Cleveland Guardians pitcher Shane Bieber is one of several high-profile victims of Tommy John surgery to start the 2024 season. The injuries have led to widespread discussion about the root causes, and Bieber was asked to weigh in on them Monday.
On Saturday, MLBPA director Tony Clark issued a statement that suggested a direct link between increased pitcher injuries and the implementation of the pitch clock. Clark suggested that there are unanswered questions regarding the “reduced recovery time” from the shorter length between pitches and the spate of injuries.
Bieber, however, was not totally willing to sign on to the union’s statement.
“I’m not ready to say that that’s the reason that it happened,” Bieber said, via Tom Withers of the Associated Press. “From a conditioning and cardiovascular standpoint, that hasn’t affected pitchers, I don’t think. So it’s hard to say what’s going on in the inner workings of the elbow and the arm. We’ll see what’s to come of it.”
There is unlikely to be one root cause of the increase in pitcher injuries. They were already on the rise before the pitch clock was implemented in 2023, suggesting a much broader problem.
Bieber is one of several pitchers to suffer a significant elbow injury this season. A number of these pitchers were handled very carefully by their teams in a bid to prevent such issues, but it is not working.
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