I've had MLB Network on in the background. Mitch Williams keeps saying Harvey has had at least some forearm pain going all the way back to HS.
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From what I understand, ligaments do not repair themselves if the damage is more than microscopic. Ligaments do not fuse back together like broken bones do. Ligaments do not heal like a cut does. Once a ligament is torn the only way to get back to 100% is to replace the ligament with a new one.
Really sucks to hear. Sorry for Harvey, Mets fans and baseball fans. :(
I pitched through my high school years. Not at the MLB level obviously, but still there was rarely a day I didn't have some kind of aches or pain in my pitching arm. I don't know how these guys who regularly throw 95+ mph can ever be completely healthy arm-wise.
That is correct. As Red Raindog mentioned, it is because there is not an adequate supply of blood flow to ligaments, which would promote the healing process. I've read about ultrasound being used to increase blood flow and promote healing during the course of physical therapy for non-athletes, but to my knowledge, I'm not aware of it being used in athletes because of the amount of stress placed on the ligament during athletic activities. Even if it were to heal, the ligament would be significantly weaker and susceptible to further injury, which is why Tommy John Surgery is almost universally recommended in pitchers.
Regardless, this sucks for Harvey. I wish him the best.
Certainly this is the Reds medical staff's fault.
In the FWIW category, I looked Harvey's number of innings up to see if he had a "Verducci effect' issue:
2010 North Carolina as a Junior: 90 IP.
2011 Minors: 135 innings pitched
2012 Minors 110 IP, MLB 59 IP, total of 169 IP.
2013 MLB 178.1 IP
Although this year's usage was only a little above last years to date, he was arguably over-used last year. This is why Tom Verducci named his as one of the top pitchers at risk for problems before this year started. (See HERE).
Verducci's work has been thoroughly debunked. There's really no rhyme or reason to it. It wasn't even a thorough study. He picked an arbitrary number and looked at cases to see if they fit his arbitrary number.
Baseball Prospectus did a thorough job earlier this year tearing his methodology apart:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/ar...rticleid=19497
From Sports Illustrated:
Baseball Prospectus rightly criticizes Verducci's work as overly simplistic and not scientifically based. Their cited article makes a certain amount of sense.Quote:
The Year-After Effect, as SI writer Tom Verducci has called the risk after a big innings jump, is not a scientific, predictive system. It's a rule of thumb to identify pitchers who may be at risk because of a sharp increase in workload. Last year, Verducci identified 14 young pitchers coming off workload increases of 30 innings or more. Nine of them suffered injuries or significant regression: Derek Holland, Dylan Axelrod, Jaime García, Liam Hendricks, Eric Surkamp, Chris Schwinden, Daniel Hudson, Zach Stewart and Michael Piñeda.
Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mlb...#ixzz2d7olrtUi
However, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Where there is smoke, there may well be fire. The Baseball Prospectus article includes this statement:Baseball Prospectus's own efforts in that regard was a system called "pitcher abuse points, or PAP." This system has fallen by the wayside after itself being criticized as unscientific. It was based largely on how many games a pitcher had where he threw a very high number of pitches.Quote:
With that said, my findings are not a license for teams to go out and Mark Prior-ize their pitchers. You can blow out a young (or old) arm from overuse. It's just that the Verducci formulation isn't a good guide to figure out who is at risk.
And as much as Baseball Prospectus criticizes Verducci, they have yet to implement their own scientifically sound way to rate the risk of injury to pitchers, other than to harshly condemn ever letting a pitcher exceed 130 pitches in a single outing.
Verducci's 'year after effect' has helped change baseball. Teams are shutting down starters after they have pitched 20 to 30 innings more than prior years, to reduce risk (See Strasberg in 2012). Even though the Verducci effect is deeply flawed, it remains on the table and will continue to get attention as long as SI publishes Verducci's list of 'at risk' pitchers. .