On August 17th, 2015, Bryan Mitchell, a pitcher on the New York Yankees, became the seventh pitcher since 2013 to be hit in the head by a line drive from a hitter. Mitchell was fortunate not to have any serious injuries other than a slight nasal fracture. This is because the brim of his cap took most of the damage. But what about the pitchers hit before him that have not been so lucky? For example, when J.A. Happ was hit in the head in 2013, he suffered a skull fracture behind his left ear and a sore right knee from the impact of his fall.
Doug Fister of the Tigers tries to protect himself from a line drive.
A company called isoBLOX seems to have a solution. They have developed a baseball cap that provides frontal head protection and side head protection. The cap has been certified by the MLB to help protect against line drives up to 83 mph. Bruce Foster, the chief executive officer for isoBLOX’s parent company explained, “The padding is made of hexagon-shaped injection-molded polymers connected by a hinge, and fitted with a foam substrate.” This technology being used helps disperse the force of the ball when it impacts the cap. For the protection it provides, it only adds one half-inch thickness to the front of the cap and an inch on the sides. It also weighs seven ounces, which is only about 3 ounces heavier than a standard hat.
Alex Torres of the New York Mets
So why is Alex Torres of the Mets the only pitcher rocking this new technology? There are several factors. For one, many pitchers are superstitious and believe it will hinder their pitching performance. Unfortunately, this is not the worse reason. The main reason is that the “protective hat” only protects up to an 83 mph line drive. The company isoBLOX made some major faults in their statistical analyses when designing their cap.
To start, the MLB and isoBLOX set the threshold of the product at the average line drive speed from the data they collected. Since it is safe to say the speed of line drives is symmetrically distributed, this means the cap only protects against half of line drives hit. This also means that the half of line drives this hat is protecting against is the slower line drives. Line drives below the average line drive speed are more likely to be caught than those hit above the average speed since the pitcher has more reaction time. For example, a pitcher has twice as much time to react to a 50 mph hit than he does a 100 mph hit. Finally, the balls traveling below 83 mph have a far less change of producing a severe injury compared to the balls hit above 83 mph. The point of the cap is to protect against severe injury, therefor the threshold of the product should have been set at the max line drive speed hit, not the average.
If the MLB and isoBLOX can design a cap that has a higher threshold, and possibly reduce the bulk of the hat, I am confident Alex Torres would not be the only pitcher opting for the added protection. But as of now, from the data the MLB has collected, it seems the only thing Alex Torres’s cap is protecting against is the balls he is already likely to catch or knock down.
Pitcher safety has certainly become a large topic around the MLB in last couple years. Unfortunately, no type of special headgear will ever solve the problem. The reality is, that every single pitcher that steps on the field knows he could be hit in the head with a line drive at any given time, yet not a single pitcher has refused to step on the field because of that. So long as pitchers are willing to take that risk upon themselves, it is hard to argue that any sort of protective gear be implemented. Pitchers are being paid millions of dollars and just don’t prioritize this issue currently. Here is an article where Brandon McCarthy, a pitcher who has been struck by a line drive before, states he won’t use the current technology even through it would improve his safety.
As a baseball fanatic, I really like this post. I had no idea that the MLB had this type of technology and hat this hat created. I also had no idea that there was a pitcher who was willing to wear this new hat. I do not think this new “hard hat” for pitchers will be successful for the fact that like you stated in your post, many line drives are coming much faster than 83 miles per hour off the bat and it wont slow down much when it hits that pitcher 60 feet away. Plus the hat looks pretty goofy in my opinion. Once they come up with a hat that looks as if there is not a UFO hovering over the players head, I’m sure more and more pitchers would happy change their lid for the new and improved protection hat.