Sports
What's fueling the rise in arm injuries across MLB? A dangerous 'cocktail' of causes
Matt Blake texted Cleveland Guardians pitcher Shane Bieber a conciliatory message over the weekend. As a member of the Cleveland player-development system in the 2010s, Blake aided Bieber’s rise from college walk-on to unanimous American League Cy Young Award winner in 2020. For a time, Bieber represented the modern model for the manufacturing of a big-league ace, a player who added strength to his frame, velocity to his fastball and spin to his offspeed pitches as he ascended the ranks.
By the time Blake sent his text, though, Bieber had become part of a growing, more troubling demographic: talented young pitchers who will spend this season as spectators. Two days after the Miami Marlins announced 20-year-old phenom Eury Pérez would undergo Tommy John surgery, the Guardians disclosed Bieber, 28, would need the same procedure. A recent examination of 25-year-old Atlanta Braves starter Spencer Strider revealed damage to his elbow’s ulnar collateral ligament, which could result in his second Tommy John surgery. In New York, where Blake is now the Yankees pitching coach, the team has lost its ace, Gerrit Cole, until June with elbow inflammation and one of its top relievers, Jonathan Loaisiga, to year-ending elbow surgery.
“As a pitching coach trying to get through nine innings worth of pitching every night over 162 games,” Blake said, “I’m pretty worried.”
Pitching has always been hazardous for its practitioners. There is reason to believe it is only getting more challenging to keep them healthy. The opening days of the 2024 season have demonstrated the inherent fragility of the position. A recent story by The Ringer cited research from former MLB trainer Stan Conte that tallied 263 UCL surgeries in 2023, a steady uptick from 111 procedures performed in 2011. Of the 166 players who began the season on the injured list, as the New York Post reported, 132 were pitchers. If these trends continue, 2024 will be another banner year for arm injuries — and cause for alarm around the game.
The subject prompted sniping between Major League Baseball and the MLBPA on Saturday, as the two sides argued through press releases about the effect of the pitch clock, which was introduced in 2023 and shortened for 2024. MLBPA chief Tony Clark painted the league’s insistence on cutting time off the clock before the 2024 season against the wishes of players as “an unprecedented threat to our game.” MLB countered by citing unpublished analysis from Johns Hopkins University that found no link between the introduction of the clock and the surge of injuries.
The clock, however, was just one area of concern among players, coaches and managers surveyed by The Athletic this weekend. Those conversations presented a tapestry of additional reasons for the injury problem, including the industry’s relentless push for optimization, the encouragement of players to chase maximum velocity and spin, and the usage of training methods that encourage year-round, full-throttle workouts. To some, the explanations are interwoven and intractable. Untangling the knot may require years of research and re-evaluation.
“To protect these guys’ arms is paramount,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “And clearly we haven’t nailed it.”
This season began with baseball’s most heralded pitchers on the shelf. Los Angeles Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw underwent shoulder surgery last October. Texas Rangers pitcher Max Scherzer is recovering from back surgery, while his teammate Jacob deGrom is rehabbing from a second Tommy John surgery. Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander experienced shoulder soreness in spring training. All those pitchers are 35 and older, the sort of age where the body no longer cooperates with the rigors of the big-league schedule.
Not long ago, Eury Pérez and Sandy Alcántara were on their way to becoming twin aces for the Marlins. Now both will spend 2024 rehabbing from surgery. (Megan Briggs / Getty Images)
For MLB, the more pressing concern is the fleet of arms breaking down soon after reaching prominence. Miami Marlins starter Sandy Alcántara, the unanimous winner of the 2022 National League Cy Young Award, underwent elbow reconstruction last season. So did Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Shane McClanahan, a little more than a year after starting the All-Star Game. Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff will miss this season because of shoulder surgery. Same story for Kansas City Royals pitcher Kyle Wright, a 21-game winner for Atlanta in 2022.
“Our sport deserves our best pitchers to be on the mound,” Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “Regardless of the era you’re in, the starting pitcher matchup is the first thing you look at every day. You want the big boys out there. You want the guys that are elite, and more and more are getting hurt.”
To research the problem, MLB commissioned a study last October, which has sprawled to include conversations with 100 people around the game, including medical officials. When the study is completed, the league intends to create a task force and provide recommendations to clubs about how to keep pitchers healthy.
The sport has grappled with the problem since its inception. In another era, pitchers were believed to get hurt by overuse. Teams altered how they used pitchers in hopes of preserving them. Gone are the days of the exhausted starter, pushed to the brink at 125 pitches or more, trying to finish the seventh or eighth inning. The new archetype asks the pitcher not to ease into outings but explode at the outset. Go as hard as you can for as long as you can, is the new mantra. An influx of data about the shape and movement of pitches offered teams granular ways to make pitchers better. The data did not, however, offer an answer for how to keep them healthier.
“I’ve heard through my years managing that we ask less out of starting pitchers because we don’t leave them in the game long enough and they don’t throw 100 pitches as much anymore,” Hinch said. “Yet we ask them for max velo, max shape, max everything, and virtually train year-round.”
Hinch pointed to Tarik Skubal, a 27-year-old Tigers lefty who underwent Tommy John surgery in college and flexor tendon surgery in 2022. Skubal trained this past winter so that when he arrived at spring training, he touched 99 mph in his first session of live batting practice. “Go to Tarik Skubal and tell him, ‘Hey, ease it off and throw 92 mph,’ and see how that works out for you,” Hinch said. “No. Because we’re asking our athletes to compete at the highest level.”
To some retired players, the quest for elevated velocity and spin has put pitchers at risk. Dan Haren, a 13-year veteran who now works as a pitching strategist for the Arizona Diamondbacks, posted on X about his Instagram feed providing footage of “guys throwing weighted balls at max effort against a wall, with a crow hop, with his bros cheering him on.” Added Roberts, “The body is designed, in my opinion, to only take so much force and velocity before it gives way.”
Shane Bieber hadn’t allowed a run over two outings this season when it was announced he would undergo elbow surgery. (Jason Miller / Getty Images)
Some, like Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell, suggested pitchers will always try to throw harder. “I don’t think the pursuit of velocity is ever going to end,” Counsell said. “Because it’s something that makes pitchers better. I don’t think we should demonize the pursuit of velocity.”
Yet the industry has championed this trend by shortening the outings of starting pitchers and encouraging them to maximize their output. Not only do pitchers throw their fastballs as hard as possible, they throw offspeed pitches with utmost force, in hopes of generating unique movement and missing bats. “The types of deliveries that create the outlier shapes are probably more stressful in some ways,” Blake said. “I think the maximization of force to create the shapes probably doesn’t help. When you’re chasing 20 inches of break or 20 inches of ride or the high velo, I think there is some level of physical cost.”
Despite protestations from MLB officials, players will continue to complain about the clock. The innovation trimmed 24 minutes off the average game last season. The timer in 2023 granted pitchers 15 seconds to act with the bases empty and 20 with runners aboard. MLB’s 11-man competition committee voted to shave two seconds off the 20-second clock for 2024 despite objections from the players.
Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Anderson suggested pitchers might place more stress on their arm rather than their legs because of the clock. But he doubted any study could show a correlation between decreased time between pitches and increased injuries. The act of pitching was already unhealthy enough. “Rob Manfred knows it’s really hard to prove, would be my guess,” Anderson said.
The union sees the clock as a bogeyman. The commissioner’s office sees their complaint as a straw man. For coaches like Blake, who must navigate the season as injuries continue, the clock is only part of the problem, along with the perilous chase of velocity and spin.
“I don’t think any of them are the most responsible,” Blake said. “But the cocktail of them all is hard to get by.”
The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya, Sam Blum, Patrick Mooney, Cody Stavenhagen contributed reporting.
GO DEEPER
Rosenthal: Pitching injury crisis has no easy fix, but baseball’s leaders better get to work on one
(Top photo of Strider: Justin K. Aller / Getty Images)
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Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar’s feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWE’s match of the year.
Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to “The Beast Incarnate” deciding to retire – at least for a moment – at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.
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Oba Femi looks on during Monday Night RAW at Allstate Arena on July 6, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois. (Melina Pizano/WWE via Getty Images)
At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.
WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a “generational matchup.”
“I’ve never seen anything like Oba – well, I have. I’ve seen Brock,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in. Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and he’s gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Not only could he talk, he’s a really smart guy. Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling. He came one of the biggest draws in UFC. It’s an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.
Brock Lesnar in action against Oba Femi during “Monday Night Raw” at TD Garden on March 23, 2026, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Michael Owens/WWE via Getty Images)
“This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does. Everyone kinda does it, it’s like The Bushwackers. But the whole arena does it. I was in Vegas and I didn’t want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar. I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance. The guy is just unbelievably over.
“I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, you’re going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance. You’re gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or ‘King’ (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and it’s infectious. Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, that’s when I think you’re gonna see entire arenas doing it. I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way. This is, to me, a generational matchup.”
Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi face off during WrestleMania 42: Night 2 at Allegiant Stadium on April 19, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
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SummerSlam will take place on Aug. 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
Sports
Commentary: ‘I don’t want any handouts.’ Amid the Angels’ drought, a starry homecoming for Mike Trout
Mike Trout last played in an All-Star Game seven years ago. It’s crazy, really. The best player of the previous decade, the link that ties Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols to Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, has not taken an All-Star at-bat this decade.
Injuries, mostly. And he turns 35 next month.
Next week’s All-Star Game takes place in Philadelphia, about 40 miles north of Trout’s hometown of Millville, N.J. Major League Baseball reserves a potential All-Star roster spot or two each summer for distinguished players: Bryce Harper and Justin Verlander this year, Clayton Kershaw last year, Pujols and Miguel Cabrera in past years.
That could have been Trout’s spot this summer: a worthy honor for a three-time most valuable player, a local hero feted on the national stage the Angels have failed to provide him.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Trout said.
Not even at home?
“It’s an honor to get voted in and represent the American League,” he said. “For me, I don’t want any handouts.”
Trout is an All-Star for the 12th time, the old-fashioned way: He earned it.
Fans voted him into the starting lineup, with the most final-round votes of any AL outfielder. His peers voted him as one of the top three outfielders in the AL.
“It means a lot,” he said. “I’ve been through a lot of hurdles, a lot of adversity. I put some hard work in, and I did not let up. I could have easily got down on myself and not pushed through it and not come back.
“I know what I am capable of. I know I have the confidence to get back to the player I used to be.”
His .874 OPS entering play Thursday ranks second among AL outfielders, a career season for many players. In 11 of his 14 full seasons — all but the previous three — he has posted a higher OPS.
In April, in a four-game series against the New York Yankees, Trout hit five home runs and drove in nine runs.
“Everything was clicking,” he said. “When I first came up, that’s how I felt the whole season.
“Just to be able to get that feeling back, that little spark, to know it’s still in there, it makes you feel pretty good.”
For him, so does playing in Philadelphia. The first time he played there with the Angels, Millville basically closed down for the night, and just about everyone in town boarded a bus to the game. Then Trout had an exceptionally rare experience, a visiting player cheered at the home of the boo.
Mark Gubicza can testify to that. Gubicza, the two-time All-Star pitcher and now the Angels’ television analyst, grew up in Philadelphia.
“I don’t care if you were God himself, if you were wearing a different color uniform, I was still booing you,” Gubicza said. “But he was cheered.”
Still is. Trout is a diehard Philadelphia Eagles fan, with his season tickets not in some climate-controlled luxury suite but along the sideline.
“The players all walk by him and say ‘Trouty!’ ” Gubicza said. “Before they all go out to get their heads beat in, they’re all saying hi.
“He’s not one of those guys that comes there to be seen. He’s going there to root. That’s why they love him: He’s one of us.”
Said Trout: “I know how passionate I am about the Eagles. From my experience as an Eagles fan, it’s just different.
“It’s like win or die.”
It’s not like that in Southern California, where almost no one listens to sports-talk radio, and where a nice day is always a day away.
No one would begrudge Trout for living year-round along the Orange County coast. (OK, maybe Philadelphia fans would.)
Roy Hallenbeck, Trout’s high school coach, remembered visiting years ago on what he called “a perfect day” and asking Trout how he could ever get tired of all that sunshine.
“Yeah, coach, I couldn’t live here,” Trout told him. “‘I need my seasons.”
Trout built a family home near his boyhood home. He built his Trout National golf resort, with a course designed by Tiger Woods, in Millville.
He is as loyal to the Angels as he is to Millville. He appreciates the team that “took a chance on a kid from a little town in southern New Jersey” and signed him to two nine-figure contract extensions.
Trout was the last Angels player to take a postseason at-bat, in 2014. Even amid baseball’s longest playoff drought, he still considers Anaheim a special place, and always will.
“It’s where it all began,” Trout said. “I think the fuel of people doubting us kind of makes it more of a fire for me to try to get back to the playoffs. I think that’s the biggest key for me.
“Could I take the easy way out and just leave? Yeah. But I think — I said this last year around this time, but it’s the same feeling I’ve been having — I really haven’t sat down and talked to anybody about it specifically, but I know there’s a time where, if things change, who knows? I don’t know. But, for me, right now, my focus is on trying to get this club back in the playoffs.”
At the All-Star Game, Trout might well hear Phillies fans beseech him to come play for the home team. However, Hallenbeck said, the hometown folks no longer are as strident in that long-held wish.
“I think the overriding sentiment of most people I talk with, even Phillies fans, is we would all — as people that know him, love him and care for him — love to watch him play relevant baseball in August and September,” Hallenbeck said. “It doesn’t matter where. It doesn’t matter who. Just being relevant late in the season would be something we would all love to see.
“Hopefully, it’s with the Angels. They’ve been so good to him. We’d love to see it there.”
So would we. In the meantime, in the absence of a World Series, Trout deserves to enjoy his homecoming game.
Sports
London descends into disorder as Morocco fans flood streets after World Cup elimination by France
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Public unrest began in parts of London late Thursday night, and it appears Morocco’s exit from the 2026 FIFA World Cup at the hands of France is the reason.
France took down Morocco 2-0, eliminating the African country for the second consecutive tournament, this time in a quarterfinal match.
As a result, many feared Paris would erupt into riots, especially after the chaos that followed Paris Saint-Germain’s UEFA Champions League victory over Arsenal in May.
Instead, images and videos from Edgware Road in northwest London showed police clashing with large crowds as smoke billowed through the streets and debris littered the roadway.
A police vehicle is parked in a road as people from pro-Palestinian activist groups gather near the Edgware United Synagogue during a demonstration against the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” organized by real-estate agency My Home in Israel, which markets property in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, in London, Britain, June 14, 2026. (Toby Shepheard)
Riot police, equipped with shields and body armor, tried to contain the crowds as they clashed with people launching fireworks and throwing debris. One video also appeared to show an officer down.
KYLIAN MBAPPÉ, OUSMANE DEMBÉLÉ FIRE FRANCE INTO WORLD CUP SEMIFINALS WITH WIN OVER MOROCCO
It’s unknown what happened to the officer who was down on the asphalt or how he was injured.
Fans waved Moroccan flags in the middle of the streets, which held up traffic. Some even jumped on top of vehicles trying to get through the area.
Moroccan fans in the stands before a FIFA World Cup 2026 quarterfinal match between France and Morocco at Boston Stadium July 9, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (Richard Sellers/SportsphotoAllstar)
Similar scenes unfolded after Egypt’s World Cup exit, when Argentina rallied for a controversial 3-2 victory that featured several disputed officiating decisions.
Paris, on the other hand, looked more like a city celebrating than one on the brink of a riot. Supporters of both France and Morocco flooded the streets, slowing traffic in several parts of the city.
One video showed horns blasting from cars with French and Moroccan flags out the windows on the L’avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Supporters on the side of the road, waving their own flags, joined in on the celebration.
France’s Kylian Mbappé scored his eighth goal of this World Cup, which ties him for the most with Argentina’s Lionel Messi. Ousmane Dembélé also scored in the second half for France in the 2-0 win over Morocco.
It’s the third straight semifinal appearance for France, while Morocco still made World Cup history despite the loss. After becoming the first African country to reach the quarterfinals and semifinals in World Cup history in 2022, Morocco added to that by becoming the first-ever African nation to reach more than one quarterfinal.
Moroccan fans react while attending a watch party for the World Cup round of 8 match between France and Morocco in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 2026. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP)
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Morocco’s exit means there are no more African nations alive in the World Cup. France will be taking on the winner of Spain and Belgium, while England and Norway and Argentina and Switzerland face off in the quarterfinals.
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