Should we be concerned about Noah Syndergaard?

Sandy Koufax, widely considered among the most dominant pitchers in baseball history, had his career end at age 30 due to unbearable pain in his left elbow. It was thought to be incurable arthritis, but we now know it was likely a torn ulnar collateral ligament – the all-important elastic piece of the elbow that connects the arm bones at the joint. Had Koufax pitched in a later era, he likely could have extended his career another five or even 10 years following the now common Tommy John surgery and requisite 14 months of rehabilitation.

Fellow lefty John famously had his namesake procedure performed in 1974 by Dr. Frank Job. The pioneering surgery involves replacing the torn UCL with a ligament from another part of the body – typically a leg. John was 31 at the time of his surgery and already had 11 seasons as a starting pitcher under his belt. Following successful surgery and a year off, John went on to pitch another 14 seasons, including seven of more than 200 innings pitched and three 20-win campaigns.

While not all pitchers have returned so successfully after the surgery (see: Parnell, Bobby), more than 500 MLB players have undergone the procedure since then, including an astonishing 160 in the past five years. Of course the Mets have had their fair share of UCL tears and Tommy John surgeries during this time, including Steven Matz, Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler, Jennry Mejia, Parnell, Josh Edgin and, most recently, Marcos Molina.

Theories abound as to what’s at the root of the increase of UCL tears.  A recent study by the NY Times proved that the old theories about screw balls and sliders being the culprit are patently false. In fact, the in-depth study, that relied on a team of scientists, test subjects, computer simulations and endless data, showed that a fastball actually puts the most stress of any pitch on the arm. Some theorize that today’s pitchers are throwing harder than ever and perhaps that’s contributed to the epidemic. Others, including Ron Darling, blame the over-reliance on radar guns putting pressure on young pitchers to try to throw every pitch through a brick wall. The ubiquity of radar guns has trickled down through the minors, college, high school and even Little League. Some old school pitchers point out that guys like Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver never suffered elbow injuries, despite never being mollycoddled with innings limits. That’s not the popular opinion however, given the size of contracts aces are getting these days.

Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci has developed a theory of his own that points to rapidly increasing workloads as a red flag for arm injuries. In particular, he looks at drastic increases in innings pitched among young pitchers. So, if a rookie pitcher throws 150 innings and then follows up with 225 in his sophomore season Verducci sees him as an injury risk. “The Verducci effect” as it has been coined, is perhaps best exemplified by Mark Prior, the Cubs pitcher who was overworked in a pennant chase by his manager Dusty Baker and then suffered a serious of arm injuries that derailed his very promising career. For those of you too young to remember, he was the Stephen Strasburg of the early 2000s. After throwing 116.2 innings in his rookie season, he followed up with 211.1 in his second year. If not for the famous fan interference play costing the Cub’s a playoff berth, that number would have risen even higher.

Each pre-season, Verducci throws up the red flag for pitchers he notes are coming off significant increases in innings pitched. This time, Noah Syndergaard and his thunderbolt of a right arm made the dubious list. In 2015, he threw a combined 198.2 innings between AAA Las Vegas and the Mets’ regular and post season. In 2014, he threw just 133. As the Sports Illustrated article points out, that’s a 49.4% increase, second only to the Astros’ Lance McCullers.

Before you panic, the article concludes, “the Mets believe Syndergaard is such a physical force—a true outlier when it comes to strength and size—that the usual risk of such an innings jump for such a young pitcher does not apply.”

Verducci’s theory certainly holds some weight, but still, it’s a bit too speculative for the sabermetric crowd. Last week MLB Trade Rumors delivered a ground breaking new study on Predicting Tommy John Surgeries. Kudos to Tim Dierkes, Bradley Woodrum for spending seven months developing a model based on mountains of data from Pitch F/X, Fangraphs, baseballic.com, Baseball Heat Maps and more. Age, the number of hard pitches thrown, standard deviation of release point, “days lost to arm injury in 2015,” and previous TJ surgery were the contributing factors in the model.

Every pitcher was put through the computer to calculate their injury risk based on this model. At the top of the list is Brandon Morrow, largely due to days lost to arm injury and a high reliance on four seam fastballs and sliders.  The highest ranking Met on the list is Erik Goeddel at number four. He’s the only Met who appears as a high risk. Much further down the list, in the moderate risk area, are Harvey, deGrom, Hansel Robles, Addison Reed and Syndergaard. Logan Verrett, Matz and Jeurys Familia are seen as minimal risks, while Sean Gilmartin, Antonio Bastardo and Bartolo Colon don’t register as risks. Obviously, fastball velocity plays a big part in the algorithm. Colon finished toward the very bottom of the list, just ahead of knuckleballer RA Dickey, who you may recall, doesn’t have a UCL ligament.

This is a really interesting study – the first of its kind – and it’s worth a look. However, as this writer commented on MLB Trade Rumors, despite all the new statistics and algorithms, there’s a reason teams still hire scouts. As a baseball coach and former pitcher, it is this writer’s belief that poor mechanics are the number one indicator of future arm injuries. Power should come from the upper back and legs, and the arm should follow through fluidly, not violently. Many quality pitchers have made it to the majors despite putting tremendous stress on their elbows with delayed follow through, coming across their bodies or the dreaded inverted W. Some of them were so egregious, you could see them coming – Kevin Brown, Jake Peavy, Strasburg, Wheeler, Masahiro Tanaka, etc.

Good mechanics alone can’t protect a pitcher from elbow injury (Harvey), but bad mechanics put undue strain on the elbow and, at least in one writer’s estimation, are the number one red flag for future TJ surgery.

Syndergaard throws really hard, he’s young, his innings increased substantially and he’s the only member of the Mets fab five who hasn’t had Tommy John surgery. This makes for great speculation, but with an easy, fluid and repeatable delivery that allows him to harness power by using his large frame to drive off the rubber and follow through without putting undue strain on his arm, Syndergaard is no more at risk for an elbow injury than any other pitcher – except maybe Dickey.