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Diam⚾️ndBuzz: MARCH 10, 2025

The Pitching Crisis of Spring Training 2025

And so, here we are again. Another spring training, another fresh start, and yet, a deeply familiar and unsettling trend. It is the time of year when hope springs eternal, where young pitchers dream of making their mark and veterans seek to recapture their dominance. But in the lush, sun-soaked camps of Florida and Arizona, instead of building anticipation for the season ahead, we are watching the most valuable arms in baseball drop like dominos.

Something is happening to pitchers in the spring of 2025, and it is neither coincidence nor bad luck. The number of injuries piling up is staggering, unprecedented even by today’s standards of high-velocity, high-risk pitching. One after another, marquee names are being shut down—some for a few weeks, others for the entire season. Ulnar collateral ligament tears, flexor tendon strains, rotator cuff inflammation—an epidemic of injuries has overtaken baseball. And the question that echoes across front offices, clubhouses, and fan bases is a pressing one: why?

Could it be the way pitchers are training in the offseason? Have we become so obsessed with velocity and performance metrics that we are sacrificing durability? And here’s another thought: should every single pitcher undergo a post-season MRI to detect hidden injuries—those silent killers lurking beneath the surface, invisible until it is too late?

Let’s unravel the mystery, not with reckless speculation, but with careful, thoughtful analysis.

The Arm Wasn’t Made for This: Why Pitchers Are Breaking Down

The human arm, in its original design, was never meant to hurl a baseball at 100 miles per hour, let alone do so 90 or 100 times in a game, 30 times in a season, year after year. But here we are. The modern pitcher is a marvel of science, a biomechanical masterpiece trained to maximize every ounce of force the body can generate. And yet, the numbers tell us the cost of that pursuit.

Back in the so-called “golden age” of baseball, pitchers were throwing 250 to 300 innings a season, relying more on movement, deception, and guile than brute strength. Today, the game has changed. Velocity reigns supreme. Spin rates, pitch shapes, and high-effort mechanics have become the driving forces of development. And therein lies the problem.

In the offseason, pitchers no longer rest like they once did. They train harder than ever, chasing another tick on the radar gun, adding more stress to arms that are already hanging on by a thread. Weighted ball programs, max-effort bullpen sessions in December, throwing year-round to maintain velocity—these have become the norm. But in that very pursuit, pitchers are skipping what medical experts will tell you is the most crucial part of long-term health: recovery.

The Case for a Throwing Shutdown: A Medical Necessity

Baseball’s best-kept secret isn’t about spin rate, nor is it about pitch sequencing. It’s about collagen regeneration—a term rarely uttered by fans but intimately understood by orthopedic surgeons.

When a pitcher throws a fastball, the elbow undergoes a violent whipping motion, placing immense stress on the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL). With each pitch, microscopic tears develop in the ligament. Over the course of a 162-game season, those tiny tears accumulate. If not given time to heal, they grow worse, eventually leading to the dreaded diagnosis that no pitcher wants to hear: Tommy John surgery.

That is why the best medical minds in baseball recommend one to two months of complete shutdown from throwing after the season. Not to punish pitchers. Not to take away their edge. But to allow their ligaments, tendons, and muscles to fully repair themselves before the next round of abuse begins. After all, didn't pitchers in the early 20th century take the offseason to rest their arms after a season of hurling 300 plus innings?

And yet, many pitchers don’t take that break. They fear losing velocity, fear falling behind, fear not being ready when spring training begins. So they keep throwing, keep pushing, and—unknowingly—bring themselves closer to the inevitable.

This year, we’re seeing the consequences of that trend.

The Pitch Clock and the Hidden Toll on Pitchers

There’s another element to consider, one that has quietly added strain on pitchers since its introduction: the pitch clock.

Baseball’s efforts to speed up the game have been largely successful, but they have also placed a greater workload on pitchers in a shorter amount of time. Gone are the days when a pitcher could take an extra few seconds to collect himself, reset his mechanics, and give his arm a brief respite. Today’s pitchers are working faster, throwing more pitches per minute, and seeing fatigue set in earlier.

And fatigue, as any pitching coach will tell you, is the root of mechanical breakdowns. When mechanics suffer, stress shifts to the wrong areas—elbows, shoulders, forearms—leading to injuries that were once avoidable.

Now, one can argue that pitchers simply need to adjust. But the data suggests otherwise. Since the pitch clock’s introduction, the rate of elbow and shoulder injuries has risen dramatically. Coincidence? Unlikely.

The MRI Question: Should Pitchers Be Scanned After Every Season?

This brings us to a controversial but necessary question: should every pitcher be required to undergo an MRI after the season to detect hidden injuries before they become catastrophic?

Consider this: many of the injuries we’re seeing this spring didn’t happen in one sudden moment. They were ticking time bombs, developing over months, even years, without symptoms.

A pitcher may finish a season feeling strong, unaware that his UCL is fraying, that a stress reaction is forming in his shoulder, that the early signs of a flexor strain are already present. Then, after an aggressive offseason training regimen, those minor issues turn into full-blown injuries.

A simple MRI in November could detect those problems early. It could tell a team, “Shut this guy down for two months.” It could tell a pitcher, “Focus on rehab, not max effort throwing.” It could save careers before they need saving.

But there’s a flipside. False positives. Overdiagnosis. Teams may shut down pitchers who are perfectly fine, erring too much on the side of caution. And then there’s the issue of cost, though when compared to a lost season due to Tommy John surgery, an MRI seems like a bargain.

So what’s the answer? Perhaps mandatory MRIs aren’t the solution, but strongly recommended MRIs—especially for pitchers with high workloads—might be the middle ground that baseball needs.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Baseball’s pitching problem isn’t going away. If anything, it’s accelerating. The injuries we’re seeing in spring training 2025 aren’t a fluke; they are the result of a system that pushes pitchers beyond their limits without the necessary safeguards to protect them.

So what must change?

Encouraging offseason recovery—Every team should mandate structured shutdown periods to allow proper healing.

Rethinking how we train for velocity—Teams need to prioritize longevity over short-term velocity gains.

Adjusting the pitch clock for high-workload pitchers—Maybe certain innings need a few extra seconds to prevent fatigue-induced injuries.

Implementing offseason MRIs where needed—Not as a requirement, but as a smart, preventative tool.

The game of baseball has always evolved, and now, it must evolve again—not just to make the game more exciting, but to protect the very arms that make it possible.

So as we sit here in another spring training, watching injury after injury unfold, we must ask ourselves: will this be the year we finally learn the lesson? Or will we be having this same conversation next spring, watching another wave of pitchers fall?

The choice, ultimately, is baseball’s to make. Let’s hope it makes the right one.

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