THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Ugh. I’m disappointed to see this appear with no real commentary. This is a sore point for me. Pitching mechanics analysis is presented as fact and while I think it’s generally based in solid theory I’ve seen little to no public studies that look at this on a systematic basis.

It strikes me as summary judgment without evidence.

There is some concern, just like there is some concern with lots of guys.

I’m generally a defender of SS’s mechanics from the standpoint that he doesn’t have the inverted-w like Prior and Reyes, but he does have the “horizontal-W” like Peaby (pitching arm elbow goes toward 1B).

Wainwright has completely different mechanics than Prior and Peavy.

A larger concern I have with SS is the competitive IP as an early teen. He was a member of the talented SD team that was competing in national showcase tourneys 10 years ago. Youth pitching in SoCal is a concern, due to the region and playing year-round. These guys are far from monitored in college as well. Considering spring season, summer leagues, and fall ball, 18yo may be throwing “major League Seasons” (34 starts, 200+ IP). Coaches often have a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” attitude, which may explain how guys like Wood make it to ML with messy mechanics.

I’ll also sat that changing your mechanics after 10-15 years of habit (and success), and at the highest level of competition is no small feat.

I think we’ll continue to find that guys that are generally FB-CH pitchers (Felix) generally have better arm health than other types. A concern I had of Wainwright was not his elevated elbow release point, but the number of sliders thrown. It’s always been a high-risk, high-reward pitch. There also remains a “pussy” stigma on pitchers that rely mote heavily on the changeup, but that has to die at some point, right?

I also have doubts that guys like Stras, Verlander,Lincecum can ever employ the “pitch to contact” approch (supposing it actually exists”.

Batters aren’t up there intentionally swinging and missing.

I followed some former high K guys through HS and college and I (erroneosly) told them that their pitch counts should go down at the next level due to guys putting more balls in play. The reverse occurred. Batters swung at fewer pitches they couldn’t hit and still whiffed on the ones they tried to hit. Still high K, high PC pitchers. One of them averaged 145 pitches per game through the D2 CWS.

The best they can hope/train for IMO is reduced BB/9 to lower pitch counts. Max Sherzer may be on this path.

Interesting, but doesn’t it seem like someone should already know this stuff? I think I’m sort of saying the same thing as #1/azru. Seems like someone should already have ran every single pitcher’s motion through the computer, and we could easily figure out whether this “late cocking phase” is really the key to predicting injury or not. Must be harder to figure out than it sounds.

They do. There’s lots of technology that does this.

But, there’s lots of factors that go into injuries, prevention, prediction, etc. We know this and even study it in sabermetrics.

But people have different genetics and pitch types as well. Guys could have identical motions and could pitch very different IP before a major injury occurs.

We also continue to learn. At one time, Prior’s mechanics were considered “perfect” and Lincecum’s “risky”. We now know that pretty much the opposite is true. Even though there are a ton of gurus just waiting for Timmy to get hurt so they can throw themselves an “I told you so” parade.

That sounds reasonable the way you describe it, makes sense.

I’m just waiting for Lincecum to get injured because I’m a Dodger fan. (Just kidding, it’s never fun to see someone get injured like that even on the other team. I do wish he would lose some effectiveness though.)

Baseball teams are not monitoring this like some doctors know they could be. I recently interviewed a doctor (who has consulted ballplayers) about this for IIATMS as a follow up to this article of Verducci’s. Ball clubs could be doing more.