30 0 N THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSSUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 2020
Of all the elements that make
baseball distinctive, nothing
compares to pitching. In what
other team sport does the most
influential player spend most of
the schedule rest-
ing? Training for
the treacherous job
of throwing over-
hand repeatedly, at
high speeds, re-
quires careful
calibration and strict routines.
And then there is 2020, when
quarantined pitchers are firing
baseballs into hotel-room mat-
tresses to stay loose.
“I lined up the mattress, I set
up chairs to act as hitters, and I
would throw for about a half-
hour every day, just trying to
simulate something, just trying
to make sure I was putting some
velocity into it so the arm stayed
in shape,” said Miami Marlins
pitcher Brandon Kintzler, whose
teammate, Elieser Hernandez,
had the same idea. “Hernandez’s
room was next to me, and I know
he was doing the same thing,
because I could hear the ball
bouncing everywhere.”
Kintzler and his teammates
were effectively trapped in their
hotel rooms for a week after an
outbreak of positive tests for the
coronavirus tore through the
Marlins’ roster after their first
series last month, in Philadel-
phia. The St. Louis Cardinals,
too, hunkered down in their
Milwaukee hotel for five days
after their own outbreak on July
- Jack Flaherty threw base-
balls into his mattress, Adam
Wainwright into his pillows.
Beyond the health risks of the
virus itself, the pandemic scram-
bled the preparation of baseball’s
most finely tuned creatures.
When Major League Baseball
shut down in mid-March, the
sport was four weeks into its
six-week spring training. Three
and a half months of inactivity
followed, then teams held three-
week summer training camps for
a 60-game season that started on
July 23.
Somewhat predictably, the
early season has seen a rash of
arm injuries. No type of pitcher
has been spared, from rookies
like A.J. Puk to the 40-year-old
Rich Hill, middle relievers like
Tommy Kahnle to closers like
Ken Giles. High-profile casualtiesinclude Cy Young Award winners
(Justin Verlander, Corey Kluber),
World Series most valuable
players (Cole Hamels, Stephen
Strasburg) and Shohei Ohtani,
the celebrated two-way player
for the Los Angeles Angels.
“Pitchers are a unique breed,and they rely very heavily on
getting into the flow, where ev-
erything seems to slow down and
it just goes exactly right,” said
Dr. Anthony Romeo, a former
team physician for the Chicago
White Sox.
“I think that’s something many
pitchers are experiencing this
year, that the only normal part of
their life is on the pitching
mound, and everything else is
completely disrupted — how
they interact with their team-
mates, how they travel, how they
interact with their families. All of
that is a tremendous distraction,
and I think it’s really hard for
many of these pitchers to get into
the flow the same way they’re
used to.”
The healthy pitchers have
been largely effective, even with
the designated hitter now used in
both leagues. Through Thursday,
M.L.B. pitchers had a 1.262
WHIP (walks plus hits per in-
ning pitched), better than theseason-ending WHIP for every
season since 1972. The collective
earned run average, 4.17 — while
in line with 2018, when it was 4.15
— is much lower than last sea-
son’s 4.51.
Yet the pileup of injured pitch-
ers is concerning. According to
Baseball Prospectus data com-
piled by The Ringer, there were
30 pitcher arm injuries requiring
an injured-list stint through the
first 10 days of this season. The
previous high for any season in
the last decade was 12.
Pitching injuries are common
at the start of every season, but
Dr. Chris Ahmad, the Yankees’
team physician, predicted on his
blog in May that inactivity dur-
ing the pandemic “may greatly
compound and exaggerate the
risk factors” associated with the
usual rash of early-season
Tommy John surgeries. (Kahnle,
a Yankees reliever, had the pro-
cedure on Tuesday.)
For pitchers, the physicalgains they made during the
spring training buildup were all
but erased by the long layoff.
“It’s not like all of a sudden
you bank what you did in spring
training 1.0 and you pick up
where you left off in spring train-
ing 2.0,” said Dr. Keith Meister,
the Texas Rangers’ team physi-
cian. “It was a pretty diverse
off-season for different people in
terms of ability to work out or
throw. The last level of getting
ready for games was those com-
petitive innings, and we defi-
nitely didn’t have a lot of those
into the lead-up of this season,
and that was a concern.
“But you have to be very care-
ful about overanalyzing a very
small snapshot. When we look at
injuries, we look at them over a
three- to five-year cycle.”
To mitigate the risk for this
year, most teams have been
extremely conservative with
pitchers’ workloads, continuing a
long trend. Through Thursday, 23
of the 30 major league teams
were averaging fewer than five
innings per start, taking advan-
tage of the extra depth this sea-
son offered by expanded, 30-man
rosters to begin the season.
Rosters have since been pared
to 28; initially, baseball had
planned to reduce the roster size
again later this month, to 26, but
decided last week to hold off on
further cutbacks. The league has
taken other measures to reduce
the strain on pitchers, holding
seven-inning games during dou-
bleheaders and a putting a run-
ner on second base in extra
innings to resolve games faster.
But there was no way to fully
account for the stress of pitching
in real games — even without
fans in the stands — after just
three weeks of camp. Dr. Meister
said the first month of this sea-
son would essentially be an
extension of spring training, with
pitchers continuing to build to
top form.
“But sometimes it’s not neces-
sarily just the buildup, it’s the
spike in effort,” he added. “Guyswill tell you all the time: Once
the uniform color changes on the
other side of the field, and you’re
not throwing live batting practice
and intrasquads, all of a sudden
everything jumps up.”
The Rangers encouraged
pitchers to back off a bit during
the layoff, Dr. Meister said, but to
try to stay active with regular
throwing sessions. Wes Johnson,
the Minnesota Twins’ pitching
coach, said he wanted his start-
ers to stay in a “holding pattern”
by working four-inning simu-
lated games throughout the
break, with relievers throwing
two bullpen sessions — one long,
one short — per week.
“But muscle capacity goes up
the more you take on, and that’s
really hard to replicate when you
are throwing sim games at an
indoor facility or in a wide-open
park,” Johnson said. “So I think
that’s some of the challenge. We
had some guys built up, but you
just can’t replicate adrenaline
and having a real hitter in the
box.”
While pitchers navigate this
strange season, the bigger ques-
tions may come next year. If
baseball gets back to its usual
six-month grind, what happens
to prospects who missed a full
year of games because the minor
league season was canceled?
Can veterans safely resume their
usual workloads after a big drop
this year? What about young
pitchers, or those coming off
injuries, who had hoped to reach
certain innings thresholds this
season?
The mystery of the pitching
arm — that fickle, fragile, fantas-
tic apparatus that makes base-
ball so beguiling — will get more
complicated. Even the experts
wonder what comes next.
“We’re trying to get a hold of
how to manage that — and to be
completely honest with you, we
don’t know yet,” Johnson said. “I
don’t think anybody knows.
There’s not a manual for this
one.”Creatures of Habit Confront a Season of Chaos
TYLER
KEPNER
ON
BASEBALLBrandon Kintzler threw baseballs into his hotel mattress during the Marlins’ quarantine.NICK WASS/ASSOCIATED PRESSA rash of arm injuries
is discouraging, but
not unexpected.
In the crowd-free quiet of the
P.G.A. Championship on Saturday,
Collin Morikawa could hear two
kayakers on the lake below the
16th hole of TPC Harding Park
trying to identify golfers on the
cliff above them. Eventually, the
pair came up with the name of the
player walking with Morikawa —
Adam Scott, the former world No.
1 from Australia.
They did not recognize
Morikawa, whose profile is be-
coming a lot higher this weekend.
Morikawa, 23, put himself
squarely into contention ahead of
Sunday’s final round with a five-
under-par 65 on the often-vexing
San Francisco municipal course.
His 54-hole total of seven-under
203 left him two strokes behind
the leader, Dustin Johnson.
At sea level and often covered in
misty air, Harding has upended
the norms of swing speeds and
ball flights for the best players in
the world. For Morikawa, though,
it has been something of a comfort
zone.
“It helps, I’ve played here may-
be a dozen times,” Morikawa said
of Harding. “I’ve played it enough.
It helped to show up Tuesday and
know the course already. I knew
the layout. I didn’t have to figure
out the putting green. It helps, not
have to worry about learning the
ropes.”
Morikawa played college golf at
the University of California,
Berkeley, where he was a three-
time first-team All-American and
reached the top spot in the world’s
amateur golf ranking. Twenty-one
miles from the Berkeley campus,
Morikawa is playing in his second
major championship as a pro; he
competed in the United States
Open last year.
His third round on Saturday, an-
chored by a brilliant stretch of
birdies at Nos. 15, 16 and 17, left
him with a significant role in Sun-
day’s script.
The list of contenders will in-
clude other youngsters like Cam-
eron Champ, 25, another native
Californian, who shot a 67 to finish
at eight under, tied for second
place with Scottie Scheffler, a 24-
year-old Texan who was low ama-
teur at the 2017 United States
Open.
Then there will be familiar char-
acters like Brooks Koepka, who
was seven under for the tourna-
ment, and striving at age 30 to win
a third consecutive P.G.A. Cham-
pionship and his fifth major over
all. Also at seven under is Paul
Casey, a 43-year-old Englishman
looking for his first major title.
And, of course, there is the 36-
year-old Johnson, the winner of
the 2016 U.S. Open.
Morikawa represents a new
wave of player making an impact
on the PGA Tour since it restarted
after the coronavirus pandemic
halted play for almost three
months.
He lost a playoff to another
young star, Daniel Berger, in the
first event back at Colonial in
June, only to outlast the world No.1, Justin Thomas, in a three-hole
playoff at the Workday Charity
Open one month later for his first
professional win. Bryson
DeChambeau, 26, and Jon Rahm,
23, have also won on tour since the
restart.
Still learning his craft at the
highest level, Morikawa said play-
ing with veterans like Steve
Stricker and Zach Johnson earlier
in the week had helped him
change his putting approach. Af-
ter being paired with Scott on Sat-urday, Morikawa said the rhyth-
mic beauty of the Australian’s
swing had helped his tempo all
day.
The interlude with the kay-
akers, though, reminded him of
what was missing.
“If there were fans, I’d feel like a
little more of a major feel, with big
crowds,” Morikawa said, looking
forward to Sunday’s round. “But
yeah, I feel very comfortable, and
that’s always a good sense. Three
birdies in my last four holes showI’ll be ready.”
The names at the top of the
leaderboard mean that, unlike the
fairways at Harding Park, the
chase for the Wanamaker Trophy
is wide open.
Chaos can reign on a weekend
at a major; Haotong Li, the sec-
ond-round leader, lost a golf ball in
a cypress tree on the back nine on
his way to a 73 on Saturday. Those
who embrace the vagaries of a
municipal course with idiosyncra-
sies are surging to the fore.“It’s a really pretty place; I like
the cypress trees,” said Scheffler,
whose 65 matched Morikawa and
placed him a stroke better, at eight
under through 54 holes. “It’s got a
good look for me.”
A player who knows something
about what it will take to win on
Sunday offered some thoughts. Ti-
ger Woods may have struggled
again with a two-over 72, but of-
fered his analysis of the final
chase.
“You see the same handful of
guys up there, they understand
how to win major championships”
Woods said, before name-check-
ing Koepka. “We see Brooksy up
there again. Guys who under-
stand how to play tough golf
courses and tough venues tend to
be up there, whether it’s with
crowds or no crowds.”Name Players and Players Making Name Set Pace at P.G.A.
By BRIAN MURPHYHARRY HOW/GETTY IMAGESRORY CARROLL/REUTERS CHARLIE RIEDEL/ASSOCIATED PRESSA surreal weekend,
with two kayakers
serving as a gallery.
Tiger Woods and his caddie,
above, at T.P.C. Harding Park
on Friday. There have been no
spectators on the course for the
P.G.A. Championship, but a
few peeked in on Friday, far
left. The layout, though tough,
is familiar to Collin Morikawa,
left, who finished Saturday’s
third round two shots behind
the leader, Dustin Johnson.