River Ryan makes clear his distain for the pitch clock as he faces Tommy John surgery:
Ryan said he started to feel tightness in his forearm in the third inning Saturday and continued to pitch until he was removed in the fifth inning after showing discomfort following a pitch to the Pirates’ Michael A. Taylor.
“It’s part of the game, man,” Ryan said after Saturday’s game. “The pitch clock definitely makes you speed up a lot. Back in the day, you didn’t have to speed up as much when you threw. So throwing back-to-back pitches in 15 seconds, it starts to take a toll. But we’ll see how it pans out.”
Chron.com
I have two thoughts on this:
- There were lots of elbow injuries before the pitch clock.
- Pitchers could have avoided the imposition of the clock. They all knew MLB wanted to speed up the game, and the league was testing pitch clocks in the minors. They could have made an effort (and batters, too) to stay on the mound, and pitch at a fast but comfortable speed. Then, in tough situations, they could have taken more time since they were making it up elsewhere. They are all in a union, and batter and pitchers could have reached an agreement to speed up the game in non-critical situations so they could slow don’t when it really mattered. For some reason, they didn’t think MLB would impose these rules.
I’m sorry Ryan’s elbow got hurt, and I hope he doesn’t need surgery. But don’t blame MLB when the players go out of their way to slow the game down. (As they did at the end of the 2023 season, leading to an even shorter time between pitches with men on base.)