MLBPA head Clark: Teams 'blowing out' pitchers

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Players' association head Tony Clark said teams are encouraging pitchers to throw as hard as possible, leading to more injuries and minimizing the importance of starting pitchers.

Speaking before Friday's World Series opener, Clark criticized how the game has evolved in the analytics age. There were a record-low 26 complete games in the major leagues this season — four fewer than Catfish Hunter alone threw in 1975.

“Unless and until the decision makers determine that blowing out pitchers day in and day out as a result of how they're using them or what they're requiring of them is no longer the best way to treat their players, we (won't) see a change,” Clark said. "Absent that, a rule change would be challenging.”

Over the past 10 years, the average fastball velocity has risen from 93.3 mph to 95.5 during the 2024 regular season. Injury rates have also skyrocketed, with 484 pitchers going on the injured list this year, nearly double the 2014 total.

Starters have averaged 12.8 outs in the postseason, down from 13.8 last year and 15 in 2022, according the Elias Sports Bureau.

"The conversations that we've had with our players have suggested that unless or until you draw a line in the sand and force change, that the decision makers on any one particular team are going to continue to make the decisions that they're making, which is have pitchers, starting and relievers, max effort for the period of time that they can have them," Clark said. "As soon as they seem to run out of gas, as the data suggests that they're going to, recycle them out and to burn out another pitcher.”

When Clark in April claimed a shorter pitch clock led to injuries, MLB said there was a "long-term trend, over multiple decades, of velocity and spin increases that are highly correlated with arm injuries."