I was at an ASU baseball game last week when Eder Erives came in to pitch.
He’s had a good freshman season so far, and as soon as he finished his warmups, it was clear something was wrong. Trainers came out, and the right-hander left the game without throwing a pitch.
A coworker leaned over and said he hates pitcher arm injuries. Pitchers are just trying to do their job, he said, and get injured throwing a pitch, something they’ve done thousands of times.
He’s right. I can’t think of another injury in sports where a player is risking his health on an action performed so frequently.
Pitching is an irregular arm motion, and everything from spraining the finger used to spin a curveball all the way up to the shoulder can make a pitcher’s arm less of a strikeout weapon and more of a dangling appendage.
There’s no collision, no nasty fault, and no one at fault.
It’s not just college pitchers. In the last few weeks alone in MLB, Arizona’s Patrick Corbin, Oakland’s Jarrod Parker and Atlanta’s Brandon Beachy and Kris Medlen all sustained arm injuries and may have to miss the season.
There’s really nothing that can be done to prevent these kind of freak injuries. They just suck.
Reach the reporter at justin.emerson@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @J15Emerson
