Rob Manfred on rash of MLB pitching injuries: 'Pursuit of spin and velocity' among commissioner's concerns

The MLB commissioner discussed several topics ahead of next week's All-Star Game

Ahead of the start of this weekend's All-Star Game Festivities at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred sat down for an interview with Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. Among the topics the two discussed were the financial impact felt by the uncertain regional sports network situation, the automated strike zone, and gambling. 

While the entire interview is worth reading, we wanted to highlight one particular answer Manfred gave to Grant concerning the rash of pitching injuries that has impacted teams throughout the spring and into the summer.

"I think there is an initial impression about a couple of topics. We think, in particular, the way young people are being trained pre-draft, but being trained in general, in pursuit of spin and velocity [is an issue]. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that those are concerns and we're going to continue there," Manfred said about some potential root causes of the injury epidemic. 

Thanks to improvements in technology and technique, pitchers have become more efficient when it comes to adding spin and velocity -- those being the traits that most often get players drafted to or paid at the game's highest levels. How, precisely, the league could put that particular paste back in the tube is anyone's guess given the incentives for pitchers. Still, Manfred asked for patience, noting that MLB has assembled a task force responsible for studying the issue and offering potential solutions. 

Manfred added that "no topic is off the table" to the task force, even the pitch clock and sticky substances. 

"My biggest hope is people will give that process a chance to play out. Getting out there and saying, for example, that the pitch clock is causing pitching injuries, when the only study that's been done suggests that's not true, isn't helpful. The same thing with sticky substances. The idea that sticky substances, or the regulation of sticky substances, is causing pitching injuries [isn't accurate]. The fact of the matter is pitching injuries have actually gone down since we started enforcing the sticky substance rule. We need to talk about what the facts are, not a narrative driven by other motivations."

Earlier this year, Texas Rangers head physician Dr. Keith Meister theorized that two pitches in particular are responsible for the injury epidemic: the sweeper and the hard changeup.