Taxing Speed

Via BBTF, Daniel Brown complains about the increased number of pitchers throwing very fast balls:

Velocity has gone up or held steady in 14 of the past 15 seasons. In the bullpen, especially, it’s as if everyone suddenly comes equipped with a Rich Gossage fastball. It’s not just Goose anymore, it’s geese: The top 20 relievers last year averaged 96.72 with their heaters, according to numbers collected from fangraphs.com.

Better training, more sophisticated throwing programs and advances in medicine have paved the way for this generation of young, hard throwers. But there’s no way to strengthen an elbow ligament, leaving the UCL to bear the brunt of this unprecedented fastball force.

Stan Conte, the former Giants and Dodgers trainer, last year was the first to report that while shoulder injuries are on the decline in major league baseball, the number of elbow injuries continues to rise.

The trend of mega-velocity has been described as baseball’s Faustian bargain: Throwing hard will get you drafted and could make you a star — and then, almost certainly, it will destroy you.

Shoulder injuries are down because medical personnel figured out the right exercises to strengthen the shoulder muscles correctly to reduce injuries. Researchers are trying to do the same thing with the elbow. It’s possible that rich plasma injections could help prevent tears.

Apart from the injuries, there is the increase in strikeouts:

As pitchers reach for anything to give their fastballs a boost, hitters are forced to keep pace. At what point does a pitcher throw so hard it’s unhittable?

Is it 108 mph? 110? 115?

None of the above, Giants outfielder Hunter Pence said.

“No matter how hard you throw, it’s hittable,” Pence said. “There’s no one with a 0.00 ERA. There are some tremendous pitchers out there, but there are also good hitters. It’s just the nature of competing against the best.”

Right, but those pitchers with higher velocity tend to get more strikeouts, and that leads to lower ERAs. After a while, too many strikeouts in too many games reduces the randomness of batted balls that makes baseball so interesting.

So how do you combat fastballs? Moving the mound back would work, but eventually the game will wind up with the mound at second base. I tend to like economic suggestions, so why not put a tax on speed? Every pitch greater than 95 MPH costs $1000. I suspect the cost should be shared by the pitcher and the team. One could even make it go up as the speed increases, with pitchers over 100 MPH costing $2000. I would then distribute the taxes collected to the hitters who faced those pitchers. That way, the pitcher knows when he throws a really fast ball, he is putting money in his opponents pocket.

The effect might be two-fold. Pitchers who make a lot of money would hold off on throwing really hard until they need a strikeout. Younger pitchers, who make near the league minimum, would be encouraged to learn the art of pitching, rather than just throwing hard to conserve their salary. Teams might start paying less for hard throwers, again encouraging the art of pitching.

What do you think?

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