Players’ association head Tony Clark said teams are encouraging pitchers to throw as hard as possible, leading to more injuries and minimizing the importance of starting pitchers.

Speaking before Friday’s World Series opener, Clark criticized how the game has evolved in the analytics age. There were a record-low 26 complete games in the major leagues this season — four fewer than Catfish Hunter alone threw in 1975.

“Unless and until the decisionmakers determine that blowing out pitchers day in and day out as a result of how they’re using them or what they’re requiring of them is no longer the best way to treat their players, we (won’t) see a change,” Clark said. “Absent that, a rule change would be challenging.”

Over the past 10 years, the average fastball velocity has risen from 93.3 mph to 95.5 during the 2024 regular season. Injury rates have also skyrocketed, with 484 pitchers going on the injured list this year, nearly double the 2014 total.

Starters have averaged 12.8 outs in the postseason, down from 13.8 last year and 15 in 2022, according the Elias Sports Bureau.

“The conversations that we’ve had with our players have suggested that unless or until you draw a line in the sand and force change, that the decisionmakers on any one particular team are going to continue to make the decisions that they’re making, which is have pitchers, starting and relievers, max effort for the period of time that they can have them,” Clark said. “As soon as they seem to run out of gas, as the data suggests that they’re going to, recycle them out and to burn out another pitcher.”

When Clark in April claimed a shorter pitch clock led to injuries, MLB said there was a “long-term trend, over multiple decades, of velocity and spin increases that are highly correlated with arm injuries.”

Clark said he was pleased with the expanded postseason, but skeptical of 14-team format

Clark expressed satisfaction with the agreement in the 2022 labor contract to expand the postseason from 10 teams to 12 and skepticism over a 14-team format, which management proposed and players resisted.

Every team with at least 90 wins has reached the expanded playoffs and clubs with as few as 84 have earned wild-card berths. Arizona earned the sixth and final NL slot last year and made the World Series for the first time since 2001.

Dodgers add Vesia, Graterol and Rojas >> Left-hander Alex Vesia (Cal State East Bay), right-hander Brusdar Graterol and infielder Miguel Rojas were added to the Dodgers’ World Series roster before Friday’s opener, and left-hander Nestor Cortes was restored by the Yankees.

Outfielder Kevin Kiermaier and right-handers Evan Phillips and Edgardo Henriquez were dropped by the Dodgers and infielder Jon Berti by the Yankees.

Phillips’ arm “tightened up” and didn’t respond well after the NLCS and “there’s enough ambiguity” that the Dodgers left him off the roster, according to Andrew Friedman, president of baseball operations.

Because it is a pre-existing issue, Friedman said the team couldn’t replace Phillips if the problem persisted and they didn’t want to put him in harm’s way.

Vesia was left off the NLCS roster after he suffered an intercostal injury while warming up in Game 5 of the NLDS against San Diego on Oct. 11.