Should MLB Pitchers Wear Helmets?

"“It felt like my head was in a vise,” said Pirates pitcher Chris Jakubauskas."

Should pitchers in Major League Baseball wear some sort of helmet to provide protection from hitters?  Or is it simply that major league pitchers have terrible fundamentals and leave themselves open as a target by not being ready to field a batted ball?  Either way, there are numerous gruesome videos of pitchers being line drived on  You Tube. Even more examples go undocumented each year.  Looking at each of the pages and pages of available video, most are similar to the head vise Jakubauskas experienced on Sunday. 

Thinking this through and being a devil’s advocate, would a helmet protect the critical areas of the anatomy and lead to even worse fundamentals by major league pitchers?  In essence,  would a helmet provide pitchers with a mental security blanket that could lead to a higher comfort level?  Would we see more line drives to the neck, more broken knee caps and other injuries to (ahem) lower extremities?   I don’t think so.

My bottom line is this, I feel it should at least be discussed and analyzed, because that was some scary stuff on Sunday.

One could argue that a standard helmet might not help, it certainly wouldn’t have made a difference in the Jakubauskas injury on Sunday.  But a few inches either way, well it would have helped.  It could have saved serious injury.  So let’s say MLB dodged a catastrophe.  I feel that wearing a helmet isn’t cool.   In fact, it could be argued that is’s soft.

So, put aside dork factor five, don’t you make your kids wear one when they snowboard?  When they ride a bike?

So why wouldn’t major league pitchers wear a helmet on the mound?