This spring has unfortunately brought a familiar sight: pitchers going down with injuries.
Just this week, it was announced that New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole will undergo Tommy John surgery and miss the season. The Seattle Mariners' George Kirby and the Baltimore Orioles' Grayson Rodriguez, both up-and-coming potential Cy Young contenders, will miss the start of the season with injuries, while Luis Gil, Cole's teammate and the 2024 American League Rookie of the Year, is out three months with a lat strain.
This is on the heels of a 2024 season that was a devastating one for the health of starting pitchers across the majors. Spencer Strider and Shane Bieber both went down after just two starts. Cole and Blake Snell, the 2023 Cy Young winners, missed time in the first half and combined for 37 starts. Sandy Alcantara, Shane McClanahan, Shohei Ohtani, Julio Urias and Brandon Woodruff didn't pitch at all. Kodai Senga made one start; Jacob deGrom made three. The venerable trio of Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander collected just 33 total starts.
These pitchers were all among the best in baseball in recent seasons, from Cy Young winners or contenders to future Hall of Famers -- and all were impacted by injuries, causing those around baseball to further speculate about a seeming increase in pitcher injuries over the years.
MLB published a 62-page report in December based on its yearlong study of pitching injuries -- not only in the majors but down to the collegiate and youth levels as well -- that investigated that increase and identified contributing factors, from increased velocity to more offseason training to pitchers chasing better "stuff."
"This recent spate of injuries to high-profile pitchers has brought renewed attention to pitcher health," the report stated. "But these events are unfortunately just a continuation of a long-term trend. In fact, injuries sustained by pitchers in professional and amateur baseball have increased substantially over the past several decades."
Indeed, the report identified 104 major and minor league pitchers who underwent UCL surgeries in 2010; in 2024, the total had soared to 281 (including 41 major leaguers).
One aspect the study didn't specifically address, however: Are we losing star pitchers at a higher rate than ever? Was 2024 an extreme outlier season for injuries to aces? To investigate this, we isolated the top 20 starting pitchers from each season since 1971, then tracked their production in WAR and innings pitched in the five seasons following the initial base year of study. We also kept track of how often the members of each group remained top-20 starters over the next five seasons.
This led to a spreadsheet full of data -- and, yes, an answer to both our questions. Let's dig into 10 takeaways from this research, from the most interesting discoveries to additional questions that arose from the data.
(Note: All innings for the strike- or lockout-shortened 1981, 1994 and 1995 seasons have been prorated to a full season, and we excluded 2020 from the study.)