Cleveland Guardians ace Shane Bieber is one of several MLB pitchers to get bad injury news this year, which some have started to blame on the implementation of the pitch clock. Bieber isn’t so sure that’s the case, though.
The Guardians announced Saturday that Bieber will undergo Tommy John surgery to repair his torn UCL. The same day, Atlanta Braves ace Spencer Strider was also announced to have damaged his UCL. Those injuries, along with others earlier in the year, including to Gerrit Cole, led to dueling statements from the MLB Players Association and MLB over the pitch clock.
Speaking Monday ahead of the Guardians’ home opener, Bieber indicated that he believes the pitch clock hadn’t affected pitchers as severely as its critics believe.
It was an emotional day for Bieber, who choked up when talking about how much he was looking forward to this season, saying, “I was falling back in love with pitching.” He went on to receive a standing ovation from the Progressive Field crowd during his introduction.
MLB implemented its pitch clock last season after years of experimentation in the minor leagues, with pitchers allowed to wait only 15 seconds between pitches with the bases empty and 20 seconds with men on base. The league made the restrictions stricter over the winter by unilaterally changing the men-on-base timeframe to 18 seconds.
Bieber isn’t the only former American League Cy Young Award winner to be skeptical that the current spate of injuries can be laid entirely at the feet of the pitch clock.
Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander, currently on a rehab assignment with the Triple-A Sugar Land Skeeters, gave a lengthy answer when asked about the injuries. Instead of focusing on the pitch clock, Verlander noted how every pitcher is throwing with maximum effort and how changes to the baseball have incentivized a focus on chasing strikeouts:
Verlander also mentioned the downstream effects of such changes on college, high school and youth pitching.
Pitchers have been complaining about MLB’s tinkering for quite a while — and not just with how the ball flies out of the yard a bit more. Some fans this week dug up a 2021 interview from current Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow, in which he blamed a recent UCL tear and flexor strain on MLB’s crackdown on sticky stuff.
Glasnow claimed that he had used the common combination of sunscreen and rosin to get better grip. When he went cold turkey off the stuff for a start, he said he could feel significant aftereffects on his arm, and he described how he had to change his pitching:
