This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
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There is no such thing as a healthy pitcher. There are only pitchers who have been healthy, and the next pitch. MLB teams have done everything they can do to keep their pitchers from being overworked, which is what teams can control. The modern wave of injuries, though, is about effort, about velocity, about the fundamental building blocks of success, and there may be nothing anyone can do about that. “Number go down,” as applied to pitch counts in 2025, is just woo. It’s not working and there’s no evidence to suggest it will. It’s time for teams to give up the illusion of control and accept that elbow health is a lottery. Pulling a healthy, effective pitcher after 64 pitches isn’t doing anyone any good.
