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)
Sports
Florida AG launches civil rights investigation into MLB’s warning to Christian pitchers over Pride Night caps
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The attorneys general from Missouri and Florida have reacted strongly to the controversy stirred when Major League Baseball warned three San Francisco Giants players about inscribing a Bible verse on their Pride Night caps, and that reaction includes MLB being served with a subpoena that signals the launch of an official investigation.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier launched his investigation on Friday by serving MLB with a subpoena to investigate whether it is violating the civil rights of players based on their religious beliefs.
The general purpose and scope of Florida’s investigation “extend(s) to possible civil rights and deceptive and unfair trade practices violations in matters of employment concerning the business practices, policies, and procedures of Major League Baseball,” per the subpoena obtained by Fox News Digital.
In a letter from Uthmeier to MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred, the AG warns that “a pattern or practice of selectively enforcing its rules to benefit favored secular beliefs over disfavored religious beliefs would not only potentially violate Florida civil rights law, but it would also violate the League’s own policies.
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL FACES BACKLASH FOR ITS STANCE ON CHRISTIANS WRITING BIBLE VERSES ON PRIDE CAPS
“And a practice of claiming not to discriminate based on religion while discriminating based on religion could further amount to an unfair or deceptive trade practice in violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.”
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier speaks at a news conference in Orlando on July 15, 2025, where he said U.S. Masters Swimming should not allow transgender athletes to compete against women swimmers or face legal action. Advocates Cassidy Carlisle and Lainey Armistead also attended. (Rich Pope/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service)
Uthmeier is particularly troubled by the fact MLB said its warning had nothing to do with the players’ religious beliefs but rather was strictly because of a violation of the league’s uniform code.
It should be noted MLB said in a follow-up statement to its initial warning to the players that it was merely enforcing its uniform codes and the warning had nothing to do with Giants pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker writing a Bible verse on the team’s Pride Night Cap most of the other players wore.
MLB ACCUSED OF ‘DOUBLE STANDARD’ AFTER CALLING OUT PLAYERS’ BIBLE MESSAGES DESPITE BACKING BLM IN 2020
Uthmeier noted that doesn’t ring true and presented in his letter a handful of examples where MLB has been absolutely fine with players adding to their uniform.
“In 2019, for example, a Cincinnati Reds player wrote on his cap in tribute to a nearby mass shooting,” Uthmeier wrote to Manfred. “And in 2020, MLB evidently added new, sweeping exceptions to its uniform rules by allowing players to ‘support social justice and diversity and inclusion.’ These policy changes included permitting players to add Black Lives Matter patches to their sleeves.
“MLB therefore appears to applaud — even change its rules for — the ideological beliefs it prefers, but targets players who express religious views the League doesn’t like.”
Commissioner of Major League Baseball Robert D. Manfred Jr. speaks at the 2024 MLB Draft presented by Nike at Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas, on July 14, 2024. (Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
The Florida subpoena, issued under the Florida Civil Rights Act, demands action from MLB on July 23, 2026, at 9 a.m.. At that time, MLB must deliver to the AG’s office documents including:
- All documents concerning how MLB characterized or classified the June 2026 cap writing, including, for example, whether MLB treated it as religious expression, political messaging, protest, or a violation unrelated to its content.
- All documents concerning what prompted MLB’s review of and warning regarding the June 2026 cap writing, including any complaint, media inquiry, internal escalation, or third-party communication received before the warning issued, and the timing of each relative to the warning.
- All documents concerning the actual June 2026 warnings issued by the MLB to any club.
- All documents, including drafts and internal deliberations, concerning MLB’s decision to issue and publicly announce the June 2026 warnings, and any analysis of whether doing so adhered to the Code or with MLB’s treatment of comparable non-religious expression.
San Francisco Giants pitcher Landen Roupp wrote “Genesis 9:12-16” on his Pride-Night themed hat. (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
Uthmeier is thus joining Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, who recently wrote a letter to Manfred asking the commissioner to confirm that no player who has chosen to refrain from “wearing Pride Month paraphernalia or included Bible verses on Pride Month hats” will not be disciplined in any way.
Hanaway’s letter states that if Manfred fails to answer by June 25 or does not confirm that no discipline will be levied, she too will open an investigation of MLB.
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The two attorneys general have authority over their individual states. But it affects four MLB teams.
Florida is home to two MLB teams — the Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins — while Missouri is home to the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals.
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Sports
Commentary: Why MLB’s Pride Night cap condemnation isn’t the anti-Christian crackdown conservatives claim
Amid the first days of grief after Alex Vesia and his wife lost their newborn daughter last fall, Vesia noticed something as he watched the World Series on television. He paused the broadcast, then checked the video, then texted another player to make sure.
51.
Dodgers teammates wore his number on their caps. So did players from the Toronto Blue Jays.
“It was awesome,” Vesia said. “It was a very heartwarming moment.”
Moving.
Touching.
And, under baseball’s rules, illegal.
Who knew, really, until this week? Three pitchers from the San Francisco Giants wrote the name of a Bible verse on their Pride Night caps and, amid an uproar, Major League Baseball said it had warned the players that “writing of any kind, with any message” on any playing apparel is not permitted. The issue, the league said in a statement, was not what they wrote on their caps but simply that they wrote on them at all.
Said MLB in the statement: “We have given the same warning numerous times in the past to players for messages such as ‘Dad’, ‘Happy Mother’s Day, I Love Mom’ and names of family members.”
To its credit, the league did not enforce the rule when Vesia’s number started appearing on caps in the World Series. But, if you’re going to draw a line on enforcement, where should you draw it?
In San Francisco, the actions of the Giants’ pitchers were widely condemned.
“They were in for a rude awakening with the response, and it wasn’t just from the gay community,” Giants broadcaster and former pitcher Mike Krukow told KNBR, the team’s flagship radio station. “It was from the Northern California community that supports the gay community.”
In response to media inquiries, and as first reported by Outsports, MLB confirmed it had warned the three players. I asked the league whether warnings had been issued in two other instances in which players had written on their caps, including Clayton Kershaw last year writing the same Bible verse on his Pride Night cap that the Giants’ pitchers wrote this year. MLB declined to comment.
“I got chastised by the league when I put Charlie [Kirk]’s name on my hat last year, because a man was murdered in cold blood,” Dodgers pitcher Blake Treinen told me, “and now these gentlemen who are relievers in San Francisco are getting chastised by the league for putting a Bible verse on their hat. It’s crazy to me.”
Treinen said league officials had told him the rule is strictly enforced.
“I straight up asked Clayton last year, ‘Did they call you when you put that on your hat?’” Treinen said. “He said, ‘No.’”
The Pride caps feature team logos decorated in the colors of the rainbow, a symbol long associated with the gay community. In the Bible verse cited by the pitchers (Genesis 9:12-16), the rainbow represents “the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures.”
That the league would warn players against writing a Bible verse on their caps ignited a wave of conservative outrage, from Vice President JD Vance to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley fired off a letter to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, alleging apparent discrimination “against baseball players who profess their Christian faith” and threatening the league’s antitrust exemption. Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon said on national television that players might be able to file a claim for employment discrimination.
That is complete nonsense. This is what you want: When employees raise an issue to their employer, the employer listens and addresses their concerns.
In 2023, the year after five Tampa Bay Rays players declined to wear rainbow logos for Pride Night, Manfred said the league would no longer compel players to do so.
“We have told teams, in terms of actual uniforms, hats, bases that we don’t think putting logos on them is a good idea just because of the desire to protect players: not putting them in a position of doing something that may make them uncomfortable because of their personal views,” Manfred said then.
Teammates congratulate Freddie Freeman after his walk-off home run gave the Dodgers a 1-0 win on June 5, when the Dodgers held their annual Pride Night. Blake Treinen, the winning pitcher that night, elected to wear his regular Dodgers cap instead of the Pride version.
(Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)
Manfred said the Pride Night celebrations could go on, however a team wished to stage them — or not, in the case of the Texas Rangers, the only one of the 30 MLB teams that declines to hold a Pride Night. And the league still sells Pride gear on its website for all teams, including the Rangers.
In the cases of the Giants and Dodgers, MLB grandfathered each team’s long-running use of a rainbow logo on the cap, with this accommodation to players: If you don’t feel comfortable wearing the Pride cap, just wear your regular cap.
That is what Treinen and outfielder Alex Call did when the Dodgers celebrated Pride Night. That is also what a fourth Giants pitcher did.
“My job is to abide by the rules,” Treinen said. “Ultimately, the only rule we have is to wear our team-issued uniform. So that’s what I chose to do.”
To Treinen, the decision over whether to wear a Pride cap is not about passing judgment on anyone else but about what he sees as the push “to force something on people that you know that is controversial to their faith — and, in fact, straight up against their faith.”
He expressed his support for the Giants pitchers.
“Kudos to those men over there who are standing strong in their faith,” he said. “It’s a sad thing to corner someone and try to make them feel bad about their convictions.”
I respect Treinen for explaining his viewpoint. To me, wearing a Pride cap for one night does not diminish your faith at all. It might sharpen your convictions. More important, it signals a welcome to everyone in the community that buys the tickets and broadcast subscriptions that help pay your salary.
“I think a few people made it about themselves and not about the community,” San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie told the Bay Area Reporter.
We always proclaim the life lessons of sports. One of them: Sometimes you have to put the team’s interests ahead of your own.
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After its massive 1-0 win over South Korea on Thursday night, Mexico has won Group A and officially clinched a spot in the knockout round.
El Tri will play its Round of 32 game in Mexico City, and will face the third-place finisher in either Group C/E/F/H/I.
This is the fourth time that Mexico has topped the group stage of a World Cup, with the other three coming in 1986, 1994 and 2002.
With the win, Mexico remains unbeaten in World Cup group games at home, going a combined 6-2-0 (W-D-L), with two wins and a draw in 1970 and 1986, and now two wins in 2026.
Before the tournament began, Mexico was listed at +6500 to win the World Cup. Now, after winning its first two games of the tournament, Mexico has surged up the oddsboard to +5000.
Can Mexico build off its first two matches and make a deep run in this tournament? Let’s check out the updated odds for El Tri as of June 19.
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Team Mexico — Stage of Elimination
Last 32: +125 (bet $10 to win $22.50 total)
Last 16: +135 (bet $10 to win $23.50 total)
Quarterfinals: +600 (bet $10 to win $70 total)
Semifinals: +1600 (bet $10 to win $170 total)
Runner-up: +3000 (bet $10 to win $310 total)
Outright winner: +5000 (bet $10 to win $510 total)
Mexico is currently +5000 to win the 2026 FIFA World Cup after winning Group A (Getty Images).
Mexico’s Past World Cup Results:
1930: Group stage
1934: Did not qualify
1938: Withdrew
1950: Group stage
1954: Group stage
1958: Group stage
1962: Group stage
1966: Group stage
1970: Quarterfinals
1974: Did not qualify
1978: Group stage
1982: Did not qualify
1986: Quarterfinals
1990: Banned
1994: Round of 16
1998: Round of 16
2002: Round of 16
2006: Round of 16
2010: Round of 16
2014: Round of 16
2018: Round of 16
2022: Group stage
2026: TBD
What to know: Mexico has made a habit of being in the running, but never really being in the running. Make sense? Consider this: El Tri made it out of the group stage in seven consecutive World Cups (1994-2018), but never made it past the Round of 16 in any of those years. In 2022, Mexico failed to make it out of the group stage, and it will look to get back to its winning ways in 2026 after a great start to the tournament. With its win Thursday night, Mexico has now advanced to the knockout stage in eight of the last nine World Cups. It is important to note, however, that Mexico has never made it past the quarterfinals at a FIFA men’s World Cup.
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