Under The Knife 3/28/25

2025 Season Begins!

I hope everyone had a happy and hopeful Opening Day. Bud Selig once said that every team should have hope and faith at the start of the season and while we mock the phrase now, the sentiment is correct. It’s a failing of baseball owners that they continue to make that less correct. Then again, I grew up a Cubs fan and when we “broke up”, my life got easier. My day didn’t hinge on whether a bunch of guys who didn’t know who I was won or lost that day, that week, or that year. People ask me now who I root for and I always say “I root for guys I like, and I root for baseball.” I’ll watch West Coast games because they’re there. I don’t care if the Padres or Mariners win or lose, but I like Dave Sims - excited to hear him in New York with Suzyn Waldman - and I like Don Orsillo and Mark Grant a lot. I watched a lot of Dodgers, and almost none of the Angels. I’m going to watch a lot of baseball in 2025, some of it even in ballparks, and I raise a glass to you, to baseball, and to another season. We made it.

Dr. Glenn Fleisig is as big a name as there is in baseball biomechanics and pitching. He’s been alongside Dr. James Andrews and his ASMI crew for decades, advancing the work from a lab to the field. He has a new idea he’s been debuting, first with a talk at SABR Analytics (where he also won the lifetime achievement award), and then on MLB Now.

The crux of the idea is changing the ball, from the current 5 ounces to 6 ounces. Fleisig’s data has long shown that torque is reduced with increased weight, which has been central to work on weighted balls going all the way back to Dr. Mike Marshall. That data is indisputable, but making a change so basic to the game is not only difficult, but creates issues beyond what Flesig can test in his lab. Flesig admits this is only a first study and much more needs to be done, but there’s a couple that I think need to be measured next.

First, we need dynamic studies on what Brian Kenny points out in the MLB Network segment. If the ball is changed, it doesn’t just affect pitchers. How would it affect hitters? Kenny suggests - and I agree - that it would cut distance and three true outcomes. Would it create more action because of reduced velocity and movement? That’s something that would need to be tested. It’s easy enough to do that, through things like the mound move in the Atlantic League.

Second, for pitchers, I’m worried about the effect of the ball. If we’re reducing the torque on the elbow, are we moving it to something else. There’s always a weak link in the kinetic chain and I’m relatively sure that Dr. Fleisig tested that, so I’m waiting to see the full study.

Third, the ball itself is likely to be an issue. Dr. Meredith Wills has detailed the issue with ball consistency over the past few seasons and changing the weight doesn’t fix this. Would the weight be created with more size, as Dr. Fleisig suggests, or a heavier “pill” in the center? I’m not sure how else it could be done - heavier yarn? I spoke briefly with her over text and she had questions about the process with the ball, but not a lot of optimism.

I asked experts and coaches about their thoughts on this. Most wanted to stay off record, but had concerns ranging from mild to major. Part of the issue is that Dr. Fleisig is an rigorous researcher in a world where anyone can call themselves a pitching expert. Many coaches and teams have their own systems and are invested in them. Fleisig’s ability to test many things quickly is limited by the need to collect data in certain ways, but that’s not the case for a lot of facilities not as interested in publishing. There’s tons of biomechanical systems out there and more data than we know what to do with.

I reached out to Kyle Boddy, who would likely have the most data and with his Open Biomechanics project, it’s likely out there. Boddy’s done more for making weighted balls a thing that anyone and my guess is that there’s enough data just in his sets on six ounce balls to know a lot more about velocities, efforts, torques, and endurance concerns.

There’s a lot to unpack with this study and the suggestion that the ball could be a fix of some of baseball’s woes. I want to read the full study, raise more questions, and I’m hoping I can get Dr. Fleisig to talk more about it in this space. I’m keeping an open mind, as we all should.

Now, let’s get to the injuries:

JARED JONES, SP PIT (sprained elbow)

I quote:

“Pirates senior director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk confirmed Wednesday that Jones has received multiple opinions confirming a UCL sprain in his right elbow. Tomczyk added that imaging didn’t reveal any ligament damage and Jones will not require surgery.”

This is from Rotoworld and I could have picked off similar things from other outlets that quoted Tomczyk. It’s a sprain, but no ligament damage. Allow me to go and bang my head against a wall, because nothing I’ve done for the last 23 years has taken. I am not the first to explain a sprain, but I feel that I’ve done my best. And it has not worked. A sprain is a tear, and a sprain is, by the very bleeping definition, damage to a ligament. Some, small, minor, major - it’s damage. That’s what a sprain is.

So what we have is a UCL sprain, one minor enough that two separate doctors (and probably three, though I couldn’t confirm this) agreed that surgery is not needed. Treatment is rest and biologic agents, though again, I could not confirm this. I think the rest confirms itself. After a period of time, likely six weeks, Jones will be re-examined to see if the UCL is healing/healed. If so, he’ll progress and if not, surgery might need to be reconsidered. It’s always worth trying and with wide agreement on what is a small sprain - it’s a sprain! - there’s better than a coin flip that Jones will avoid the year off and take the month or two to heal.

Subscribers will get all the info, not just a taste. C’mon, order the dessert and for less than the price of a good tip, you get all the injury info you need. Yeah, I was watching Top Chef when I typed this out …