According to a new report in WebMd, researchers surveyed 61 youth baseball coaches in Cincinnati and northeast Ohio, and found that all of them were familiar with pitch counts and limited the number of pitches thrown by players in some way.
The results also showed that 92 percent of the coaches knew that throwing with a fatigued arm put pitchers at increased risk for injury.
However, the survey revealed that 44 percent of the coaches do not use pitch counts all the time. And less than 10 percent monitored and set safe limits on how much their players are pitching throughout the season or year, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
In addition, 41 percent of the coaches have players who are at increased risk for overuse injuries because they play on a number of baseball teams in the same season, the study found. More than one-third of the coaches had at least one player benched due to an overuse injury.
Reasons cited by coaches for not following pitch-count recommendations included lack of knowledge, insufficient staff to keep track of pitches and not wanting to do what they viewed as a tedious task, according to the study.
The findings are scheduled to be presented Friday at the American Academy of Pediatrics annual meeting in San Diego, reported WebMd. Research presented at medical meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
