BlogsTom Tango - Consultant for the Seattle Mariners
As an A's fan, I have only one thing to say about this:
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
This is the 12-year old Marshall-trained pitcher that is making the rounds about the Internet. You can see all of the pitches he throws in this video in high-speed (appears to be 210 FPS). Go to the video directly to see it in HD quality.
I'll let the viewers draw their own conclusions. The only thing I will say is that the release of the Maxline Pronation Curveball is nearly perfect.
1 day ago
Kyle Boddy
20 comments
0 recs
Discussion: Internally Rotating the Shoulder
by Kyle Boddy
on Jan 4, 2009 2:02 AM PST
in Pitching Mechanics
SB Nation poster NoNameOnCard is a frequent contributor to this site and has published his own blog about biomechanical research as it pertains to baseball - TexasLeaguers.com. For those who think that I go on at length about biomechanical and anatomical concepts, you should check out his stuff!
He has an excellent article up right now that discusses the internal rotation of the shoulder and how it contributes to valgus stress on the elbow (the primary cause of UCL rupture). Dr. Marshall believes that UCL rupture occurs due to "forearm bounce," or when the pitching arm goes from zero acceleration to maximum acceleration with the forearm being "laid back" in a position of shoulder external rotation. An example of external shoulder rotation can be seen below:
As a slight digression, Paul Nyman (SETPRO) believes that shoulder external rotation is the cause of high pitched ball velocities. I disagree. It is the effect of high pitched ball velocities.
NoNameOnCard believes that by extending the pitching arm before internal rotation takes place that the triceps can maximally project the baseball towards home plate with higher velocities and reduce the risk of UCL-related injuries.
I'm not sure I agree. I emailed NoNameOnCard this blurb in hopes of stirring up some discussion:
I love the blog so far. However, I don't think that I draw the same conclusions that you do about internal rotation. Dr. Marshall's students experience significantly higher degrees of internal rotation about the shoulder than "elite" pitchers from ASMI, as documented in this study. This would indicate that Dr. Marshall's pitchers should be at much higher risk for UCL injuries than traditional pitchers. Do you think that Dr. Marshall's pitchers use of their triceps via pronation helps to protect against valgus stress?
As for your comments about the anterior deltoid needing to flex to maintain the full length of the forearm behind the shoulder to avoid "forearm bounce" (vertical pitching forearm laying back in external rotation), you are correct - their pitchers do not do this. However, Dr. Marshall does want them to do so. Bill Peterson of RPM Pitching has indicated that his son Patrick had serious injuries in the anterior portion of his shoulder - particularly the deltoid area - after years of training with Dr. Marshall. To me, using the anterior deltoid in this manner causes a position of hyperabduction and poses a serious risk of injury. It takes a genetically gifted individual to accelerate a baseball at meaningful velocities using this technique, and Patrick was one of the few that could. It directly contributed to anterior shoulder injury.
The flaw of "looping" that Dr. Marshall talks about (the bending of the pitching elbow) is not a flaw at all, IMO.
I need to review the videos of Dr. Marshall's students, because while it is true that the internal rotation of their shoulders is significantly higher than ASMI's "elite" group of pitchers, the lack of UCL-related injuries to pitchers in his group could be related to an extended pitching arm before internal rotation, if NoNameOnCard's theories are correct.
I've emailed Dr. Marshall about this issue as well, and I'll start pulling video to see what I can conclude.
I promise that less verbose articles will be published in the future and more pitcher analyses will go up. I'm just knee-deep in tons of research that I want to understand a bit better before I continue. Thanks for your understanding.
1 comment | 0 recs
Quick News: Scapula Stuff, Schooling, Dr. Fleisig
by Kyle Boddy
on Dec 31, 2008 9:50 AM PST
in News
Scapula Stuff
In "Differences in Scapular Upward Rotation Between Baseball Pitchers and Position Players" (Laudner et. al. - link), it is confirmed that pitchers have significantly less scapular upward rotation than position players at 60 and 90 degrees of humeral elevation.
Your arms at rest are 0 degrees. Raising them parallel with your shoulders straight in front of you is 90 degrees.
At 120 degrees (hyperabduction), it is not statistically significant, but the trend does seem to hold water.
This is important because insufficient scapular upward rotation has been empirically linked with several shoulder disorders.
The question now is: Why does this happen?
In "The Role of the Scapula in Rehabilitation of Shoulder Injuries" (Voight, Thomson - link), Voight et. al. conclude that while "rotator cuff strengthening has been an obvious treatment for various pathologies," the scapula is the base of the rotator cuff and therefore the muscles that control it should be strengthened as well. Weakeness causes altered biomechanics of the glenohumeral joint, possibly leading to unnecessary stresses on the rotator cuff (particularly the subscapularis) and the anterior capsule.
Still, we have no real link between why scapular upwards rotation is decreased in healthy professional pitchers compared to position players of the same organization. Nevertheless, we can regain some of this upwards rotation by performing various types of PNF stretching, D2 patterns with SPRI bands, tons of different types of rows (Eric Cressey of Cressey Performance loves these exercises for pitchers), and serratus anterior punches with SPRI bands.
Altered push-ups with chains or blast straps would be a great way to work similar muscles, especially if you focused on retracting the scapula at the top of the exercise.
Schooling
After careful consideration, I have decided to go back to school and finish my undergraduate coursework. Previous to dropping out of a full-tuition scholarship at a quality private university in the Midwest (very smart, I know), I was studying Economics and Entrepreneurship - two fields of study that I still enjoy reading about today. However, since my plan in life is to work around baseball (and sports medicine/training overall), I'll be taking some general coursework at the local junior college to get my prerequisites out of the way (sadly enough I have 90+ semester credits finished but nearly none in the hard sciences) before applying for admission to a local college to study Exercise Science. After graduation, I will take the ATC and CSCS exams for certification and attend graduate school to earn a Master's degree in Kinesiology. Though I can't really see myself attaining a Ph. D., I suppose it is entirely possible that I will continue on.
Biomechanics Lab
I'm happy to report that the high-speed camera works wonderfully - if there's enough light. I took it to the batting cage to mess around with, and unfortunately there's not much to share due to the poor lighting conditions. However, I managed to take some great footage of Matrix-style choreographed fights at work last night, and that turned out wonderfully.
Dr. Glenn Fleisig of ASMI (hazel's hero, if I recall correctly) was good enough to speak with me on the phone about planning out a biomechanics lab in the Pacific Northwest. He was happy to hear that I planned to study Exercise Science and that I was interested in opening up a biomechanics lab up here to do similar studies on pitchers and hitters. He said that he had a few people interested around the country in opening up "satellite" offices and that he would put me in touch with said people in about a month, after the Injuries in Baseball Conference in Houston (such coaches include Tom House, Rick Peterson, etc).
Dr. Fleisig invited me to come down to Birmingham for a few days to understand the general layout of the facility and to help me get an idea of the cost and planning it would require to build such a lab myself. I look forward to visiting him sometime in 2009 to make this happen (and to think I have yet to visit Bill Peterson of RPM Pitching in Colorado).
The goal of Driveline Mechanics was to establish a baseline of what I thought I knew and see if it panned out, and it turns out that many of you are interested in similar pursuits! There exists a significant body of work out there that I am delving into that suggests that scapular loading below the acromial line can be very beneficial, and as such I am thinking about changing my mind on this very subject (though I never really cared about people passively "loading the scapula," only people who forcibly took it behind the acromial line and especially in a hyperabducted state). I hope that you never stop questioning both what I write and what you read, because the truth is that none of us have all the answers. One day, we may very well have them - but it does us no good to simply know what we should do; we must figure out how to relate them to the youth baseball players who will grow up to be professional pitchers so they can pitch with less injury concerns.
4 comments | 0 recs
This Time Around, Giants Play It Smart on Free Agent Pitching Market
by David Golebiewski
on Dec 28, 2008 7:53 AM PST
in Transaction Report
Wading into the free agent pitching waters is just about the most treacherous activity that a team can undertake. There are certainly some bargains to be had, but the history of lengthy, exorbitantly-priced contracts for the most coveted arms on the market is mixed at best.
By definition, a free agent has accumulated at least six years of service time at the major league level, meaning that his days of making less than his fair market value are over. Add in the injury and attrition rates for pitchers and the uncertainty of projecting player performance more than a few years out, and you have a recipe for some expensive mistakes.
To get an idea of the return on investment that clubs have been getting from free agent hurlers, let's take a look at the pitchers who received multi-year deals during the 2006/2007 offseason and how their level of performance stacks up to their salary.
13 comments | 1 recs
News: Coaching
by Kyle Boddy
on Dec 28, 2008 1:27 AM PST
in Training
A few people have emailed me about the broken Coaching link in the Pages section in the left sidebar. I have since fixed that problem, but both the Pitching and the Coaching pages should be updated with new and additional information that I've researched over the past year. For now, I think my readers are happy that I'm updating the blog with some regularity and I promise to get around to updating the pages in the near future!
As for coaching, readers have emailed me asking about my location and my availability to analyze hitting/pitching clips for a fee, so I will talk about this on the front page. The intention of this site (Driveline Mechanics) was not to tout my coaching services or analyst skills, but to publish a blog that analyzes MLB players and prospects from a different point of view - combining the performance analysis of sabermetrics with a scouting perspective as well to form player profiles. Still, this blog has attracted a fair amount of interest with regard to coaching services, and as such, I have begun work on a dedicated coaching site. This site will have free content with drills and strength and conditioning tips as well as a forum to post to, and it will have more information about my coaching availability.
Much of my background comes from a strength and conditioning background, which is how I got involved in safe and effective pitching mechanics (suffering elbow and shoulder pain myself certainly accelerated this journey). Most of what I have studied with regard to general biomechanics, strength and conditioning, and nutrition are not suitable for publication on this blog, but would be very useful for amateurs and professionals alike who are looking to improve their skills and sport-specific performance. These topics will be covered on my new coaching site.
A major coaching/analyst goal of mine in 2009 includes finding a batting cage facility to partner with to setup a complex biomechanical lab (with help from Dr. Fleisig's instructions) in Seattle, WA. It will include reports similar to what ASMI provides with traditional, high-speed, and infrared imagery available to hitters and pitchers at any level. This prospect of developing the first full-featured biomechanical lab to analyze baseball players in the Pacific Northwest is very exciting to me, and I hope to be able to share these facilities at reasonable costs with others in the area.
As always, if you have questions, please feel free to email me directly - kyle@drivelinemechanics.com, or post comments. I love feedback of all types, and I know the other authors appreciate it as well.
0 comments | 0 recs
FanGraphs Adds Wins Above Replacement (WAR)
There’s a new section in the batting player pages which does the job of calculating a player’s runs over replacement and wins over replacement.
Now that's awesome.
9 days ago
Kyle Boddy
0 comments
0 recs
Quick Hit: Joe Mauer
by Kyle Boddy
on Dec 27, 2008 1:42 AM PST
in Hitting Mechanics
Joe Mauer is the definition of a "sweet swing." People point to him and love his work ethic, his amazing defensive skills, his high batting average, his great walk rate, and that beautifully simple stroke that laces line drives from gap to gap.
And why not? Take a look at his 2008 stats:
This type of production is simply unheard of from a catcher. Hell, it's hard to find a first baseman this good.
Now, his swing:
People have been saying for years that Mauer would eventually fill out and start hitting 30 home runs annually, which would make him the best player in the major leagues and it simply would not be close (assuming he continued to hit .300 with high walk rates). However, while Mauer still racks up the doubles and walks, he's not hitting too many over the fences.
A quick analysis of his hitting mechanics might tell us why...
6 comments
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Hitter Profile: Justin Smoak (Part Two)
by Kyle Boddy
on Dec 27, 2008 1:23 AM PST
in Hitting Mechanics
For those who missed it (or ignored the post due to so many comments), please check out Part One of our Hitter Profile on Justin Smoak. Teacherman makes a lot of interesting comments about Smoak's swing - he parallels it with Dr. Chris Yeager's work, which he believes does not produce the high-level MLB swing. Since I don't want to get too technical - this can be a featured story in the future - I will simply say that I disagree with the assertion that Dr. Chris Yeager's work does not mimic or produce the high-level MLB swing, and that I mostly believe in Dr. Yeager's ideas about hitting mechanics. Again, pages upon pages can be written about what the high-level MLB swing actually is, and it's something I plan on talking about in the future.
However, for now, we'll stick with our basic hitting breakdown using the four stages of the swing as Dr. Yeager talks about. This is the clip we'll be analyzing, since the end result was a HR and it represents Smoak's "best swing."
Part Two of our Hitter Profile on Justin Smoak continues after the break...
12 comments
| 0 recs
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Pitch F/X Profile: Jon Lester
by David Golebiewski
on Dec 23, 2008 5:57 PM PST
in PITCHf/x Work
A World Series-clinching win. A successful battle against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. A no-hitter. Red Sox southpaw Jon Lester has already compiled a career's worth of accomplishments, and he's only going on 25.
16 comments | 0 recs
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