MSBL League and Tournament Pitcher Creates New Offseason Routine

By Steve LaMontia, Director of Communications

Major League Baseball recently published a study identifying factors creating the rise in pitching injuries.  Too many highly paid commodities have been going down with elbow and shoulder injuries and it was time to see why, along with some suggestions regarding what they can do about it to protect their assets.

To capsulize, they found that the offseason and spring training throwing has contributed to the weakness in their arms, thus opening up Pandora’s box of potential injury.  The graph below illustrates the month-by-month injury probabilities.  Basically, throwing too frequently and throwing too hard early on in the year are the major culprits.  Velocity has become the true demon and underbelly of arm injuries, as the lure of huge paychecks has thrown caution to the wind.  You can click on the graphic below for a summary of the study.

Why is this important to know?  We have a 70-year-old MSBL pitcher who has taken the exact opposite approach.  Stew Sallo plays in the Denver area throughout the summer, along with traveling to the occasional tournament as a gun for hire during those months.  Then like so many of us, he hits the October and November baseball trail that takes him to Arizona and Florida.

Stew contacted me recently to outline his routine for keeping his continually aching shoulder in pitching condition in the offseason, revolving around throwing MORE, not less.  In Stew’s own words, let’s examine his routine and his passion to excel and improve his performance on the bump at the age of 70.

“After experiencing shoulder issues that have prevented me from pitching, and even being an effective position player, I have tried more remedies than I can remember. Some of the ones I have tried are stem cells, platelet-rich plasma (PRP), hyaluronic acid, physical therapy, weight-lifting programs, shockwave treatments, cortisone injections, infrared treatments, massage, an arthroscopic debridement surgery, pain medications, and a list of supplements far too long to list here. But I have discovered a method that seems to be as or more effective than any of the things I have tried: throwing regularly.

During the recent fall tournaments, I noticed a significant improvement in my shoulder pain after my daily game schedule began. After a few games, I was throwing with almost no pain throughout the five weeks, which included four tournaments and around 30 games.

Therefore, I have decided to keep throwing during the offseason as a means of keeping my shoulder healthy between late November and mid-February, when my next tournament is scheduled to begin.

I have been throwing 100 pitches every other day to a “portable catcher” a friend of mine built.  He calls it the ProStrike Zone Net. Here’s a photo of this device:

Of course, not everyone is lucky enough to have this kind of setup, but it can be duplicated in any number of ways with nets, or even with a heavy rubber ball thrown at a solid wall.

In the interest of full disclosure, it is my belief that my regular throwing protocol is only part of what has led to an improvement in my shoulder, and I will be continuing some of the other remedies concurrently with keeping my shoulder active. But I am convinced, and the advice I have received about shoulder adhesions confirms (look up ‘frozen shoulder’ for more on this), that keeping the shoulder joint moving, not to mention the other joints in the body, is one of the keys to avoiding pain and injury.

I am certainly not an orthopedist, physical therapist, or any other type of health care professional. And, of course, every case is different. But this is working for me, and I wanted to pass it along.”