Why Baseball Is More Dangerous Than Ever

Being a major league

baseball

player is

more

dangerous

than

ever

, which is ironic because this used to be legal, players used to go home like this, and no one got thrown out of the game. The stadiums had concrete walls, there were no nets to protect fans and no dugout fencing yet in any way. More players are injured today than

ever

. Teams used to be so bad at treating injuries that the Reds once sent a pitcher to the dentist because his arm hurt. They pulled out a tooth, but his arm still hurt. Today's pitchers throw fewer pitches and throw

more

. arm care and the best medical care in the world, but there have been more Tommy John surgeries in the last year than in the entire 1980s, hitters wear more elbow pads, face shields and helmets, but they get hit in the face and they get injured.

More than ever before, a pitcher had his season and possibly his career was ruined because he hurt his arm from playing too much. Guitar hero Moses Lou was injured after accidentally running over his son with his bicycle and several players were injured from sneezing. These injuries were real but fake injuries are also at an all-time high according to one player who was told by his team that if he didn't fake an injury he would be cut from the team and this is a new strategy being used throughout the MLB league . is starting to implement new equipment and new rules to solve their injury problem, but they have been trying to make

baseball

safer for decades, unfortunately for them, games like this can still happen, unlike most sports In baseball, the offside area is separated by a wall. that is still in play, which has caused a safety hazard for more than a century.

The first MLB stadiums had concrete walls. Pete Riser fractured his skull crashing into a wall; he was temporarily paralyzed from running into a different wall and fractured his skull a second time after running. On a third wall, MLB gradually switched to chain link fences which were also

dangerous

. Willie Mays was knocked unconscious after colliding with a chain link fence on this play and still somehow caught the ball. They finally switched to padded walls which also had problems. Ward went completely through one of these on this play and still managed to throw the ball. The walls are now almost all padded and secured, except for a few chain-wire fences and markers that players occasionally crash face-first into.

It's an incentive to invest in safety like this because owners lose millions of dollars paying injured players every year. In 1998, teams paid $116 million in salary to injured players who couldn't even play. In 2021, that figure rose to an incredible $871 million. an increase of 750 during a period when the average salary increased about 300 percent, so owners are losing more money than ever due to tickets and when this happens, things usually change, so already You can't do this in the 1977 alcs. Hal mcrae disbanded. double play running through the bag and carrying in Willie Randolph allowing the run to score two days later Craig Ortigas didn't even try to slide and ran over Frank Wright to break up another double play George Brett recovered Ortigas the next day after sliding to third and pushing him, Nettles responded by kicking him in the face and the two teams began a fight.

All three plays were considered completely legal and no players were suspended. You used to be able to slip into a bag however you wanted. until this happened in the 2015 NLCS with the tying run at third, Howie Kendrick hit a soft grounder to second, stopping this double play would tie the game, so Chase at least slid extremely hard breaking the double play and also breaking Reuben Tahata's leg after appealing. MLB's initial suspension ruled it a completely legal slide, but Tejada was never the same player again and the league-wide reaction led MLB to completely ban the serve slide unless the defender was directly in the back path.

The MLB's goal was to stop collisions in the base pass. They no longer wanted to see plays like this. In 2006, Brian Anderson hit a fly ball to left. Aj Perzinski scored. He ran home and completely destroyed Michael Barrett. He punched Brzezinski in the face and the banks cleared Michael Barrett thought this play was dirty because he didn't even have the ball yet, however this slide was completely legal until this happened in 2011. Scott Primos, caught on a fly ball, came home and ran over Buster Posey to score the go-ahead run. Posey failed the rest of the season and although this play was also completely legal and accepted throughout baseball history, the cousins ​​received death threats and the general manager of the giants even said: if he does not play another day in the big leagues, I think we will all be happy in a few years.

MLP later implemented what is known as the Buster Posey rule, which prohibited catchers from blocking home plate without the ball and runners from going out of their way to run over catchers, essentially prohibiting any collisions at home plate by prohibiting this. MLB saw a 45% drop in injuries. caused by collisions at home plate and by prohibiting throwing out a runner at second base, they saw a 36 decrease in injuries due to collisions at second base; However, the number of injuries overall has increased dramatically since these rules were implemented, with position players getting hurt sliding more than anyone else.

Sliding injuries in the game are most likely to occur during slides into second base. or toward home plate and are almost twice as likely to occur when the head slides first. The feet-first slide used to be a way for runners to intimidate fielders, making them more reluctant to block a bag or take a risk. receive attacks, but since removing fielders has been removed from the game, there is much less incentive to do so, causing more head slips and more injuries. Prohibiting collisions is just one of several reasons why head slides occur more frequently, but this shows that even rules that make some players safer have unintended consequences that make the game more dangerous for others, but baseball has come a long way because until recently stadiums were essentially death traps dugouts had no protective fences players often fell into them and were hit by foul balls in 1999 Mo von fell in a dugout trying to catch and He hurt his ankle.

The Times wrote what's next. Protective nets in the dugout and that's exactly what happened. The dugouts are now protected by a railing. Players still fall into them while trying to catch. and occasionally being hit by bats and flying balls, but it is not as dangerous as stadiums like the Oakland Coliseum, which for some reason to this day does not have dugout railings. MLB cared so little about safety in the early 20th century if there were full teams. would literally put fans on the field to watch fans would hold a rope in the outfield to form a new fence hitting a ball beyond this rope resulted in a ground rule triple in the 1903 world series there were 17 ground rule triples basic that Yankee Stadium used to have stone monuments and a flagpole in the outfield that were in play they also had a rubber drain that was in play in the middle of right field in the 1951 world series mickey mantle tripped over it torn ligaments in his knee had to be taken off the field and he played 17 more seasons with a torn ACL that was never repaired in the '70s, throwing things on the field happened so frequently that referees sometimes didn't even stop the game and continued playing with debris on the field.

Philly fans were throwing so many things. to dick allen who in 1969 began wearing a batting helmet while playing in the infield the mlb did not begin requiring hitters to wear helmets until two years later, in 1971, dave parker took this rule change to another level after from a cheek injury, wore a football helmet and even a hockey mask at the plate during games, protective gear for hitters has evolved into elbow pads, shin guards, face shields and better helmets, despite From this, hitting is more dangerous than ever because hitters are being hit and punched in the face at a higher rate. than any other time in baseball history and hitters are getting tired of it ask the angels who started the biggest fight of the year after justin upton got hit in the head by michael lorenzen this was a complete accident But later that month, after Mike Trout saw two pitches go over his head, he speculated that these might have been on purpose and also said that even if they weren't pitchers he didn't have enough control to throw in without hitting in someone's face, they probably shouldn't do it at all.

The Angels threw near Julio Rodriguez's head the next day, causing a back-and-forth, and when they hit Jesse Winker later in the game, things got ugly. The bad thing for MLB is that this increase in hit batters is largely by design. Teams are making pitchers pitch. more breaking balls than ever, which are more likely to slip out of the pitcher's hand and hit the batter, when they throw fastballs, they aim them high in the zone or inside corner more than ever, causing more pitches near the heads and batters' hands. have found that pitchers with more velocity and pitching motion are more valuable than pitchers who simply have good control, which means there are a lot of pitchers with nasty sliders and 100 mile per hour fastballs who are told to Throw high in because they are the hardest.

Unfortunately, pitchers who hit are also the ones most likely to hit a batter. The last full Major League season had 21 hits by pitches, which is an all-time high and this study found that from 2011 to 2014, one in every 21.7 hits by pitches resulted in an injury and it was also found that the faster the the more likely an injury was to occur. The average fastball velocity has increased since then, so it's very likely that this rate is even higher now, but what's possibly more concerning is that nearly one in every three pitches that hit a batter in the head cause an injury and until the high fastball is no longer effective this trend will be difficult to stop, but MLB is trying this offseason, the league attempted to implement a rule that automatically ejected any pitcher who hit a batter in the head, regardless of whether it was on purpose, as well as a hit-per-pitch point system, each hit-per-pitch would count for a certain amount of points depending on where it hit the batter, once a pitcher passed a certain number of points, be ejected immediately players have rejected both rule changes and this is not the only time players have rejected things that made them safer in 2009 mlb helmets supposedly only protected them from pitches up to 70 miles per hour the ball The average fast speed was 91 miles per hour, so Rawlings introduced a new helmet that protected against a 100 mile per hour launch, but almost no one wore it because they were too big and looked funny after an influx of line-hitting images. in the mob head offered a similar option for casters. brandon mccarthy may have been the scariest, he required emergency surgery and then had a seizure because of a line drive and a moped offered the pitchers this hat that alex torres wore, but he was probably the only one to ever wear this hat for reasons obvious. more hats and helmets with extra Protections have since been introduced that are more popular and much less noticeable, but despite all these changes that have improved player safety, the number of days dedicated to the il across the league has went from 31,000 in 2017 to 48,000 in 2021, that is. an increase of 65 in just five seasons and many of these injuries are actually fake, but before we get to that, a word from today's sponsor is a meal delivery service that sends fresh, never frozen, gourmet meals directly to your door.

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Teams can manipulate this by diagnosing a starting pitcher with an injury he does not have and only losing them for one start, this is illegal, however it is quite difficult to know which injuries are real and which are not. Jose Cardinal once had to miss a game because he said there was cricket in his hotel room that kept him up all night another time he missed a game because he claimed his eyelid wasn't closing As ridiculous as it sounds, both injuries were real it was reported that jose maya hurt his shoulder and had to have surgery because he played too much guitar hero this was also real and katorio even put him in the credits of guitar hero 2 saying he quoted danny mclane once he was on the DL because he said that his foot fell asleep while watching TV and he stood up too. he quickly punched him and dislocated his toes this was fake he was actually connected to the mafia and owed money to famous gangster tony gigaloni jaggaloni broke his toes as punishment which landed him on the DL Glenn Allen Hill had to go on the disabled list because he claimed he was afraid of spiders.

He had a dream about spiders that scared him so much that he fell asleep. He walked over a glass table and broke it. He then proceeded to fall down the stairs while he was sleeping. This was a true story. Ross Stripling once went up to the According to him, with lower body fatigue, this was completely false. Another unnamed veteran pitcher says he was given the option of faking an injury or being released. This strategy allows teams to replace underperforming players by placing them on injured rosters. That way, they don't have to release them since they are technically still on the team, if their replacement gets hurt in the future they can just take them off the roster. nursing and pretend that teams with fake healed injuries will also do this to pitchers they think have thrown too many innings by putting them on the il.

They do not have to return to the Miners or be released and can stay with the team and pitch again later in the season, even though they are not actually injured. Made to prevent future injuries like Tommy John surgery, which has happened more times in the last year than in the entire '90s, the league has responded to this epidemic with fewer pitches, but this is arguably getting worse. things because pitchers used to throw far. more innings with much less rest and was injured much less frequently. Radburn pitched more complete games in a single season than the entire league combined in 2021.

The Brooklyn Robbins and Boston Braves once played a 26-inning game and both starting pitchers pitched every inning. Nolan Ryan once threw 235 pitches in a game, which is more than double the pitch average of Sandy Alcantara, who leads the entire league with an average of 102 pitches per game. Pitchers and past eras were accustomed to throwing a lot of pitches so they could do it without adding too much risk, but research shows that throwing more pitches increases the risk of injury, especially if pitchers are not used to it. The Rangers once let José Canseco, who was an outfielder, pitch during a blowout even though he only pitched one inning. he broke his ucl and had to get tommy john.

The only way to throw a lot of pitches without having a high risk of injury is to get used to throwing a lot. The only way to do this is to throw more pitches, which also increases your risk of injury, this is why resolving Mob's elbow injuries has been so difficult and has made Tommy John surgery the most difficult injury. harmful in the sport, not only because it happened so often but because it takes forever to heal and rushing a pitcher back can be even more catastrophic, Dave Dravecki once had to have a cancerous tumor removed from his arm, survived and, Against all odds and doctor's orders, he returned in less than a year on his second start, breaking his arm so badly that it could reportedly be heard at all times.

At the stadium he was out for the entire season, but a few months later, while celebrating with his team, he broke his arm again and, as bad as it was, doctors took an x-ray and discovered that his cancer had returned, putting an end to to his baseball career forever, Tommy John. has a success rate of 84, but it takes pitchers 12 to 18 months to come back to avoid things like this and teams are being extremely cautious with their pitchers, but perhaps the most important factor in elbow injuries is what the teams are promoting more. Higher velocity pitchers have the greatest likelihood of Tommy John because greater velocity generally means more arm torque, but a pitcher who tries his best to throw 95 often applies more torque to his arm than a pitcher who can throw 100. easily, probably the old Haas Radburn. he pitched in the 80's and probably rarely threw as hard a pitch as he could because he knew he was expected to throw the entire game which is why he could throw 1 million pitches without getting hurt but today mlb values ​​pitchers with velocity more than anything, so pitchers are doing everything they can to throw as hard as possible as often as possible, putting hitters and the entire league in greater danger than ever.