With injuries mounting among starting pitchers, the pitch clock has found itself wrongfully on the chopping block.

Baseball’s newest feature has become a victim of circumstance.

It has been framed by unorthodox pitches and low innings as the main culprit for the Tommy John epidemic.

Implementing the pitch clock has worked wonders in quickening baseball from four or five hours to two and a half in just a season.

The pitch clock is a 25-second timer that begins between every pitch. 

If a pitcher is not set and ready to throw during those 25 seconds, then a ball will be added to the count during an at-bat.

Though, since its introduction, a startling number of starting pitchers have suffered severe, long-term injuries.

The actual culprits for injuries among starters are low-inning pitches and unorthodox pitches, mainly the sweeper.

According to pitching trends, this should not make sense.

Starters are pitching fewer innings than at any other point in history.

In 2023, the average starter faced 22.2 batters per start.

This number is down from 25.4 twenty years ago.

Despite this, the number of pitchers, especially big-name ones, who are missing significant time in 2024 is still alarmingly high.

Players such as Felix Bautista, Jacob Degrom, Sandy Alcantara, Shane McClanahan and Shohei Ohtani make up the list of pitchers who will not be active for significant portions of the season.

Ohtani is the only exception in that he is a two-way player. 

The number one injury culprit of these pitchers has been torn ulnar collateral ligaments, which require the infamous Tommy John surgery to repair. 

The scapegoat for the trend has been the pitch clock. 

Naturally, a more sped-up game has required pitchers to work faster and put more strain on their bodies.

Though, plenty of pitchers, such as Mark Buehrle worked just as fast and remained healthy for most of their careers. 

Current Mariners ace Luis Castillo works at a tempo of 12.9 seconds between pitches and has remained healthy during the pitch clock era. 

The pitch clock is the easy target because it was unpopular during its inaugural season, and its introduction only coincided with the injured pitcher trend. 

The low number of innings pitched has only done a disservice to the craft and health of starting pitchers. 

Gone are complete games from guys like Pedro Martinez and Greg Maddux. 

In their place are analytics, which tell managers to take out starters once they face the lineup for the third time, for example. 

This has only weakened starters’ arms as they are removed from games, sometimes not even halfway through them. 

Pitchers no longer build the stamina to go seven, eight or nine innings. 

This is especially problematic for aces or pitchers having great seasons. 

A pitcher who may have found themselves averaging 5.5 innings per start in one season may find themselves pitching seven innings if they are having a better season. 

This places extra strain on their arms and causes injuries.

The sweeper has done the most damage to pitchers. 

For example, Baltimore Orioles’ closer Felix Bautista does not have to worry about a high amount of innings being pitched. 

In most situations, he will only appear in the ninth inning, maybe in the eighth in a dire situation. Despite this, he tore his UCL this past season, which can be blamed on his use of the sweeper. 

The sweeper is an effective pitch due to its high amount of horizontal movement. 

Batters often struggle to hit it, and a pitcher with an effective sweeper is undeniably lethal. 

But on the other hand, the pitch forces a high amount of strain onto the arm of the pitcher. 

Two of the most prolific users of the sweeper are the aforementioned Bautista and fellow Tommy John victim Ohtani.

Another sweeper connoisseur, St. Louis Cardinal Sonny Gray, also suffered injuries near the end of last season while with the Twins. 

The connection between the two goes beyond coincidence into a cause — the correlation is there.

While the pitch clock has been blamed for the high amount of injuries among starting pitchers, it is nothing but a scapegoat. 

The more subliminal causes are trends that are becoming startlingly more common in the modern game.