Union head Tony Clark: MLB teams are ‘blowing out’ pitchers, risking injuries and limiting innings

AP Baseball Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Players’ association head Tony Clark said teams are encouraging pitchers to throw as hard as possible, leading to more injuries and minimizing the importance of starting pitchers.

Speaking before Friday’s World Series opener, Clark criticized how the game has evolved in the analytics age. There were a record-low 26 complete games in the major leagues this season — four fewer than Catfish Hunter alone threw in 1975.

“Unless and until the decisionmakers determine that blowing out pitchers day in and day out as a result of how they’re using them or what they’re requiring of them is no longer the best way to treat their players, we (won’t) see a change,” Clark said. “Absent that, a rule change would be challenging.”

Over the past 10 years, the average fastball velocity has risen from 93.3 mph to 95.5 during the 2024 regular season. Injury rates have also skyrocketed, with 484 pitchers going on the injured list this year, nearly double the 2014 total.

Starters have averaged 12.8 outs in the postseason, down from 13.8 last year and 15 in 2022, according the Elias Sports Bureau.

“The conversations that we’ve had with our players have suggested that unless or until you draw a line in the sand and force change, that the decisionmakers on any one particular team are going to continue to make the decisions that they’re making, which is have pitchers, starting and relievers, max effort for the period of time that they can have them,” Clark said. “As soon as they seem to run out of gas, as the data suggests that they’re going to, recycle them out and to burn out another pitcher.”

When Clark in April claimed a shorter pitch clock led to injuries, MLB said there was a “long-term trend, over multiple decades, of velocity and spin increases that are highly correlated with arm injuries.”

Clark pleased with expanded postseason, but skeptical of 14-team format

Clark expressed satisfaction with the agreement in the 2022 labor contract to expand the postseason from 10 teams to 12 and skepticism over a 14-team format, which management proposed and players resisted.

Every team with at least 90 wins has reached the expanded playoffs and clubs with as few as 84 have earned wild-card berths. Arizona earned the sixth and final NL slot last year and made the World Series for the first time since 2001.

“We are encouraged by teams like Kansas City, who may have had a challenging year the year before and then rather than suggest a four- or five-year rebuild as a result of a challenging year, find their way into the playoffs,” Clark said.

“It’s an acknowledgment that perhaps with the additional two teams getting to the playoffs and the opportunity in what appears to be a very well-run organization with a plan that they have in place to be able to go from 100 losses to the playoffs is something that can happen in a way now that’s a little bit different than before,” he added.

Clark said a further expansion could lead to some teams not trying to improve rosters as much as possible during offseason.

“You’ve got to be careful about making changes to the playoff format such that each win during the regular season doesn’t have as much value as it should,” he said. “It’s a very delicate proposition and one of the biggest reasons why players weren’t interested in going to 14.”

Players pleased that Sacramento stadium will have grass, not turf

Clark applauded the decision to keep grass at Sutter Health Park in Sacramento, California, the Athletics’ temporary home from 2025-27 after leaving Oakland.

MLB and the team originally intended to install artificial turf because the ballpark will be the home of both the A’s and the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A River Cats. The union expressed concern because of summer heat that has reached 115 degrees (46 Celsius), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“We have been vocal about the surface for a while,” Clark said. “So getting to the point where the decision was formally made that it’s going to be grass, it ensures that at least on that issue that player sentiment was a part of the conversation that it often is when it comes to health and safety.”

Clark said a limit on on-field events should be considered to prevent the grass surface from becoming worn and that resodding may be necessary at times.

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