It is the 21st century. Everybody desires to be the best at something. They need to be the biggest, the strongest, and the fastest. They need to be consistent, young, and energetic. These traits have transitioned not only from the real world, but the baseball kingdom. Take a look at Noah Syndergaard. He claimed to gain 17 pounds of muscle in the offseason so he could throw harder. As if 100 miles per hour wasn’t enough, he had to push himself to the next level. Now, he is currently on the disabled list with an ailing bicep and lat. Also note, the other four Mets’ starters have also had stints on the DL.

Giancarlo Stanton. Another human monster. Weighing in at over 230 pounds, he is the biggest position player in the MLB besides the Yankees’ Aaron Judge. Stanton has never played a full season since 2014, which was cut short when he took a pitch to the face. He has spent time on the shelf due to hand and wrist problems.

Players these days are getting hurt due to over working themselves. Back in the day, hurting yourself in baseball was never heard of. If you did end up hurting yourself, you played through it. Take Mickey Mantle for instance. Mantle dealt with injuries every season of his 18 year career. Despite dealing with constant pains, he was able to put together a great career, perhaps the greatest career for a switch hitter. He was also smoking and drinking at the same time, wrecking his body even more. If Mickey could play through it, why can’t today’s players work through injuries? The answer is simple: medical advances.

Ever since Tommy John underwent ground breaking surgery, the medical world has been rapidly progressing. Now, there are treatments for every thing. Draining fluids of joints, removing damaged ligaments, even taking out ribs to relieve pressure. It is no secret that some players abuse these procedures to increase draft stock. Some players in high school undergo Tommy John surgery to get it out of the way. What some of these people don’t seem to know is that these surgeries don’t leave you with a fresh ligament or elbow. In fact, they could weaken the body. The process for TJ surgery is to remove the damaged ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in the arm and replace it with a less used UCL from the wrist or other joint. As mentioned before, it might seem the human specimen has a fresh UCL, but they do indeed have a ligament performing a role it wasn’t created for.

When you put the over training factor into this mix, things get a whole lot worse. As shown in the Giancarlo Stanton/Noah Syndergaard point, players are training harder than ever. But now with these players having mix and match tendons and ligaments, the bodies can’t handle these. You can’t expect a wrist ligament to withstand the same pressure a elbow UCL has.It’s just bound for disaster. The reason why players are getting hurt so easily is now clearly exhibited. You just cannot have the players waking up at six in the morning to do workouts when they have the ligaments where there not supposed to be. If Major League Baseball wants to protect their players, they should put workout caps and surgery bans to limit injury. Besides, what’s a little decrease in velocity and home runs compared to people living their lives in pain and in casts?