Ramping Up to Nowhere

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Let’s take this show on the road.

Heading to a few spring training sites over the next few days before everyone is injured – but here is the first of many suggestions that will come from Baseball or Bust this season.

Take it slow, baseball.

What I’m seeing throughout baseball is a bit too much “ramping up.’’

As a result, injuries are already happening way too often. Baseball has a certain pace. It has always had that pace. Don’t mess with the pace.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.’’

Especially baseball.

What’s happened though is that every thing has been ramped up, some of that is because of the upcoming WBC, but I believe there is so much metric reading in the game now from the cavalcade of front office people and new coaches that the measuring never stops, even in the off-season. It only increases. Off-season hitting and pitching sessions are too strenuous and too often.

I really like what Sandy Koufax said a long time ago about spring training

“People who write about spring training not being necessary have never tried to throw a baseball.’’

The same can be said for hitters.

More platforms, more chances for the owners and players to make much more money.

The pace of spring training needs to be slowed down, not rushed, but everything is rushed now. Spring training games start this weekend. Before you know it, the regular season opener will be here on March 25 when the Yankees take on the Giants at Oracle Park on Netflix.

More platforms, more chances for the owners and players to make much more money.

As a result of all this everybody seems to be ramping up way too much and here is just a smidgen of what that brand of baseball has brought us this week.

Twins right-hander Pablo Lopez will undergo his second Tommy John surgery, the last one coming back in 2014. Lopez, 29, was “ramping up’’ ahead of his typical spring training schedule because he was getting set to pitch for Venezuela in the WBC.

Now he is a done ace for the year, just call them the Terrible Twins.

The Braves have already had to place right-hander Spencer Schwellenbach on the 60-day IL with right elbow inflammation/bone spurs, following a 2025 elbow fracture and fellow right-hander Hurston Waldrop is headed for elbow surgery. Something tells me – and I’m no pitching coach but I have been around a lot of great ones – that fractured elbows and max velocity and max spin are not a healthy combination.

Hello Lucas Giolito or someone able to throw a baseball.

Before spring training even started Ha-Seong Kim suffered a finger injury that required surgery and will keep the Braves shortstop sidelined until May. Seems he fell on ice in Korea. Catcher Sean Murphy is coming back from a hip injury, a significant labral tear that required surgery, never a good situation for a guy who has to spend most of the game squatting and framing.

The Braves are already in big trouble and when I heard of the two significant pitching injuries, I thought, gee, somehow Leo Mazzone kept his Hall of Fame Braves pitchers healthy. Leo’s mantra, whenever I talked to him was consistent and brilliant: “Throw more often with less exertion.’’

I spoke with a former pitching coach on Wednesday (not Leo) and asked him what in the new pitching world is going on with the Braves and so many other teams and the constant bombardment of pitching injuries. It only gets worse every year.

This coach did not hold back. He went up and in on the Metric Readers who pose as pitching coaches.

Why is this happening?

“It’s the emphasis on velocity. It’s the emphasis on power. It’s the emphasis on lifting weights,’’ he told BallNine. “Ron Guidry was 5-11, 160 pounds. He threw gas. He used his whole body.’’

Yes, 160 pounds of Louisiana Lightning. It was a delight to watch.

Josh Hader, the $95 million man, is out with the Astros with biceps inflammation, putting their closer situation in flux. RHP Shane Bieber is back on the shelf for the Blue Jays, who already have issues, following his return from Tommy John surgery. His ramp up did not go well.

The Rangers lost top shortstop prospect Sebastian Walcott to UCL surgery. A 19-year-old shortstop with a bad elbow is a huge blow. This all started with elbow inflammation last October in the Arizona Fall League. It got worse, not better.

Many position players have suffered elbow injuries recently in this Hawk Eye, advanced camera-based tracking system baseball world where every throw is given an MPH life of its own. It is too much.

Constantly chasing velocity is chasing trouble. And in baseball you can be sure, trouble finds you.

“Now it is all chasing velocity, chasing higher spin rates, the effort to leave it all out there, let it fly,’’ the former pitching coach from another era told me. “Every pitch doesn’t have to be your maximum effort fastball. Every pitch doesn’t have to be your highest spin rate. It’s a screwed-up game right now.’’

It sure is — and then this week there is the ugly Tony Clark situation, a released $20 million player in Nick Castellanos, subsequently picked up by the dumpster diving Padres, a move the Phillies should have made after the season to avoid it being a major spring training story, yes, quite the week for baseball and, of course, the lockout is on the horizon.

But it is the slew of ramping up injuries that is most disturbing; injuries from out of the blue and we haven’t even got to the onslaught of hamate bone injuries. More on that later.

“Do these players, when they are lifting weights or throwing ever think, ‘Gosh, my shoulder or my elbow is killing me. While they are swinging the bat do they ever think, ‘Gosh, my wrist really hurts. Do they say something?’’

Great question, and it appears when something is said, there is a brief reset and then it is right back to the same metric world.

Pitchers of all ages are now forever in love with velocity and spin readings in their “let’s go bro!” workouts. Hitters are guilty of too much swinging in this metric era and run breathlessly to a video screen.

There is much too much focus on swinging the bat, and not enough focus on hitting the baseball.

Sounds crazy, especially for someone like me who grew up in the thick-handled Jackie Robinson-bat making contact world of baseball, but it is really that simple.

For hitters of all ages, it is always about taking their A swing, and not what I call their B swing — with B standing for the baseball hitting the bat and putting the ball in play to make something happen.

Bring back the B swing, baseball.

Pitchers and hitters have lost their way because they are being led down a sanctimonious metric path and not a baseball path, not by all teams, but too many teams. The Dodgers and Blue Jays both showed the value of putting the ball in play during the World Series but overall, everywhere there are too many layers of front office people and quality control coaches, not quality coaches, mesmerized by the world of numbers.

It all sounds so intelligent in meetings and is a way to wow the owner that progress really is being made even though it is Year Five of the latest rebuild.

“Too much swinging and too much lifting,’’ the former pitching coach noted of today’s ballplayer, front office, coaching mindset. “All they do is have these players stress their bodies to the max and it certainly isn’t helping them out any.’’

It certainly is not. It is a ramp up world that is going downhill quickly

“I think the number last year was $1.8 billion 40-man roster money lost to injury,’’ the former pitching coach said.

Still, the owners, who are shelling out that money, continue to be led down that same injury-plagued path by sweet-tongued GMs and presidents of baseball operations.

As for the hamate bone, it is the hook-shaped bone stationed in the palm below the pinky. The bone is prone to breaks with too much swinging, an occupational hazard, but again, more swinging than ever now and more ramping up swinging. The days of easing into a spring training and the swing are over and sometimes there is a toll to be paid.

The Mets’ Francisco Lindor, the Diamondbacks’ Corbin Carroll and the Orioles’ Jackson Holliday, have all paid the hamate bone toll this spring. Now that is weird. Carroll was getting ramped up for Team USA in the WBC and Lindor also had hopes of playing in the WBC for Puerto Rico before insurance woes put a stop to that.

The surgery is a six-week deal, most likely. Then the question remains how much power you lose coming back from this injury.

The snap is compromised.

Another big hitter already down and out is Anthony Santander, who has been a $92.5 million bust for the Blue Jays and looked to be out of shape last season. He is recovering from shoulder surgery and could be gone for the season.

I am not even going to bring up the pitiful Kris Bryant chronic back injury saga, and shame on the Rockies for not seeing they were going over the injury cliff with Bryant.

Overall, baseball needs to get back to more of a slow and steady development world, especially in spring training.

Spring training is not the upcoming NFL Combine.

Like the great Earl Weaver once said: “This ain’t football. We do this every day.’’

They sure do. Unless something breaks while ramping up.