May 14th: Gun Slingers Beware

After a Rookie of the Year win and a third place finish in the Cy Young voting, Jose Fernandez was sitting pretty in Miami. The team began the season with the best home record in baseball, and was an overall shock, undoubtedly, at least in part, due to their young stud ace.

That all came to a screeching halt on Monday when Twitter began to blow up with rumors that Fernandez was being put on the Disabled List. What began as an elbow strain eventually became a season-ending possibility. Although the Marlins will continue to evaluate the situation, it looks like they will be without their best pitcher for the year.

Fernandez joins a long list of young flame-throwers who have lost a year to arm surgery, most notably Stephen Strasburg of the Nationals and Matt Harvey of the Mets. In each case, the game’s brightest pitching stars are sustaining arm injuries that require major surgery.

What, though, does this growing trend say about the future of the game? Young guns are an important part of building a dynasty, but the need to wait an extra year can not only cause a pause in a playoff push but can also risk the player not recovering in the ways that the team may want.

Another piece of the puzzle is the ethical issues associated with asking players to give their all in a way that will almost inevitably lead to injury. It isn’t that these players are being mismanaged in the majors. They are being coached to the point of injury from the time they first demonstrate their unbelievable skills. This may be as early as middle school. A kid who can throw the hardest becomes the biggest star of his high school team, his college club, and even his minor league affiliate for the franchise that will be betting the farm on him. This gets to the complexity of the issue: these players are being asked to perform, to play for their team, in ways that will both get them the big contract, but also the big hurt.

Going forward, coaches at every level needed to be trained what to do when they are blessed with talented young men to throw the baseball. While a young kid might want to pitch every inning of the season, it is to a disadvantage for his long-term success to put that much strain on his elbow.

For the Marlins, and all of major league baseball, the best they can hope for is a speedy recovery and a 2015 return of the same dominant star from the past. As eyebrows begin to go up, though, about the new epidemic of elbow injuries, it is clear that something is going to have to change. It might be a new era of hitting dominance. It may be a new era of subtle, finnessed pitching rather than knockdown heat. EIther way, the injury to Fernandez is, quite possibly, the beginning of a change in Major League Baseball.