Why we need some kind of pitch/inning count in softball!

[canyonjoe]

I love the idea about playing underhand catch at young ages. I wouldn't mind an innings limit but it would have to be very well thought out. I would even be OK if they said no back to back games on the same day but again needs thought. I don't think it's OK to just trust parents and coaches to do the right thing.

 

[erniekru]

And? So If your daughter can't throw 600 pitches we need a rule that everyone can't throw 600 pitches?

Every pitcher is different. Maybe she pitched 600 pitches last weekend. Perhaps she is throwing 600 pitches next weekend as well.

Overusing injuries with pitchers is not a problem I see at the level we play at. I am sure there is a coach somewhere overusing a pitcher, I get it. Do we need an arbitrary rule for it? No thanks.

So what good does it do ANYONE to have her throw 600 pitches? It is not good for the pitcher. It is not good for the team as development of other pitchers does not occur.. Just a bad premise perpetrated by dad's of the "premier" pitchers in young age groups.

Overuse just doesn't happen in the older ages. It is too much wear and tear on the bodies (backs, knees, feet, and yes the shoulder)

DD's team made it to the semis of a very decent 18u invitational here in So Cal.. One of the three pitchers got hurt on Saturday and was out for Sunday. The other pitcher was unavailable due to personal reasons, leaving only the third pitcher.

That girl pitched lights out won 2 back to back bracket games and the team forfeited the semi final game because pitching 3 back to back games is just stupid. Not one parent was upset.

 

[daywalkerdad]

I wonder if we need more pitchers or fewer teams?
We may be short on quality right fielders but not really noticeable in their 1-2 plays a game.
In order to develop players at positions coaches have to be willing to live mistakes. Taking a 3rd baseman to left field probably will not lead to errors and mistakes but probably not losses. Taking a 3rd baseman to pitch probably means a loss.

 

[El Oso]

So what good does it do ANYONE to have her throw 600 pitches? It is not good for the pitcher. It is not good for the team as development of other pitchers does not occur.. Just a bad premise perpetrated by dad's of the "premier" pitchers in young age groups.

Overuse just doesn't happen in the older ages. It is too much wear and tear on the bodies (backs, knees, feet, and yes the shoulder)

DD's team made it to the semis of a very decent 18u invitational here in So Cal.. One of the three pitchers got hurt on Saturday and was out for Sunday. The other pitcher was unavailable due to personal reasons, leaving only the third pitcher.

That girl pitched lights out won 2 back to back bracket games and the team forfeited because pitching 3 back to back games is just stupid. Not one parent was upset.

Save your breath. He won't budge. He thinks his anecdotal evidence is sufficient to make overall judgements.

 

[daywalkerdad]

And? So If your daughter can't throw 600 pitches we need a rule that everyone can't throw 600 pitches?

Every pitcher is different. Maybe she pitched 600 pitches last weekend. Perhaps she is throwing 600 pitches next weekend as well.

Overusing injuries with pitchers is not a problem I see at the level we play at. I am sure there is a coach somewhere overusing a pitcher, I get it. Do we need an arbitrary rule for it? No thanks.

I cannot say all directly from overuse;
But the number of “Due to injury XY team is looking for a pitcher for the ABC tournament next weekend” on the message boards would tend to contradict the lack of injury problems with pitchers.

 

[CoachJD]

I'm more and more convinced that is part truth, part genuine lack of knowledge but also a huge dose of utter disregard for the health of the pitcher. We'll never know how many girls that could have loved the game that flamed out because of this but I'd guess we are north of 30% through high school. I also think with the massive shortage of pitchers at older levels, it's a massive disservice to the game to not share the load at younger levels.

Would bet many, many thousands of dollars that the percentage of girls who stop pitching because of serious overuse injuries before they reach high school is nowhere near 30%. That's a massive number, and it certainly doesn't align with anything I've seen or heard about.

Most of them stop pitching because pitching is hard and it takes an insane amount of work to just be adequate and it's way more fun to play other positions.

 

[CoachJD]

One the "coaches" on this site tried to tell me that the underhand motion can't be compared to the overhand motion because he could throw 200-300 front toss pitches on back-to-back days with no pain. While I agreed that the motion wasn't the same, I asked him if he went through a full wind-up on every pitch and threw with max effort. To my utter shock, I got no response.

Girls can get hurt just as easily as boys. It tends not to be Tommy John surgery, but if you let these coaches run them into the ground, they will get hurt.

That was me. And I never saw your response, which means my life was significantly better before reading your post here. Now I feel compelled to deal with the inanity.

Full wind-up/max effort isn't relevant because nobody's pitching overhand BP with a full wind-up and max effort, either. So if you're going to suggest that throwing 150 full-effort softball pitches is possibly more taxing on the body than lobbing in a couple hundred BP baseball pitches, yeah, I suppose it might be. But apples are apples and oranges are oranges.

I've said here and elsewhere, probably multiple times, overuse injuries are real, but they're probably not usually arm injuries if the pitchers use correct mechanics. The focus should be on leg injuries, especially since girls are more likely to suffer knee/ACL injuries than boys. My other contention is that it's very stupid to use baseball pitch counts as a model for softball. Only the very dumb interpret that to mean there should be no limits on softball pitching. There should be. They just should not be the same because they're objectively different acts that involve different movements.

Oh, also, none of the studies on this I've seen have been done by people who seem to understand that there's a right way and a wrong way to pitch and those who pitch the wrong way have a lot more arm/shoulder problems.

600 pitches in a day is child abuse. Why do we need to force kids to play six games in a day anyway? This isn't letting the parents/coach off the hook for overusing that pitcher, but do we really need that many games in these tournaments?

 

[LEsoftballdad]

So if you're going to suggest that throwing 150 full-effort softball pitches is possibly more taxing on the body than lobbing in a couple hundred BP baseball pitches, yeah, I suppose it might be. But apples are apples and oranges are oranges.

My point was throwing around 160+ pitches in a game and warm-ups is significantly more taxing than throwing front toss BP in softball. As you get tired, your mechanics will suffer, which can lead to injury.

My daughter was diagnosed with tendonitis this spring because her HS coach ran her into the ground. The MRI confirmed it, and she had to be shutdown for almost a month. And she wasn't throwing 600 pitches a day, but they did have five scheduled back-to-back games in a 45 day span. That's something that doesn't happen in baseball.

Agree with it or not, the girls do need proper rest, and it seems the powers that be don't seem to think they do.

 

[_MIA_]

I've said this before, but closely monitoring various performance metrics during a game is probably the best way to determine when a kid has had
enough. What exactly those would be, and the %percent change from rested numbers which would trigger being taken out, would have to be ironed out.

 

[GunnerShotgun]

The MRI confirmed it, and she had to be shutdown for almost a month.

When she came back from injury did the coach "overuse" again since there was no rule in place to prevent it?