You're not asking me, but did you hear about the kid in Washington who threw 194 pitches? James Andrews believes that year-round competitive baseball, unlimited pitch counts and curve balls at a young age are the biggest contributing factors. I think I've also read that he doesn't believe kids should be throwing harder than 85 in their mid teens.

That's smart, I think, because pitching is inherently unnatural, and throwing a breaking pitch that young is compounding the problem. It's crazy that so many pitchers can throw 95-100 these days, but I'm guessing a lot of that is because of max effort. I'm also not sure how many kids are being taught to generate their power from their legs. The high school kids I see are just whipping the ball.

tkihshbt wrote:

That's smart, I think, because pitching is inherently unnatural, and throwing a breaking pitch that young is compounding the problem. It's crazy that so many pitchers can throw 95-100 these days, but I'm guessing a lot of that is because of max effort. I'm also not sure how many kids are being taught to generate their power from their legs. The high school kids I see are just whipping the ball.

I've been wary of the "tall-and-fall" mantra since it became en vogue in the colleges about a decade ago. It relies mostly on the upper half, and I think the follow through puts too much stress on an arm that, as you correctly point out, is being asked to do something it doesn't do naturally.
I'm a "drop-and-drive" proponent. You get more power from your legs, and you're more apt to have an arm angle that's more vertical, which I think leads to fewer arm issues. Guys like Ryan and Seaver were drop-and-drive pitchers and played for decades without ever having serious arm problems.

"Kids will always try to throw them tho.  It is fun."

It is, and they do. A few years ago, I had a 10-year-old on a team I coached who tried to throw a curve, and I put an immediate stop to it. He could have done serious damage to his arm because he was holding the ball with a fastball grip and torquing his elbow. I showed him a 3-fingered changeup and he was happy. Turns out all he wanted was the catcher to throw down fingers so he'd feel like a real pitcher.

Examining a slow motion replay of a pitcher throwing a curveball (even an adult...), it makes me cringe. Same feeling I get when I watch someone break their leg. Most unnatural looking thing ever.

If a grown man wants to do that to his arm, that's his business, but allowing (much less demanding) that a kid do it is grounds for dismissal to me. It's dangerous.

FWIW, Bob's reasons for not playing had nothing to do with pitching or not pitching.  The coach was a total douche in many other ways, and most of the kids (Bob included) couldn't stand him.  

The guy constantly complained about something.  One game, our team won by a ridiculous score of something like 18-2, mostly because the other team didn't have a pitcher who could throw strikes.  We probably didn't have more than 5 hits.  After the game he yelled at the kids for not swinging enough.  Last game of the season our kids fell behind 11-2, but rallied to win 12-11.  He spent 10 minutes telling the kids how embarassing it was that they fell behind a clearly inferior team.

The sad thing is he's one of those parents who is deparately trying to make up for his own athletic shortcomings by trying to force his son to be a great athlete despite the fact the kid simply isn't athletic.  The dad had the kid pretty much forced the kid to play football the last 2 years.  If he put rocks in his shoes, the kid might have weighed 75 pounds and wasn't 5 foot tall.  Whenever we'd start a tackling drill, the kid either got a stomach ache or he would literally start crying.  The dad's solution was to invite our family to his house for a barbecue and ask me if I could bring Bob in full pads so the boys could line up and Bob could "knock the tears out of him." (We obviously declined the invitation).

During the baseball season, the dad tried desparately to make his kid a leadoff hitter, but the kid would cry when he made an out which would naturally cause him to play worse, which led to more crying which led to worse play, and so on.  So here's the kid (who's either 13 or 14 years old) constantly crying in front of his classmates (which is embarassing enough), but then you have dad trying to force him into the leadoff spot (which caused resentment among the kids because the kid wasn't good enough to play leadoff) and then the dad's an asshole on top of it all.

The only good thing is that Bob is one of the few kids who doesn't make fun of the son because it wouldn't surprise me if at some point this poor kid snaps and goes on a shooting spree.  If he does, I just hope he targets his parents and not his classmates