The Hardball Times -- Kyle Boddy

How Scott Kazmir got his groove back

Kyle Boddy — 2013-05-16T07:18:15+00:00

Everyone knows who Scott Kazmir is - or rather, was. The high school flamethrower who threw four straight no-hitters, a cameo in one of the funnier baseball trade jokes (Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano), the tough luck guy stranded in Tampa Bay, and the guy who just lost it all.

Plenty of baseball writers have picked up the story of Kazmir in 2013: the guy who came back from it all, the guy who found his fastball again. The guy who threw 95-96-95 mph heaters straight past Luke Montz to cap off a 10-strikeout performance on May 9.

But scant few have actually picked up on the "how." This is interesting—for a field of study that is so obsessed on creating value in the thinnest areas, how has so little attention been paid to how Scott Kazmir did it?

In December of 2012, I gave a talk at Ron Wolforth's Bootcamp about the power of collecting and presenting data on pitching mechanics, training pitchers, and other equally thrilling subjects. While giving my presentation in front of representatives of 18+ major league teams and countless college and high school coaches, I was able to talk to Ron about Kazmir—after all, he had been working with him all offseason in addition to the guys at Dynamic Sports Training.

Ron told me what he was doing with Kazmir and impressed upon me how hard a worker he was—and not only a hard worker, but one who thought critically about things. Ron joked that nothing was his idea—it always had to be Scott's idea. Scott had to fully internalize the idea and own it before he would implement it. This applied to anything from pitching mechanics tweaks to training philosophies.

After then, speaking to scouts in the room about his performance in indy ball as well a winter league, I was very impressed. After he signed with the Cleveland Indians later in December, I was very happy. In February, I had this Twitter conversation with Adam Burke of The Cleveland Fan:

@skatingtripods Just wait until you see Kazmir throw for the Indians. I think you'll be surprised.
— Driveline Baseball (@drivelinebases) Feb. 6, 2013

In the follow-up to that Twitter conversation, I said that baseball didn't believe that such a thing could be done:

As I said above, no one in baseball thinks velocity development can happen in the professional ranks. In 2012, I wrote an article titled "Making the Sabermetric Case for Increasing Fastball Velocity." (This article was actually about Kazmir. I loosely used him as a baseline for my comparison.) I had a few conversations with front office staffs as a result of it, and here are some snippets out of the emails I received back:

"You can't change [a pitcher's] arm action."
"if his (ed note: referring to Ron Wolforth) or your methods worked, you'd be working in OB already"
"That sounds interesting but how would you even begin to roll it out in an organization? Trainers don't think that way."

In 2008, Paul Nyman outlined this problem on this very website:

Recently I was asked by an MLB team’s baseball operations person to look at one of its pitchers, a player who last year was consistently 92-94 mph and who this year is throwing in the 86-88 mph range. My first question: Do you have good video of this player? The answer was no; they had had what commercial television footage was available. I then lectured this person on the necessity to create and maintain a player video library where camera angles are carefully chosen and the videos maintained to be used in situations like this.

The pitcher (and organization) in question have been revealed by Paul, though that information no longer is accessible on his website, so I will keep it quiet for now. (Astute readers can probably figure it out by looking around.)

Importantly, the fact that this organization did not keep a video archive on its players from various angles—especially ones who are losing velocity— shows how little they believed such a thing mattered. I wish I could say things have changed in five years, but not much has. Organizations still don't really believe in player development from an actual player development standpoint.

Enough talk, more GIFs

Before I show you the differences from 2011 to 2013, I want to show you what Kazmir looked like when he was dominating high school hitters with a fastball that reportedly reached the 97-98 mph range.

Such rotational violence had Kazmir finishing with his body completely turned to the hitter—the after-effects of trying to throw the ball as hard as possible, with maximum intent.

Here's what he looked like in 2011 compared to 2013, synchronized to release point:

Obviously the differences from high school to professional baseball are huge. However, 2011 vs. 2013—and thus 85 vs. 96 mph—is not that readily apparent. But a few things stick out, even with the parallax error introduced by the horrible Kansas City Royals center field camera circa 2011.

Pushing the baseball

Simply put: Kazmir was pushing the baseball. This sequence illustrates the problem perfectly:

For comparison, here's a right-handed pitcher who has a strikingly similar arm action to that of the high school Kazmir. He works out in my velocity training program, and he has thrown a baseball 97 mph (and a two-ounce ball 107 mph, which is always fun):

What do you see?

Kazmir of 2011 has fully rotated hips and an early-rotated torso. His shoulders don't start closed, and his arm gets into the high-cocked position very early. He is afraid to throw the ball as hard as he can, because he was struggling with command and control. That's when pitching coaches tell you to slow everything down—to just "throw strikes." Slowing down leads to less rotational momentum, which isn't what you used to do, which means the ball comes out 5 mph slower and with LESS command, since you aren't kinesthetically tuned to pushing a ball, and the spiral continues downwards.

The athlete in my video has a similar load/unload action— very violent. His torso stacks late, his hips rotate early, and he has extremely closed shoulders that turn fast. The advice he gets when he misses his target is no different than what Kazmir got when he was struggling: Just slow down, just take it easy.

"Throw 85-87 mph and throw strikes!"

The truth is that even if it worked, it wouldn't have been useful. Kazmir wasn't Jason Neighborball. Kazmir was a 5 WAR pitcher with his "wild" and "violent" delivery. To take him and try to turn him into Barry Zito (on his best day) shouldn't make sense in the slightest, yet this is the advice guys get when they struggle.

Both the athlete in the video and the new Scott Kazmir have a big glove pull, yet another "red flag" that has little to no basis in research. The truth is that the glove pull/yank is an after-effect of elite torso rotational movements (it explains a huge percentage of the variance around fastball velocity when compared to other kinematic factors) and you see it in guys who throw very hard who don't have freakishly huge levers.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm in love with Kazmir's mechanics, because I do think there are things that could be improved. However, if the choice is "slow down and throw strikes" vs. what he's doing now, the latter is far, far better.

And Kazmir may very well fail, get injured, or be ineffective throughout 2013. But he's proven people wrong in the one area that scouts and front offices can't understand: Fastball velocity can be regained and improved.

How baseball failed Scott Kazmir

For the million dollar question that I ask on a regular basis: Why did Kazmir have to go outside professional baseball to figure this out?

Turning a nobody (Scott Kazmir, 2011) into a somebody (Scott Kazmir, 2013) is worth a lot of money to professional teams. So why don't they believe it can be done?

When it comes to player development, I firmly believe we are in a worse place now than when Bill James was writing Baseball Abstracts in-between his shifts as a security guard. At least back then we had guys like Pete Palmer designing the very ground floor for all metrics we use—the concept of linear weights.

You may think that organizations are rolling stuff out like this in secret and not telling anyone. But aside from one club that uses weighted baseballs for rehab/recovery (and its track record for developing pitchers is ridiculously good, I might add), I know of no other that even looks at this stuff—and I work with pitchers from many major league organizations and know plenty of people inside baseball.

I hope Kazmir (and his teammate Trevor Bauer) will throw some light on the subject.

But I'm not holding my breath.

"No one wants to hear about the labor pains, they just want to see the baby."
--Lou Brock

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How Josh Outman really wants to throw a baseball

Kyle Boddy — 2013-04-17T07:05:15+00:00

If the name Josh Outman is mentioned to average baseball fans, they might remember that he pitched in Colorado and gave up a ton of runs—and prior to that, pitched in Oakland and gave up a fair amount of runs. Beyond that, not much stands out. His delivery isn't unique, he doesn't throw terribly hard, and he is pretty forgettable. He is, after all, basically a replacement-level pitcher.

This is Outman pitching with the Oakland Athletics:

Nothing special about that—pretty average delivery for a left-handed pitcher. With Oakland, his fastball velocity was 93-94 mph. He combined that with a slider, curve and change.

But here's how Josh Outman first learned how to throw a baseball:

The Outman Methodology

Josh and his brother, Zach, were taught to throw a baseball by their father, Fritz Outman. Fritz has developed the Outman Methodology, which is a method of throwing a baseball in a manner that is certainly not conventional.

The Outman Methodology hopes to deliver a pitch on a purely vertical plane and to avoid side-to-side casting of the pitching arm. In this respect, it is similar to the mechanical pattern of Dr. Mike Marshall's ideal theoretical delivery. However, it differs from both the Marshall-style delivery and the conventional traditional pitching mechanical model in a variety of ways, as evidenced by Josh's video above. The specific details can be found on the Outman Methodology website, which is quite detailed, to say the least!

Fritz and I have spoken a number of times via email and phone, and he's been a great source of information. I've folded in some of the methods I've learned into how I train baseball pitchers, and I believe the concepts have been immensely useful. However, regardless of my thoughts on the full Outman Methodology—or even what positive or negative aspects it may have—the question that always eluded me was this: Why was Josh forced to change how he throws the baseball?

Josh Outman's success in high school and junior college was well-documented—his fastball velocity was easily 90+ as a high school senior and as a JC pitcher, and he had solid peripherals while using the Outman Methodology. However, he was told that he would go undrafted unless he changed his mechanics to something a little more conventional.

So when he went to Central Missouri, he adopted a traditional wind-up and set position for the first time in his life, posting pretty solid statistics while doing so, despite the fact that he was really learning to throw all over again. Pitchers struggle with making the smallest change in their mechanics; imagine scrapping everything you know about how to throw a baseball and replacing it with an entirely different model! Do you think you'd suffer control problems? Lose velocity?

Outman would go on to be drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies in 2005, going in the 10th round. He would progress through the minors—albeit with a high walk rate—and would be traded with Adrian Cardenas and Matthew Spencer to Oakland in the Joe Blanton deal.

Prior to the 2009 season, Josh would give an interview with David Lauria (then with Baseball Prospectus). In the interview, he touched on why he was forced to change his pitching mechanics:

David Lauria: Phillies assistant general manager Mike Arbuckle was quoted as saying that you probably would have been drafted much lower had you not changed your motion, because people would have been afraid of the injury factor. What are your thoughts on that?

Josh Outman: I think that was an assumption made under faulty information. What I was taught actually took stress off of my arm, so there wasn't full comprehension on how my motion worked. Using a vertical arm position freed up my rotator cuff and enabled the use of the larger pectoral and abdominal muscle groups rather than the smaller deltoids and various other shoulder muscles. It used my lats to slow my arm down rather than just the posterior deltoids, and because those are larger, stronger muscles that can withstand more force, it took a large workload off of my shoulder muscles. And eliminating the leg kick in lieu of a normal walking step, I was expending less energy to get the same production from my body, while sparing my throwing arm much of the wear and tear associated with pitching.

When asked about advantages and disadvantages to the switch:

DL: Unconventionality aside, were there any disadvantages to the motion?

JO: What's interesting is that it never really even came up. Nobody was really interested if there was an actual downside. People just thought that it didn't look right and was therefore wrong and needed to be changed. The answer to the question is no, I don't think there were any disadvantages.

DL: Are there specific advantages, or disadvantages, with your current motion?

JO: The biggest disadvantage is the added stress and wear and tear that is put on my pitching arm. The only real advantage at this point is that I am able to play baseball professionally using conventional mechanics.

I added the bold for emphasis, because in 2009, Josh Outman would suffer an injury to his pitching elbow&mdasdh;requiring Tommy John surgery. He missed half of the 2009 season and the entirety of 2010.

Josh would pitch in 2011, and though his velocity was down a tick, he was fairly effective using traditional statistics, throwing 58.1 innings and posting a 3.70 ERA, though his xFIP was 4.77 and his strikeout rate had dropped. He would be traded in the offseason to the Colorado Rockies for Seth Smith, and during that time, gave an interview to David Lauria again (with Fangraphs). David asked Josh about his elbow injury:

David Laurila: You blew out your arm in the middle of the 2009 season. Would that have happened with your old delivery?

Josh Outman: The injury itself was a partially-torn ulnar collateral ligament, which is the Tommy John ligament. Would it have happened with my old delivery? There’s no way to know for sure. Would the probability have been lessened? Yes, I think so.

David asked Josh a bunch of questions about the Outman Methodology as well as his traditional delivery, then closed with this depressing exchange:

DL: What do think would happen if you walked into camp and announced that you were going back to your old delivery?

JO: I think what would happen is that I’d find myself out of a job, or at least not in the same position that I want to be in. I can’t speak to the Rockies, because I’m new to the organization and have just had the one conversation, but it seems like just about anyone would be willing to watch, just to see it. But as far as accepting it&mdasdh;being willing to take a chance on it… I don’t know.

I have independently verified through sources then with the Athletics that Josh asked to modify his delivery to get closer to the Outman Methodology way of throwing a ball, and the player development department steadfastly refused to allow him to do so, threatening to permanently stash in him in Triple-A or even a lower minor league affiliate. From what I was told, no one even asked questions, and when Josh tried to escalate the issue, he ran into continual resistance and eventually gave up.

Josh's future

Despite being lights out in spring training as a reliever, Outman was sent to Triple-A Colorado Springs to begin the 2013 season. He is still pitching conventionally, and as long as he does, he will likely stay a replacement-level pitcher.

What is the risk in allowing Josh to throw the way he was taught—a way that he insists will significantly reduce his control problems and increase the command of his entire arsenal? It's clear that Colorado does not see him as a fixture in the big league rotation or bullpen. The Rockies don't have a lot of investment in him (unlike their first-round Marshall hybrid pitcher Tyler Matzek, which is a story for another day), so why force him to fail doing the thing he doesn't want to do?

However, things may be changing: A pitching coordinator with a different team told me "If we could get Josh in our system, we'd let him use the Outman Methodology in the minors until he proved to us he could compete at the big-league level. And we'd have no problem letting him use it there."

Outman's long-term future may not be with Colorado, but he should know that his dream (stated back in the 2008 Lauria interview) may still be alive:

DL: Can you foresee a scenario in which Josh Outman stands on the mound in a professional game and delivers a pitch with his old motion?

JO: Yes, I can. It may not be in the near future, but at some point the time will be right.

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Ubaldo Jimenez: perception vs. reality

Kyle Boddy — 2013-04-04T08:18:15+00:00

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Mark Appel: What the heck happened?

Kyle Boddy — 2013-03-29T07:05:15+00:00

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Pitcher injuries and witchcraft

Kyle Boddy — 2013-03-19T07:03:15+00:00

It's happened once again: A big-time draft pick out of college gets into affiliated baseball, and within a year he's shelved with a major elbow or shoulder injury. The scouts and player development departments point fingers at each other, blaming one another for failing to detect whether a pitcher is more likely to be hurt or for ailing to keep him healthy once he's in the organization. Meanwhile, fans boo the organization and wonder what is happening the black box of "player development."

Or a top prep player hurts his arm in high school because his coach doesn't prepare him to pitch 100 innings per year. He rehabilitates his arm, and his physical therapists suggest looking into a specific type of training to help strengthen his arm. The athlete researches the topic vigorously and buys into the program, and after rehab, his arm feels better than ever. He is throwing the ball harder than he ever has, and he has no pain. When he reports the great news to his prep coach, the coach says "It's my way or the highway. If you don't lift with the team and drop those stupid exercises, you won't pitch for us."

Here are some stories, all true—though personally identifiable details may have been changed to protect the players and coaches—about this ridiculous phenomenon.

The college star

Michael is an very good college pitching prospect—in his draftable year, he will be in the top five of his conference in both strikeouts and walk rate. While his velocity is nothing eye-popping (89-91 mph), his plus command and his pitching ability have him projected to go in the top five rounds of the draft. Michael's pitching coach in high school was very open-minded, and sent him to a pitching camp to learn how to build his arm up. The coach also recommended the college he attended, since the pitching coach follows a similar program and has had a very good record of keeping his pitchers healthy.

Michael's team washes out of the college regionals, not getting close to Omaha, but his draft stock isn't hurt by it. He's picked in the top rounds and signs quickly, going straight to his pro team's short-season affiliate. While there, he pitches well, but he's not used to the organization's pitching philosophy. The team makes him do a lot of long-distance running and limits its pitchers to throwing warm-ups at only a certain distance.

Michael's usual warm-up takes him over an hour to complete when done properly, and it includes many different exercises with unique implements. The coaches in the organization think this warm-up is dangerous, but when Michael gently tries to have a conversation about his program (Michael studied exercise science, so he knows a bit beyond the rote stuff he gets from his trainer), the coaches say: "We are the employers, you are the employee. Deal with it."

Six weeks later, Michael's velocity has fallen to 85-87 mph. His arm is in constant discomfort, though it's not painful yet. Getting accustomed to the new warm-ups and the five-day schedule was tougher than Michael thought.

In his last start of the season, Michael throws a slider and immediately grabs his pitching forearm—it feels like he's been shot! He looks down and sees pulsing in the middle of his arm; it now feels like someone has plunged a hot knife into his arm. He begs off the mound, and runs to the training room. The trainer tells him that it's very likely a torn flexor tendon or a major UCL tear (Tommy John), and that he needs to ice it and see the team doctor.

MRIs confirm that Michael's ulnar collateral ligament has been ruptured. When Michael's doctor compares his pre-draft MRI (clean, minimal fraying of the UCL) with his post-draft MRI (full rupture), he is at a loss for words.

The college sleeper

John is a short, unassuming pitcher at a major Division I school. His pitching coach is very laid back and allows John to train the way he likes, though the pitching coach wishes he would throw more and do some of the exercises he has recommended for him. John thinks all the stuff that looks like ballet is a load of garbage, and he internally laughs at his teammates who are into it. The pitching coach doesn't mind that much, since he's a player's manager, and as long as John gets guys out (3.90 ERA) and doesn't hassle his teammates too much, he can continue to pitch.

John goes undrafted after his junior year—not surprising for a 5-foot-11 pitcher who throws 87-88 mph with minor control issues. While John has a good breaking ball and a feel for the spot, his stuff is simply not good enough for pro ball. John resigns himself to having a nice college career and getting into the work force after he completes his degree in mechanical engineering.

However, a new strength and conditioning coach has been hired, and he is sick of John's attitude. Having been the assistant in the past, he looked at John's wiry body and knew that John should get himself together and listen to the pitching coach. This coach gets in his ear and yells at him all offseason, even chasing him around the campus telling him he's wasting his life, and he shouldn't come out to the baseball team next year.

John doesn't take this very well, and he responds with a ton of anger. The strength and conditioning coach tells him he just wants him to be the best pitcher he can be, and to give him four weeks to demonstrate that he (and his pitching coach) aren't idiots.

John mulls it over and accepts the challenge. He's not exactly ready to let the pro ball dream go.

After four weeks, John is lifting huge numbers in the weight room and loving the physical changes to his body. He can now long toss the ball much farther, and his arm doesn't get sore. John throws almost every day to the point where the pitching coach is having to tell him to take breaks.

At the beginning of his senior year, John is throwing in the mid-90s. The pitching coach tells him he wants him to be a closer, since he's still a bit wild. John loves it and continues to work very hard, knowing he has to throw only 20-25 pitches per game. His velocity tops at 98 mph and he comfortably sits in the 95-96 range.

Despite his size, John is third in his conference in strikeout rate, and his stuff has now reached elite status. He is picked in the first round of the major league draft, but negotiations take a long time, and he is unable to pitch for the organization until the following year.

The organization signs him to a large bonus and tells him that he must follow its off season workout regimen—that he can no longer lift heavy, throw whenever he wants, and do the strange exercises he wants to do. John doesn't take kindly to this, and goes to parks to long toss—until he finds the local area scout pulling up in a car to yell at him for throwing in cold weather and past 120 feet.

John gets a call from the team's director of player development, who threatens to ruin his career if John doesn't follow his organization's rules. John sighs, and does so.

At the beginning of spring training, John's velocity is down to 90-91 mph despite following the offseason workout to a T. He pitches his first full season and is wilder than ever, and he goes on the disabled list twice for general soreness. The next year, he tears his ulnar collateral ligament, rehabilitates it, and is traded to another organization, which buries him. John is eventually released, and doesn't sign another pro baseball contract.

The prep weirdo

Robert is a sophomore on a nationally ranked high school team on the east coast. At 6-foot-2, he gets plenty of attention from his coaches, but Robert can't throw harder than 75 mph. His coaches use him sparingly, and at the end of the year, Robert asks what he can do to improve his velocity. The coaches look at each other and shrug; they have no idea. They say to run a lot and throw a bunch.

Robert's father shows him some Internet reports of pitchers gaining 10 mph in a single year of training. The problem is that the training site is morethan 1,500 miles away. Though the facility offers books and DVDs, Robert's dad wants to check out the facility for himself. They save up and book tickets to see this pitching coach, who shows Robert some mechanical drills he can do to get better, and a full-year training program. Robert takes well to the training, and works a summer job to build up enough money to buy the necessary equipment and a huge chain-link fence in the backyard, where he can simulate long toss and bullpen sessions.

His summer ball coach absolutely loves Robert's work ethic, to say nothing of his fastball velocity, which has topped 85 mph now. The coach was using him as the No. 2 starter, but when he finds out that Robert's arm never hurts and that he is throwing six days a week, the coach makes him a short starter, throwing 65 pitches per start and doubling as a high-leverage reliever up to two other days of the week. That suits, because while he liked starting, he just loves taking the hill in any form. While the summer coach never really buys into Robert's program, all he cares about is results—and Robert is delivering them.

Summer comes and goes, and Robert shows up to tryouts with this in his hand:

His coach doubles over in laughter and calls the contraption a bunch of vulgar words. His players join in, and Robert tries to explain that he uses it to warm-up, and that some big time pitchers use it!

"Yeah, like that idiot who was traded? I heard Nomar Garciaparra making fun of him on TV and saying he'd never amount to anything."

Robert fights back tears quits the high school team. He plays only for his summer ball team and a recreational team.

A year later, a scout's son is playing in a fall recreational league and sees a 6-foot-3 kid throwing 90-92 mph and mowing down hitters. While the competition isn't very good, the scout has to wonder, so he approaches the pitcher after the game, and asks him where he's going to college.

"Nowhere, sir."

"You aren't playing college baseball?"

"No. I'm not good enough to play."

"...let me get your contact information, if that's OK with you."

Robert signs as an undrafted free agent with the scout's organization, which lets him continue his weird workout—big black flexible tube and all. Robert is a second-year professional pitcher and was the only starter on his team not to go down with an arm injury.

The overzealous prep coach

Kevin is an imposing figure— 6-foot-6, 240 pounds. He looks more like a Division I power forward than he does a baseball player. And actually, he has been scouted by many Division I schools to play basketball, but he decides his junior year that baseball is his first love. Kevin is throwing just 70 mph because he is uncoordinated, and while he has plus raw power, he can't square up a ball.

Kevin finds a gym where he can train at 5 a.m. before school and at 8 p.m. after practice, and he works extremely hard with his trainer to develop fastball velocity and bat speed. Kevin wants to switch-hit, but his coaches aren't enthused with the idea, saying "He can't hit from either side of the plate." Kevin shoulders on and works on hitting from both the left and right side in addition to pitching.

During his junior year, the coaches tell him that he has to bat right-handed only, or he will be sent to JV. Kevin tells his coaches that he feels he can hit from both sides, and in tryouts he delivers multiple extra base hits from both sides of the plate, including a pair of homers as a lefty. The coaches stand firm on their threat, so Kevin accepts the demotion rather than changing what he wants to do.

He finishes the year manhandling JV pitching, and plays for a summer team, pitching quite well and hitting fourth in the lineup. An area scout watches him throw and adds Kevin to his professional scout team, where he'll allow just a single run in 26 innings. At this point, Kevin's fastball is topping 84, and when he is invited to a closed professional workout, his fastball touches 86.

Kevin is now fielding many college scholarship offers, and eventually decides to commit to a prestigious junior college so he can keep his draft options open. The junior college coach tells him he will start every week and bat in the middle of the lineup, sharing duties at first base and DHing the days before his starts on the mound.

All is right in the world, until he returns to his high school. Despite the fact that the head coach has been fired, the returning coaches know about Kevin's "problems," and while they put him on the varsity roster, he never plays. (Not a single other senior is good enough to have a college commitment to play baseball.)

And there are more

I could go on and on. I have at least six other stories I could tell.

These are the attitudes of prep, college and professional coaches everywhere. And it boils down to one word: Witchcraft.

Though performance analysis and quantification of the game has been successful in many areas of major league organizations, their player development still lags far, far behind. We are even further behind where Bill James was when he started pontificating about numbers and baseballs while he worked as a security guard at a pork and beans factory.

We can't get better at it until we accept that there is a problem.

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Scouting Adam Plutko, UCLA ‘14

Kyle Boddy — 2013-02-18T07:01:15+00:00

Adam Plutko is a right-handed pitcher for the UCLA Bruins, not having signed after being picked in the sixth round by the Houston Astros in 2010 out of Glendora High School. Standing 6-foot-3 and approximately 200 pounds, Plutko is a flyball pitcher who tends to work up in the zone with the following pitch arsenal:

Fastball: 89-92 mph, fairly straight
Slider: 79-82 mph, wide break instead of tight rotation due to lack of velo
Curve: 70-72 mph, freeze pitch / strike stealer
Change: 80-82 mph, strikeout pitch

Here's some high-speed video of him throwing at UCLA, courtesy of Steve Fiorindo:

Unfortunately the video isn't cut from the exact planar angles I'd need to take static kinematic measurements, so that's out of the picture, but 200 frames per second allows for fairly detailed analysis all the same.

My first reaction after seeing him pitch was:

Wow. I love this kid's mechanics. RT @socalsteve9 ADAM PLUTKO, RHP, UCLA PITCHING MECHANICS 200 FPS youtu.be/US0nsFv5D9s?a
— Driveline Baseball (@drivelinebases) February 16, 2013

So, if that's all you wanted to know, show's over! If you wanted some more details, then let's continue on.

Who is this guy?

I took one look at Plutko and immediately sent it to my friend who's a pro scout. The first question he asked me was, "Is this guy a (Texas Baseball) ranch guy?"

The Texas Baseball Ranch is the home of Ron Wolforth, most famous for turning out Trevor Bauer. I didn't know if Plutko trained at the ranch, but he does go to UCLA, where Bauer pitched. Curious about the similarities, I synchronized their high-speed videos as best I could (Steve's and Trevor's cameras shoot at different frame rates, which is evident when you watch the video), and came up with this:

I see a lot of similarities here. Though Bauer has a more pronounced hip lean into the linear phase of the delivery, Plutko does a great job of creating the hip angle I like to see:

Both Plutko and Bauer like to work up in the zone and believe that fly balls are advantageous, which, by the way, they might be right about when you adjust for their level. Plutko even said, "It’s a lot easier to get outs with the ball in the air than with the ball on the ground."

For those who don't want to read the above linked article, if you simply consider that BBCOR bats are close to the performance of wood bats and that college hitters are worse than professional hitters, you can start to grasp how home run-per-fly ball ratio is probably much lower on average among amateur hitters, and, therefore, fly balls are less scary to give up. (Also consider the cooler weather during the NCAA season.)

Though Bauer's velocity is significantly better and he struck out more hitters than Plutko, they seem to go about their business in a similar manner, and there are a lot of similarities in their mechanical patterns. Pretty interesting!

The good

Plutko creates great linear momentum to the plate with his hip angle on approach and does an awesome job of stacking the torso behind the midline. He keeps the throwing shoulder back, and the torso remains closed through the delivery, which allows greater time to apply force to the baseball.

However, Plutko does not allow this minor counter-rotation to delay his throwing arm at footstrike. In other words, he doesn't create hyperangulation or hyperabduction of the throwing arm (often known as the Inverted W), and his forearm is slightly inside vertical and on time at Stride Foot Contact (SFC):

Plutko also has a great torso deceleration action, as he forwardly rotates his throwing shoulder into the target, giving his pitching arm a long path of deceleration and utilizing the large muscles in the back to help slow the arm down. Wolforth tenets would call this the late launch

There's a lot to like in Plutko's delivery.

The bad

Plutko's delivery is pretty good all around. If I had to nitpick, I'd just say that he seems to extend at the pitching elbow a bit more than I'd like after ball release and doesn't have the best forearm pronation in his recovery phase. This could lead to irritation to the elbow and eventual bone chips due to repeated collisions of the bones in the back of the elbow and the forearm. However, it's not a large mechanical flaw as it pertains to ulnar collateral ligament damage, which is the major issue that most teams want to avoid.

No, Plutko's problems are due to his iffy control and the modest strikeout rate he posted in 2012. Though he suppressed home runs fairly well (despite being a flyball pitcher), his walks were pretty high at 3.53 per nine innings, and his strikeouts were not eye-poppingly great at just 7.45 per nine. He'll have to bring those numbers up to be considered a high draft pick in the 2013 draft, even if this draft class is thinner than most.

Conclusion

I would grade Plutko's mechanics as very good. I recently did a small project to test my mechanical grades against injury rates and found that my blend of subjective/objective measurements produced a fairly decent predictor of injury rate. (An article may be forthcoming on this as I do more research and depending on how much I can release given some obligations I have.) Only a few pitchers in that small test group graded out as better than Plutko. Bauer was one of them, naturally.

However, the 2013 version of Trevor Bauer's pitching mechanics will be different than what you are used to! Here's a conversation we had over Twitter:

The YouTube video of the differences can be seen here:

However, analyzing all of that is for another article in the future!

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Seeking surplus value: Risk-free wins

Kyle Boddy — 2013-02-06T06:05:15+00:00

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Trevor Bauer needs to be left alone

Kyle Boddy — 2012-12-12T06:22:15+00:00

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How baseball failed Phil Coke

Kyle Boddy — 2012-11-14T07:59:15+00:00

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Getting out of the injury zone, part two

Kyle Boddy — 2012-10-25T08:04:15+00:00

(My apologies in getting this article out far too late. Life circumstances and such got in the way.)

In Getting out of the injury zone of Getting out of the injury zone, I discussed a machine learning algorithm that took PITCHf/x variables and attempted to predict what combinations could indicate future injury to pitchers. Today's article will focus on the scouting part of the equation.

The need for high-speed video

I've been a vocal advocate of high-speed videography for a long time now, and strongly believe all clubs should have the capability to record consistent video clips of their pitchers from a variety of angles. Consumer-grade cameras with high-speed capabilities are falling in price, and combined with wireless technologies and synchronization software, videos could be made available to interns over the wire at near real-time speeds. Having a library of high-speed video (example: Mark Appel scouting profile) would be incredibly useful for scouting purposes—and biomechanical analysis methods, too.

What people call "pitching mechanics" needs to be more specifically defined. There are two ways of understanding the movement patterns of pitchers:

Kinematics

Kinematics describes what the body is doing—for example, the humerus (upper arm) is internally rotating (accelerating) at 5000 degrees per second. Kinematics does not tell you the load on the various levers, joints, and pulleys involved in the process. An example of a basic static two-dimensional planar analysis would be:

A two-dimensional kinematic analysis can tell you a fair amount of useful information if you have a suitable control object of known size in the shot (we use pitcher height in these images, which isn't exactly the most reliable indicator)—a ruler or surveyor's rod in the shot would do the trick. I've shown what you can capture in my articles, so if you're interested in those, go Kyle's THT Author Archives for plenty of examples.

Two-dimensional video clips with frozen frames can give the coaching staff and front office an insight on how a pitcher looks like at various checkpoints in the delivery (industry-accepted values such as Stride Foot Contact, Maximum External Rotation, Ball Release, etc), which can help if a pitching coach is trying to effect a particular change in mechanics. It's impossible to evaluate changes—even seemingly large ones!—with the naked eye or at 25-30 frames per second of a regular camcorder. There's also very actionable data for trainers from side view high-speed video—for example, pitchers who have a significantly internally rotated humerus and a significantly flexed elbow at/near Stride Foot Contact (SFC)...

...will accumulate greater stress in the late-cocking phase of the delivery, as inertial load of the baseball is higher in the Maximum External Rotation (MER) position. While it's simple to say "Don't do that," changing someone's motor patterns with a snap of the fingers is basically impossible. Extremely fine motor control is a learned behavior over years—decades—of repetitions, and even subtly altering these movement patterns takes a lot of time, effort, and specific instruction geared to making it stick. So, while the person is making changes (or not, as the case may be), trainers can help mitigate the stress caused by this particular flaw. (The details of such methods will be discussed in the third article of this series.)

However, a planar kinematic analysis cannot give you detailed measurements, such as angular velocities of particular body parts. For that, you need a multi-camera setup that combines two or more cameras into a three-dimensional representation of the movement in question. PITCHf/x uses a calibration system much like my biomechanics lab does:

With those detailed measurements, you can then get the actual joint loads on the body, which is called...

Kinetics

Kinetics describes how the body is doing what it's doing—or really, what forces are being generated as a result of a particular movement pattern.

A simple way to think about it:

Kinematic Measurements + Measurables = Kinetics

Measurables in this case would be the pitcher's weight of his humerus, upper arm, shoulder, torso... hmm. How would you know that information? You can't readily weigh someone's upper arm or torso without some radical surgery that is likely to leave the patient in bad sorts. Fortunately, some research scientists figured out a way to estimate these values:

In case you can't read it, you can find the abstract over at Pubmed (Adjustments to Zatsiorsky-Seluyanov's segment inertia parameters).

If you're thinking "That sounds incredibly error-prone," you are absolutely correct! Consider this: To calculate kinetic data, you are taking a multi-level derivation of positional data. Here's the stepping logic:

-Position: The spatial location of a point in space. Measurement error is the biggest issue here.
-Velocity: The rate of change between two points in space.
-Acceleration: The rate of change of velocity.
-Force: Mass times acceleration.

If what you want to study is the force on a particular joint of the body (assuming a rigid body structure), you have a lot of sources of error there. Especially when you consider the collection method involves manually digitizing each point on the body you want, for each frame of the video, for each video in the camera, for each camera used on a pitcher...

Right. I think you get where this is going.

Is there a better way?

It's possible to capture data in a laboratory setting using markers on the body, much like American Sports Medicine Institute (ASMI) does:

By using highly reflective markers—and some interesting math—you can create a representation using multiple cameras to film the subject in motion. While measurement error is no longer an issue, two problems arise. The first is minor, but does affect consistency—how do you know the researchers are applying the markers in the same location every time? While there are specific instructions for placement (place on the distal elbow at the olecranon process, for example), there are bound to be errors here. The second is a major issue that gets glossed over: Release velocities are NOT identical in the lab and in a game situation! The reasons for this are varied, but the largest is pretty obviously the fact you are covered in sticky markers, throwing off a turf mound, into a net, in a lab.

Let's investigate that problem a bit further: We know that velocity is not the same in the lab as it is in the games. Can we assume that the drop in velocity is constant between pitchers? And furthermore, do a pitcher's mechanics meaningfully change when they throw off a turf mound under analysis as compared to a game situation when they are throwing much harder? And do the angular velocities, accelerations, and forces all scale predictably between their lab results and game results?

Even if you could get a precise calculation of joint loads, you wouldn't know the tension on the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL), the labrum, the distal elbow, or the various rotator cuff structures—all common areas of injury. Due to anatomical variations, muscle fitness, and combinations of movement patterns, it's impossible to say "The UCL is under X Newtons of force at this point in the delivery."

Despondency with the methods

OK, OK, so it all sounds bad - there's no real way to get a true answer. However, that doesn't invalidate the fact that data collection can be useful. A true three-dimensional setup may not measure specific numbers X, Y, and Z, but it could very well give us answers anyway! It's entirely possible that collecting live kinematic game data and analyzing it using statistical methods (regression, machine learning, data mining, etc) could yield very useful results. Given the fact that consumer-grade cameras are inexpensive and a setup as described in this article can be built by laypersons (yours truly, for example), it could absolutely grant an edge in scouting to teams—where such edges continue to disappear.

Meanwhile, advances in wearable technology will continue to improve—at Driveline Biomechanics Research, we've partnered with MotionShadow to trial their outstanding non-intrusive kinematic collection system, and we're hard at work on a WiiMote-based solution that captures pitching arm kinematics (specifically interested in the relationship between forearm pronation timing vs. maximum internal rotation velocity). These technologies could be useful for low-cost fast-track analyses, provided that release velocity stayed close to competition release velocity and pitching mechanics were not significantly altered.

By combining the data collected from a high-speed video setup, wearable computing data, and PITCHf/x data, you could start to explore some seriously interesting frontiers for both performance enhancement and injury prevention. In part three of this series, we'll talk a bit more about the details of the applications of this technology.

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