Last spring, a dad on our team pulled me aside after a tournament. His son — a 12-year-old pitcher — had just been shut down with elbow pain. The kid hadn't exceeded a single pitch count all season.
"I don't get it," he said. "We followed every rule. He never threw more than 75 pitches in a game. We tracked rest days. We did everything right."
Except they didn't. And I didn't have the heart to tell him in that moment.
Because here's the thing nobody talks about: game pitches are only 10-12% of what your kid throws in a season.
Read that again.
All those pitch counts you're tracking? All those rest day charts? They're measuring a fraction of the stress on your son's arm. The other 88% — the bullpens, the lessons, the long toss, the catches with dad in the backyard, the throws from shortstop at practice — none of that gets counted.
And that invisible workload is where most arm injuries actually come from.
The Math Nobody Does
Let me paint a picture of a typical week for a competitive 12U player:
- Sunday: Tournament game, 55 pitches (tracked!)
- Monday: "Light" catch with dad, 30 throws
- Tuesday: Team practice — infield/outfield drills, 60 throws
- Wednesday: Pitching lesson, 45 throws
- Thursday: Catching bullpens for two teammates, 50 throws
- Friday: Long toss before practice, 25 throws
- Saturday: Pre-game warmup, catches between innings, 40 throws
That's 305 total throws in a week. But on the official pitch count? Just 55.
The coach sees 55. The league sees 55. The parent tracking rest days sees 55.
The arm feels all 305.
What the Research Actually Says
I'm not making this up. A study tracking youth pitchers found that in-game pitches accounted for only 10% of their total throwing volume across a season. For college pitchers, it was just 12%.
The American Sports Medicine Institute (ASMI) — the folks who literally wrote Pitch Smart — have been sounding this alarm for years. Dr. James Andrews, who's probably done more Tommy John surgeries than anyone alive, puts it simply: fatigue is the driving factor, and fatigue doesn't care whether the throws came from a mound or shortstop.
Here's a stat that should keep you up at night: youth baseball players are 10 times more likely to sustain a UCL injury today than in 2000. Ten times. And it's not because we stopped counting pitches — we actually got better at that.
It's because we're measuring the wrong thing.
The Positions That Fool You
Let's talk about catchers for a second.
Every parent knows pitchers are at risk. But catchers? They throw on almost every single pitch. Game after game. And then some of them pitch too.
ASMI research shows that pitchers who also play catcher have increased injury risk — "likely due to the increased number of throws during the season." Yet most pitch count apps ignore catchers entirely. ThrowIQ doesn't.
Same goes for shortstops, third basemen, and outfielders with cannons. Those throws add up. And at the younger ages, where kids rotate positions, your "pitcher" might also be your shortstop, your catcher, and your center fielder across multiple games in a weekend.
All that load. None of it counted.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
The 15-19 age group now has the highest rate of Tommy John surgeries in the country. Let me say that differently: teenagers are having elbow reconstruction surgery more than college or pro players.
The injury rate in that age group is increasing by over 9% per year. These aren't freak accidents — they're the result of accumulated stress that started building years earlier, when nobody was watching the total picture.
And here's the gut punch: 50% of these injuries are preventable. That's not my opinion. That's what the research says. Preventable. With proper workload management.
But you can't manage what you don't measure.
What You Can Actually Do
I'm not here to scare you and leave you hanging. Here's the deal:
1. Start counting everything. Not just game pitches. Everything. Bullpens, lessons, catches, long toss, defensive throws. Yes, it's tedious. That's why we built ThrowIQ — to track weighted workload, not just raw counts.
2. Weight the throws appropriately. A game pitch from the mound isn't the same stress as a catch in the backyard. But it's not zero either. Smart tracking accounts for intensity and throw type.
3. Watch for fatigue, not just pitch counts. If your kid is rubbing his arm, if his velocity is down, if he's "not feeling it" — that's data. Don't push through it because the pitch count says he has 20 more to give.
4. Communicate across teams. If your son plays for multiple teams (travel, school, lessons), someone needs to see the full picture. Right now, nobody does. That "someone" has to be you.
5. Take the off-season seriously. ASMI recommends at least 2-3 months completely off from throwing every year. Not "light throwing." Off. The arm needs time to recover from the accumulated micro-trauma.
The Bottom Line
Pitch counts were a good start. They gave us a framework. But somewhere along the way, we convinced ourselves that following the rules meant our kids were safe.
They're not. Not automatically.
The arm doesn't know the difference between a pitch in a game and a throw from shortstop. It just knows stress. And when that stress accumulates faster than the body can recover, something breaks.
That dad who pulled me aside? His son missed the rest of the season. Surgery was discussed. The kid is fine now, but it was a wake-up call.
Don't wait for your wake-up call.
Stop guessing. Track the data. Try ThrowIQ →