New York Mets Reliever: Focus On Pitchability To Curb Arm Injuries

Adam Ottavino is off to a sensational start, and the New York Mets reliever believes there is a place to start when it comes to curbing pitching injuries.

New York Mets reliever Adam Ottavino is having a renaissance at 38 years old.

As the Mets head back to New York after a road series with the San Francisco Giants, the right-hander has a 1.86 ERA and has a strikeout rate of 18.4 per nine innings in nine appearances.

If he can carry this through the entire season he could match his terrific 2022, his first season with the Mets, when he went 6-3 with a 2.06 ERA in 66 appearances with a strikeout rate of 10.8.

But like many pitches, he’s also battled arm problems. While with the Colorado Rockies in 2015, he partially tore the UCL in his right elbow which led to Tommy John surgery.

He needed more than a year to recover, but when he returned to Colorado he set a Rockies franchise record with 37 scoreless appearances in 2016 and he co-led MLB with 34 holds in 2018.

One might expect Ottavino to have some opinions on what many believe is a rash of pitching injuries in baseball.

Jon Roegele, who researches baseball injuries, recently published the last two years of Tommy John injury data, and 34.4% of MLB pitchers in 2022 and 35.3% in 2023 have undergone the surgery.

This year the Majors has already lost several big-name starting pitchers to elbow injuries, including Shane Bieber and Spencer Strider.

ESPN spoke to Ottavino and several other pitchers around baseball, many of which have gone through Tommy John surgery or serious arm injuries.

Ottavino was asked about the pitch clock and said he wasn’t sure if the pitch clock was the primary cause of recent arm injuries.

But he does believe that scouts and baseball people aren’t prioritizing the right things at the developmental stage.

“If they were prioritizing a guy who can grow into his body but had the pitchability and threw like 90, 94 (mph), I feel like that type of trajectory lends itself to maybe having a little more of a chance of staying healthy,” Ottavino said. “I worry about guys that throw 100 in the minor leagues. How long can you do that for?”