CHICAGO — The IHSA Baseball Advisory Committee has unanimously approved recommendations for limiting the number of pitches a high school baseball player can throw, an idea pushed by a Weiss Memorial Hospital expert.
The committee of the state high school sports authority acted on recommendations from Dr. Preston Wolin.
Wolin, a pitching coach for Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Skokie and the director of sports medicine at the Chicago Center for Orthopedics at Weiss, 4646 N. Marine Drive, presented the recommendations at the committee's regularly scheduled meeting in Bloomington after years of watching young pitchers hurl dangerous amounts of pitches.
Josh McGhee talks about the proposed pitching limits.
“I think these recommendations are going to make the game safer and more enjoyable,” Wolin said. “The cooperation of the baseball coaches in coming up with these limits was outstanding. Everyone in that room was committed to the safety of our young pitchers. That dedication is being translated into our pitch count limits in the state of Illinois.”
But the recommendations, which can be found here and, in part, below, still have a long road to becoming official IHSA rules.
[Courtesy of the IHSA]
“We need to be respectful of the rules writing process running its course, but today was certainly an important first step,” said IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson.
“We appreciate the passion Dr. Wolin has for the safety of high school baseball pitchers, and thank him for taking the time to participate today. We also commend our committee members for the teamwork they displayed in working together on this important issue.”
On Sept. 14, a committee of athletic administrators will discuss and vote on the recommendations. In the next two months, the IHSA staff will also review and vote on the recommendations, according to a news release from the meeting.
While these votes do not directly impact the recommendation, they will provide feedback for the IHSA Board of Directors, who will vote on the recommendation Oct. 12. If approved by a simple majority by the board of directors, the recommendation will become a rule to be applied for the 2017 IHSA spring baseball season, the release said.
“As a veteran of the IHSA Sports Medicine Advisory Committee and a long-time advocate of pitch-count limits, this meeting was not only extremely gratifying, but really historic for the players, parents, coaches, administrators and the Association," Wolin said.
Earlier this year, the National Federation of State High School Associations announced each state will have to create a pitch-count policy before the start of the 2017 season. The organization creates the rule books for 16 high school sports across the U.S., according to the Tribune.
While a few states already have enacted such rules, the IHSA has only limited "pitchers to seven innings a day only in postseason games," but plans to craft stronger regulation is in the works, the Tribune reports.
In July, Wolin said he hoped to limit pitchers to 105 pitches with a four-day rest in between, but sees a problem with implementation considering a lot of players play for multiple teams. With travel baseball and IHSA baseball, players can easily play about five to six games a week, he said.
While the IHSA has no jurisdiction over travel baseball, he hoped an IHSA policy would help set the tone, he said.
"It makes it so there’s a little more pressure on the travel ball coach. I do think there’s a number of these travel ball coaches who do have the best interest of their players in mind. If they know about these rules they’re going to be mindful of them. ... I look at it as the beginning of a dialog about this across baseball in the state," Wolin said in July.
While there was pushback earlier pertaining to enforcement and punishment, Wolin said by the end of the meeting the group had "arrived at something we could all agree on."
The recommendation laid out focuses not only on the amount of pitches thrown, but also weighs in rest between performances.
"Rest is the most important thing without rest you don't have time to recover. Even if you keep the pitch count down, if there is not enough time to recover" chances of injury remain high, he said.
Over the last few years, there has been a huge increase in injuries for "throwing athletes, especially pitchers." The most publicized is an injury to the ulnar collateral ligament, which can require Tommy John surgery in which a tendon is relocated from another part of the body to the arm, Wolin said.
"That’s a potential career-ending type injury especially for a young man and sometimes young women, who have participated in fast-pitch softball. That’s an injury that if they want to continue pitching, you can’t really pitch with it" and the rehab usually takes 12 to 18 months, Wolin said in July.
After the meeting, Wolin said he was confident the recommendations would help make the game safer and more enjoyable.
“The cooperation of the baseball coaches in coming up with these limits was outstanding. Everyone in that room was committed to the safety of our young pitchers. That dedication is being translated into our pitch count limits in the state of Illinois," he said.
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