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Baseball is certainly in a struggle against itself, especially when you factor in that there's a deep drive into left field by Nick Castellanos and that'll be a home run

“Pete Reiser fractured his skull running into a wall, was temporarily paralyzed from running into a different wall, and fractured his skull a second time after running into a third wall. As he was being carried off the field on a stretcher, the TV broadcast showed Reiser looking directly into the camera, which broke the fourth wall.”

Change the hit batter rule into a walk to second base -- perhaps starting with the second player hit in a game. This would give control pitchers a greater relative worth.

I think another factor is that players and organizations have become more aware of injuries and are more likely to report it. Back in the day the mentality was often "just walk it off" so I can imagine quite a few injuries would go unreported because players tried to play through the pain. Now I feel like any amount of pain no matter how insignificant is brought up and taken care of. If a player today wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and has a sore back the organization will give them an ice bath and massage, 20 years ago they probably would have been told to suck it up and go to practice.

although i understand how dangerous it is to run full speed into a wall without bracing yourself because you're looking in the opposite direction concentrating on a fly ball i've always appreciated the looney toons factor it presents as a viewer.

I’d be more concerned about these injuries if baseball actually existed

10:55 Dale Earnhardt died because he didn't wear a hass device because he thought it was uncomfortable, nascar now mandates them. Some times the league just needs to tell them to suck it up.

17:45 Not to mention pitching is getting more reliant than ever in relieving pitchers, which not only brings the aforementioned lack of being used to pitch a lot of times per game, but also making the overall pitcher lose the "marathon" mindset of not forcing their throws to prevent injuries. Relievers are never holding back their pitches because they will be benched after one or two innings, and starters aren't holding back their pitches as much as before because they are more likely to be relieved sooner rather than later.

I think the biggest thing for pitchers even with the decreased pitch counts is increases on elbow torque. Ultimately it’s insane that we can throw as hard as we do and that throwing motion is literally tearing your shoulder/elbow appart with that amount of force. Realistically a lot of the older guys who were throwing 300+ innings a year were simply not throwing 100% effort for the vast majority of their pitches, if it all. I think in the past it was more common to have actual shoulder wear issues for pitchers from over use but now it’s all elbow injuries due to increased torque which comes from pitch velocity. MLB is not actually solving any problems by decreasing pitch counts because it’s just allowing pitchers to throw harder for shorter outings which just exacerbates elbow injuries.

We've been seeing an increase in serious injuries across pretty much every sport. Considering that athletes today are bigger, faster and stronger than ever before, I believe we're coming to the absolute limit of what humans can physically do.

simple rule ... when a player gets hit by a pitch, he's awarded 1st base.

Start making players use hockey helmets and more specifically goalie helmets. They are designed for 100mph shots in hockey right to the face and the vision in them is good enough for goalies to effectively stop those shots. Give pitchers hockey helmets as well, except since they need to be more stream lined and have more peripheral vision give them player helmets with a fish bowl on it. Instead of just fences, use plexiglass to protect the dug outs. They can also easily survive 100mph shots just fine while being as clear as glass, so they work perfect Also use plexiglass for the walls around the stadium. If used in the design used in hockey using stanchions they provide a very good surface to bounce off of when hitting the wall. Make a higher penalty for hitting the batter with the ball. Instead of one base, give 2. Or maybe while giving a single base take away one of their outs so that they need to get more to end the inning. You will see the league meta change, hopefully to resort to more skilled pitchers again or to pitches farther from the batter. The simple fact is, don’t make safety the players choice. Make the league set that up and make those decisions.

Damn the Dave Dravecky portion hit me hard. My cousin got a rare cancer when he was around 10 or 11 and passed away. My parents got my Dave's book about his life as I was a big baseball fan. I wrote him a letter and he even responded. I knew about his arm breaking while pitching from the book but I had never seen video of it.

I couldnt imagine seeing 100 coming right at you. The worst hbp i had was against kid in high school probably not even throwing 80 and he still knock me out for a week when he nailed me in the side of my knee

5:48 I always love that Ortiz "slide" XD

14:00 Glenn Allen Hill sounds like he might have had a run in with the mob.

This is the most painful baseball video I’ve ever watched, man…constant stream of arm blowouts, wall collisions and headshots 😬

your channel is one of those things that MLB should invest it. You're making baseball so much accesible and interesting to non baseball fan

Pitchers throwing at 100% power is what kills arms. Think about motors: if you run your car at 100% pedal to the floor all the time non-stop it won’t last. If you give it a relatively easy life it’ll last much much longer. Even just dropping down to 80% would greatly reduce wear on their arm.

As a 21 year old who grew up right after “travel ball” exploded, I think that had a lot to do with the arm injuries we see on the pitching side. My dad grew up playing baseball, but back then, it was only little league (which was more competitive than most little leagues today)or your high school team. Both of these enable an off season in which your arm can rest. The year round travel ball cycle doesn’t allow for this. Guys are just throwing more year round from a young age, and are specializing earlier.

I love the fact baseball is just pretty openly corrupt and always has been like it gives the entire history of the sport a rough character you just can't get anywhere else and there's always some kind of controversy going on to go a hilarious deep dive on .

The overvaluing of velocity I think is also a reason game length has become more of an issue. Higher velocity means less control which means fewer strikes which means more pitches. More pitches means a longer game which is magnified by needing more pitching changes with more pitches. If control was valued more, then you would have fewer pitches and also more hitting as well. I'm not sure what rule changes could be practically applied to getting teams to value control more, but lower velocity and more control would result in both a safer and more entertaining game.

1:30 that was hilarious af lmao 😂

9:26 that curveball thrown by a Cubs pitcher might be the sickest and nastiest off speed pitch I’ve seen. The one right before this one which knee buckled the batter was FILTHY AF too! I remember watching Kerry Woods 20K’s game and the sliders he threw that game looked like a whiffle ball.😮

7:18 Imagine how even better Mantle could have been on two good legs

1:07 Baseball is apparently turning into Soccer.

I think the Tommy John surgery related injuries aren't from doing less it's from the fact they are throwing faster pitches with more movement and a larger range of motion and often go beyond what the human body is supposed to do in order to get a better pitch

Admittedly, I totally miss the home plate collision. That tying or winning run coming around third in the bottom of the ninth or extra innings, the ball hitting the cutoff man at just the right time for the relay to reach the plate at the exact same time as the runner. I mean, there are few things I’ve ever seen in baseball that were more exciting than those plays. I’m all for the player safety, I just miss that level of excitement lol

About to start watching this vid but I want to say that in todays Blue Jays @ Yanks game, Aaron Judge was hit in the shoulder on a fastball from Alek Monoah, and on a normal sized human being, it would hit the head

As a European that doesn't really know any of the American sports beside basketball, I really love your videos. Without you, I'd have never known how crazy and wild of a sport baseball actually is lmao

As someone who played Finnish baseball in my teen years, I still can't believe how the hell baseball is fine with the bases as they are. In the Finnish version, the bases are huge, AND due to them all being on the edges of the field, you have literally 30ft of room to just run "through" the base while still being safe. Also tagging isn't used to get an out, so there is even less reason for collisions, just get the ball to the base the runner could advance to

I’d like to see a team go with a strategy to have 4 starter rotation, where they pitch five innings maximum. Then they will have a designated reliever who pitches the final four innings. That reliever is essentially a second starter, and they would prepare and be conditioned as a starter. So, in effect, you have two 4 starter rotations, where each player pitches half a game. The manager could flip the pitcher that starts the first inning. The remaining 5 pitchers would be relievers. And you would use them sparingly, for extra inning games or blowout mop up duty. There would be no one inning closer. This strategy would balance out the pitch workload, where 8 pitchers would, theoretically, have the same pitch count in the season, and it would be less of a pitch count than what is average for starters.

Shoutout to the pitchers, outfielders and batters sacrificing themselves for their team.

QuandalDingle

Your videos are fascinating!! It would seem to be able to drastically reduce the amount of hit pitches to simply offer additional bases per hit batsmen. If you hit one it's a double if you hit a second he starts on third and a third hit person is ejection and 1 month suspension. Add to the intrigue of the game on a more controlled pitch.

I feel like in the Majors, the players aren't out there just having fun and playing the game to enjoy it. They are looking at everything so technically. Whether that is sabermeteics, film, advancments in training and practice methods, their health-care, or how they go about fine tuning their mechanics. It's almost like the players who get hurt are the ones not playing and having a natural flow to their game, but rather trying to implement all this training and information to throw the "perfect" pitch against that particular batter. It's like changing someone's delivery after they have been throwing a certain way all their life, then they need tommy John and are never the same again. Or hitters who get into slumps, and come back with a "changed" swing, then go from bad to worse when instead they should have just hit the cages more and fine tune your own swing, instead of adopting a whole new one.

0:22 thats gotta be some sort of ancient healing technique

Awesome vid. Always been curious how these surgeries are named after players. Maybe a vid explaining the surgery, player named after ect. Just a thought. Keep up the good work.

This channel is just flat out incredible. The amount of research you had to do for this is insane. I send your links to my baseball friends constantly.

9:29 This Reoccurring theme is What Lead Me out of Baseball ⚾️ it also didn’t help that I was “Left Handed”

This isn't exactly a genius take but I would imagine that the increased velocity both to the plate and off the bat has something to do with it.

These are bar none the best videos on UKposts. Thrilling, informative, lightly hilarious.

I've never had an interest in baseball, or sports period. And yet, I've been watching/listening to your vids all day at work. I don't think I've watched a vid on sports ever before coming across a vid of yours that was seemingly 100% randomly recommended to me, and now I'm a sub of yours. These algorithms are getting scary good, and you have been blessed lol

I remember playing high school baseball and seeing a 70 mph ball coming at your face was enough to make you reconsider things, let alone a 90 to 100 mph ball coming at you.

One thing that was not brought up was Jamie Moyer: the man pitched into his early 50s and even though his velocity slowed down, he would change his pitching game that took advantage of the strike zone.

I think the rise in arm injuries are due to max effort throwing constantly, less focus on control, and less focus on mechanics. This leads to wild pitchers that throw harder than the should inaccurately and also incorrectly which leads to arm injury from poor arm path and poor arm deceleration. The reason I mention this as well is that it also contributes to the rise in batters being injured by pitched balls.

I remember reading some years ago that there were more hit-by-pitches in the American League than the National League, and this difference was attributed to the DH rule. Basically, the pitcher who's throwing at guys' heads....had to step up to the plate in the NL. It will be interesting to see if we have more HBP now that the DH is universal.

man love your videos and want more but love the time you take with the research you do to come out with quality videos.

We need a full Denny McLain video his life and career is insane

I broke a catchers shoulder playing on my 7th grade team. Love how the collisions were kept in the game until recently, always was interesting to see the little guy on the team try to takeout a shortstop or catcher

I read a whole 300 page biography about Dave Dravecky. He actually was born and raised in the town I live in, and one of our little league fields is named after him

Really fantastic video. You have every famous baseball collision I remember - except for Nate Schierholtz completely blowing up the Yang Yang at home plate during the 2008 Olympics. Even though I'm a Giants fan (Nate's MLB team at the time), I always felt bad for the Chinese catcher, who was totally unprepared for the collision, and seems to have no idea that was within the rules of baseball at the time. Call me soft, but I love that baseball is essentially a pastoral game. I'm glad the violence is being phased out of this beautiful sport: from the removal of home plate collisions, to outlawing dirty slides into second base, and even less bench-clearing brawls. Very glad netting has been extended along the foul lines- a fan was going to die eventually, unless that was cleaned up. The last big potential problem hanging over baseball's head is line drive comebackers to the pitcher. Until forcefields are invented, I don't know what the solution is for this.

8:02 I didn’t know Jason Voorhees played baseball Also if this HBP keeps going up they should do something like instead HBP = batter to 1st base maybe be more drastic to even HBP = batter to 2nd base or just toss the pitcher right away or move the mound back a few feet

i just want everyone to know that I've been watching every single video this man has posted for the last 6 months and I honestly couldn't name you 5 baseball players I know nothing about baseball but the presentation of his videos are amazing and make me keep coming back to watch your latest video.

When you have specific areas that are reliably dangerous and expectedly so, when you remove the concentrated areas of danger, you open the entire rest of the field to danger as to where it may fit.

17:34 know one gunna talk about how that’s mlb the show

Keep the vids coming. You do such great work. Cheers

For pitchers there should be a a thin but string wall that pops up from the ground in from do the mound if a ball passes by a sensor at a certain speed at the pitcher.

6:32 homie got caught for the Tombstone piledriver 11:30 he tried to keep his eye on the ball

Bruh Some of those Dugout catches look like they're from the jackass movies when they were trying Not to fall especially the one at 6:12 🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😭😭😭😭

I wonder of the massive uptick in spin rate and velocity can contribute to more Tommy John surgery.

One time during high school game I was pitching it was during the 3rd 5th or something different but the facts are true I sprained my arm on a sideways throw on a fastball pitch I eventually returned after a while but you can actually believe this man. You just got a new sub

Pitching is no joke; I remember the first time I tried it with a target on a fence, I threw maybe 15 - 20 pitches… My elbow/UCL was sore for a week.

2:20 of all the clips out there they somehow got one of brandon belt playing left field lol

9:47 "Studies show faster the pitch is, the more injuries it causes."

Always pumped when you upload man! Keep it up!

in Australia we have a game called cricket which is similar on a basic level but very different in multiple ways. umpires don't wear helmets (because they aren't right in the firing line), but one has been killed and many more injured from being hit by the ball. Also we don't have nets protecting the crowd from sixes (basically a home run), so tons of people have been hit as well. look up the basic rules, it's cool

Softer core baseballs? There are so many components that go into how far a hit ball goes- incoming velocity, the weight of the ball, the weight of the bat, the speed of the bat, how hard the ball is, how elastic it's core is, how good contact is made (which of course pulls strings into it since they help pitches break). It seems they could tweak helmets a bit, tweak balls a bit, tweak bats a bit, and come up with the same game with slightly lower risks of injuries. As for Tommy John surgeries, is anyone regularly monitoring pitchers stress on their arm before they have the injury? I know it wouldn't translate directly, since the velocities wouldn't be the same, but maybe they need to hire a large group of players who throw hard, but not MLB hard- guys who topped out in college in the 80s, or didn't have control and just hit 90 occasionally, or guys who washed out. You get a group of people who throw hard, but who have no shot at the big league and you pay them to throw simulated games under different variables. You monitor them and run them through different training and pitching regimens to see what really limits injuries the most. They get paid, and get any related medical bills paid, but no multi-million dollar arms get ruined. They get to brag that they threw hard enough to be part of an MLB pitch safety test group.

Absolutely incredible video. Fantastic research. Seems like pitchers having to throw harder is the main culprit in these modern baseball injury problems

Boxing had a similar phenomena, where by increasing the padding on the gloves the boxers could hit each other harder in the head without hurting their hands.

Its so dangerous they play two games a day

At 5:57 that dudes head hit his butt!

Id rather be tackled by a 300 lbs lineman than be hit by a 100 mph base ball any day of the week....

i like how the takeout slide is literally just a hitstick where the runner doesn't care if they are getting tagged or not

Seeing Greg Nettles took me back to when I was a kid watching the game with my dad. He was one helluva third baseman

When you talked about the salary paid to injured players comparing the 98 season to last year Is that accounting for inflation?

This was actually super informative and well technically you’re not wrong but I think players and coaches are just being more careful with their players. How the hell did someone throw 73 complete games without having an issue in one season? Nolan Ryan an absolute stud to 235 pitches in 1 game without an issue in one game

Regarding the walls: would slightly sloping them away from the field reduce the impact of collisions without being too much of a detriment to big plays at the wall??

6:37 whoever caught that bat deserves a ring

Always a good day when BDE posts a video.

You forgot to mention that in the 90s pretty much every player was juiced to the gills. Roids help protect from injury IMMENSELY. It's a lot harder to get away with PEDs now, so a lot more injuries occur from overall less strength, especially in fine motor muscles. Also, because the body just does not fatigue at nearly the same rate when you're on juice, they were able to go harder and longer in the 90s, but with far fewer injuries.

When I played highschool ball I was put into left field and was never in the outfield until that year. I grew up at SS and pitcher so I was learning to find the wall while finding the ball during practice and ran into the fence so hard I put a hole into it. It knocked me out and woke up to my coach telling me to pay attention next time lol. I had a concussion and 14 stitches in my forehead. Still have the scar today lol. Outfield can get spooky sometimes

The one thing I don't understand (as a recent UK fan) is the number of injuries that occur due to the solid 'bags'. In the youtube highlight reels I've seen, the number of ankle injuries that happen when players feet slip on the bag is worrying adding to the injuries that happen when players slide into the bag (whether feet first or head first).

The sneeze related injuries aren’t rare, I remember Sammy Sosa doing it way back when. I’ve done it myself. Injuries to back, abdominal and oblique muscles happen easily when you’re muscular but maybe a little over-worked, as well as when you’ve got weak core muscles.

New idea for baseball. You know how in soccer when you accumulate so many yellow cards you get a one game suspension? How about a 7 game suspension for starting pitchers and a 4 game suspension for relievers for every 4th HBP the pitcher throws? This should lead to pitchers either improving their control and the game getting safer OR fewer inside breaking balls and more offense. I like this way better than banning shifts.

10:10 - The players also rejected the pitch clock until it was forced upon them. They had better get this under control on their own if they don't want something even more onerous.

Im into baseball at all but your honesty just interesting to listen to and i love your style, keep up the good work man this weeb is rooting for ya!

I was about thirty yards away from the huge brawl that occurred from the winker incident that day. I remember looking at my best friend and saying “it’s only the first inning and both teams are brawling, we picked the perfect day for baseball” lol

So I play softball, am a pitcher, and wear a mask both while pitching and while hitting. It’s just always been a thing for me. I don’t know how it’s not required since there have been people that have gotten permanent damage to the brain or even killed by getting hit in the head while pitching

for the number of pitches thing, just month by month increase the pitch count by a few pitches to a point where its enough

I get that its a good thing that players aren't getting hurt as much from contact at 2nd and home, and that its a good thing. But as a Canadian hockey fan my need for violence in every sport misses those plays.

Anytime I see a notification for your video I immediately click on it. You’re videos are so good!

I believe there is likely a connection with the increase in throwing speed and breaking balls, to injuries to pitchers. They may be pitching less, with more rest, but the wear on the arm seems to be higher. I don't know, but it seems logical to me given the data presented in this video.

5:49 bro was like “imma just step here, you cool with that?”

13:31 Okay I have no way too know for certain, but I'm skeptical that anyone could get a repetitive stress injury from playing Guitar Hero that has a doctor look at it and send you straight to surgery. For carpal tunnel syndrome, surgery is only offered to normal people after years of physical therapy and a lot of serious pain. I would put money on the idea that if a normal person came in with the exact same injury and the exact same severity, they'd be given a physical therapy prescription first. Of course, if said normal person was something like a high school baseball player, they'd be told to stop playing. That is unacceptable for an owner, so the player recieved a surgery of questionable nessecity and efficacy, from a purely medical prespective.

Every time @baseballdoesn'texist, uploads a video, you know that shit is going down! You make such incredible content and I always stop what I am doing to watch your video. You are the best content creator on UKposts.

13:35 ok that is actually hilarious

I like the point system and beam ejection proposals. If you think about it, organizations are only choosing hard throwing wild pitchers and instructing pitchers to throw high and tight because they did the analytics and found that the outs gained and limiting of slugging % by this strategy far outweighed the bases given up by hitting more batters. So now if you have to add to the formula that you could lose a starting pitcher and screw up rotations for that game and subsequent games the analytics change. Not to mention this will likely mean more action! Batters that aren’t being brushed off as much with high fastballs can get settled and will obviously also see more hittable pitches in the zone!

So basically, increased velocity in pitches is the root of all of baseball's problems today, but pitchers want to throw that hard because thats more likely to get guys out lol