First Luis Severino broke. Then Chris Sale. Now Noah Syndergaard. When it comes to pitching health, these are hard times for hard throwers.
All three were All-Star pitchers in 2018. All three were among the 20 hardest-throwing starting pitchers in the majors that year. Severino and Syndergaard ranked 1-2. Sale just made it inside the top 20, as did Michael Fulmer, Jameson Taillon, Chad Kuhl and Shohei Ohtani, if he had lasted long enough to qualify.
All of them had Tommy John surgery in the past 17 months to repair a torn elbow ligament. The breakdown rate is staggering: one-third of the 21 hardest-throwing starters blew out in less than a year and a half.