I am a skeptic when it comes to the current age of the tissue-paper arm. Baseball babies pitchers like never before but there are more serious arm injuries, not fewer, than ever before. Why is that?
A little trip down memory lane is not only nostalgic but informative. The 2016 Dodgers infamously used 15 different starting pitchers who pitched an average of 5.3 innings per start. Their top 5 starters (by number of starts) started only 108 of the Dodgers’ 162 games in 2016 (67%).
By comparison, the 2016 Cubs’ top 5 starters started 153 out of 161 games (95%) and averaged 6.