• Posted June 18, 2026

Major League Pitchers Might Avoid Elbow Injuries By Altering Their Approach, Simulation Suggests

Elbow injuries are common among pro baseball pitchers, with Toronto Blue Jays right-hander José Berrios recently undergoing Tommy John surgery to repair an elbow ligament torn during spring training.

But pitchers might be able to avoid these injuries without cutting down their fastball’s velocity, a new study suggests.

Minor mechanical changes to their approach could help Major League Baseball pitchers avoid potentially career-ending elbow injuries, researchers reported recently in the journal Multibody System Dynamics.

A high arm angle during a pitch, as well as tilting the torso away from the pitching arm during delivery, put the most demand on the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in pitchers’ elbows, results showed.

"Our simulation found solutions that suggest there's untapped efficiency out there,” said lead author Cedric Attias, who did the research as a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the University of Waterloo in Canada. 

“Our goal isn't to tell pitchers to throw softer,” he said in a news release. “It's to help them throw smarter."

For the study, researchers built a detailed digital skeleton with muscles, ligaments and joints, and used it to examine the extreme forces exerted during a pitch on the UCL — a small band of tissue on the inside of the elbow that helps hold the joint together.

The UCL often breaks down and tears due to the repeated explosive motions required to pitch at professional speeds, researchers said.

If this happens, pitchers require Tommy John surgery to replace the ligament and a long rehabilitation process to return to pro ball — if they ever do.

“This ligament is especially vulnerable because it’s small, has a poor blood supply and wasn’t designed for movement this extreme or repetitive,” Attias said.

The computer model showed that if players adjust their arm slot and torso tilt, they might be able to reduce their risk of injury while still maintaining their fastball.

“We confirmed that mechanics matters tremendously,” said Attias, who now works as a biomechanist for the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball.

“We showed that one pitcher throwing 93 miles an hour with controlled, upright mechanics puts meaningfully less stress on the UCL than someone using a more extreme technique to reach the same speed,” he said.

More information

The Cleveland Clinic has more on Tommy John surgery.

SOURCE: University of Waterloo, news release, May 27, 2026