Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 855: Jeff Passan on Righting the Elbow and Writing The Arm

Episode Date: April 5, 2016

Ben and Sam talk to Yahoo! Sports columnist Jeff Passan about his new book, The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports.

🎵 Little conscious, but I feel alive. The little girl red was in your eyes. Good morning and welcome to episode 855 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hey, Ben. Hello. And today we are going to be talking to Jeff

Passan, who is the author of the extremely good book, which is out today called The Arm Inside the Billion Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports. I've been looking forward to this book for so long, Jeff. How are you doing? I've been looking forward to being done for so long. Yeah. I mean, this is such a huge, huge, huge project. I'm sort of curious to know what was your first official interview or your first official act of putting this book together? I'd say once I got the idea for it, my first official act was trying to convince Danny Duffy to let me follow him around for the next year. And unsuccessfully. This is not a book. Everybody don't rush into this expecting a lot of insight into Danny Duffy. He is mentioned once in the epilogue.

Yes, this was a failed courtship. And I was spitting game like I never have before. And it just did not work. I don't want to relive that moment. I mean, it's pretty shameful in hindsight. Like I'll look back on the text messages that I was sending him and just shake my head and be like, pass it. God, you pathetic. When I, I think that when you mentioned somewhere publicly that you were following Daniel Hudson through his rehab, that is when I really became extremely excited. Like I would have been excited anyway, I would have wanted to read your thoughts on it and all that. But knowing that you were going to take us through this rehab, because it is sort of an underrated aspect of

Tommy John surgery, what a brutal and grueling rehabilitation process it is. And so when you were looking for a guy to go along with on this journey, did you think that it was realistic? I mean, how surprised were you when Daniel Hudson actually said yes. And when Todd, Todd copy actually said, yes, I was, I knew someone was going to, because I had been rejected by Duffy. I had been rejected by Brandon Beachy and that was frustrating. And I suppose there was a point where I said, is someone really going to let me do this? Because it's a lot to ask. I mean, think about it. You are at your most vulnerable, vulnerable point in your life because these guys have been conditioned to focus on baseball and their lives are baseball and their livelihoods are baseball and it's taken away from them. And everybody knows

how arduous Tommy John rehab is because you've seen teammates walking around the clubhouse with the zipper on their elbows and you've seen the sorts of exercises they do and how they, you know, they feel like they don't belong in the clubhouse because they're not playing. So it was me asking somebody to trust me to handle their story in the right fashion. And I think it takes a pretty vulnerable person to do that. And so with Daniel Hudson, Nick Pecorio, a good friend and a good man, put in a good word for me and said, hey, if you decide to do this, Jeff will treat you right. And I talked with his agent, Andrew Lowenthal, who was

spectacular about it as well. And so he said yes first at the same time, though, I had reached out to the Dodgers about Todd coffee. And as you'll learn from reading this book, uh, Todd coffee has no, no secrets to keep. And he, uh, he was on board from the start. He's like, hell yeah, let's do it. He'd been through Tommy John before he knew what what it was like. And I think he wanted to previous pitching crises. It's never really been a safe or pain-free occupation. And as bad as things are now, as you detail from every conceivable angle in a very engaging way, do you think that things are better than they used to be? You obviously spend a lot of time talking about players who blew out their elbows before Tommy John surgery was even an option. You talk to Sandy Koufax and you got him to describe the ordeal he went through until even he could no longer tolerate it.

So if you could pick any era in which to become a pitcher, would you want to do it today despite all of the problems facing pitchers? today despite all of the problems facing pitchers? Or would you want to go back to a previous era when guys didn't throw as hard and perhaps didn't face this injury quite as often, although when they did, there was no recourse? Yeah, I think you want to pitch today in spite of all that, because there are people who can do it in a conscientious matter. And it takes the knowledge of parents and coaches and the buy-in of parents and coaches to rear a pitcher who doesn't abuse his arm. And because of the medical and technological advances, even though we're still relatively ignorant about the arm and about what's going on inside of it and about what ideal mechanics really might be. Despite all that, we still know a hell of a lot more than we did back when they thought that pulling teeth was going to fix your shoulder.

And that's the thing. One of the parts of the book that stands out to me as much as any is when Sandy Koufax was talking about how the Dodgers would bring 600 players into camp. It's a staggering number. And the reason that they did it is because they knew guys were going to get hurt. And when guys got hurt, they just sent them off to the glue factory and brought in some more. And it's really Darwinian, the way that baseball operated back then. And I think that that's the reason that they were able to have 300 inning pitchers because it was total survival of the fittest. And some guys, whether it was mechanically, genetically, or usage wise, just were not punished as bad as others and were able to survive this. You talk a lot about mechanics. You try to sort of divine the relationship between mechanics and injury risk in the book. Daniel Hudson tried to change his mechanics after the second surgery.

And I've always been kind of agnostic about mechanics because I know I have no idea whether a certain style of pitching will lead to injury. And really, it seems like it's possible that no one else has any idea either. It definitely seems like the more certain someone is about having the answers, the less likely they are to actually have the answers. So after spending three or four years working on this book and talking to everyone in this world, do you consider yourself qualified to make any sort of judgment about a pitcher's injury risk based on his mechanics? And is there anyone you would trust to make that judgment? Here's what I know about mechanics. There is such a

thing as perfect mechanics and perfect mechanics are what a pitcher who stays healthy has. Right. And, and that's, it's, it's like, you can't work forward. You just have to work backward. And everyone can say Greg Maddox has perfect mechanics. You know why we like Greg Maddox? Because he's got a really smooth, clean delivery. And we sometimes mistake beauty for something that's actually going to keep you healthy. I mean, Chris Sale has a horribly ugly delivery and Chris Sale has managed to stay healthy up to this point. So his mechanics have been pretty damn ideal. Anybody who says he or she understands mechanics and can talk about perfect mechanics,

charlatan, snake oil salesman, I just don't buy it. And there are certain things that I think can probably tend to be correlated with higher injury risk. I mean, there's a study by Weemee Dwogi in Washington, D.C. about how poor timing, for example, can lead to bad mechanics. And yeah, of course, poor timing is going to lead to bad mechanics. I mean, that's a pretty self-evident and obvious thing. But to look at a pitcher and say this guy is going to get hurt, you just don't know what's going on inside his body. You don't know the tensile strength of his ligaments. You don't know his shoulder strength. You don't know his ankle mobility. You don't know anything that goes into the kinetic chain

that determines these things. And so without those measurements, I don't see how with the naked eye, even with the slowest of motion, slow motion video, we can possibly divine when a guy is going to get hurt or not. We're just not there yet. Not there yet. Do you think that's a different conversation in 10 years, 15 years? No, I don't. I think eventually we may get to some point. For example, a product like Kinetrax that can track every single movement, every single joint angle to the millisecond. Maybe we get an epidemiologist or an analyst on it to try and find some sort of common thread that these pitchers who break down have. And maybe then, whether it's the elbow being at a certain point or the hips rotating at a certain point or the shoulder externally rotating to a certain degree, maybe then if we get a sense that players who have X have all gotten hurt, maybe then we have a better sense and can try and teach it a little differently. But I know

the way I'm teaching the eight-year-old kids I'm teaching right now, and trust me, I understand that that's nothing. They're eight-year-old, nine-year-old kids. But the way I'm teaching them is throw how it's comfortable for you. And if you're doing something like stepping way off to the left when you're throwing, we're going to correct you and have you step on line. But ultimately, the way you throw, I really do think is the way you throw. And Daniel Hudson is a perfect example of that. He wants to throw differently. He knows that the way he throws puts him at risk just because of the timing being so far off with his delivery.

But when you have mapped mechanical patterns for what really with him is two decades now, erasing those is damn near impossible. Yeah, but where are your eight-year-olds ranked on Perfect Games eight and under top 100 list? I have a feeling that if my child ever is going to be ranked on a perfect game list, we're going to have to change his last name because I don't think my name is too terribly welcome in perfect game right now. Why do you think that? Well, I guess maybe not.

Why do you think that MLB hasn't? But do you think it's realistic that MLB will take over the youth sort of? I don't know if they'll take over the whole industry, but like football has its combine. sort of, I don't know if they'll take over the whole industry, but like football has its combine. You don't have to go to 35 private showcases to get noticed as a football player by a coach or by, you know, an NFL team. And it doesn't seem that impossible that Major League Baseball would do something similar where you'd have a spring combine and a fall combine for everybody who's draft eligible the next year and sort of take the onus off players to travel around the country spending all this money just to get noticed. Is it something that

MLB is at all thinking about? I know that they are somewhat uncomfortable with the situation as it is now. And particularly there are individuals within the game who are very uncomfortable with it. Is there any movement toward consolidating that industry under their umbrella so that they can exercise some control over what 15 and 16 year olds are expected to do? I've been told from very high levels at Major League Baseball that that's something that they plan to do within the next five years. Now, I don't know why they wouldn't do it this year. I guess they're probably trying to get the collective bargaining agreement out of the way. And this will come up in basic agreement discussions with

the union. But I know the union's motivated that way, too, because that's the thing and this will come up in basic agreement discussions with the union but i know the union's motivated that way too because that that's the thing about this nobody wants injuries it's like nobody nobody benefits from this at all the game suffers the players suffer the team suffer the fans suffer and if you have a generation kids coming into the game who have surgically repaired arms uh that does not portend well for the future. I mean, we all know from Jeff Zimmerman and Russell Carlton and all the brilliant people who have done the actual research and study on this, that the greatest predictor of a future injury is a past injury, especially when it comes to the arm. And if you have kids who have been getting cut at 15 and 16 and 17, the chances of them lasting to 30 years old

before they need another Tommy John surgery are damn near slim to none. And the chances of them coming back from that second Tommy John surgery and being effective as they were before is pretty much the same. You say nobody wants injuries. And I think that that's probably true. And I think that what I'm about to ask you next is probably either somewhere between a hot take, a stretch, or a pie in the sky. But on the other hand, if you did get rid of a massive amount of pitcher injuries right now, the game almost couldn't survive that. Because part of what keeps the balance between offense and defense is that pitchers are so affected by these injuries and always have been. It is a game, a sport of attrition, particularly at the pitcher level. And if suddenly we have 30% more pitchers and could eliminate the 30% of pitchers who make up the bottom of rotations

and bullpens right now, you'd have, you know, two one games every night. So can you kind of though, I mean, make the argument that in fact, it, it is this great villain of the sport is actually a key part of the fabric of the sport, that you sort of can't imagine a form of baseball in which pitchers aren't restricted in what they can do and in which the balance between offense and defense isn't largely dictated by this force that's out of everybody's control. I think in order for that to happen, though, at this point, because velocity is such a huge part of a lot of these injuries, in order for that to happen, velocities across the game would have to come down. And I think that right there would be a balancing act in and of itself. You know, the rise of velocity is correlated strongly with the rise of the pitcher in the last five years. And I don't think that's any accident.

I think if velocity weren't there as much strikeouts would, uh, would go down. And if strikeouts are going down and balls are in play, that's, uh, it's inherently going to be more offense right there. So, and injuries, injuries would go down to injuries would go down as well. I mean, you can like, in a sense, this is a bargain that pitchers have made. They're willing to accept more injuries in order to throw harder and teams are willing to accept more injuries in order to have more hard throwers. Yeah, no, I think that's a, I think that is a very fair argument to make. And it's, it is a total Faustian bargain. And look, if guys can throw 100 miles per hour, if their bodies can allow them to do that, they're going to do that. And I think a lot of that is because in baseball right now, it's so romanticized.

I was talking with someone at MLB a few days ago, and they helped out with the movie Fastball that just came out. And it glorifies speed. And there was a little bit of cognitive dissonance with the person I was talking with because he's like, why are we glorifying something that is leading to these injuries? Should we be involved with doing that or what should our involvement be? Picking up on that, you later in the book, you talk about this figure named Dr. James Buffy, which I hope I'm pronouncing right. I don't know if I am because he's not a public figure, perhaps unfortunately for the world. And he is this brilliant researcher who developed a model that seemed to have the potential to predict injuries and perhaps prevent injuries. And it looked like he was interested in staying in the public eye and working for a public facility. And then the Dodgers swooped in with a sweet offer and stole him away. And now we'll never know what his work is again. So whose fault is that? If anyone's, you can't really blame Buffy for taking the best offer. You can't really blame the Dodgers for wanting to win the most baseball games.

blame the Dodgers for wanting to win the most baseball games. Should you blame Major League Baseball for not being the one who gives him the best offer? Or is this just sort of the system? No, I think MLB should have hired him. And I think he would have been perfect there because they have the resources that the Dodgers do. And they have the motivation to do it for everyone. I don't blame the Dodgers for hiring James Buffy at all. They're using their money to get a competitive advantage. And they're not the only team trying to do this. The Indians are very, very deep into not just injury prevention, but really growing pitchers and doing it through novel methods. And the Astros

have, I think, I'm trying to think what he is. I think it's Bill Furcus is his name. Right. Medical director. Exactly. Medical director. Somebody who's trying to use data to suss out all the changes in pitchers' arms. And Cardinals have a guy named Paul Davis who's working with their minor leaguers. And Paul Davis is such an interesting, fascinating guy. He said something that actually made a whole lot of sense to me. And I want to run this by you guys because I'm curious to see if this ever would make it out into the public and stick. We talk about mechanics, but what are mechanics really?

He wants to characterize it as movement. And I think that's a much better way of looking at what a pitcher does. How does he move? Where is his body in space at a particular time? And I think rather than focusing on this word mechanics, that sounds so mechanical, talking about the movement of a pitcher has a better chance to actually teach them the right way to move and how to do it properly and get in the right position. So there are people, the point is there are people at all levels of the game right now that are trying to do something about this. But the onus is ultimately going to be on Major League Baseball because it's the place that has all the power and all the ability to govern from the top down

and to tell Little League this is how things need to be and to tell Perfect Game this is how things need to be because we are the arbiters of the sport and you guys need to develop players so we can have them healthy by the time they reach us. Ben and I have both, I think, bemoaned the sort of proprietary nature of teams work and so much of the intelligence into this issue is happening behind closed doors. And it seems like a loss that they can't share it. On the other hand, it also seems like, one, teams are horrible at keeping their secrets a lot of times.

I mean, I don't know that there is a single game that a team has made over the last 20 years that hasn't been adopted by the rest of the league or at least been identified by the rest of the league. And having 30 teams that are competitive with each other seems like a better kind of motivator know, motivator for gains than having, you know, this league office, which, you know, has a great incentive to do something about this, but it's, you know, top down instead of kind of, I don't know, capitalistic based or whatever the case

may be. I'm not, I don't know that it's not a bad situation that, you know, the Dodgers get to hide the best, one of the best thinkers on this issue behind closed doors. But I'm also, I don't know, I'm not sure if it's actually good or if it's actually bad. And I don't know. I don't know if you got a sense of whether that competition among 30 teams is inspiring gains on this. Somebody in MLB told me one time that he thought that, you know, that is the great motivator in this sport is that, you know, that with 30 teams that are all at the top of the industry and very smart and have huge incentives, especially when you have such a limited number of people who actually are doing science on this. And maybe this desire for it inspires more people to get into the field, in which case, hey, great. That's fantastic.

great. That's fantastic. But it's like Randy Levine said in the book at one point, and he's the Yankees president, I don't want to contribute to what other people are getting. I want to do it myself and I want to keep it for myself. And let's remember, Andrew Friedman comes from the Rays, and we're talking about secrets getting out. The Rays were damn good at keeping secrets, at least I think so. I mean, Jonah Carey wrote a whole damn book about them, and they didn't talk to him about that. So the place, the Dodgers now, I don't know, frankly, until the book came out, whether anyone had even written about the think tank that they're forming. I think Pedro Moura might have alluded to Doug Fearing, who's in charge of that a couple of times, but they've done a very good job of keeping things tight right there. And it's one of the

reasons, frankly, that I have a lot of faith that the Dodgers are going to be really good in the coming years. It's not just the farm system. It's not just the payroll. I think they're just not afraid to ask questions that others don't necessarily try to answer. So what is a reasonable goal for MLB or I guess maybe even for all of us? I mean, you could imagine, and I don't, I, you know, some people will say that this is not realistic, but just hypothetically, you could imagine that somebody develops a synthetic ligament that you put in somebody's elbow and it never snaps that, you know, you basically become bionic and then never, you know, no Tommy John ever again. Would that be satisfactory? I mean, if I told you, if I came back from the future 20 years from now and said, we, we fixed Tommy John,

we all have synthetic ligaments. Would that be satisfactory? Is there something else that would sort of mark success in this field? I mean, is it just getting, having fewer injuries? Is it having shorter recovery time for injuries? Is it simply protecting kids? And we accept that grownups are going to get injured. When will you be able to declare victory in this field? I think the victory is going to start by preparing the next generation not to go out and pitch year round and not to emphasize velocity too young and to educate parents and coaches and have them, you know, have there be barriers in place. And Major League Baseball is trying to do that with Pitch Smart. And I think it's done a solid job so far. But you need buy-in from everybody, and you're not always going to have that.

And I think if the injury rates among kids can go down, then that's a very good first step. At the same time, the generation of kids now, 17, 18, 19, the ones late high school, college, going into MLB, I think the cat's out of the bag on that one. And I think the injuries are going to continue for another decade. But that's why you need to look at this and try and stop it at the younger ages now so that next generation after this one has a chance to stay healthier. Yeah, there's a reason though that everybody pitches year round. Part of it is because of these perverse incentives for them to get noticed. But part of it also is because it really does help players develop younger, faster, maybe better. And maybe you could make the case that in fact, the goal is not to

eliminate year round pitching, but to make it, to make this a world where you can pitch year-round without injuring yourself. And if the solution to that is, you know, we have better doctors, we have better mechanics indicators or movement indicators, or we somehow make pitchers impervious to injuries, invincible, then, you know, a generation from now, maybe it's that you can throw year-round without getting hurt. And maybe that's the goal. I mean, we also, a generation from now, maybe it's that you can throw year round without getting hurt. And maybe that's the goal. I mean, we also, we don't, we want pitchers to not get hurt. We also want to see pitchers like Jose Fernandez, who are just infinitely better than we could have imagined 30 years ago. And so I don't know if we're, I guess what I'm saying is that what you're

describing as, as success sounds like success now, it sounds very good. And I wonder if, if having taken care of that will just inevitably get greedy and start aspiring for something more. I'm okay with that. I just don't know that the human body's okay with that. Yeah. I don't know though, you know, if, if there is that, that was the really interesting thing about Dr. Buffy's work that he theorized that theorized that the forearm muscles can help stabilize the elbow. And if we can do things to make the forearm muscles as strong as they need to be to focus on particular muscles in the forearm, like we have the particular muscles in the shoulder, doing job exercises and the other things that have more or less not eliminated shoulder injuries, but certainly lessened them. If we can do those things for the elbow, then yeah, maybe there is a possibility of us breathing pitchers who can, at least in their later teen years, go year round. I don't think,

though, that up until kids are 13 or 14, that there's really any point in it. And I don't think that there's all that big of a point of competition any point in it. And I don't think that there's all that big of a point of competition up until that point. And I say this as a parent of a fiercely competitive eight-year-old who loves playing baseball and who wants to go out there and kick ass every single time. You want to encourage winning and emphasize winning, but not to the point of it being detrimental. And that's the balance that's so difficult to strike. Yeah, you spend a lot of time in this sort of scene, both in the United States and in

Japan, where it's especially competitive at the youth levels. And that's sort of what I wanted to ask you is, is the greater injury? I mean, how much did you sense that what kids are doing with that hyper-competitive ultra-competitive atmosphere at a young age is the damage more to their arm or is there something damaging psychologically to it or just to their youth? Uh, did you, do you feel like if we could make the arm impervious to these injuries, it would still be a significant social issue that we have such high demands of young pitchers. I mean, I think we can look at anything in life and say, hi, you know,

demand on kids is greater now than it ever was. And maybe that's just recency bias. Maybe that's, you know, me as a parent looking at my child and what he's doing and comparing it to what I was doing at that age and being like, whoa, like this is faster than it used to be. Why, why are we doing things quicker right now? What's the need for immediacy? What's the rush there? Uh, but in other cultures like Japan, it's, it's always been the case because the idea is that it will instill virtues in you and that the younger age you learn them, the better off you are. And in China and in Australia, at the Australian Institute for Sport, kids are picked, you know, from the time they're five or six years old to specialize in a sport. And they focus on that for the rest of

their lives with the hopes of being Olympians or stars or whatever it may be in their sport. And so I don't think this is anything novel necessarily. I think it's kind of jarring because it's fairly new in the United States, but I'm not sure it's too terribly healthy. Some kids love it. Like Trevor Bauer said, I'm the case for single sport specialization because he did nothing else and he threw baseball almost every single day and he's been healthy and

he made it to the major leagues despite being a mediocre athlete. And so there are cases where it works and where it's right. But writ large, I think that's what the problem is and that that's where you really have to be careful and look out for the kids. And lastly, Sam mentioned Jose Fernandez a moment ago. Obviously, though, the long-term solution is probably something more sweeping, whether it's imposing limits on workloads for kids early on or something like an artificial ligament or nanotechnology

or something science fiction-y. But in the short term, what should fans think? What should their default position be on innings limits at the major league level based on your research and people you've talked to? Is it, you know, obviously the fewer pitches you throw, the less damage you do, the fewer opportunities there are to get hurt. But is there a real additional risk to a sizable single season increase? And do you think there's a better approach than picking and sticking to a single number? I think Clayton Kershaw should throw 250 innings a year and 120 pitches every outing. I, I, no, I do. I think there are certain guys who, who have shown durability and if guys have shown durability, you push them and you use them as best you can. And there are very few guys who are like that though though. I'd put Kershaw there. I'd put Baumgartner there.

I mean, the list isn't very long. But for young pitchers especially, I don't think innings limits are a bad idea. I also don't think jumping more than 30 innings is a terribly detrimental thing. I mean, we've all seen the Raducci effect debunked many places, and I tend to buy into that. I also don't think that keeping pitchers on 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 pitch limits down in A ball is good for them at all. So it's – one of the main takeaways I hope people have from this is everybody's different. And if you have a paint-by-numbers routine there in an organization, it's not going to work.

You have to have better staff, a bigger staff, and more assessment individually. All right. Well, I will say some sincere and glowing things about the book in just a minute, but the Passin Media Tour must continue. So we will let you go. Thank you for coming on, and I hope you sell a billion books. go. Thank you for coming on. And I hope you sell a billion books. I hope so too. Thanks for having me boys. Great talking. And I'm very much looking forward to doing this with you next month as well, when I can interview you about your book. All right. Thank you. Take care guys. All right. So I can only hope that people can afford to buy two baseball books this spring. Obviously I hope you'll all buy the book that Sam and I wrote, but I think you'd be silly not to buy Jeff's book, which you can read right now. Sam and I have both read it cover to cover and strongly endorse it. I've read a lot and even written a fair amount about pitcher injuries over theity in Sports. And if you feel like killing two books with one transaction, our book comes out in a matter of weeks now. It's called The Only Rule Is It Has to Work.

And it's the story of how Sam and I ran an independent league baseball team, the Sonoma Stompers, last summer. Spoilers, no one on our team had Tommy John surgery. So obviously we figured out the secret to preventing pitcher injuries. Our book comes out May 3rd, although odds are it will ship a little bit early if you pre-order. You can also support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. A handful of people who have done that already. Thomas Schiavone, Steve May, James Walker, Tim Morton, and Jason Brooks. Thank you. You can send us emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild

and you can rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. You can also get the discounted price on the play index by going to baseballreference.com and using the coupon code BP. If you have questions for us, get your emails in soon, because we will be back tomorrow with a listener email show. Oh, for the day it's far wide on the other side Where the fairy's flowers bloom On the right hand and on the left hand

Fifteen miles of available room