Imagine you are a senior, excited to have a great final season and pitch for your team, however you sustain an injury and are forced to watch your team while you are on the bench, unable to play. For seniors Noah Parker and Arjun Ram this became a reality, as both were unable to pitch or play in the field due to injuries they both suffered. ”Losing Arjun and Noah were big losses but it is great to see how hard they are working to get back,” senior Wes Greenberg said.
Senior Noah Parker had been dealing with elbow problems coming into the season. Parker was not able to make his first pitching appearance until six games into the season where he pitched four innings in a 8-2 loss versus Whitman on Apr. 11. He pitched three innings in a 26-7 win versus Rockville on Apr. 15. Another elbow problem caused Parker to miss more time, not pitching again until Apr. 30 in a 10-7 win versus Clarksburg. ”It is very hard watching your team lose when you can’t do anything about it,” Parker said.
Parker has been able to make a full recovery from his injury and is committed to play baseball at Oberlin, a division three school located in Ohio, next spring. “Recovering is not a very hard process, just long and some people can come back immediately and dominate while others take a while to get back to where they were; you just need to stay patient and do everything you can to recover,” Parker said.
Injuries for pitchers have increased dramatically over the past eight years. According to ESPN, 35.3 percent of pitchers underwent Tommy John surgery (a common surgery players get after a UCL tear). This is a six percent increase from 29 percent in 2016. Experts blame the increase in velocity as the reason for this epidemic, as since 2008, fastball velocity has increased four miles per hour from 90.2 in 2008 to 94.6 in 2023. “I think injuries have been increasing because kids are trying to throw as hard as they can every pitch so they are bound to throw their arm out at some point doing this,” Parker said.
Senior pitcher and shortstop Arjun Ram was sidelined after a collision during practice, causing him to tear his labrum, and he was unable to play for the rest of the season. “ Watching my team lose when I was injured was one of the hardest things. It was difficult to not have been able to help my team,” Ram said.
Ram only pitched three innings all year in a blowout 45-4 win versus Watkins Mill on his senior night on Apr. 25, where he was only able to throw lightly to prevent further injuries in his arm. Ram believes the best way to prevent these things from ever happening is: “ Strength training and stretching can help prevent injuries. If something feels off you should first check it out with the athletic trainer before playing,” Ram said.
