Travis Garner was shocked when he returned to the state of Mississippi in 2013.
After coaching baseball for nine years in the state of Alabama, Garner had learned how to manage and manipulate all of the pitching rules that governed his sport.
But Garner was stunned to learn there were almost no pitching rules in Mississippi when he accepted the job as Starkville High School baseball coach.
“I liked it that way,” Garner said. “I liked knowing it was up to you how you’re going to manage kids and keep them healthy and all of that fun stuff.”
Garner likely will have at least one more rule to contend with next season, as the National Federation of State High School Associations has directed its members to regulate the number of pitches a high school player can throw in a game.
The rule, which will go into effect in the spring of 2017, comes amid growing concerns about overworking young arms. According to Elliot Hopkins, the NFHS director of sports and student services, the federation didn’t proscribe a specific number, but a limit must be established by next season.
“My personal preference is to leave it alone,” Garner said. “The proposed deal is going to work in some ways and in other ways it is not. I wish they would do a better job with coaches in teaching us how to take care of arms. That is one of the things we try to do here really well. In three years here we have not had an arm injury, but I get why they are making the rule.”
Garner said setting an arbitrary pitch count doesn’t take into consideration how much stress is put on a pitcher in a game. He said a pitcher could coast through nine innings and throw 110 pitches, while another player could struggle and amass a pitch count of 110 in four innings.
Garner, who played baseball at Starkville Academy and coached at Northridge High School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, before taking the job at Starkville High, said some older coaches likely will wonder why the NFHS is mandating that a change be made after they have done it another way for so long. He anticipates some baseball coaches might be stubborn at first, but he feels confident they will deal with it and move forward.
According to The Associated Press, every state plus the District of Columbia is a member of the NFHS. Each state except Michigan has a sports medicine advisory committee that likely will be involved in settling on a specific number.
“I think they’re better suited to determine what the number is,” Hopkins said, noting the number in warmer climates, where baseball season starts earlier, might be higher.
States like Texas already have established their limit at 125 pitches. Alabama, Colorado, and Kentucky have said that will be their number, too, Hopkins said. Minnesota will use 105 during the season and 115 or 120 in playoffs.
Anecdotal evidence suggests it is time to make the change. As a member of the USA Baseball sports medicine advisory committee, Hopkins said he sits between well-known sports surgeon Dr. James Andrews and former major league pitcher Tommy John at meetings. Andrews in 1974 pioneered a surgery, first performed on and then named for Tommy John, that reconstructs the ulnar collateral ligament in a pitcher’s elbow, allowing them to resume their careers after rehabilitation.
“During those meetings, Dr. Andrews always expressed how more and more of his service, and his surgeries, revolved around younger kids,” Hopkins said.
USA Baseball, the national governing body for amateur baseball, in 2014 launched the program “Pitch Smart,” which sets age-appropriate guidelines for the number of pitches a pitcher as young as 7 can throw and the amount of rest they should get between pitching appearances. Most amateur baseball leagues have adopted the guidelines, which set 120 pitches as the maximum recommended for pitchers ages 19-22. It then also requires they receive four days of rest.
The “Pitch Smart” chart lists 95 pitches as the maximum number for players 13-16. That number increases to 105 for players 17-18.
One impact Hopkins hopes will come from the rule change will be the involvement of more players.
“You have maybe three or four pitchers in your bullpen typically,” he said. “We’ll get some kids who really can’t throw five innings, can’t give you five innings, but they can give you a solid two, and now you’ve got a bullpen and you get more kids involved.”
Robert Holloway, who is an associate director at the Mississippi High School Activities Association (MHSAA), said he will talk about the rule with baseball coaches on Thursday at Mississippi Association of Coaches (MAC) meeting in Jackson.
Holloway, who is in charge of officiating for the MHSAA, the state’s governing body for public schools, has served as coordinator of umpires for the Mississippi Association of Community and Junior Colleges (MACJC) and is a veteran Division I umpire. He also serves on the NFHS Rules Committee. He said the MHSAA has used a limit on the number of innings a pitcher can throw in a week as its only restriction.
“This is new to all of us,” Holloway said. “We have to look at this right away.”
Holloway said taking coaches at their word, or using the honor system, is the only way to ensure compliance with the rule. He said changes might have to be made on scoreboards to show the number of pitches for each player and that the MHSAA might be called on to look at scorebooks to rule on a dispute. Whatever number the state of Mississippi sets for pitchers, Holloway said everyone will have to feel their way through it and make it work.
“I would hope, and I do believe, that the coaches we have out there for the most part are upstanding and trying to do the right thing,” Holloway said. “The bottom line is this is protection for the kids, and I hope the coaches are not going to value winning over hurting a kid or hurting an arm that might not otherwise be hurt.
“Like I said earlier, I just think the integrity of our coaches is going to be of the utmost importance. It might be an issue come playoff time, and we might have to monitor it more closely come playoff time. I don’t know we will have a lot being said in the regular season, but as the stakes get higher we might get more calls of people alleging there are teams that are not doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”
While the state of Mississippi awaits the implementation of the pitch count rule, some in the state of Alabama are working with a different rule.
In the Alabama Independent School Association (AISA), pitchers are allowed to throw a maximum of 14 innings in a week. Pitchers also are required to have 48 hours rest after they throw seven innings.
Pickens Academy baseball coach Brach White said the AISA doesn’t have a pitch count rule but that it has been talking about it. A member of the AISA Rules Committee, White said the organization discussed a pitch count in the spring because its rules will come up for a vote next year.
“I like trying to take care of people, but I don’t know what the best case is,” said White, who coached baseball at Central Academy in Macon from 1994-2007 before moving on to Pickens Academy in Carrollton, Alabama, where he also serves as headmaster of the school. “When I started coaching in Mississippi, there wasn’t a pitching rule. I have seen guys in a three-game playoff series appear in every game. I think that is why they have the rule now.”
White understands the idea behind a pitch count limit, but he also said every pitcher is different in that it takes some a few pitches to loosen up while others need 40-50 to warm up. That is why White said coaches have to know each player and understand the strength of their arm so they can use them in the best way.
Heritage Academy baseball coach Bruce Branch thinks adopting the rule is a “great idea.” He said the growth of travel ball, which usually has younger players start as pitchers at 9 years old, has increased the number of games in the summer. He said it is difficult for a high school coach to manage the amount a work a pitcher shoulders in the summer, so he and his peers have to be careful how they handle their pitching staffs. He hopes a limit for pitches will be well received by all coaches in the state.
“I definitely don’t think the good-old-boy system is going to work,” Branch said. “You’re always going to have one coach or one player that is in a tight game and that it means more to them to win that game. You can’t rely on word of mouth.”
Branch suggested using GameChanger, a program baseball coaches can use on their phones, computers, or tablets to score a game, to monitor compliance with the rule. GameChanger keeps track of the number of pitches, so Branch said the MHSAA and/or the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools (MAIS) could require coaches to submit reports from their games for approval. He said other coaches also would be able to keep track of opponents.
“That is going to require another job for somebody to do,” Branch said. “That is a lot of responsibility, but someone has to be responsible for keeping up with it every week.”
Branch believes the rule will be good for high school and junior high baseball. He hopes it will trickle down to the youth levels because it will help promote greater depth on pitching staffs and will help make coaches more sensitive to the dangers of younger players suffering arm injuries.
But Garner said he wishes the NFHS would have taken two years to ease the move in because coaches will have to alter their plans for the 2017 season. With school starting in August, baseball coaches in the state of Mississippi have five months to develop greater depth on their pitching staffs to prepare for the new year.
“With the new rules and the schedule we are playing now, we’re going to need seven or eight arms, so we need an opportunity to develop guys,” Garner said.
Wire reports were included in this story.
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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