photo by: John Young

Lawrence High senior pitcher Parker Kirkpatrick delivers a pitch during the Lions' game against Maize during the River City Baseball Festival Saturday at Hoglund Ballpark.

Instead of looking at the number of innings pitched, high school baseball teams will be counting pitches thrown next season.

The National Federation of State High School Associations adopted a “pitching restriction policy based on the number of pitches thrown in a game” last week.

It will be up to the Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA) to determine the number of pitches allowed in each game and the required days of rest between pitching appearances. That decision will likely be made in the fall.

Last season, KSHSAA asked schools to input pitch counts and days of rest between pitching appearances into a database, researching the number of pitches thrown in most games.

Previously, Kansas had an innings limit instead of pitch count restrictions. Pitchers were allowed to throw nine innings in one day and 12 innings over a 48-hour period.

“That certainly makes sense,” Free State High coach Mike Hill said of the rule change. “An innings limit doesn’t really indicate to you the amount of pitches a kid has thrown. In my analysis, it’s the amount of pitches that provide the wear and tear on an arm, not the amount of innings. It totally makes sense to go that route.”

Hill, who served on the national rules committee that made the recommendation to the national federation, said he expects KSHSAA to follow something similar to Major League Baseball’s PitchSmart guidelines.

MLB and USA baseball recommends a limit of 105 pitches in one day for a 17- to 18-year-old, and a required four days of rest if a pitcher exceeds 76 pitches. For 15- to 16-year-old pitchers, the daily limit is 95 pitches.

“I’m all for it, man,” Lawrence High coach Brad Stoll said. “I think it’s going to protect these kids across the board and I’m in favor of it. I wish it was in place from little league all the way up.”

Stoll, who is an assistant coach in the summer with the Falmouth Commodores in the prestigious Cape Cod League, noted there is a priority on pitch counts in his college baseball summer league. Those pitchers are potential MLB draft picks and they are trying to avoid injuries before the upcoming college season.

But he wishes the pitch count restrictions trickled down to youth baseball.

“As a father of a 10 and 13 year old, I really wish it was in place in those leagues,” Stoll said. “I see things at my sons’ games that just blow my mind because I know some of those kids are just getting abused. They aren’t even going to get a chance to play for Free State or Lawrence High.”

At an American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine meeting last year, one study presented from Rush University in Chicago found 56.7 percent of Tommy John surgeries are performed for 15- to 19-year-olds.

Tommy John surgery involves the reconstruction of the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL), which replaces the elbow ligament that essentially holds the upper and lower arm together with a tendon from elsewhere in the body.

“Arm injuries are totality injuries. They are not something that happens in one moment,” Hill said. “One pitch doesn’t cause a UCL to fray. It’s totality of what’s happened over time. Whether it’s the seven- or eight-year-old level when kids start pitching, or in my opinion, to the college game, pitch limits are important to protect our kids.

“In our game, this is our version of concussions. We need to act now on the front end of this before it becomes more of a problem for baseball players.”

One of the benefits for large-school baseball teams in Kansas is typically teams only play two or three times in a week. That allows pitchers to naturally fit in their required days of rest between pitching appearances.

“For us, we don’t feel like this is going to have any impact on what we do,” Hill said. “I think this is true of a lot of coaches in the Sunflower League. We’ve already tried to be overprotective on arms.”