MLB HEADQUARTERS — Baseball isn’t what it used to be. The staggering figure of 51,597 pitches thrown at 98 mph or higher in the 2025 season is not just a statistic—it’s a definitive statement that the sport has entered its Velocity Revolution.
This immense surge in power has fundamentally reshaped the game, but also raises the critical question that fans, executives, and players are asking: Are we witnessing the future of pitching, or are we burning toward an unsustainable biomechanical breaking point?
The Staggering Surge in High Velocity
While exact historical data comparison for 98+ mph pitches across multiple decades is complex, the data trends are undeniable and represent a multi-fold increase:
- The Baseline (2008): In the first year of the pitch-tracking era (PitchF/X/Statcast), only 196 triple-digit (100+ mph) fastballs were thrown all season.
- The New Norm (2025): The sheer volume of 98+ mph pitches—now surpassing 50,000—shows that what was once elite is now expected. Sources confirm that 2025 was the first MLB season where every single team had at least one pitcher throw a pitch of 100 mph or higher.
- The Demand: Velocity isn’t just valued anymore; it is demanded. Pitchers who sit in the mid-90s are constantly pushing to hit 98 mph, a threshold that analytics shows offers a sharp increase in swing-and-miss rates, particularly when combined with high spin.
The Biomechanical Cost: Burning the Wick
The pursuit of maximum velocity is a test of biomechanics, brute force, and, critically, human durability. Coaches and medical experts widely agree that the exponential increase in velocity is directly correlated with an epidemic of arm injuries:
- Injury Parallel: Orthopedic surgeons have repeatedly stated that the average increase in fastball velocity has completely paralleled the increased incidence of injury.
- Elbow Stress: Generating high velocity requires rapid and extreme external rotation of the shoulder and intense torque at the elbow. Studies show that for every mile per hour increase, the stress placed on the Ulnar Collateral Ligament (UCL)—the ligament repaired in Tommy John surgery—increases significantly.
- The Trickle Down Effect: The impact is not limited to the MLB. High school and college players are emulating professional training techniques (such as weighted ball programs and max-effort throwing) to chase velocity, leading to a rise in elbow and shoulder injuries in the 15-to-19 age group.
The pitching community now faces a paradox: teams are rewarded for finding the hardest throwers, yet they pay the price with record numbers of days lost to the Injury List (IL), particularly for elbow issues, which have more than doubled in the last decade.
The question for baseball’s future is no longer if velocity will continue to rise, but when the industry must implement changes—such as stricter workload monitoring, mandated pitch limits, or mechanical adjustments—to preserve the arms fueling the revolution.
