Pitchers Are Throwing Less In Spring Training

As Spring Training wraps up yet again, it’s worth pausing briefly to consider one key aspect of MLB’s preseason. Of course, Spring Training is about a lot of things. It is about new beginnings and new team members and players showing up in “the best shape of their life”; it is about giving exciting prospects some time on the MLB side of Spring Training complexes, battles over roster spots, anticipating breakout seasons, making decisions at the margins of a roster, and potentially late offseason acquisitions too. However, in and among all those dynamics, one could argue that the biggest thing about Spring Training is health.

For players, fans, and front office members alike, making it through spring unscathed and with a roster generally intact is the primary objective. Easier said than done. In particular, ramping up pitchers is an exercise littered with pitfalls. In fact, MLB has put out research highlighting the spike in pitcher injuries annually during March and April.

Given this context, one might expect that teams have begun to approach Spring Training a bit differently in recent years, and in that expectation they would be right.

A global pandemic and MLB lockout impacted two MLB springs already this decade, and the World Baseball Classic surely affected things in 2026 as well. Still, it is clear that teams have been continuously taking a more conservative approach to ramping up their pitchers.

This year, only Will Warren, Tanner Bibee, Colin Rea, Anthony Kay, and Simeon Woods Richardson have thrown at least 20 IP to this point in Spring Training.

There appear to be two key inflection points over the last couple decades. First, teams started to restrict the number of pitchers throwing significant innings (defined here rather arbitrarily as 20+ IP) beginning in 2014, which kicked off a steady decline leading to 2020. Following the abbreviated 2020 season, Spring Training innings volume seems to have stabilized at new normals well below that of years past. Now, only a small handful of pitchers eclipse 20 IP in spring at all.

Given the serious problem of pitcher injuries, this seemed to be a well-intentioned and positive development, though only time will tell. For now at least, TJ surgeries do appear to be lower this March than in years past; this online TJ tracker indicates that 4 TJ surgeries have occurred to this point in March whereas 18 and 11 surgeries were done in March 2024 and March 2025, respectively. This is really welcome news and something to feel good about as the 2026 regular season gets underway.