Scherzer Blames Pitch Clock for Pitching Injuries

“Both of them are saying the same thing: that they saw an uptick in severity,” Scherzer said on the “Foul Territory” podcast. “It makes you start scratching your head. What’s unique to 2023 here? When you make the game go faster, part of the thing is, as a pitcher, I lived it. Your form just gets fatigued faster.

“For starting pitchers that are trying to pitch 100 pitches, you’re going through that fatigue, you’re over-gripping the baseball to try to combat that fatigue, and that’s a very plausible reason for the severity of the elbow injuries.”

Scherzer didn’t put all the blame on the pitch clock, adding that it’s just part of the problem. Still, the artificial nature of pitching under a time limit was a foreign concept in baseball for basically its entire existence.

Whether the pitch clock has led to an increase in injuries, especially regarding the elbow, has yet to be verified by MLB officials. The sample size – one season – is likely too small to conduct any definitive studies.

Scherzer dealt with a shoulder injury late in the regular season and suffered back spasms in Game 3 of the World Series.

He criticized the pitch clock on several occasions while with the New York Mets before coming to Texas before the trade deadline.