By Coach Ron Wolforth –
If you’ve been paying close attention over the past 20 years, this week’s blog post won’t come as a surprise. If you haven’t, brace yourself because what’s unfolding in professional and elite college baseball is a tidal wave of injuries at levels we’ve never seen before.
As always, the elite procrastinators in the media will chime in with their “insights” and proposed solutions to this rising plague of disablement. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of that commentary will actually be helpful. Most of it will be the equivalent of rearranging deck chairs and changing the sheet music for the band as the Titanic goes down—visibly active but ultimately irrelevant.
Having spent the last 25 years focused on arm health and durability, let me provide you with a brief overview of why I believe baseball has been heading toward a cliff for quite some time. And why, in my opinion, we’re no longer jogging… We’re sprinting to our own demise.
Injury Is Complex, But the Trends Are Clear
Soft tissue injuries are multifaceted and hyper-personalized. On an individual level, they’re nuanced and complicated. However, when we zoom out to 30,000 feet, we can clearly see macro-level trends… And the most recent developments in professional and college baseball are pouring jet fuel on an already burning fire.
Let’s Start with the Basics
At a young age, boys today spend significantly less time climbing trees, playing tag, wrestling in the dirt, or engaging in unsupervised, creative physical play. Recess is shorter, P.E. classes are reduced or eliminated, and sandlots have been replaced with Xbox and PlayStation.
It’s no surprise, then, that general physical structure, alignment, and functional strength are not only inferior, but they’re also regressing year after year.
Meanwhile, baseball itself has evolved. Gone are the days of daily catch in the backyard, neighborhood pick-up games, and a 3:1 or 5:1 practice-to-game ratio. Today, we have structured, adult-led everything. Weekly private pitching lessons are the norm. Team practices are rare. Athletes play 100+ games over 10 months instead of 20–25 over the summer.
We now have national rankings for eight-year-old teams, as well as post-exit velocity and throwing velocity available for preteens on social media. Data tracking technology, such as TrackMan and Rapsodo, is routinely available to athletes as young as 14. Colleges and professional organizations are gradually replacing their human scouting departments with algorithmic selection models that rely on data.
I’m not listing these things as criticisms; they are facts. Like all evolutions, some of these developments have positive impacts that force us to adapt and improve. Others carry dangerous long-term consequences.
Bottom Line: Today’s young athletes are less physically prepared than ever, yet we push them harder than ever in pursuit of velocity and “swing-and-miss” stuff. These metrics now determine scholarships and draft positions.
Is it any wonder that the injury rate has been climbing steadily for the past 15 years?
Now For the Jet Fuel
Professional Baseball:
- To boost offense, MLB made the ball slicker and lowered the seams. This reduces natural movement and forces pitchers to manipulate the ball more aggressively with their fingers and hands.
- They banned grip enhancers, which means the forearm and fingers must work even harder, increasing fatigue and stress.
- The pitch clock, implemented to speed up games, reduces recovery time between pitches. This is especially punishing for starting pitchers and relievers who rely on high-intent deliveries.
- Player selection and promotion are now deeply tied to metrics such as whiff rate, induced vertical/horizontal break, spin axis, and raw velocity. In other words, throwing maximum effort with sharp movement is the ticket upward.
- In an effort to save money, MLB has systematically reduced minor league roster sizes, so fewer pitchers are now throwing more innings at every level—from rookie ball to the big leagues.
College Baseball:
- The NIL era and the chaos of the transfer portal have created a wild new frontier. Performance is now monetized at the amateur level.
- Players are understandably chasing better deals and bigger programs. And the quickest way to get there is high velocity and “nasty stuff.”
Bottom Line from Both Levels: Young arms are conditioned to throw harder and sharper than ever, with massive incentives to do so. Upon succeeding, they are promoted faster and carry heavier workloads, all while battling a slicker ball, no grip aids, and facing a pitch clock that punishes fatigue.
What could possibly go wrong?
Final Thoughts
Look, I get it. Change is hard, it’s messy, and it’s often uncomfortable because it forces us to confront our own blind spots. However, pretending this isn’t happening—or worse, pretending it’s someone else’s problem—is a dangerous illusion.
The train is off the tracks, and we continue to increase its speed. The warning signs are everywhere, yet the baseball establishment continues to double down on the very things accelerating the crisis… More data. More velocity. More exposure. Less time to recover. Less individualized development. Less human nuance.
If we don’t fundamentally rethink how we prepare arms, develop athletes, and define success, the next decade will make today’s injury epidemic look tame.
At the Texas Baseball Ranch®, we’ve said for years: “There is no quick fix to arm health.” You can’t fake durability, and you sure as heck can’t cheat physiology. Adaptation takes time. Resilience requires preparation. And elite performance? That’s earned through intelligent, individualized, constraint-based training, not from chasing the next magic metric or “grip-it-and-rip-it” showcase.
This is not the time for passive observation. It’s the time for bold, courageous course correction.
Because if we don’t change something soon, we’re not just heading into rough waters… We’re headed for a shipwreck.
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Important TBR Updates
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- Would you like to participate in the Ranch Summer Program but can’t find 2+ weeks in your schedule? We have an option for you! Attend one of our 3-Day EPBC’s and add the summer program week after. It’s seven days of training and is a great option for those players with an extremely busy summer schedule. Give us a call and we can provide you with more details – (936) 588-6762.
- Check out this video on our YouTube Channel: “The Identity Crisis Every Baseball Pitcher Must Overcome“. Watch it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YEqIynB3Z0 and share your opinion in the comments.
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