started twice more before being forced out of a game after 2/3 of an inning pitched as he had made his elbow injury worse. The Royals have had three pitchers go down with Tommy John surgery this year: Soria, Duffy and Blake Wood. That seems to be more than bad luck. It seems like the Royals are not handling their young pitchers very effectively.

Bottom Line: Ignore your players when they tell you they are fine. Beachy clearly wasn’t fine, because he had three straight outings with abnormally high (for him) walk totals. The Braves handled it wrong and now have no chance of catching the Nationals with Beachy done for the season.

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