Elbow issues seem to be a daily story for major league pitchers

There was a common trend when interviewing pitchers in spring training. Too many of them were part of an exclusive group that pitchers try to avoid. They were part of the "Tommy John club."

It's amazing, really. Thirty years ago, shoulder issues usually ruined pitchers' careers. Now, it's all about the elbow. Pitchers still have shoulder injuries, but it seems the number has decreased dramatically, while elbow issues seem to be a daily story among the 30 teams.

You can almost count on someone going down with the injury in every camp, whether it's on the major league side or on the minor league fields, every spring. The Atlanta Braves got theirs out of the way early this year when lefty reliever Andrew McKirahan got hurt in the second game of the Grapefruit League. He had his second Tommy John surgery a few days later and will miss a full year.

Tommy John is the pitcher who started all of this. In 1974, John's elbow blew out. Dr. Frank Jobe decided to try something new, by replacing the ulnar collateral ligament with a tendon from elsewhere in the body. It saved John's career, and who would have ever guessed his name would become part of the lexicon of baseball?

Don't think this only happens in the Braves' camp. It's an issue all over baseball. The theories of why this happens to some and why others avoid it are endless. You could talk with all 30 major league pitching coaches and likely get 30 different ideas. There is no answer, no solution and no proven way to avoid it.

Teams only can do what they think is best to prepare their pitchers the best way possible. They have learned a lot along the way, of what to do and what not to do. The work a pitcher puts into a regular routine might surprise you, but it's mainly to try and avoid this one major injury.

Now the injury has gotten so prevalent, with pitchers like McKirahan having it a second time, that even the pitchers who have already had the procedure must do things differently to avoid having it again. That has popped up in the past few years, as the number of pitchers having it a second time has increased. So procedures must now be in place to make sure even those who have had it can avoid it again.

In a weird way, that's a good thing -- to kill the notion that if a pitcher has the elbow surgery he is immune from future elbow issues. Stories surfaced several years ago that baseball dads were encouraging their sons to have the procedure even if they didn't need it to make sure they could avoid it down the line. The real reason was to not have the elbow issue hurt their shot at making big money.

That's nuts. And maybe now people are realizing how tough it is for these pitchers to come back from this procedure. Pitchers work hard each and every day; it's a grind that they never want to deal with again. Some make it back and are even stronger than before, while others never get back to who they were as a pitcher. There are no guarantees.

The amount of pressure young pitchers -- those in their early teens -- put on their arms is likely the root of the problem. When I was a kid, we played usually 20 games or so and then just in fields the entire summer. Now, kids are playing 50 or more games during a year. Are those young pitchers being monitored the way they should be closely watched?

It's bad enough that many are doing things wrong mechanically, but then to have an out-of-control workload that is just not good for a developing arm makes the problem a disaster waiting to happen.

Elbow issues are unpredictable. You can think someone who has done everything right and who has a good throwing motion will avoid it, and then on one pitch everything can change. There seems like an inevitability to it, considering how many have to go under the knife.

So hold your breath as we get close to baseball season. This virus that has hit baseball likely will hit your favorite team at some point. It seems to happen every spring.

Listen to "The Bill Shanks Show" from 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WPLA Fox Sports 1670 AM in Macon and online at www.foxsports1670.com. Follow Bill at twitter.com/BillShanks and email him at thebillshanksshow@yahoo.com.

This story was originally published March 29, 2016 at 5:37 PM with the headline "Elbow issues seem to be a daily story for major league pitchers ."