SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, PA — Chinese Taipei manager Lai Min-Nan has been planning for this moment.
Yes, he’s playing for a Little League World Series championship, but he has also managed to save his ace in the hole to throw it.
Lin Chin-Tse has overpowered opposing hitters all tournament, striking out 16 in six innings and dotting the strike zone with a fastball that has reached 82 mph.
Thanks to the efficient work of Liu Wei-Heng, a lefty who pitched a near-complete game to set down Aruba 1-0 in the international title game, Lin will start against (Las Vegas) Nevada in the Aug. 24 LLWS championship game.
It’s a strategy, and a sigh of relief, for which youth baseball coaches across the globe can relate.
“It’s not necessary to have him pitch but it’s nice to have a strong pitcher to stand by,” the manager said of Lin this week through a translator.
According to ESPN, Lin’s fastball seen from 46 feet away is the equivalent of a Little Leaguer facing 107 mph.
But how safe is it for a 12-year-old to throw that hard?
“Just throwing a baseball in general, when you really look at the velocity of the shoulder joint, it’s the most kind of violent action of a joint in any sport,” says John Kunkel, an orthopedic surgeon and the medical director for the Little League World Series. “And just inherently throwing a baseball for a shoulder just puts a lot of stress on it.
“That’s why the period before the season, getting your body ready to throw is really important. And then building up, warming, all that kind of stuff. Your body really does adapt.”
As velocities are rising from youth sports to the majors, let’s consider how young pitchers can protect themselves.
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Kunkel trained to be a sports medicine specialist with college and professional teams, including the Houston Astros and Texans.
Today, he sees athletes of all ages, including 45-50 year old men and women who are playing pickleball or pickup basketball. He has worked three Little League World Series.
“With different athletes, max effort is gonna produce different velocities,” he tells USA TODAY Sports. “And so that’s where you get some limitations of just your own biology, your own structure. Some people are born with the ability to be able to throw that hard, especially at a young age.
“There’s not necessarily inherently more risk for somebody like (Lin) who’s throwing 82. It’s more on what his max effort throws are over the course of a game, season, career.”
A trend across baseball is to throw as hard as you can in a game for as long as you can. The end result, says Nick Kenney, director of medical administration for the Kansas City Royals, is seen when those pitchers reach the major leagues.
Many of them, he says, are chasing velocity instead of trying to capture it.
Kenney points to a line from Vincent Key, the Royals’ team physician: You only have so much tread on your tires: if you’re gonna burn it off every time you come to a stop sign, and if you pop it, will you surprised?
Of the trend, Kenney says: “where the game is taking us, especially with the emphasis on extreme velo and extreme spin … it’s mind-boggling. It’s extremely frustrating, but we are trying to increase our ability to find risk factors.”
What’s an effective way for a 12-year-old to pitch?
Chinese Taipei has won 17 Little League World Series titles. Lai Min-Nan, its current manager, builds his winning strategy around his pitchers controlling their fastball. Only when they demonstrate that ability will he add a slider or curve to their repertoire.
Liu Wei-Heng, his starter in the international championship, drew confidence and energy from throwing 70% strikes (50 out of 71 pitches) against Aruba.
During the 1-0 win, he and closer Chen Qi-Sheng combined for one walk over six innings. Liu pitched with runners on base in four, but calmly kept pounding strikes and trusting his fielders to make plays.
The two pitchers touched the low 70s with fastballs a few times when ESPN flashed their velocity but only dialed it up when they needed it for a punchout.
By limiting his max effort pitch count this way, Kunkel says, a pitcher is protecting himself.
“Especially as you get into the older levels with bullpen specialization and guys are coming in saying, ‘Hey, if I can just throw max effort for five innings, somebody else is going to come in and throw max effort for an inning,” Kunkel says. “’Somebody else is going to do the same thing after that.’
“Whereas 3-4 years ago, he might be thinking, ‘Hey, I’m going to throw 85% effort to see if I can complete the game. And so then your max effort pitches are actually less than maybe they are today.”
There are precautions young players can take before it gets to that point.
When should we start throwing a curveball?
Talk to your orthopedist about when might be the right time for a curve or slider. Kunkel says there’s mixed data on when is the right time, as the technique for those pitches can differ from pitcher to pitcher.
Biology also comes into play.
“Especially at this age group, the difference in growth between a 10 and a 12 year old and then different 10 and 12 year olds is vastly different,” he says. “So it’s tough to standardize those things for a league. The data really shows us it’s just those pitch counts, kind of max effort pitches, if we can manage those, that’s probably our best bet as an organization trying to standardize things to keep pitchers safe.”
Why are pitch counts so important?
Little League World Series pitchers are limited to 85 pitches per day and require calendar days of rest after numbers of pitches thrown: Four days for 66 or more pitches, three for 51-65, two for 36-50 and one for 21-35.
The LLWS went to pitch counts over inning restrictions in 2007. Before that, Mike Ludwikowski, the event’s head athletic trainer, said kids were lined up at their office at 8 a.m., getting treated for their shoulders and elbows.
The push for pitch counts has come from American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, led by orthopedist James Andrews. We can track them across Little League and travel ball, where sometimes there aren’t restrictions despite pitchers throwing a number of high-stress innings.
Our risk of an arm injury greatly increases with fatigue. For example, Kunkel says the main stabilizer to the elbow when we’re throwing is not the ligament, but the muscles around it call the flexor pronator mass.
As it gets tired over the course of a game, you start to rely more and more on your ulnar collateral ligament. We know today that a torn UCL leads to Tommy John surgery.
Kunkel doesn’t think a young pitcher should be throwing all his pitches max effort a game. Rest, both in between games and in the offseason, is crucial.
“Are we playing baseball all year round? Do we play other sports? Are we picking up a basketball in the winter? Are we playing something else also in the summer?” he says. “If you’re throwing from mound max effort all year round, that’s going to set you up for arm issues.”
What can young pitchers do to avoid an injury?
Over the past two weeks here, we’ve seen kids lay out out all over Lamade Stadium for grounders in the hole and fly balls in the gap. Nevada manager TJ Fechser says he expects it of his players.
When you’re 12, Kunkel says, you quickly bounce back from the nicks and bruises and your body adapts. You can overcome physical things faster than even major leaguers might.
But everyone needs to take a step back from competitive play at some point during the year.
“That’s not inherent just to baseball, but specialization in any sport,” Kunkel says. “We know that leads to more chronic injuries. You’re using one movement pattern, one group of muscles over time, and that’s just going to set you up for those chronic overuse injuries, whereas if you vary it and you’re playing different sports in different seasons, you’re working on different movement patterns, different muscles.
“Not only does that decrease your risk of chronic overuse injuries, but it makes you a better athlete, because you’re learning to use your body in different ways.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends kids take at least one day off a week and two months off from a sport per year. The later you can specialize, the better. You can put if off by playing one sport competitively, and others recreationally.
“Having some time throughout the year where you’re taking a break, playing different sports, those are different ways to kind of lower the volume of those max effort pitches over the course of a year and career,” Kunkel says.
If you have any pain while you’re playing, stop throwing and rest. And once you rest the amount of time a sports medicine physician recommends, understand it might take just as long to ramp yourself up to full speed.
Think about when big leaguers return from an injury, they go on rehabilitation assignments to the minor leagues, where they slowly increase their innings over a number of games.
“I always say that there’s really no way to prevent injury,” Kunkel says. “When you’re an athlete, you’re pushing your body to compete and win. And there’s no way to take the risk out of that. Athletes are always going to push their bodies and there’s going to be injury. So injury risk reduction is what we’re trying to do.
“And the best way to reduce risk is making sure that your body is ready to compete and then managing that overuse portion of it: not specializing, playing a variety of sports and then whether after injury or before the season, start slowly ramping up and making sure you’re ready to go.”
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.