COUNTING PITCHES

10 year old Robert Meermam eats, drinks and sleeps baseball.
“I’d play baseball everyday if I could,” says Robert.
Robert has been a pitcher for little league since he was 7 years old. His passion for pitching makes it a struggle to put down the glove.
“Sometimes my arm gets a little tired, but i still just finish the innings,” says Robert.

But, he must abide by the league’s strict pitching guidelines. Kathy Meerman is Robert’s mom and coach. “We’ve started basically a 50 pitch count rotation, each boy gets to pitch about 50 pitches. So it goes about 2 innings,” explains Kathy.
According to data recently presented at the annual meeting of the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, it is the number of pitches a child throws during an outing that matters, not just limiting the number of innings a young pitcher can spend on the mound.
Dr. Timothy Radomisli is a pediatric orthopaedist with Mount Sinai Hospital. “50% of pitchers report either elbow pain or shoulder pain. Children are overusing their arms and getting injured,” explains Dr. Radomisli.
Dr. Radomisli says the most common injuries are over-use injuries that are related to throwing too much and too hard… they can cause damage to the growth plate of the shoulder or elbow.
The growth plate is the area of developing tissue near the end of the long bones in children. Each long bone has two growth plates, one at each end. The growth plate determines the future length and shape of the mature bone. When growth is complete, sometime during adolescence, the growth plates are replaced by solid bone.
Overuse, or repetitive trauma to the arm can cause microscopic fractures in the growth plate known as little league shoulder or little league elbow.
And it’s these overuse injuries that can lead to loss of motion and may require surgery to heal the problem. “If left untreated these can really ruin a kid’s career because the kids will have chronic pain and will not be throwing properly or as forcefully as they could if they were healthy,” says Dr. Radomisli.
It’s recommended that pitchers ages 8-10 should have no more than 50 pitches per outing, no more than 75 a week. For children 11-14, they should pitch no more than 75 pitches per outing. Also, according to the study, breaking balls are a big issue. No children should throw curve balls in competition until they’re at least 14 years old and they shouldn’t be throwing a slider until they’re 16 years old.
“My advice to the kids is always listen to your body if something starts to hurt, you really need to tell the coach, take a break, or you’re just going to do more damage,” says Dr. Radomisli.
Although Robert is overzealous at times and wants to continue pitching even when his arm is tired, he knows that he needs to give his arm regular “R&R” if he’s going to make it to the majors one day.
“I definitely think I want to pitch when I get older.”
The study also emphasized how rest between games is crucial. Medical experts advise that anywhere from 1 to 4 days of rest is appropriate depending on how many pitches were thrown in the previous game.
For more information on children and sports safety, click here:
http://www.aap.org/healthtopics/sports.cfm