College baseball coaches must be stopped from abusing pitchers' arms: Law

New York Times

26-05-2025

Major League Baseball has been making moves towards farming out some of their player development to college programs, eliminating short-season leagues in 2021, and quite possibly pushing to eliminate another level of the minors in the next CBA. There are so many reasons why this is a terrible idea for the sport, but one of the most obvious ones slaps us in the face every May: College coaches can not be trusted.
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Witness the usage of A.J. Colarusso, a junior pitcher at Boston College. The draft-eligible left-hander threw 72 pitches in four innings on Tuesday, the opening day of the ACC tournament, which probably should have ended his week. Had he come back for an inning of relief at some point, I doubt anyone would have said anything or even noticed. Instead, BC had him start their elimination game on Friday and pushed him for six innings and 109 pitches — after just two days of rest. It was as high-pressure an outing as you'll find, as the loss ended BC's season, because their only path to the NCAA tournament was by winning the ACC tournament.
Colarusso doesn't throw very hard — he sits 87-89, and it's not a high-effort delivery — but the issue with overuse is fatigue, and that affects everyone. The usage blew past the MLB PitchSmart recommendations for a pitcher his age when working on two days of rest (maximum of 60 pitches), even though 'numerous studies have shown that … pitching too deep into games, violating pitch count recommendations, and acute spikes in workload significantly increase the risk of injury,' according to the PitchSmart site. They also recommend a maximum of 120 pitches in any game for any pitcher aged 19-22.
BC isn't the only school up to these shenanigans; this happens every year during the conference tournaments as coaches prioritize winning the next game over the health of their players. Arkansas-Little Rock used senior Jack Cline, who threw 69 pitches on Wednesday, for 134 pitches in a complete-game win on Saturday, which staved off elimination for the Trojans. Mercer sent senior Colton Cosper out for a 140-pitch complete-game win in their own elimination game on Friday, which is 29 more pitches than he'd thrown in any game this year, although at least in his case, he was working on more than a week of rest. Abilene Christian had lefty senior Chandler Benson throw 139 pitches on Friday on full rest. Gonzaga used senior righty Kai Francis for 121 pitches on four days of rest, even though he'd only thrown more than 50 pitches in a game once all season (and that was 76 pitches).
But what's worse about Boston College overusing Colarusso is that the ACC celebrated it, posting to their official Twitter account: '109 pitches on the night. 237 pitches on the week. An incredible ACC Championship performance.'
109 pitches on the night. 237 pitches on the week.
An incredible ACC Championship performance from No. 48 🫡 pic.twitter.com/gMMfbDAYOd
— ACC Baseball (@ACCBaseball) May 24, 2025
It was an outstanding performance by Colarusso, but the coaches and the people running the conference are supposed to be the adults in the room here, and 181 pitches over four days is not something to cheer. (He'd thrown another 56 pitches the prior Thursday, hence the 237 pitches figure in their tweet.)
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None of these pitchers are pro prospects, so this isn't like LSU pushing Kade Anderson for 135 pitches on a very cold night in Oklahoma in April, a game I was at where I could see Anderson was on fumes in the eighth inning but he ended up going nine. Pro future or not, it is still irresponsible to use any pitcher like this, because we know that overuse is correlated with increased risk of injuries, notably shoulder injuries, and those can require significant surgery and/or affect someone's life beyond baseball. It's also a dodge to say that these kids — who I'm sure wanted to stay in their games, because that's the competitive mentality we seek and develop in players from Day 1 — aren't prospects, because who decides which players are and aren't prospects? Why does one college coach get to say I'll overuse this kid, but not this other one? Why are some pitchers disposable and others aren't?
Stanford pushed lefty senior Quinn Mathews for 156 pitches in a College World Series game in 2023, using him on short rest. He went in the fifth round to the St. Louis Cardinals, ranked No. 55 on my preseason MLB top 100 prospects list, and is currently on the injured list, rehabbing a shoulder issue. No one can say for certain that the overuse in that game with Stanford caused his injury, to be clear, but we can say that Stanford took an unnecessary risk with a pitcher who turned out to be a prospect. There is just way too much history of college coaches risking shoulders and elbows because they face no consequences for their actions. If the kid gets hurt, he's someone else's problem at that point, because he's graduated or he's in pro ball, and as far as I know, no college coach has ever faced any sort of sanction or reprimand for overusing his pitchers.
The MLB Commissioner's Office seems to think that delegating more player development to the college ranks is a good thing. It might save money, but to steal a line from P.J. O'Rourke, handing the development of young pitchers over to college coaches without any restrictions in place is like handing car keys and whiskey to a teenage boy. If the NCAA won't step in and regulate itself, MLB shouldn't allow the college ranks to have any more power than they already have.
(Photo of Colarusso: Matthew Hinton / Associated Press)