The Tigers informed reporters that depth starter Sawyer Gipson-Long will undergo an internal brace surgery on Monday to repair his UCL (X link via Evan Woodbery of MLive). He’ll miss the entire 2024 season.
It’s an unfortunate but not especially surprising revelation. Gipson-Long had gone for various evaluations after feeling forearm tightness a couple weeks ago. The 6’4″ righty was already on the 15-day injured list because of a groin strain, yet this obviously represents a much more serious setback. While an internal brace procedure comes with a shorter recovery timeline than the standard Tommy John UCL reconstruction, it’s likely he’ll begin the ’25 campaign on the IL as well.
Gipson-Long is a former sixth-round draftee of the Twins. Detroit acquired him at the 2022 deadline for reliever Michael Fulmer. The Tigers called him to the majors for the first time last September. Gipson-Long had an excellent showing, working to a 2.70 ERA with a near-32% strikeout rate in 20 innings. He didn’t face the toughest competition — his starts were against the White Sox, Angels, A’s and Royals — but it was about as impressive a debut as Detroit could’ve reasonably expected.
Detroit wasn’t likely to give Gipson-Long an Opening Day rotation spot even if he were healthy. Between Tarik Skubal, Reese Olson, Casey Mize, Matt Manning and offseason signees Jack Flaherty and Kenta Maeda, they have a fair amount of rotation talent. Gipson-Long would likely have been seventh on the depth chart. Even if he started the year on optional assignment to Triple-A Toledo, it’s likely he’d have been tabbed for some starts throughout the course of a 162-game schedule.
Instead, he’ll spend the entire season on the IL. The small silver lining is that he’ll be paid at the MLB minimum rate and collect a full year of service time. Detroit can transfer him to the 60-day injured list whenever they need a 40-man roster spot. There’s no IL during the offseason, so the Tigers will need to reinstate or waive Gipson-Long shortly after the conclusion of the World Series. Assuming they keep him on the roster, he’ll be controllable for at least another five seasons.
another solid young pitcher goes down…
Brace yourselves, more injuries on the way (unfortunately).
🙁
Keep your spirits up, young man, and come back strong. The future will be great!
The future’s so bright, you’re gonna need shades.
Ouch
Or Owwwee, as it is known today.
Well a lot of the other guys on the team have already went through it. The only one fans really worry about now is future ace Jobe. Hoping he’s Detroit’s next Verlander.
is mlb gonna do anything at some point? or just keep saying “its not pitch clock, its not this, its not that, its not our fault blah blah blah”?
What exactly should they do? Make all pitchers pitch underhand like fast pitch softball? Make any pitch over 90mph be called a ball? Throwing hard, overhand, is a violent, unnatural movement. Injuries happen.
Injuries happen to a guy like you, STYMEEDONE, brain injuries, that cause Harris derangement syndrome. You’re not smart enough to remember when it was natural to throw regularly over 20 complete games per season for a pitcher without blowing out their arm at any time in their career. Just another stupid analysis from your keyboard.
@tigerfan4ever – stymeedone gave you the answer.
Velocity is the elbow-killer. Back in the day… Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens threw 95mph in their prime. Today, they’d be average velocity starters. Maddux threw like 89mph. Your heroic CG starters like Blyleven probably threw about 87mph.
So just make pitches over 90mph automatic balls. Problem solved.
You must be STYMEEDONE’s mom. Ever hear of Nolan Ryan? Likely not. You’re just as stupid as your son. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
It isn’t the pitch clock, and they have data showing that. Not just last year but when they instituted it in the minors it did not increase pitching injuries.
The reasons for the increase in elbow issues is multi-factorial, the majority of which MLB cannot control. One big factor is throwing harder and faster at a young age, throwing more breaking pitches, and throwing most if not all year around. We’ve got kids throwing hard and throwing breaking balls before they can shave. They play little league, travel ball and throw in the off season at game improvement facilities. MLB can’t do anything about that. At the MLB level we have more pitchers throwing harder with more spin. And many pitchers will tell you to get that velocity and spin they have to grip the ball harder. So about the only thing MLB could do is either make the ball tackier or allow them to use a substance like Spider Tack again. And that probably won’t have a huge impact but it might help a little.
Best post I’ve seen,in ages
Fred must be STYMEEDONE’s dad.
Seems to me that aspiring MLB pitchers want to use tech so much to throw harder and spin it more, a third party industry has developed to satisfy the demand. Might be indicative of who is driving the problem. Not sure how MLB is going to stop players from chasing hard at a career. Whatever it is, I think it has to be financial. Strip away the veneer and that’s what’s driving them. Something monetary that is rewarding health, or penalising non health. Good luck with that. Glad it’s not my problem to solve.
My son is a 20 year old college pitcher. He’s been pitching since he was 8. Always the best pitcher on his team, he was always the kid they turned to, and that’s our fault not his. And of course, as they get older, but still growing and in their teens, they’re enamored with all the stuff like cutters, sliders, mph, spin rates, etc. He gave up football and basketball to focus on baseball and pitching. His choice. This lead to offseason work such as various drills to increase velocity and weekly bullpens.
He’s 6’4” and 215 righty with a mix of 4-5 pitches that he is very comfortable with – 4 seam, 2 seam, circle change, cutter, slider… he will not pitch again competitively again until spring 2025 because he had Tommy John last November. He is one of 3-4 pitchers on his team recovering from TJS.
Specialization and year ‘round pitching mixed with violent action of pitching, is probably the issue. As Justin Verlander says, “there’s only so many bullets in that gun.”
When I was a kid and teenager, when the season was over, we moved onto other sports and didn’t throw a baseball again until late winter in the high school gym.
It seems that teams will adapt by just stock piling young pitching and avoiding long FA contracts for pitchers.
Trevor Bauer had one of the more unique throwing programs of any ML pitcher (not to mention private lives as well). He has always super long tossed. From foul pole to foul pole. He’s been doing since college at UCLA, even before. I watched him warm up at a game a few years back. I’ve never seen another pitcher do that. I think Sports Illustrated wrote about it way back when he was still in the minors.
It’s probably one of the few things other pitchers can learn from him.
[Insert meme of Derek Falvey dodging bullets like the Matrix]
Don’t worry. Its not the pitch clock, which is the only change to how pitchers pitch and corresponds with the drastic increase in pitcher elbow issues.
Yeah, and coincidentally, this is another pitcher that is not a high velo or high FB spin rate guy. Not sure how they attribute the injuries to velo + spin rate, but just ignore these guys.
Hope you’re doing well, Prov. God Bless my friend.
92 and x spin rate is going have the same impact on some peoples anatomy, as 98 and x + y spin rate is going to have on others. It’s just a different max out point per individual.
Sure, but how then can they say it is that if there’s no way to measure the “max out?”
My point is: they can’t dismiss one theory and attribute it to another when neither provide enough to test and evaluate.
Exactly Clip. There is enough anecdotal evidence at this point to pause the pitch clock rule to examine it’s possible effects. The MLBPA should be all over this.
I’m doing great living in God’s grace. Hope you’re doing the same!
The pitch clock is still way slower than normal delivery time in games from the 2000s, even. There’s an enormous amount of data which excludes the pitch clock as the issue.
They are still gathering data, but the likelihood the pitch clock is going to be implicated as a major issue is remote.
I think that’s too general and here’s why:
The time you’re referencing is 1) an average between hitters; 2) Does not consider the time between batters which was longer than the current time with the pitch clock; 3) time between innings, which was longer the current pitch clock.
So, the average between pitches does not account for those injured pitchers who {may} have been on the higher than average side, who may also be getting injured because of a lack of recovery (as a contributing factor).
As I stated, they found no direct correlation – but they can’t find a direct correlation without a direct, controlled study. They’re writing assumptions based on general data sets, which in this type of study is no good to reach a definitive conclusion.
It’s the same reason why they were saying, “velo” until pitchers with low velo were also getting hurt. Now they’ve changed it to “effort” which is immeasurable currently.
Pitch Clock I keep saying it.
and you keep being wrong. At least you’re a typical American, though. Don’t know a thing about what you’re stating, but you remain confident despite being utterly wrong.
Funny, I think you’re completely wrong. Funny how that goes huh.
@martras – pot, kettle, black
Hope he recovers fully. With all the young arms already up and others due for promotion this year or next he might have lost his spot on the depth chart in Detroit.
So disappointing. I truly hope this isn’t the beginning of yet another disastrous, injury filled season for Tigers starting pitching.
Good Luck Sawyer! I am pulling for you!
I love how these so called “baseball studies” are performed by people who have never put on a jock strap. Think of repeating max effort exercises that use the entire body in the gym and take less than 20 seconds to recover. You can go on the internet and find a study to give any point of view you could possibly dream of so called validity.
God damn, this pisses me off. MLB must get to the bottom of this alarming rate of injuries to pitchers.
We know the cause(s). I don’t see anyway to stop it.
Is Kenta Maeda really this bad.
Internal brace procedure needs a better name? IBP? Or, who was the first MLB pitcher to have the internal brace procedure? We can name it after him.