The Hardball Times -- Kyle Boddy

Chris Sale and his faulty elbow

Kyle Boddy — 2012-05-14T20:11:15+00:00

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Ubaldo Jimenez: A quick mechanics review

Kyle Boddy — 2012-05-07T12:26:15+00:00

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Ubaldo Jimenez and his missing 96 mph heater: A mechanical look

Kyle Boddy — 2012-05-04T08:51:15+00:00

On July 30, 2011, newly minted Indians GM Chris Antonetti made a huge trade, acquiring Colorado's Ubaldo Jimenez in exchange for a pair of prospects—Drew Pomeranz and Alex White. Pomeranz was a highly prized prospect in the Cleveland system; he was far and away the best prospect the Indians had and one of the best pitching prospects in baseball. Cleveland fans were excited to have a legitimate ace on the staff. A guy who could gas his fastball near 100 mph and sat in the mid-90s with some great secondary stuff hadn't been seen in Cleveland in a long time.

Unfortunately for the Tribe faithful, Ubaldo has disappointed in his short stint with the Indians, and his fastball velocity continues to drop like a stone in water, going from an average of 96 mph in 2009 and 2010 to 93.5 mph in 2011 and 92.0 in 2012 (so far, and it should be noted that fastball velocity tends to be lower in the early months of a season). His BABIP spiked in 2011, which could have caused some poor luck, but there's no denying that he's been giving up more home runs since being traded—and that's with a shift away from Colorado and into mostly park-neutral Progressive Field!

Jordan Bastian, an Indians beat writer, had this to say about Jimenez' drop in velocity (particularly bad on Tuesday):

This is generally a decent explanation for lost velocity and initially made some sense to me. Jimenez has been using his change-up much more often, and I've been critical of pitchers doing this in the past; when pitchers start relying on their change-up more than usual, they tend to straighten their delivery out and create quite a bit less rotational momentum, thus hurting velocity on all pitches thrown.

So, I decided to load up MLB.TV and download some footage from 2010 to compare it to his most recent start in 2012 to see if I could spot the same issues that Jimenez and his coaches had seen (allegedly using 2010 and 2012 video).

After viewing a clip of him throwing 96 mph in the early innings of that 2010 start (July) and 91 mph in the early innings of the 2012 start (May), I didn't see much difference around his front shoulder. It looked like he still had the weird Jeff Niemann-like stabbing motion in the back of his arm action but that he hadn't sacrificed much, if any, rotational momentum in his delivery.

This isn't uncommon—using terrible broadcast-quality video (25 FPS) will usually not yield much in the way of solid observations. Synchronizing the clips, I compared them side-by-side from all the phases of the delivery—leg lift, stride foot contact, late cocking, arm acceleration, and ball release. What I saw was so astounding, it made me re-cut the video to make sure I hadn't screwed something up. It was still there. So, I re-downloaded the video and re-cut it a third time. Still there.

I won't drag it out any longer. Here's the side-by-side comparison at full speed. Do note, however, that the video on the right (2012) is about a third of a frame ahead of the video on the left (2010) due to the joys of working with broadcast video.

Can you spot the glaring mechanical change? It's hard to notice the first few times at full speed. Here's the relevant part, slowed down:

Look at Jimenez' arm action when he separates his pitching hand from the glove! (He also collapses a bit more on the backside and has more teeter-totter north-south in his 2012 delivery, but it's very slight.)

In the Cleveland clip, he separates his pitching arm extremely early and leaves it to hang by his back pocket for four or five more frames than he did in Colorado. Look back at the full speed clip and see how the 2010 arm action is so much more athletic and smooth. The difference is honestly staggering—you almost never see a change this massive in such a short period of time.

Jimenez' arm action has always been unorthodox, but he created decent momentum out of the glove when he began the bottom portion of his arm action in Colorado. Now, he completely arrests momentum in the arm as it hangs down. He just takes his pitching arm out of the glove and lets it hang down while he used to have much better rhythm and intent out of the glove.

Ubaldo's take: Front shoulder myth busted

Whatever he saw on the video to think that his front shoulder was the problem is absolutely NOT the issue, and it's shocking that he didn't notice this difference when doing so. Simply putting synchronized video side-by-side and going through it frame-by-frame reveals a major change in arm action that needs to be addressed immediately through movement efficiency drills.

Allow me to step on my soapbox here for a bit: It should be the sole job of at least one person working in a club's player development department to routinely review video mechanics of both hitters and pitchers throughout the farm system from various angles.

Ideally, you spend about $800 and install high-speed cameras in each of your parks from the side and rear of the pitching mound and review pitching mechanics of all pitchers who come through your parks. This way, you'd have a huge library of 210-420 FPS video you could recall and use in a coaching capacity, or for scouting/player acquisition purposes. You could even review pitching kinematics to monitor red flags in deliveries of pitchers in advance, which would be incredibly valuable for future analysis. We're not talking about a huge investment here, and the payoff would be enormous. How valuable would it have been to notice this mechanical issue in 2011, or in spring training?

Ubaldo Jimenez has a 96 mph fastball left in him—but not with these mechanics. He needs to figure out how to recreate the whip in his arm action and take constant video of his mechanics to ensure they stay that way.

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Scouting Mark Appel: the possible first pick overall in 2012

Kyle Boddy — 2012-04-11T09:07:15+00:00

Stanford right-handed pitcher Mark Appel is one of the candidates to go first overall to the Houston Astros in the 2012 draft. With a four-seam fastball that touches 100 mph and sits 94-96, a two-seam fastball around 92-94 with a ton of arm-side run, a sharp slider from 82-84, and a changeup from 81-83 with plenty of depth, he has the tools to perform well in the big leagues. But there have been some serious concerns with his stats this year that are making a lot of people pause.

Where are the strikeouts?

As of April 9, Appel has only struck out 55 batters in 57 innings pitched despite his stuff (source: CollegeSplits). If you adjust for park/schedule (the Pac-12 is tougher than the average college conference), Appel projects to have 58 strikeouts in 57 innings pitched, which is not a huge improvement.

Pitchers who are projected to go with one of the top picks of the draft generally have gaudy strikeout totals, but they weren't there in 2011 for Appel, and while they've improved some in 2012, it hasn't been a huge increase.

The kinematics of Mark Appel

Similar to the Gerrit Cole and Danny Hultzen articles I've written, I've broken down Appel's kinematics using high-speed video that I personally shot on April 5 when he pitched against the University of Washington.

Metrics for analysis

These will be the same metrics as the ones used in both the Cole/Hultzen analyses:

-Maximum knee height (absolute and relative to height)
-Degrees of shoulder abduction at foot contact
-Degrees of lead knee angle at foot contact
-Stride length at foot contact (absolute and relative to height)
-Degrees of maximum external rotation (MER)
-Degrees of lead hip flexion at ball release

Maximum knee height

Appel's maximum lead knee height is 56.64 inches, giving him a relative measure of 75.5 percent of his standing height of 77 inches (error unknown). Research indicates that the best pitchers have a maximum knee height between 60 and 70 percent of their standing height, so Appel exceeds that to some degree. The idea is that if the lead knee is raised too high, the momentum down and toward the plate can be arrested or started late, though Appel doesn't seem to have a problem with this.

Stride foot contact metrics

Appel strikes the ground with his heel first, which isn't a problem, despite conventional thinking. There's no correlation between loss of velocity and/or control issues with pitchers who land heel first.

Shoulder abduction (angle of elbow/upper arm) is about 84 degrees (error unknown). Research suggests elite pitchers are generally between 80-100 degrees at this phase of the delivery.

Lead knee angle is about 144 degrees (error unknown). Research suggests elite pitchers are generally between 125-140 degrees at this phase of the delivery. This is a minor red flag, because further down the delivery, you can see Appel firms up his lead knee and closes the angle a little more after heel strike.

Stride length is about 66.5 inches or 86.36 percent of his standing height. (error unknown). Research suggests elite pitchers generally stride 75-90 percent of their standing height.

Maximum external rotation

Appel's MER is about 184 degrees (error unknown). Research suggests that elite pitchers tend to range from 170-190 degrees of "MER" throughout the delivery.

Hip flexion

At ball release, Appel's lead hip flexion is about 87 degrees (error unknown). Research suggests that elite pitchers tend to be between 92-115 degrees of hip flexion at ball release, so Appel comes in a little short here. I think this is due to his very long stride, as the longer you stride, the tougher it is to flex forward at the trunk if you have blocked the front side with your leg. This can cause deceleration pathing issues in pitchers, but Appel doesn't seem to have an excessive issue here.

Wrapping up the kinematics

Here's a review of the kinematics in a simple chart:

Appel is a little out of bounds on some of the markers, but I don't personally think there's much to be worried about.

Performance against Washington

I went to the game in Seattle with Jason Churchill, executive editor for Prospect Insider and contributor to ESPN's coverage of young baseball prospects. He wrote up Appel on his blog and wasn't too enthused with him, and I came away with similar thoughts. Appel couldn't command his fastball in the first inning at 95 mph, so he dialed it down to 92-94 and relied heavily on his two-seam fastball against the power-heavy (and defensively light) lineup that Coach Meggs sent out there.

Though Appel shut out the Huskies after Jacob Lamb tagged him in the first for a two-run double, he only struck out three hitters, and he was unable to throw his slider for strikes early in the count. Appel relied on his two-seam fastball and changeup (81-83) to get induce weak contact in a relatively big ballpark, and though it worked, Appel is supposed to be a premier power pitcher with strikeout stuff, not a contact/finesse guy like his opponent, Aaron West (who I thought pitched pretty well, to be honest—take a look at high-speed footage of West on YouTube).

Appel has a relatively easy motion and not a lot of violence, and it lends itself to a pretty repeatable delivery. He's a good athlete and fields his position well.

However, I kept thinking to myself, "If you have a 96-98 mph heater but can't reliably command it, do you really have it at all?" It's to his credit that he has the intelligence and humbleness to understand when he can't throw his best bolt where he needs it, but that's a trait you want to see from the fringe guys who have to maximize their stuff, not necessarily big-time prospects.

Bonus: Appel's two-seam fastball

What did impress me was Mark Appel's two-seam fastball that he commanded very well, getting it inside to righties on a regular basis and making them supremely uncomfortable and defensive at the plate. You can see how he releases it in this very slow animated image I created:

You can see how Appel drives the pinky-side of his hand to the plate in a supinated position, pronating through release and turning his hand over to get the massive arm-side run. Because of how Appel's hand is positioned, if he fails to pronate at the right time, the ball will come out of his hand like a cutter, which explains a lot of references to his "cutter" or "two-seam cutter" that I've seen on various blogs out there. However, this doesn't seem to happen often, and I didn't see any cutter-like pitches from Appel.

Conclusion: To take him or not?

Whether or not I'd pick Appel with the first choice in the 2012 MLB draft isn't an opinion I'm willing (or qualified) to form, but there are a lot of issues surrounding him that need to be examined before announcing his name. The teams picking at the top of the draft have their homework cut out for them.

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The 39-year-old who won’t give up on his dream

Kyle Boddy — 2012-02-21T06:04:15+00:00

The writer is the owner of the Seattle-based "Driveline" companies, which train athletes.

Andrew McNally is a 39-year-old father of three living in suburban Puyallup, Wash. Like most people, he has a day job—real estate appraisal—and spends a lot of time taking care of his family. And yet:

Last May 20, I received an email from him. He told me a little about his background and his injuries—and his desire to play professional baseball again.

Professional baseball? A late-30s guy with a litany of injuries to his shoulder? Sure, he had a lot of experience in pro ball—pitching in the minors for the Cleveland Indians, throwing for the Australian Olympic team in 1996, playing a few years of independent league baseball—but it was a long shot. Furthermore, the teenagers and 20-somethings I work with balk at how much effort it takes to make it even at the lowest levels of the minors. Yet Andrew said his goal was to "shatter all the records set by oldest rookie pitcher in the major leagues." (He amended himself a bit later when he realized that Satchel Paige's records would probably be pretty tough to break.)

I told him I'd work with him, but that the road would be long, hard, grueling, and frankly, extremely boring. Training to be the best baseball player one can be is usually filled with boredom, a fact all fans can relate to when they watch Josh Beckett pitch a meaningless game in June with runners on base. Andrew said he would do whatever it took to get there.

He sounded genuine, but I had heard the speech "I'll do whatever it takes to pitch at the next level" on more than one occasion. Almost everyone I've worked with, and told what they'd have to do to get there, eventually bailed because of the ridiculous amount of work they'd have to put in, so I no longer get too excited when people say they have an infallible work ethic.

Andrew would live up to his promise.

The beginning: Andrew's history

Before he was a family man living in western Washington with crazy aspirations, Andrew was a pretty good amateur baseball player. He pitched for his hometown team, the Perth Heat in Australia, and had enough success to earn a spot on the University of Hawaii's baseball team.

While playing for the Rainbow Warriors as a freshman, Andrew threw 137 innings, walked only 26, and was second in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in ERA, though he was left off the All-Conference team. He would eventually be named to the first team All-America squad that year.

In 1994, Andrew pitched in the Baseball World Cup (the World Baseball Classic's predecessor), appearing in two games and finishing with an 11.74 ERA. He would then redshirt his junior year so he could pitch for the Australian Olympic team in 1996, allowing 10 hits and four walks over 2.2 innings.

By the time he finished college, Andrew was second in the school record books for most innings pitched in a career with 382. He's in third place for career strikeouts at UH with 304 batters fanned, and does not appear on the career walks leader board. He is also the leader in earned runs allowed in a career, 205. All these records still stand.

Andrew's fastball sat at 88-90 mph, and he threw a curveball and change-up as his secondary pitches. While his control and command were good, when you combined his raw stuff with what he did in the WAC, World Cup and Olympics, few people could look at the total package and think that he'd be destined to pitch professional baseball. Making matters worse, Andrew is listed on Baseball-Reference as a 6-foot tall righty, but every time I've stood next to him, he looked quite a bit shorter than me—and I'm 6-foot. For these reasons, Andrew went undrafted in 1997. However, a Seattle-area Cleveland Indians scout saw enough to throw him a bone and signed him to a minor league contract in 1997.

Professional baseball: The start

A strange thing would happen when he went to short-season A ball: He'd make a huge stride forward in performance. While pitching for the Watertown Indians, Andrew would appear in 23 games, throwing 31.1 innings, and striking out 37 batters while walking only 13. Better still, he only gave up 6.6 hits per nine innings; his biggest problem in college had been giving up too much hard contact. Andrew was improving significantly by vastly improving his strikeout numbers while maintaining his plus command/control.

The Indians saw enough to promote him to the full-season Single-A team in Columbus, where he'd split closing duties with former light-hitting Seattle Mariners first baseman/DH Greg Pirkl.

(Seriously.)

Andrew would appear in 38 games, nabbing eight saves and posting nearly identical ratios from his short-season stint. Over 45 innings, he had 53 strikeouts and just 19 walks, a 2.79 K/BB ratio. He finished with a 3.00 ERA and felt good about continuing his professional career.

Then Indians GM Mark Shapiro released him. The team considered him "unprojectable," someone who could get minor league hitters out but still behind the big time prospects the Indians had in their organization—primarily flame-throwing closer David Riske.

I asked Andrew if he was ever told if he'd be released if he didn't throw harder, or was given any indication he'd be released. He said: "No. I was never given a reason why I was released other than that they had no room for me to move up. This was in the late '90s when the Indians were stacked at every level."

Andrew on the extent of the training he received in Cleveland: "They had a strength and conditioning coach that would be available for the players at the gym as well as at the field for conditioning. I don't recall working on pitching mechanics. We did meet after every game or series to discuss performance and pitch selection."

Andrew looked around for a place to play and caught on in the very tough Northern League (now part of the North American League), pitching for the Allentown Ambassadors. At the time, the Northern League was equivalent to Single- or Double-A affiliated baseball, which would have been a step up for Andrew. He responded by appearing in 17 games, throwing 28.1 innings and sporting a 1.91 ERA. He would give up no home runs in 1999 and walked fewer batters, though he also struck out fewer.

However, the reason he pitched only 28.1 innings is because he had terrible pain in his shoulder. Shut down for 10 days in June, Andrew resumed throwing and initially had no pain, but when he would step on a mound to pitch competitively, the discomfort returned. He had an MRI, which indicated a labral tear and fraying of the rotator cuff.

Surgeries and complications

He headed to see Dr. James Andrews in August of 1999 to have his shoulders assessed. Andrew would have a classic case of Glenohumeral Internal Rotation Deficit (GIRD) with 120 degrees of external rotation in abduction in the right arm, but just 45 degrees of internal rotation.

In his left arm, he had 70 degrees of IR and 90 degrees of ER. While the total motion of his shoulders was nearly the same, he had very poor IR range of motion in his throwing arm, which is not uncommon in pitchers. Dr. Andrews explored his shoulder with an arthroscope and found only little fraying of the rotator cuff in the supraspinatus tendon—no full-thickness tears that would require major reconstruction. However, Andrew had a severe type-III superior labrum anterior-posterior (SLAP) lesion which needed to be repaired, and he was judged to have excess laxity in his glenohumeral joint.

Dr. Andrews performed the common thermal capsular shrinkage (capsulorrhaphy) method, which looks something like this:

Thermal capsular shrinkage, while a "standard" surgery for overhand-throwing athletes, is still very controversial. Research indicates that a significant portion of people who undergo this operation have unsatisfactory results. In one case study, 37 percent of all patients reported poor results! [Note 1 below] Additionally, shoulder range of motion in external rotation, internal rotation, and abduction can suffer as a result of these procedures. [2]

While this might be the "point" of these surgeries, the truth is that by grossly limiting shoulder external rotation in a baseball pitcher, you are shortening the distance over which the baseball can be accelerated, making it harder for the post-op pitcher to regain his lost velocity. Additionally, research indicates that pitchers who have a wider gap between passive external rotation and dynamically achieved maximum external rotation in the baseball delivery may be at higher risk for shoulder injuries. [3]

When I asked Andrew if he was given an alternative to thermal capsular shrinkage, he said "Not really. They went in to repair the labrum and then decide what else needed to be done while inside the shoulder. I didn't know exactly what was done until after the surgery."

Andrew was rushed back to competition in 2000. He would throw only 1.2 innings before needing to go back to Dr. Andrews to have his labrum repaired again. In 2001, he was completely ineffective—his stuff suffered too much from the surgeries, poor rehab, and rush back to competition. He was out of professional baseball.

Training: The return

A decade later, Andrew would get in touch with me.

He said his arm felt good for the first time in 10 years and that he wanted to see how hard he was throwing off a mound. I scheduled a bullpen session with him, getting one of my college athletes to catch him while I manned the radar gun.

Andrew warmed up and started playing catch with Eli, his catcher for the day. He eventually got on a mound and started throwing at close to 100 percent intensity. His stuff was... underwhelming. I had his fastball at 70-72 mph, and while he had the best command of any college or pro pitcher that I'd worked with, his fastball was way too soft.

You could tell his curve was a real weapon at one point in his career, and he flashed a plus change-up, but nothing could overcome the fact he was throwing softer than every high school freshman I had in my program. I told him the velocities and told him that it was likely that he'd be able to throw harder with some real work, but that a shot at pro ball was very unlikely.

I put him on our massage table, where I checked his shoulder flexibility, and found that he had an unbelievably tight posterior capsule in his throwing arm. I was shocked: If I had examined him with no prior knowledge of his history in professional baseball, I would have thought he was a desk jockey with terrible seated posture.

Almost all baseball pitchers have crazy laxity in external rotation and severely reduced internal rotation, but Andrew was the first I'd seen to have below-average flexibility in both his external AND internal rotators. After asking more probing questions about his medical history, I found out the specific details of his shoulder reconstruction, which explained the terrible mobility in his shoulders.

When I reviewed his pitching mechanics on high-speed film, I was astounded at how poor his maximum external rotation (MER) was for a former professional pitcher. He was barely getting 161 degrees of MER, which was less than every single college pitcher I had examined!

I told Andrew what he'd have to do to reach his goals. He'd have to pay serious attention to a detailed prehab flexibility/mobility program, he'd have to lift heavy weights at the gym frequently, he'd have to start a long toss program that incorporated under/overload baseballs, and he'd have to travel the 45 minutes to Seattle to throw frequent bullpens and get progress check-ups.

He said he didn't have anyone he could throw long toss with in Puyallup, but that he'd figure it out and that he was looking forward to training hard.

I outlined a long toss and weighted baseball program for Andrew, and he faithfully stuck to it. He'd travel to the local ballfield at night alone and throw long toss into a fence 300-plus feet away. After he finished his long toss, he'd throw baseballs as heavy as 11 ounces and as light as four ounces to increase the strength and endurance in his pitching arm.

Every morning he'd wake up and head to Competitive Edge, the local gym, and get his workout in before going to his day job.

Andrew regularly updated me with his progress, and after every cycle of long toss and weighted baseballs, he'd ask for more strenuous training programs, reporting that his arm had never felt better. I told him to come into my facility to throw a bullpen to check on his improvement, impressed that he had stuck with hard training for a few months. He was touching 78-80 mph in July, so we put him on a more aggressive training program.

He would come back in October, still fighting the good fight. This time, Eli was on campus at his college, so I caught him. His fastballs were topping out at 83-84 mph. Progress was slowing, so we decided to change his routine and introduce some experimental weighted ball training concepts that I hadn't fully tested. However, we were both confident in the program and knew that he'd have to do things differently if he was going to be in the low 90s again.

Andrew was throwing a five-ounce regulation baseball over 300 feet in long toss and was throwing an 11-ounce baseball for multiple reps every other day. His arm started off sore, but as he adapted to the increased stressors, he felt better than ever.

In January, it was time to see how well his hard work paid off. Here's what his bullpen looked like (pitches in order: two-seam fastball, cutter, change-up, curveball):

(Yes, that's me exclaiming in the background because of the ridiculous movement his pitches had.)

But it was time to cut to the chase: I pulled out the radar gun and he let some fastballs fly at 100 percent intensity. I got him sitting at 87-88 mph and touching 89. After seven months of hard training, Andrew had restored nearly all of his lost velocity!

When I asked him how our training compared to his experience with Cleveland, he said: "I was given an offseason strength, conditioning, and throwing program to follow with the Indians. Although this program did assist in getting me ready for spring training and the season, it did not help with specific mechanical issues that I may have had at the time."

Finding a place to play

Andrew contacted the Cleveland Indians scout who originally signed him, and the scout was excited to see him throw again. When Andrew threw for him, the scout was very happy with what he saw—he estimated his fastball was touching 90 mph again. At age 39, Andrew was throwing as hard as he was when he was 25, with the outstanding command/control that never left him. Furthermore, his secondary pitches were judged to be big league ready.

The scout wanted to see him again, and this time brought along a current Angels area scout. The Angels scout was just as impressed with him, but wanted to see him another time to see how consistent he was.

When Andrew threw the third time, his fastball velocity was down to 88 mph. Still, both the scouts were interested. They couldn't sign him on the spot and invite him to minor league spring training, but they urged him to play independent league baseball or pitch for the Australian national team with the hopes of catching on near the All-Star break. They said if his fastball velocity was consistently 90-91 mph, he'd have no problem finding work.

So today, Andrew is in Australia, throwing for his old teammates and coaches, looking for that chance to pitch professionally again. He's going to start another cycle of weighted baseball training and long toss after he throws his bullpens for scouts Down Under, and wants to be throwing 92-93 mph by the All-Star break. His maximum external rotation is still very poor—the shoulder surgeries limit what he can do—but we're hopeful that with some mechanical changes, he'll be able to improve on that, increasing the distance over which the baseball can be accelerated, giving him that 2-3 mph boost he needs.

Simply compare Trevor Bauer's high-speed video below to Andrew's video from this month, and you can see how much untapped potential exists in Andrew's arm:

Says Andrew: "Once I am confident that I can perform at 100 percent, I hope to get an opportunity to play for a professional organization with the goal of pitching in the big leagues."

If there's one thing I've learned while working with Andrew, it's that I will never put any goal beyond his reach.

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Fastball mechanics: The hardest and softest throwers

Kyle Boddy — 2011-10-07T06:53:15+00:00

If you search Google for what it takes to become a professional baseball pitcher, you'll find a lot of forum posts and blog posts espousing that "velocity is king." You'll also find a wide variety of rebuttals to that from forum posters and bloggers saying that pitching is an art and velocity isn't everything—control, command and poise all matter even more than fastball velocity!

Is Jordan Walden's rotation the source of his blistering fastball? (Icon/SMI)

Who's right? Certainly we've had the major league success of relatively soft tossers like Jamie Moyer and Mark Buehrle, but the vast majority of successful pitchers (both starters and relievers) have had a big fastball.

If you don't believe me, let me show the stats of a former college pitcher. Based on these stats, I want you to think about where you'd draft him. The only other information you have is that he's 6-foot-5 and 205 pounds with no documented history of arm injuries (the reason he didn't pitch his second year in college was because he was very bad). I'm not going to give you his fastball velocity until you think about it.

 Year      W-L   ERA    G  GS  CG  SV    IP   H   R  ER   BB   SO  WP  HBP  Avg. 
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 20xx      3-0   3.70  15   7   0   0  41.1  30  21  17   36   32   9    7  .208
 20xx      0-1  27.00   9   1   0   1   6.2   6  20  20   24   11  13    3  .273
 20xx      5-3   7.13  14  13   0   0  53.0  47  52  42   53   72  16   12  .240
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Career    8-4   7.04  38  21   0   1 101.0  83  93  79  113  115  38   22  .229

This guy sucks, right? Sure, his strikeout rate is decent for a college pitcher, but his walks are way too high, and just look at the number of wild pitches he threw!

The person who owns those stats is Jason Neighborgall, a former Georgia Tech pitcher, and he was drafted in the third round by the Arizona Diamondbacks, getting a bonus payout that was more appropriate for a high second-round pick.

How could he get drafted so highly without control, command and poise?

That's easy. Neighborgall had the only thing that mattered: A 100+ mph fastball with life. He paired it with college's best curveball, and scouts thought both pitches would eventually develop into No. 1 major league starter weapons (a scouting grade of 80).

I'm using this introduction to show you that scouts care so very much about one single thing, and that thing isn't control, command or poise. It's fastball velocity, period.

Let's say you're a right-handed college pitcher throwing in the high-80s with solid control, but scouts aren't interested in you. They tell you that velocity can't be developed and that they would rather have raw talent with a mid-90s fastball without much of a breaking ball or control. Why? Because it's common knowledge that you can teach someone a breaking ball, change-up, and decent control - but velocity can't be taught.

If you've read my other posts on The Hardball Times, you know that I don't believe in that "common wisdom." I've focused on training-related ways to increase fastball velocity in pitchers. Today we'll look at the pitching mechanics of the hardest throwing pitchers and compare them to the softest tossing pitchers to see if we can draw any conclusions. (Watch out, as there will be many large animated GIFs incoming!)

Furbush vs. Vasquez, or "Jeff Sullivan figured this out already"

These two pitchers aren't the hardest and softest throwers in the big leagues, but since the animated images were already cut by Jeff, I'm going to use them—because I'm nothing if not lazy. (Hey, cutting up animated GIFs is repetitive and boring work!)

This is Anthony Vasquez (left) and Charlie Furbush (right). Vasquez has an average fastball velocity of 85.2 mph while Furbush clocks in at 90.9 mph (source: Fangraphs). Frankly, I'm surprised that Vasquez is even hitting 85 mph on the gun regularly with his mechanics!

Jeff Sullivan of Lookout Landing noticed this very obvious stark contrast between pitching mechanics, and he said:

Furbush is kind of a max-effort guy. You can see that from the way he finishes, falling off to the right. He slings his left arm around as his right arm pulls his upper body. There's a lot going on in there, and though I'd say his delivery is pretty consistent, I don't think anyone would say that he's polished. It's a rougher motion.

And then you have Vasquez. Vasquez is the main reason for this post, because, just look at him. If Furbush is just about max-effort, Vasquez is just about no-effort. His motion is smooth and polished because it's hardly a motion at all. He might as well be having a catch with his nephew. Watch that motion and you expect a knuckleball to come out of his hand. Which, given his velocity, isn't that far off, I guess.

It's just... okay, obviously, Vasquez has made that motion work. He's pitching in the major leagues, after all. But is it any wonder that he can't throw 90 miles per hour? It's like every pitch is a warm-up pitch before the real pitches get started. He makes it look effortless, but not in the way that we say Ichiro and Albert Pujols make it look effortless. Anthony Vasquez makes it look effortless in that it looks like he isn't putting forth any effort.

Jeff has touched on what is generally called "the intent to throw hard." Furbush intends to throw the ball hard, and Vasquez does not. But is it that simple? What is the "intent to throw hard?" Is it enough to tense up and muscle the ball to the plate?

The intent to throw hard—and what it means

I think it's pretty clear that Vasquez is not intending to throw the ball hard, and Furbush is. Furbush looks "out of control" and Vasquez has a smooth motion. What you're seeing is an effect of the violent rotational forces that Furbush (and others) use to generate arm speed. Furbush throws over 90 mph because he is finishing sideways to the target; the after-effect of the rotational velocity of his shoulders carrying him to the side.

Coaches often say: "Bring your pitching leg over your glove leg to finish in front!" This might be a decent cue for some pitchers, but the pitching-arm side leg trailing over and rotating is due to rotation in the delivery; its presence is an effect of throwing hard, not a cause. Most cues coaches use (bend your back, finish out front, extend out front, put your chin to the catcher's mitt) do nothing to generate fastball velocity and will more likely lead to a pitcher throwing softer and often with less control.

Let's take a look at the hardest throwing relievers for some proof:

The flamethrowers

The three pitchers with the hardest fastball velocity (in order) are Henry Rodriguez, Aroldis Chapman, and Jordan Walden. (source: Fangraphs) And here's what they look like when they're throwing fastballs:

Henry Rodriguez

Aroldis Chapman (97 MPH)

Jordan Walden

(If you right-click and save any of these images, you'll get the full-size of them, as some were re-sized to save space on the screen)

What do you notice in all of them? Before you answer, let's look at ....

The soft-tossers

Barry Zito (average fastball velocity: 84.1 mph in 2011)

Doug Davis (average fastabll velocity: 84.6 mph in 2011)

And of course, Anthony Vasquez above (averaging 85.2 mph).

The key difference: rotational violence

What you see in Rodriguez, Chapman and Walden are "max effort" mechanics—and you see the opposite in Zito, Davis and Vasquez. Scouts are afraid of "max effort" guys because of control issues or possibility of injury, but no one has correlated these outcomes with those factors. The truth is that elite fastball velocities (92+ mph) require "violent" and "max effort" mechanics from the vast majority of pitchers. Some guys have the ability to throw 92+ without serious trunk rotation due to crazy genetics, but this simply isn't true for most people—even for your average major league pitche,r who probably has a lot of congenital advantages in his favor.

The American Sports Medicine Institute even concluded that:

A pitcher with increased shoulder external rotation, faster pelvis and upper trunk rotation, and greater front knee stabilization and extension will throw with greater ball velocity.

Faster pelvis and upper trunk (shoulder) rotation is generated by efficient use of the lower half and sequencing the body parts correctly from distal to proximal, but a big part of the ability to throw hard simply comes from the desire to modify one's pitching mechanics to attain these higher rotational velocities—and that means faster moving parts. Faster moving parts means more effort, which means you have the intent to throw hard.

I hope that makes sense and that the animated GIFs of pitchers provide a nice visual representation of one facet of pitching mechanics that separates the elite hard throwers from the soft tossers. Just think: What would it mean to someone if he picked up a few mph on his fastball?

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Jason Vargas, the twist, and the intent to throw hard

Kyle Boddy — 2011-09-13T05:04:15+00:00

Jeff Sullivan on Lookout Landing made a very interesting observation about Jason Vargas changing his mechanics as of late. Jeff provided two animated images of Vargas throwing from the windup and how he added a "twist" to his delivery—much like how Felix Hernandez changed when Erik Bedard introduced this to him. To simplify things, I combined the images into one, synchronized to ball release:

The obvious thing that you notice immediately is this:

However, Vargas is doing a lot more than simply "twisting" during his glove side leg kick! Here's what isn't obvious unless you watch the image closely using a frame-by-frame image analyzing program:

He's a frame or two (30 FPS) quicker from the top of his leg lift to foot plant. He's making more potential energy available to him as he gets from the "balance point" (which not all pitchers have; Vargas and other soft-tossing pitchers generally do, however) to footstrike.

-He is generally much quicker throughout the delivery. He picks up his leg faster in the after video.
-He has a lot more movement with his arms during the delivery, giving them what some would call a "running start."
-His pitching arm enters and exits shoulder horizontal abduction (scapular loading) much faster despite the reverse rotation of the shoulders and hips.

Effort, or the Intent to Throw Hard

Paul Nyman first made popular the phrase "intent to throw hard." Jason Vargas prior to making these changes throws like your standard soft-tossing lefty—he gets to a balance point with his glove leg and he has a slow and controlled initial portion of his arm action. Vargas does have a relatively aggressive stepover into footstrike and does rotate his shoulders pretty quickly for a guy who is throwing in the mid-to-upper-80s; a better example of a true soft tosser would be his teammate Anthony Vazquez:

(image credit: Lookout Landing)

And really, an LHP with an average fastball velocity of nearly 88 MPH isn't exactly the softest tosser out there. But if he has the chance to simply get into the 90's by some simple mechanical tweaks, that's a huge gain.

So, what does The Twist do?

Vargas isn't simply twisting in addition to his original mechanics; this much is clear. Maybe he feels like that's the only thing that changed, or that it's the only thing he's consciously focused on, but Vargas is very simply trying to throw much harder than he used to—and succeeding.

However, let's just discuss The Twist specifically. By reverse rotating around the hips, you theoretically gain a longer distance over which you can rotate, and if you can rotate over a longer distance with the same acceleration, then it stands to reason that the ending velocities will be higher. It's not all about peak hip rotational speeds, however; there's research out there (ASMI, University of Tsukuba) that shows that the timing of these peak rotational velocities matters too, specifically, the earlier the hip can reach its peak rotational velocity, the better. The mechanism of action isn't known why this would produce higher fastball velocities, but the theory is simply that the sequencing of the parts in the kinetic chain are optimized as a result—force is more efficiently passed from body segment to body segment.

Fastball velocity is (mostly) about how quickly someone can rotate his shoulders while the forearm is in the optimal position to enter shoulder external rotation where the inertial mass of the baseball pushes the forearm back. By getting the hips in the right position to support the trunk's high rotational velocities, you can possibly throw much harder if the upper portion of the body's mechanics do not also get out of whack.

The Twist can introduce a timing issue where the shoulders also rotate too early; this would undo all the good work of better hip positioning when the glove foot strikes the ground. Additionally, The Twist can cause an altered positioning of the pitching forearm which can drastically change the kinematics and kinetics of the shoulder and elbow, possibly increasing injury risk.

So, The Twist is not a catch-all mechanical change everyone should be flocking to. I hope this explains it a little better.

Is the velocity gain for real? If so, why don't other MLB teams look into these types of mechanical optimizations?

Well, Jeff Sullivan tends to think it might be a real gain in velocity, and I do too. His mechanics should generate better arm speeds and fastball velocities for as long as he keeps using them. Whether or not his other pitches will suffer is another question entirely; one that I can't adequately answer without more data.

As for the second question, it requires a bit of speculation. First of all, some teams do send their pitchers to ASMI's labs in Birmingham, Alabama, where they are biomechanically analyzed to determine kinematics and kinetics of their pitching motion. Driveline Baseball offers a comparable product: Our Biomechanical Video Analysis services can also measure kinematics and kinetics of a pitcher's motion as well using high-speed cameras and specialized software. (Additionally, our services can be deployed on the road at an MiLB stadium, for example.) However, the interpretation of ASMI's reports can be variable and may not be fully integrated into a player's development plan for whatever reason. And of course, some organizations don't think there's value in sending their pitchers there, so they don't.

It makes the most sense to experiment on the organizational players of the minor leagues, where the cost is low if things fail (non-prospects getting the boot from baseball doesn't matter much) and potentially very high if it succeeds and becomes an organization-wide plank in the training platform. The same can be said for other unorthodox training methods, but from my—admittedly limited—interactions with professional baseball players, it doesn't sound like much of this is going on. This is a shame, since I firmly believe that player development is the next frontier of finding the hidden edges, just like sabermetrics was during the mid-to-late-90s.

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How baseball failed Steve Delabar

Kyle Boddy — 2011-09-12T21:08:15+00:00

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A pitcher breaking the mold

Kyle Boddy — 2011-08-13T04:38:15+00:00

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The science of scouting: A biomechanical look at Gerrit Cole

Kyle Boddy — 2011-08-11T06:06:15+00:00

The Pittsburgh Pirates spurned Rice third baseman Anthony Rendon to take the flame-throwing Gerrit Cole out of UCLA with the first pick in the 2011 major league draft. Cole's arsenal features a fastball that sits from 94-96 mph (allegedly touching 102 mph once), a sharp slider at 88-90 mph and a hard change-up at 88-90 as well.

Scouting Gerrit Cole using a scientific approach

We'll be using the same 2-D kinematic analysis method that we talked about in my article about Danny Hultzen's mechanics. The video I'll use is this series of clips shot by Texas Leaguers, available on YouTube:

This video is particularly good to use because Trip Somers (owner of Texas Leaguers and current major leagbue scout) has high-speed camera equipment that he used when shooting film of pitchers. His cameras are the same ones we use in the Driveline Baseball biomechanics lab, which have worked well for us. The side-facing view we'll use isn't perfectly lined up in the frontal plane, but it's really close.

Metrics for analysis

These will be the same as the ones used in the Danny Hultzen analysis:

-Maximum knee height (absolute and relative to height)
-Degrees of shoulder abduction at foot contact
-Degrees of lead knee angle at foot contact
-Stride length at foot contact (absolute and relative to height)
-Degrees of maximum external rotation (MER)
-Degrees of lead hip flexion at ball release

Maximum knee height

Cole's maximum lead knee height is 48.01 inches, giving him a relative measure of 63.1 percent of his standing height of 76 inches (error unknown). Research indicates that the best pitchers have a maximum knee height between 60 and 70 percent of their standing height.

Stride foot contact metrics

Shoulder abduction (height of elbow) is about 120 degrees (error unknown). Research suggests elite pitchers are generally between 80-100 degrees at this phase of the delivery. This is a red flag.

Lead knee angle is about 159 degrees (error unknown). Research suggests elite pitchers are generally between 125-140 degrees at this phase of the delivery. This is a red flag.

Stride length is about 61.15 inches or 80.2 percent of his standing height. (error unknown). Research suggests elite pitchers generally stride 75-90 percent of their standing height.

Maximum external rotation

As I said in the previous article...

Maximum external rotation (MER) is actually a pretty big misnomer; it describes the angle at which the forearm "lays back" during the pitching delivery. This is due to a rapid turn of the shoulders as the inertial mass of the baseball pushes the hand and forearm back. The problem with the term is that "shoulder external rotation" describes the humerus rotating backward, while in reality scapular tilt is providing a significant amount of the "external rotation" during this phase.

It is, therefore, multiple components being measured as a single thing. Scapular tilt is hard to measure without markers on the scapula and a bridge connecting them, and so researchers have just grouped these variables together; it's stuck ever since. Evidence suggests that scapular tilt varies between overhead throwing athletes, so comparing MER between athletes may introduce a gross error based on anatomical and congenital differences between the two.

Cole's MER is about 198 degrees (error unknown). Research suggests that elite pitchers tend to range from 170-190 degrees of "MER" throughout the delivery.

Hip flexion

At ball release, Cole's lead hip flexion is about 107 degrees (error unknown). Research suggests that elite pitchers tend to be between 92-115 degrees of hip flexion at ball release.

Wrapping it up

Based on research published by various sources, some of Cole's kinematic measurements would be classified as "red flags," namely the elevated position of the humerus and the extended knee at stride foot contact. These red flags are not guarantees or predictors of future injuries or decreased performance; they are only outliers when compared to a population of healthy professional pitchers.

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