The Hardball Times -- Paul Nyman

Beyond Moneyball: Player development, Part 5

Paul Nyman — 2008-07-08T05:02:15+00:00

(Previously Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

Finding prospects is the lifeblood of any professional sport. A significant portion of any major league baseball organization’s resources and activities is dedicated to this problem. From a job description for a baseball scout:

"This knowledge allows them to recognize young players who have astonishing athletic talent and skill.”

How do scouts actually recoginze such players? They do it through a process of objective-subjective analysis, being quantifiably objective by using a system that attempts to identify the critical components of baseball "talent and skill"—specifically how the player hits, (swings?), pitches (throws?), fields and runs.

Q: How do your scouts rate prospects?
A: We have basic generic things that apply to both position players and pitchers and then we have specific things for position players and pitchers. We grade position players on hitting ability, power, running speed, arm strength and fielding. We use a scale of 2-8 in each category to grade our players and come up with an OFP (Overall Future Potential). A total range of 40-80 covers major league prospects.

Forty is the minimum for our category of a major league prospect. We have fringe, average and definite prospect (categories). As the number gets higher, the better the prospect is. We grade pitchers on fastball, curveball, slider and other (if the pitcher throws a knuckler or split-finger). If a pitcher doesn't throw an "other," he gets graded on the three he throws. But that's when a scout's instinct comes into play. If a pitcher only throws two pitches, but the scout sees he has the arm instinct to develop a slider, he'll grade him higher. A scout can move the number up if he feels the potential is higher. The generic qualities that apply to both position players and pitchers are things like aggressiveness, instinct, dedication, work ethic.

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/official_info/about_mlb/scouting_overview.jsp

The scouts' numeric system is based largely upon their subjective opinion.

For example:

{exp:list_maker}(Bat Speed) the ability to swing the bat quickly
The ability to consistently hit the ball hard
Knowledge of the strike zone
The ability to turn on a major league fastball
The ability to hit breaking pitches
The ability to hit to all fields
The ability to make adjustments at the plate when fooled {/exp:list_maker}

They form opinions using their own personal experiences as opposed to specific formal training. The only real quantitative information is obtained from either the radar gun or stopwatch.

Pitchers Velocity:
{exp:list_maker}8: 98 mph +
7: 93-97 mph
6: 90-92 mph
5: 88-89 mph
4: 85-87 mph
3: 83-84 mph
2: 82 mph - {/exp:list_maker}

Which often leads to:

One of the amazing things about baseball talent is the fact that different, great scouts can see different things in different ballgames. Someone might see a young player when he’s especially hot while another scout may see the same ball player when he’s when he’s in a slump. How have you settled those kinds of differences?

Subjectivity is the very thing that sabermetrics and its application by major league organizations attempts to eliminate; i.e., differences in player evaluation caused by differences in scout/organizational opinions. The argument, statistics versus scouting, is really an argument of objectivity versus subjectivity. Both attempt to answer the same question: How does one identify top performers?

From Dr. John Sullivan, a human resources expert:

The Performance Differential Percentage Between Average and Top Performers

Whether your focus is on hiring or on retention, it's critical that you measure and quantify the "performance differential" between average and top-quality performers in order to determine whether it's worth the time and money to recruit and retain top performers.

The Container Store found a 300 percent differential, while Jack Welch at GE found a 500 to 1,000 percent differential. The Corporate Executive Board did extensive research on the topic and came up with a 1,200 percent differential across all industries, while Bradford Smart's Top Grading research found a differential as high as 2,400 percent.

Alan Eustace, VP of Engineering at Google, concluded that there was a 30,000 percent differential between recruiting a top performer over an average one, a perception that may identify why Google is willing to invest so many resources into a recruiting model that is ultra-selective. As Google has proven, building a top talent "recruiting machine" requires unrelenting execution of a well-designed process and the resources to power it.

Defining a Top Performer

Some managers think top-performer status is related to educational level, others a candidate's past experience. Intelligent managers often counter that individuals with the most qualifications do not always produce the greatest output.

What defines a top performer is an ability to consistently produce above-average results and to work effectively within the organization's culture. Thus, top performers are not "stars" or even the most qualified; instead, they are individuals who produce the top 1 percent of results and innovations while they are in the job. A top performer in one organization may be a bottom performer in another.

http://www.ere.net/articles/db/F72234B64CEF412E9B5438E8D4D4D8DF.asp

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Sabermetrics is the analysis of baseball through objective evidence, especially baseball statistics. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research. It was coined by Bill James, who was among its first proponents and has long been its most prominent advocate known to the general public.

From David Grabiner's Sabermetric Manifesto:

Bill James defined sabermetrics as "the search for objective knowledge about baseball." Thus, sabermetrics attempts to answer objective questions about baseball, such as "which player on the Red Sox contributed the most to the team's offense?" or "How many home runs will Ken Griffey Jr. hit next year?" It cannot deal with the subjective judgments that also are important to the game, such as "Who is your favorite player?"

It may, however, attempt to settle questions such as "Was Willie Mays faster than Mickey Mantle?" by establishing several possible parameters for examining speed in objective studies (how many triples each man hit, how many bases each man stole, how many times each was caught stealing) and then reaching a tentative conclusion on the basis of these individual studies.

Moneyball started a firestorm of controversy by pitting the sabermetrician versus the MLB scout. The desired results are the same, and decisions regarding prospects are reached the same way. Information and data are collected, the information is compared to a standard of excellence and then a decision is made regarding the value of the prospect.

Sabermetrics works on numbers, processed according to predetermined formulas. The challenge is finding the right numbers and the right formulas. But players do not develop in a continuous, linear fashion.

Scouts work on what they see, hear, feel. This information is processed based upon their abilities to “see” and distinguish what is important and what is not, and then, based upon their life experiences, to process that information and predict the future.

From "The Great Debate," by Alan Schwarz in Baseball America , Jan. 7, 2005:

For the past two years, the scouting and statistics communities have feuded like members of rival families. Baseball lifers who evaluate players with their eyes are derided as over-the-hill beanbags who don’t understand the next frontier. Numbers-oriented people are cast as cold, computer-wielding propellerheads with no appreciation for scouting intangibles. Not surprisingly, the camps have grown so polarized that they have retreated to their respective bunkers rather than engage in open and intelligent debate.

The four participants were Gary Hughes, the Cubs’ assistant general manager and a scout for more than 30 years with many clubs; Eddie Bane, the Angels’ scouting director and a former top pitching prospect himself; Gary Huckabay, one of the lead analysts for Baseball Prospectus and a statistical consultant for the Athletics; and Voros McCracken, another top numbers man who also consults for the Red Sox.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/features/050107debate.html

A sampling from the debate:

ALAN SCHWARZ: To start out... how would you characterize the relationship between the scouting community and the statistics community?

EDDIE BANE: It is adversarial right now. Our guys, the so-called old-school guys, the thought is out there that we don’t know how to handle a computer and we wouldn’t know how to use that stuff. I’m very comfortable with a computer. Our people are very comfortable with a computer. We do have to drag some of our old-time guys through it. But the main adversarial thing is that some of our old-time guys are losing jobs that we didn’t feel they should be losing. It was due to cutbacks. Maybe the cutbacks were due to money or whatever. But we correlate it to the fact that some of the computer stuff is causing that. And we resent it.

ALAN SCHWARZ: Is there less of a need for scouts today, compared to 25 years ago?

EDDIE BANE: My point would be that the reason to have at least as many scouts, if not more, is when you’re drafting Marquis Grissom, as Gary Hughes did with Montreal from Florida A&M, he doesn’t cost $100,000 anymore, he costs a million maybe. And his stats at Florida A&M can be thrown out the window, because you need to see him in the two games a year that he plays against a pitcher that might have any ability whatsoever. That would be my reasoning to have more evaluators see this guy, because the bonus money is going to be astronomical on a guy like that if you have the guts to take him that high. Gary didn’t care what his stats were.

A player at UConn, his stats, compared to a guy that I’m watching in the Pac-10, mean almost nothing to me. I’m in the middle of a negotiation right now (with Jered Weaver) where a guy wants to compare our first-round pick’s stats to Mark Prior’s. And to me, there’s no correlation whatsoever.

VOROS McCRACKEN: My response to that would be that those sorts of things, say the difference between playing at Cal and playing at Florida A&M or UConn, you can study those sorts of things and find out what do the stats mean at UConn, what do they mean at Florida A&M, what do they mean at Cal? It’s not as if we treat a guy like Rickie Weeks, his stats at Southern—he had ridiculous stats at Southern, in a weak conference—the same as if he was playing for USC or Arizona State. Those kinds of things are studied. You can find out information.

Obviously, I don’t think it’s useful to draft players simply based on their stats. The issue I would bring up is that for all of these issues—level of play, the type of pitchers, his raw abilities like his speed, his strength, his size—these are all things that can be, to an extent, measured. Six-foot-one is a measurement. Five-foot-seven is a measurement. Hitters who are 6-1, do they turn out better than hitters who are 5-7, with similar stats at similar schools? These are the sorts of things that people can analyze, and I think it could provide useful information.

GARY HUGHES: All your statistics are going to tell you is what a guy has done. Somebody has got to make the decision on what the guy’s going to do.

VOROS McCRACKEN: I have no idea what the guy’s going to do. But my point would be, the scouts also have only a limited idea of what the guy’s going to do. He might do this, he might do that, he might be somewhere in the middle. What you’re trying to do is you’re trying to take the guys who you think have the best chance. I fully admit that you can’t tell the future via stats. My point is that scouting has that equal amount of unpredictability. You can only know so much. You’re scouts, you’re not fortunetellers.

GARY HUCKABAY: I think it’s important to understand that a lot of people have overclaimed what you can do by statistical analysis. It’s a tool. A car is a tool as well—you can use it to drive to the store, or you can use it to drive into a tree. I think there’s more of a dichotomy between good statistical analysis and bad statistical analysis. But all the information you can get your hands on—as long as you understand what it’s good for, and what its quality is—is always a good thing.

We’re all after the same thing here: We’re out to build a great baseball team. As long as you have X number of pieces of information, whether it’s performance data—a term I prefer to use rather than statistics, because these things are records of what happened on the field—and then also, if you’ve got people who have tremendous insight who are well trained, they know how to scout a guy, give me that information too. I want both of it. What I don’t want is someone going, “I want this guy because he had 120 RBIs.”

The difference between sabermetrics (statistical scouting) versus flesh and blood scouting is demonstrated in the following diagrams.

Sabermetrics attempts to capture the baseball talent area through statistical analysis. In essence, what sabermetrics is attempting to do is quantify the confluence of physical abilities, movement pattern (mechanics) and mental makeup of the player. How effectively it does this is illustrated by the amount of “player talent” that is captured by the analysis.

Sabermetrics is "blind" to the player’s actual physical abilities, movement patterns and mental makeup. But these are actually included in the sabermetrics analysis by attempting to capture the baseball talent that results from this combination of player attributes illustrated by the overlay of “sabermetrics analysis” and baseball talent.

It is important to understand that for any given player or group of players, the analysis is a "one-shot" deal. This is the allure of sabermetrics: Numbers don't lie. But do they?

Using the same pictorial process, scouting can be illustrated as follows.

What each attempts to do is quantify the amount of baseball talent a prospect possesses. From the diagram you can see the problem that human nature introduces: No two scouts see the same thing. They cannot because what we see is based upon our life experiences, and, as with fingerprints, it is impossible for two people to have the same life experience.

Attempts are made to “average out” this variability through the use of cross checkers and the final decision-maker (the general manager?). This variability is what sabermetrics attempts to mitigate. But does it really?

This diagram represents sabermetrics analysis, which illustrates that the metric analysis depends upon who's doing the analysis.

While numbers may have less susceptibility to interpretation, the importance accorded numbers in terms of predicting a player's performance is subjective.

Ideally a “super scout” is the sabermetrician or flesh-and-blood MLB scout whose ability to “see” baseball talent would look like this:

Bill James, quoted in Moneyball:

Think about it. One absolutely cannot tell, by watching, the difference between a .300 hitter and a.275 hitter. The difference is one hit every two weeks. It might be that a reporter, seeing every game the team plays, could sense that difference over the course of the year if no records were kept, but I doubt it. Certainly the average fan, seeing perhaps a tenth of the team's games, never could gauge two performances that accurately.... The difference between a good hitter and an average hitter is simply not visible, it is a matter of record.

Statistics cannot tell you what the player looks like. The physical attributes, height, weight, percent body fat, etc. can be measured. The value of the scout is in his ability to see how the body swings and throws, the ability to see how the player creates statistics. The scouting problem is, in its subjectivity: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Today there exists no absolute way to quantify “goodness or badness” of how a player actually uses his body to swing or throw. This is where a scout's experience and “gut feelings” potentially conflict with the statistics; the scout's “gut feeling” is not quantifiable except for the scout’s record for evaluating prospects.

From Moneyball, this excerpt:

Here's an astonishing fact: Prince Fielder is too fat for even the Oakland A's. Of no other baseball player in the whole of North America can this be said.”

Sabermetrics couldn't tell A's general manager Billy Beane, or should I say the stats Oakland used, that Prince Fielder has a very sweet swing, specifically in his ability to adjust to off-speed and breaking pitches. And, to be fair, the player Oakland did have its eye on instead, Nick Swisher, has done very well. But so has Fielder.

From "6-4-3, For What You Are About to Receive" by Gary Huckabay in Baseball Prospectus, Sept. 4, 2007:

Baseball analysis is dead.

Baseball analysis is dead because its utility has pretty much vanished. Analysis and information are only interesting and useful if they inform a decision, and even then, there really needs to be some sort of advantage or gain present relative to competitors in order for the time investment to be worthwhile. At this point in history, baseball analysis really has very little to offer on that front.

Any club that actually wants to use baseball analysis now to develop and maintain an advantage relative to their competitors has a tough task in front of them. They need to expand the scope of the data used for the analysis. They need to identify real changes that can be made in their operations if real phenomena are unearthed. They need to have people of sufficient skill to find these new discoveries. They need to develop a culture receptive to adopting the changes implied by this newfound wisdom. And finally, they need to find a way to keep other organizations from discovering the formula to their secret sauce. That’s a reasonable description of what clubs need from their search on the datafields of the game, and it’s precisely what baseball analysis cannot provide. Because baseball analysis is dead.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6666

Sabermetrics is a tool. And, as with any tool, its utility depends on the skill of the craftsman using that tool. And a good craftsman not only knows how to use each tool but also when.

Metrics: measures used to indicate progress or achievement.

Scouts typically use two numbers when grading a player, such as 4/6 or 3/5. The first number is the player's current rating on the two to eight scale; the second is his projected professional baseball rating. Of course, those numbers are based on the individual scout's opinion. When only one number is given it is almost always that scout's projection of the player's professional baseball potential.

Other than measurable parameters such as throwing speed, running speed and possibly bat speed, all the measurements are subjective.

This rating system might be termed “external metrics.” It attempts to qualify and quantify based on the result of body movement. The same can be said for sabermetrics except that it doesn't take into account physical aspects of the movement. The next step in the evolution of player scouting and evaluation is what I would call “motor skill metrics”—the ability to evaluate players based upon how skillfully they use their body to swing and throw.

"The most difficult judgment of all scouting categories will be your appraisal of who will hit and who will not," our scouting manual tells us. "Certain attributes are found in most quality hitters."

Those attributes are:
{exp:list_maker}Strength
Starting the bat, generating bat speed
Full arm extension and follow-through after making contact
Head stays on ball
Lack of fear
Short stride
Top hand is evident upon making contact and follow-through
Head of bat does not lag
Aggressive
Short stroke, yet ball jumps off bat
Bat goes to ball {/exp:list_maker}

Complicating matters further, not all good hitters meet these criteria. "Some hitters are natural hitters. They may do some strange things, but they can and do hit," the manual says. "Don't be concerned with their uniqueness. They can just hit."
(Baseball America, "The Scouting Department Diary of a Wannabe Scout," http://www.baseballamerica.com/online/columnists/scout0928.html)

From Wikipedia:

Biometrics (ancient Greek: bios ="life", metron ="measure") is the study of methods for uniquely recognizing humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits....

Biometric characteristics can be divided in two main classes: Physiological are related to the shape of the body. The oldest traits, that have been used for more than 100 years, are fingerprints. Other examples are face recognition, hand geometry and iris recognition. Behavioral are related to the behavior of a person. The first characteristic to be used, still widely used today, is the signature. More modern approaches are the study of keystroke dynamics and of voice. Other biometric strategies are being developed such as those based on gait (way of walking), retina, hand veins, ear.

The diagram shows a simple block diagram of a biometric system. The main operations a system can perform are enrollment and test. During the enrollment, biometric information from an individual is stored. During the test, biometric information is detected and compared with the stored information. The first block (sensor) is the interface between the real world and our system; it has to acquire all the necessary data. Most of the time it is an image acquisition system, but it can change according to the characteristics desired.

The second block performs all the necessary pre-processing: it has to remove artifacts from the sensor, to enhance the input (e.g. removing background noise), to use some kind of normalization, etc. In the third block features needed are extracted. This step is important, as the correct features need to be extracted in the optimal way. A vector of numbers or an image with particular properties is used to create a template. A template is a synthesis of all the characteristics extracted from the source, in the optimal size to allow for adequate identifiability.

If enrollment is being performed, the template is simply stored somewhere (on a card or within a database or both). If a matching phase is being performed, the obtained template is passed to a matcher that compares it with other existing templates, estimating the distance between them using any algorithm. The matching program will analyze the template with the input. This will then be output for any specified use or purpose (e.g. entrance in a restricted area).

A scout is a very sophisticated player-biometric identification system employing the following functions:

Sensor. This is the scout's eyes, ears, nose, etc. It is everything that takes in raw information regarding the player: How the player looks, moves, swings, throws, fields, carries himself.

Preprocessing. Certain criteria must be met before the scout will engage in a specific biometric analysis. Typical are preset thresholds of performance, such as throwing speed, 60-yard dash time or hitting or throwing statistics.

Feature extractor: Specific player attributes such as swinging and/or throwing—attributes perceived to be of greatest importance in terms of long-term projection.

Template generator: Player attributes are assembled in a standard format for comparison.

Stored templates: Visual images that are characteristics of successful players—physical characteristics and how they swing, throw and move.

Matcher: A comparison is made between the prospect template and stored templates. The scout determines how they match based on his like experience.

Application device: If there is a match, the scout makes a recommendation.

The difference between art and science:

In their most intellectual form, all things are Art. In their most practical form, all things are Science.
In this statement, I am taking the term Science to mean a process of following a set of predetermined guides in order to achieve a result. An Art, by contrast, takes the power of metaphor and independent thought inherent in the human mind to bear in order to create something.

A model, assembled from a kit by following a detailed list of instructions, is not a work of art. That is not to say it is not something to be proud of—and indeed the directions always need some degree of interpretation, substitution, etc.—which could be construed as Art. In other words, anything that could be theoretically done by a computer, given enough time, is a science rather than an art.

The greatest of scientists and mathematicians, the ones who come up with completely novel approaches to problems, are truly artists. But the rest are mere scientists, following rules discovered by greater minds in an attempt to be like them. http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=683344)

The present state of player development is more an art than science. Typing the words “the art of pitching” into Google returns hundreds of links referring to pitching as an art. Developing a high-level pitcher is historically perceived as finding ways to deceive the batter. You often will encounter the word "style" in baseball. Typically it is used to describe differences in the way that players throw or swing, an attempt to explain the unexplainable. What's unexplainable is why a player who is successful at deceiving the batter or defeating the pitcher looks different than the accepted definition of good pitching or hitting mechanics.

Baseball is very technique-driven. USA Today rated hitting a baseball as the hardest thing to do in sports. But only over the last 30 years have there been scientific attempts to better understand how the body swings and throws.

“The Science of Hitting,” written by Ted Williams and John Underwood, and Bob Shaw's book entitled "Pitching; The Basic Fundamentals and Mechanics of Successful Pitching" appeared at about the same time (1970, 1971). They were the first real attempts at hitting and pitching science, defined by predictability of cause and effect. Shaw's was the first widely read book to use the word "mechanics" to describe the throwing process.

"Mechanics" (in physics the term is used to describe the study of the motion of objects) caught on and now is used to describe anything and everything having to do with how the body swings or throws, hits or pitches. Instructional literature on pitching and hitting mechanics is based almost entirely on individual opinion about the hitting and pitching process. Because there is no peer-reviewed consensus on what constitutes good mechanics, there can be no such thing.

Pitching mechanics is based upon a specific "look." Good mechanics are often described in the context of looking controlled, looking like you are throwing free and easy, looking like you are balanced, etc.

The “right” science may tell us how to make better decisions and solve problems.

Motor learning and theory is a scientific approach to understanding how voluntary movement occurs. Swinging and throwing are voluntary movements. Because of their ballistic nature they are considered autonomous—theyhappen without much thought.

The field of motor learning and control is not a precise science. In many respects, it is still in its infancy. But it is the only game in town with respect to understanding how skills are developed. And more importantly the science of motor learning and control provides a formal framework to build more effective instructional and coaching information and methods.

One prevailing theory of learning is called the two-stage model of motor learning. The first stage is acquiring the basic movement pattern. The second stage is learning how to use that pattern under all conditions.

How this applies to the major league draft is quite straightforward. Major league organizations try to identify players who have established movement patterns that are capable of dealing with all game conditions. Motor learning terminology calls these constraints. What characterizes high-level swinging and throwing performance are movement patterns that are constraint-independent; i.e., minimal change in the swing or throw movement is required to handle any condition.

For a hitter, this means that no matter what the game situation, the movement pattern of the swing required to successfully hit the ball requires a minimal amount of change. The same applies for the pitcher attempting to get the batter out.

This principle also applies to golf. The goal is to take the same swing as often as possible. The constraints are the location of the ball on the golf course. The golfer deals with these constraints by selecting the appropriate club. Different clubs allow the golfer to approximate the same swing no matter what the constraint.

This same principle works against player development.

Why? Because if you have selected the right player with respect to their movement patterns for swinging and throwing, player development becomes a process of maturation, being able to effect this “right” movement under all conditions. Player maturation is the domain of coaching, because 95 percent of professional player development is to provide an environment, in the form of game competition, for player maturation. The hope is that players will develop the knowledge and experience necessary to deal with the increased demands of major league competition.

The player who has mechanical deficiencies must engage in a swing and throw adjustment process which takes place through trial and error. Game performance, success or failure, becomes his instructional process. And his development success is often in spite of well-meaning yet inappropriate coaching and instruction.

The "metrics problem" is how does one determine constrained-independent mechanics? And if you are attempting to develop players, how does one differentiate between constrained-independent mechanics versus constraint-driven mechanics?

Next time: The search for predictability.

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Beyond Moneyball: Player Development Part 4

Paul Nyman — 2008-06-24T05:03:15+00:00

(Previously Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Drafting and selecting players; an exercise in making good decisions.

Good decision-making can be viewed as a series of issue resolutions.

Issue 1-Need: "Why are we (not) deciding anything at all?"
Issue 2-Mode: "Who (or what) will make this decision, and how will they approach that task?"
Issue 3-Investment: "What kinds and amounts of resources will be invested in making this decision?"
Issue 4-Options: "What actions could we potentially take to deal with this problem?"
Issue 5-Possibilities: "What could happen if we took that action—things we care about?"
Issue 6-Judgment: "Which things we care about actually would happen if we took that action?"
Issue 7-Value: "How much would we really care—positively or negatively—if that in fact happened?"
Issue 8-Trade-offs: "All our prospective actions have both strengths and weaknesses. So how should we make the trade-offs that are required to settle on the action we will actually pursue?"
Issue 9-Acceptability: "How can we get agreement to this decision?"
Issue 10-Implementation: "That's what we decided to do. Now, how can we get it done, or can we get it done, after all?"

While that list helps qualify what constitutes a good decision-making process, it does not tell us specifically the characteristics of a good or expert decision-maker.

A good decision-maker has the ability to resolve issues through a combination of symbolic (knowledge) and heuristic (experience) manipulations. Experts know more about the domain and therefore can access and use their knowledge more efficiently than the novices. Though the semantic knowledge of the domain, that is, pieces of factual knowledge of the domain, may not vary between experts and novices, the episodic knowledge (past experiences) of/within the domain permits the experts to link and evoke the relevant and appropriate inter-connected pieces of knowledge in the problem-solving processes.

Experts differ from non-experts in their handling and solving problems in relation to the problem representation, constraints and reasoning arguments. Novice problem-solvers attempt to apply general, non-domain-specific methodologies. Typically they attempt to draw upon general experience and apply processes of logic and deduction and are constrained by the "facts and evidence." Domain experts develop their representations in problem solving by adding a lot of domain-specific constraints to their representation of the problem. In addition, experts present extensive arguments in the form of domain-specific reasoning and structures in the problem-solving process.

There continues to be evidence that the strategy in problem-solving varies from experts to novices. Novices typically deal effectively with what are termed "well structured" problems or decisions.

An example of a well-structured problem/decision would be “our second baseman was injured last night.” This decision is a relatively simple and well-structured one, the need to obtain another second baseman. And if there is a competent potential replacement within the organization, the problem becomes relatively straightforward to solve. If no replacement is available, the problem becomes more complex.

Ill-structured problems, such as your first-round draft choice performing below expectations, do lend themselves to strategies employed in other domains such as mathematics. But expert problem-solvers can draw on an extensive reservoir of past experiences solving analogous problems in the same domain, and can switch between various methods and strategies. Such strategies may not be as clear-cut as those in mathematics, but domain experts may retrieve in a clear stepwise manner the domain-related procedures from their knowledge and experience in problem solving.

On the other hand, novices follow either a trivial and or rather confusing path in executing the solution. In the case of the first-round draft choice not performing, well the rookie ball coach, based on what he sees, perceives the problem as one of mechanics, and attempts to solve what he sees as the problem by changing the player's mechanics.

The minor league coordinator may talk to the player and learn that there is an injury that the player, for reasons having to do with team policy violations, did not made known. Or after watching the player perform and talking to him, the minor league coordinator may diagnose the problem as simply a matter of a lack of experience with high-level competition. He then advises the manager and pitching coach to use this player in situations that are less demanding yet allow that player to gain experience.

The thought process of an expert is one of seeing the bigger picture based on his knowledge and experience (domain expertise), allowing him/her to make decisions more rapidly (autonomous symbolic manipulation based on past experiences) and with greater probability of success.

What is the domain of player selection and development expertise?

Selecting and developing MLB players requires understanding what constitutes high-level baseball performance. It also requires an understanding of how the human body creates high-level baseball performance. This understanding and its application are what “Beyond Moneyball; Player Development, the Science of Creating the Unfair Advantage” uses as the definition for the domain of player selection and development expertise. To the baseball veteran, these may sound somewhat trivial. But as with most things, beauty is on the eye of the beholder and no two people are capable of seeing the same thing the same way.

Player development: an exercise in problem solving.

Modern life in nearly every context presents a deluge of problems that demand solutions. Although many trainers avoid using the word problem because it implies acquiescence and insolubility (a problem with problem-solving is that problem has many meanings), intellectually that is what they get paid to do. Designing training is an archetype of design problem-solving. And most of these problems that people face in their everyday lives are ill-structured. They are not the well-structured problems that students at every level of schooling, from kindergarten through graduate school, attempt to solve at the back of every textbook chapter.

Before we can solve a problem, we have to identify what it is. From the perspective of the MLB organization, the player development problem is one of getting a player from the minor leagues to the major leagues as quickly and efficiently as possible. In the domain of player development, the problems associated with this activity are several-fold.

First, identifying factors preventing the player from achieving major league playing performance. This then creates the problem of identifying actions that will lead to major league performance. This then creates a third set of problems having to do with actually implementing those actions. This then creates the problem of effectively monitoring, and of changing those actions that are not producing the desired results.

This nesting or cascading of problems is typical of with what is termed an "ill-structured problem”—in this case, elevating the performance of a minor league player to that of a major league player?

What is MLB player development?

Every major league organization engages in what it calls player development—for all intents and purposes, the organization's minor league operations. They mirror the major league operation in terms of structure and how they function. Each team has a field manager, hitting coach, pitching coach and, depending on the organization, a trainer. A minor league pitching coordinator and a minor league hitting coordinator oversee the minor league coaching staff and attempt to maintain consistency of instruction within the organization.

How does player development happen?

In my search for background material for this study, I had several interviews with people who are responsible for their organizations' player development. The following exerpts are from one of those interviews (DPD stands for director of player development):

Q: Which is more valuable for a minor league system to have: a few premium players but little depth, or considerable depth but no premium players?
DPD: Both. We want premium players and a lot of them. We want to develop as many prospects as we can. We need to continue to add players through the draft, international scouting and trades. The more talent you have, the better off your organization will be. You can never have enough prospects.
Q: Are there any names of lesser known prospects that your fans should be aware of?
DPD: I am still learning a lot of the players. Some players who I managed the last couple of years are talented and have a chance. As I learn all the players, I may have more names for you.
Q: Your farm system is improving. However, Baseball America has ranked it as the No. -- organization in their annual talent rankings. What are your thoughts on that opinion?
DPD: We have outstanding ownership in place that is committed to building through the minor leagues. We have a big job ahead of us. It is not going to happen overnight. The talent level in the organization is improving but we still have a ways to go. It starts with the draft. We have added some talented players over the last two drafts (’05 & ’06) and that must continue in the ’07 draft. We must continue good scouting and drafting. Our draft budget will be such that we will be able to sign the best possible talent. Yes, we have a long way to go but the future is very bright.

Words are symbols used to convey information; how we interpret those symbols depends on our life experiences. And no two people have the same life experience. The word symbol "talent" does not have the same meaning to me as it does to anyone else.

The fundamental question for this or any director of player development is “exactly what is talent?” How are you going to find this “talent”? And how does this “talent” achieve "improvement”? What are you doing differently this year than you did last year? What are you doing differently than other organizations? And most important of all: Is this official's interpretation of the word "improvement” the same as everyone else's in the organization?

Nature versus nurture; scouting versus statistics

“Today, the debate rages, albeit not nearly as publicly as it did upon the release of Moneyball. It is not so much scouts vs. stats anymore as it is finding the right balance between information gleaned by scouts and statistical analyses. That the Moneyball draft has produced three successful big league players, a pair of busts and two on the fence only adds to its polarizing nature.”
"Rethinking Moneyball," by Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports Aug. 17, 2006 http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-moneyball081706&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Sabermetrics created such a stir in major league baseball because professional baseball organizations have never figured out how to effectively judge what they call "talent." Sabermetrics attempts to provide financial decision makers (GMs, owners) with information that takes much of the human element (personal bias and subjectivity) out of the player evaluation process.

Major league baseball operations have a poor track record with respect to draft prospects that become productive major-league players.

Three questions:

1. Is unproductive player development due to poor draft/player selections?
2. Is unproductive player development due to poor player development methods and practices?
3. Is unproductive player development simply a “fact” of player development life, that no matter what you do, there are only so many players who will make it?

What sabermetrics does (what organizations hope it does) is addressed by the first question and levels the playing field in terms of objective information versus subjective information.

Sabermetrics addresses the inability of organizations to understand on a quantitative basis what talent is. But sabermetrics doesn't really tell us anything about how to develop it. But if you make the “right” selection, does everything else take care of itself?

The word talent, talent and more talent

In the interview above, the word "talent" appears six times. How does a player become talented enough to be drafted? Where does his talent come from? Was he born that way? And more fundamentally, especially to those involved in selecting future major league players, how does one identify talent?

Answers to these questions directly impact how effectively an organization can select and develop players. Most scouts, coaches, instructors equate talent to three player attributes—hitting, throwing, speed/quickness/agility. Most organizations consider these “talents” as not teachable; i.e., they are God-given.

What baseball calls talent is in reality skill

Ask just about any scout, general manager, director of player development or coach what the most important player attribute is and most likely you'll hear one word: "talent." The dictionary definition of talent is:

endowment: natural abilities or qualities
a person who possesses unusual innate ability in some field or activity

Every level of baseball, be it Little League or major league, uses the word talent to collectively include those player attributes that are deemed God-given. In this category are such things as throwing, hitting, running, and just about everything else that is perceived to be “unteachable.” But if one consults fields of study and research such as kinesiology and motor control and learning, excellence in throwing, swinging and running are determined by three player attributes.

The materials from which talent is "constructed"

1. Genetics. I list genetics as the first attribute because when scouts talk about talent, often they're talking about physical abilities. Abilities are essentially genetic traits. Reaction times, movement quickness, certain types of flexibility are examples of genetic traits.

Abilities are considered to be enduring and relatively constant and not easily changed. For example, typical reaction time for an individual is .15-.2 seconds. The absolute best reaction time in the world is approximately .1 seconds. The Olympic Games have special monitoring devices in the starting blocks of sprinters that determine whether the sprinter initiates his starting movement in less than .1 seconds after the gun is fired. This is based on measurements which show that no human being has a reaction time quicker than .1 seconds.

There are many examples of players who are less than physical specimens yet have the ability to throw very hard, players like Billy Wagner, Tim Lincecum, Pedro Martinez. The current strikeout leader in the National League, Jake Peavy, is listed at 6-foot-1, 180 pounds. What Peavy does possess is very efficient throwing mechanics and the intent to throw the baseball hard.

Mechanics and intent are two properties which are not really understood by player development people in professional baseball. This is typically evidenced by drafting pitchers who are "safe" physical prospects; i.e., pitchers who are 6-foot5 and 220 pounds. These are safe prospects for two reasons. First the belief that bigger is better. And second because as a scout/organization drafts a physical specimen, it is easier to defend one's judgment if the draftee does not work out as opposed to drafting someone who is under 6 feet tall and not working out. Scouting directors have even issued mandates that they did not want to see any prospects who were not a specific height and weight.

Also the word ability is often mistakenly used to describe what really should be called skill. Skill is the summation of ability, technique and experience (cognitive learning).

2. Technique/mechanics. Technique/mechanics refers to how the body actually creates the body movements that result in throwing the baseball (and swinging the bat). Pitching and hitting mechanics are the most misunderstood and therefore most misapplied "activity" in all of baseball. In several articles, I have tried to make the point that for all of the chatter regarding "good" pitching and hitting mechanics, there is no such thing. After 150-plus years of baseball, all that exist are opinions regarding what constitutes good hitting and pitching mechanics. There is nothing approaching peer-reviewed information.

Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field. It is used primarily by editors to select and to screen submitted manuscripts, and by funding agencies, to decide the awarding of grants. The peer review process aims to make authors meet the standards of their discipline, and of science in general. Publications and awards that have not undergone peer review are likely to be regarded with suspicion by scholars and professionals in many fields. Even refereed journals, however, can contain errors. (Wikipedia 2007)

Until there is a “de facto” peer review process, and when it comes to hitting and pitching mechanics, the best that can be hoped for is a consensus—and, based upon all of the pitching videotapes, commentary from coaches, TV commentators and former players, currently there is nothing remotely resembling a consensus. Untill there is, there can be no such thing as a good anything.

When it comes to hitting and pitching mechanics and hitting and pitching instruction, what exists today is no different than religion and politics. It's simply a matter of what belief system you subscribe to. That belief system then becomes your "good" mechanics.

Case in point, Tim Lincecum. Almost every analysis touches on his unorthodox mechanics, and marvels at his ability, at 5-foot-11, 165 pounds, to throw close to 100 mph and possess one of baseball's best curveballs. You have those who warn that he is a "max effort" pitcher and question his durability. To which I say: how many 6-foot-6, 220 pound non-max effort pitchers have gone under the knife? Fortunately for the Giants, GM Brian Sabean ordered the coaching staff to leave Lincecum alone; don't try to change his bad mechanics into their interpretation of good mechanics.

Injury speculation and the paralysis of inaction that fear of injury creates is akin to arguing how many angels can one fit on the head of a pin. From a biomechanical perspective, Tim Lincecum is simply an example of a player learning how to most efficiently and effectively use his (small) body to achieve extraordinary results, consistently defeating the batter. The key words here are "to achieve extraordinary (the desired) results".

3. Mental/emotional makeup.< How many physical specimens who appear to have good technique/mechanics fail to perform anywhere near expected levels? On the other hand, how many less-than-stellar physical specimens with average technique/mechanics perform above and beyond expected levels?

It would not surprise me if there are equal numbers in each category. Possibly the most difficult player attribute to measure is mental and emotional makeup. My experience is that poor mental/emotional makeup, also known as desire to work hard and succeed, is the No. 1 reason players do not reach their potential.

Q. Along those lines, how important is character, a young prospect’s value decisions off the field?
A. It means so much. The personal gets awfully, awfully heavy. I tell you, we lose so many talented players from bad girlfriends, bad wives, bad habits, drugs, alcohol; all the ills of modern life. We definitely lose more players from those things than from a lack of physical ability.
Q. Put it this way: Have you ever had a player who’s had bad off-field habits, but still managed to become a major leaguer through his sheer athleticism on the field?
A. (laughs). Oh, no. If a young man has bad off-field habits, he’ll be a minor leaguer, and he won’t be a minor leaguer for long. You have to ask, "Would you want your daughter to date him?" That answer tells you a lot.
Q. On the other side, are there any players who stand out in your mind for the fact that their good character and habits allowed them to overachieve on the major league level?
A. I have to go back to Mark Lemke, who was drafted in the 27th round (in 1983). We thought he was going to be a backup middle infielder. Boy, did he surprise us. He just didn’t know how to give in.
In the minor leagues, Bobby Dews, who’s now our bullpen coach, would do drills and drills for guys like Glenn Hubbard because he knew the young man could take the extra work. Later, in Macon, as a manager, Glenn put in the extra work to develop Marcus Giles.
http://stlcardinals.scout.com/2/451433.html

The landscape of professional baseball is littered with phenoms who went off the tracks due to poor decision-making, low self-esteem, peer pressure, fear of success, etc. The primary mechanism that major league organizations employ to judge mental and emotional makeup is history. Ideally, organizations want a knowledge of the prospect from the cradle. Finding and keeping track of young prospects is an important part of the scouting and selection process.

What is baseball talent?

Talent can be viewed as illustrated as three intersecting circles representing physical abilities, movement patterns (mechanics) and mental attitude and approach.

It is possible that three players, all exhibiting the same performance as quantified by their statistics, do not possess the same "talent makeup.”

As an example, one player may have greater physical abilities and okay mechanics and okay mental approach/makeup.

Another player may have superior technique/mechanics yet less than optimal physical capabilities and mental approach.

The third player may have a superior mental approach with okay physical attributes and mechanics.

The three “talent makeups” are illustrated in these three diagrams.

The area formed by the intersection of the three circles represents the amount of “baseball talent” each player possesses. Because each produces the same statistics (performance), the areas of these three baseball talents are equal (amount of baseball talent).

Using the same illustrative principles, the difference between an average player and a super player is represented by the diagram to the right.

Player improvement occurs when the circles move closer to overlapping with each other.

Consistently hitting major league pitching for both power and average may be most difficult thing to achieve in sports.

The key word here is consistently. And what illustrates the difficulty of hitting major league pitching is the small difference. As described by Bill James (Moneyball, page 68), ".... the difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter “is one hit every two weeks.”

Next time: How do you find “talent”?

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Beyond Moneyball: Player Development Part 3

Paul Nyman — 2008-06-17T04:55:15+00:00

(Previously Part 1, Part 2)

Selecting good players is making good player selection decisions.

A "decision" is a commitment to a course of action that is intended to yield results that are satisfying for specified individuals. (“Decision-Making Expertise," by J. Frank Yates & Michaell D. Tschirhart)

Decisions (which players to select in the MLB player draft) having a probability of 2 in 50 of creating satisfaction (actually becoming productive MLB players) for owners and general managers and probably most important of all, the fans, does not fit the definition of "good decisions" IF the expectation is something greater than 2 in 50.

A "high-quality decision" is one that does indeed achieve such satisfying results.

What is of particular interest is that experts who study the decision-making process, while agreeing to the definition of what a decision is, do not believe that good results are indicative of decision-making "expertise."

“Information that is available only after a decision is made is irrelevant to the quality of the decision."

"A good decision cannot guarantee a good outcome. All real decisions are made under uncertainty. A decision is therefore a bet, and evaluating it as good or not must depend on the stakes and the odds, not on the outcome."

Researchers use different criteria for evaluating the decision-making process. "Coherence" refers to the procedures employed in making decisions.

"Procedures are 'logically coherent' if they do not contradict themselves, or equivalently, do not allow the decided to be self-contradictory in particular ways."

One way to look at the concept of "coherence" is to consider a good decision-making process as one that maximizes the expected return on the decision.

How does one actually determine if someone is a good decision-maker? If one subscribes to: “A decision is therefore a bet, and evaluating it as good or not must depend on the stakes and the odds, not on the outcome", then a good decision-maker is one who, over a lengthy period of time, wins more often than he loses.

At a fundamental level, what separates good (professional) gamblers and novice or problem gamblers is the factor of self control. The general rule of thumb for players is to avoid becoming emotionally involved in the game. Inducing emotional (rather than logical) reactions from gamblers is what makes the gambling industry so profitable. By remaining unemotional, players can protect themselves from recklessly chasing losses and avoid going on "tilt."

Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, we all are vulnerable to the phenomena called "attention decrement." Attention decrement states that people are inclined to observe a small number of cases, draw a conclusion on the basis of those cases, and then simply stop paying attention to pertinent facts that present themselves later. This is also a phenomena related to what Tversky and Kahnerman call "the belief in the law of small numbers," which implies that pursuing further cases beyond the first few is unnecessary as well as burdensome.

Attention decrement and the law of small numbers suggest that when attempting to evaluate decision-making expertise, if the first few decisions associated with the decision-maker turn out right, we apply the label "expert." But if they turn out badly, the decider might well be called "inept." And our opinion gets cast in stone simply because we are too busy or too lazy to examine the entire width and breadth of decision-making. Often times it is the exception that proves the rule, which is to say it is unreasonable to say that we should ignore the results of a single decision when trying to infer a decider’s expertise.

Beliefs regarding decision-making expertise are also driven by one’s perception versus the reality of the situation. There is the tendency to infer decision-making expertise from subject matter expertise, i.e. equating a person's knowledge of the subject to their ability to make good decisions. In-depth knowledge is a logical requisite for good decision-making, but knowledge in itself does not equate to good decision-making.

"Consensus among peers" is another often used criteria for judging decision-making expertise. "Experts" are people who already are acknowledged by their peers as experts. This begs the question of how such impressions of expertise arise, especially if one subscribes to the law of small numbers combined with the "luck of the bet." In other words, a few good decisions in the beginning of one's career can go a long way toward earning one recognition from one's peers as an expert decision-maker. Also, factors such as personal style (form versus function) combined with good presentation and communication skills can play a significant role in judging who is or who is not an expert decision-maker. Self-confidence is a particularly strong factor in the perception of a good decision-maker.

Selecting players: Decision-making and rolling the dice.

Decision-making is the cognitive process leading to the selection of a course of action among variations. Every decision-making process produces a final choice. It can be an action or an opinion. It begins when we need to do something but know not what. Therefore, decision-making is a reasoning process that can be rational or irrational, can be based on explicit assumptions or tacit assumptions. (Wikipedia 2007)

All decisions are subject to probability; when you make a decision, you're making a bet on an outcome. Decision-making as it is applied to selecting and developing players, monetarily, is no different than a game of chance. If one is playing a game of chance where money is involved, the overall (end of the night/day) success or failure of your decisions is dramatically affected by the size of your bankroll. The bigger your bankroll, the more latitude you have to make poor decisions, which follows the dictum of the “Kelly criterion.”

Kelly criterion

In probability theory, the Kelly criterion, or Kelly formula, is a formula used to maximize the long-term growth rate of repeated plays of a given gamble that has positive expected value. It was described by J. L. Kelly Jr. in a 1956 issue of the Bell System Technical Journal[1]. The formula specifies the percentage of the current bankroll to be bet at each iteration of the game. In addition to maximizing the growth rate in the long run, the formula has the added benefit of having zero risk of ruin; the formula will never allow a loss of 100% of the bankroll on any bet. An assumption of the formula is that currency and bets are infinitely divisible, which is not a concern for practical purposes if the bankroll is large enough.

The most general statement of the Kelly criterion is that long-term growth rate is maximized by finding the fraction f* of the bankroll that maximizes the expectation of the logarithm of the results. For simple bets with two outcomes, one involving losing the entire amount bet and the other involving winning the bet amount multiplied by the payoff odds, the following formula can be derived from the general statement:

f* = (bp-q)/b
where
f* is the fraction of the current bankroll to wager;
b is the odds received on the wager;
p is the probability of winning;
q is the probability of losing, which is 1 - p.
As an example, if a gamble has a 40% chance of winning (p = 0.40, q = 0.60), but the gambler receives 2-to-1 odds on a winning bet (b = 2), then the gambler should bet 10% of the bankroll at each opportunity (f* = 0.10), in order to maximize the long-run growth rate of the bankroll.
If the gambler has zero or negative edge, i.e. if b = q/p, then the gambler should bet nothing.
For even-money bets (i.e. when b = 1), the formula can be simplified to:
f* = p-q
Since q = 1-p, this simplifies further to
f* = 2p-1

The Kelly criterion was originally developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories physicist John Larry Kelly Jr. based on the work of his colleague Claude Shannon, which applied to noise issues arising over long distance telephone lines. Kelly showed how Shannon's information theory could be applied to the problem of a gambler who has inside information about a horse race, trying to determine the optimum bet size. The gambler's inside information need not be perfect (noise-free) in order for him to exploit his edge. Kelly's formula was later applied by another colleague of Shannon's, Edward O. Thorp, both in blackjack and in the stock market.[2] (Wikipedia 2007).

In the language of the Kelly criterion, organizations that have limited bankrolls need to increase their “p” (probability of winning, increasing their odds of selecting the best player), decrease “q” (their probability of taking a player who does not pan out) while at the same time increasing “b” (odds received on the wager, i.e. expected return on player selected, ideally a 20-game winner within two to three years after being drafted).

The Kelly criterion applied to major-league baseball is quite straightforward and intuitive. Organizations that have more money to spend have the greater chance of fielding players that win games because they have greater forgiveness in both the number of choices they make and forgiveness for making poor player choices. Simply stated, executives that win games with smaller budgets are “probably” better executives than those who win games with large budgets.

The corollary to this is that unsuccessful organizations seek executives from organizations that have small payrolls under the assumption that these executives a more effective than executives of teams that have similar success but higher payrolls. This quite often is a fallacy of assumption similar to assuming that player physical attributes equate to untapped potential.

This hiring and firing practice also has the potential to enslave all major-league organizations to the principle embodied in the Kelly criterion, that in the end it is the teams with the largest bankrolls that will have the greatest success. Simply because over time and repeated hiring and firing of the same bodies, the continual exchange of bodies by organizations within the MLB domain creates a commonality of personnel expertise. And in so doing, organizational cultures and practices will blend together within the entire MLB domain to produce a homogeneous distribution of expertise such that all organizations within the MLB domain will have essentially the same probability of winning “p” and probability of losing “q.”

Teams with large bankrolls (revenues and willingness to spend on player signings) can engage in a form of Martingale spending on players.

Martingale (betting system) originally referred to a class of betting strategies popular in 18th century France. The simplest of these strategies was designed for a game in which the gambler wins his stake if a coin comes up heads and loses it if the coin comes up tails. The strategy had the gambler double his bet after every loss, so that the first win would recover all previous losses plus win a profit equal to the original stake. Since a gambler with infinite wealth will with probability 1 eventually flip heads, the Martingale betting strategy was seen as a sure thing by those who practiced it. Unfortunately, none of these practitioners in fact possessed infinite wealth, and the exponential growth of the bets would eventually bankrupt those foolish enough to use the Martingale. Moreover, it has become more impossible to implement in modern casinos, due to the betting limit at the tables. Because the betting limits reduce the casino's short term variance, the Martingale system itself does not pose a threat to the casino, and many will encourage its use, knowing that they have the house advantage no matter when or how much is wagered. (Wikipedia 2007)

Major league baseball has attempted to deal with the inequalities between team bankrolls in a different way through implementation of a luxury tax and draft bonus slotting. This is analogous to casinos setting a table or house limit on betting. Unfortunately for low-revenue organizations, unlike casinos, the business of major league baseball has very soft table limits and teams frequently ignore slotting limits and/or are willing to absorb luxury tax penalties. This again reinforces the need for organizations that wish to practice tight fiscal responsibility to take a serious look at their player selection and development practices.

For any activities involving the element of chance (decision-making) and lacking any other measurement criteria (or capabilities), continued success over time is a reasonable indicator that the person and/or organization is doing something right. And those individuals and organizations that can achieve long-term success with small bankrolls are probably better decision-makers. The key phrase here is “long-term success with small bankrolls.”

Drafting and selecting players: an exercise in making good decisions.

Good decision-making is multi-faceted and can be viewed as a series of issue resolutions.

Issue 1-Need: "Why are we (not) deciding anything at all?"
Issue 2-Mode: "Who (or what) will make this decision, and how will they approach that task?"
Issue 3-Investment: "What kinds and amounts of resources will be invested in the process of making this decision?"
Issue 4-Options: "What are the different actions we could potentially take to deal with this problem we have?"
Issue 5-Possibilities: "What are the various things that could potentially happen if we took that action—things they care about?"
Issue 6-Judgment: "Which of the things they care about actually would happen if we took that action?"
Issue 7-Value: "How much would they really care—positively or negatively—if that in fact happened?"
Issue 8-Trade-offs: "All of our prospective actions have both strengths and weaknesses. So how should we make the trade-offs that are required to settle on the action we will actually pursue?"
Issue 9-Acceptability: "How can we get them to agree to this decision in this decision procedure?"
Issue 10-Implementation: "That's what we decided to do. Now, how can we get it done, or can we get it done, after all?"

While the above list of issues and their resolution help qualify what constitutes a good decision-making process, it does not tell us specifically the characteristics of a good or expert decision-maker.

A good decision-maker has the ability to resolve issues through a combination of symbolic (knowledge) and heuristic (experience) manipulations. Experts know more about the domain and therefore can access and use their knowledge more efficiently than the novices. Though the semantic knowledge of the domain—that is, pieces of factual knowledge of the domain—may not vary between experts and novices, the episodic knowledge (past experiences) of/within the domain permits the experts to link and evoke the relevant and appropriate inter-connected pieces of knowledge in the problem-solving processes.

Experts differ from non experts in ways of their handling and solving problems in relation to the problem representation, constraints and reasoning arguments. Novice problem solvers attempt to apply general, non-domain-specific methodologies. Typically, they attempt to draw upon general experience and apply processes of logic and deduction and are constrained by the "facts and evidence." Domain experts develop their representations in problem solving by adding a lot of domain-specific constraints to their representation of the problem. In addition, experts present extensive arguments in the form of domain specific reasoning and structures in the problem solving process.

There continues to be evidence that the strategy in problem solving varies from experts to novices. Novices typically deal effectively with what are termed "well structured" problems or decisions.

An example of a well-structured problem/decision would be “our second baseman was injured last night.” This decision is a relatively simple and well-structured one: the need to obtain another second baseman. And if there is a competent potential replacement within the organization, the problem of obtaining a replacement becomes a relatively straightforward one to solve. If no replacement is available, the problem becomes more complex.

Ill-structured problems, such as your first-round draft choice performing below expectations, do lend themselves to strategies employed in other domains such as mathematics. But expert problem solvers are able to draw on an extensive reservoir of past experiences solving analogous problems in the same domain and can switch between various methods and strategies. Such strategies may not be as clear cut as those in mathematics, but domain experts may retrieve in a clear stepwise manner the domain-related procedures form their knowledge and experience (their schema system ) in problem solving.

On the other hand, novices follow either a trivial and or rather confusing path in executing the solution. In the case of the first-round draft choice not performing well, the rookie ball coach, based on what he sees, perceives the problem as one of mechanics and therefore attempts to solve what he perceives as the problem by a change in the players mechanics.

Whereas the minor-league coordinator engages the player in conversation and in so doing learns that there is an injury that the player for reasons having to do with team policy violations did not made known. Or after watching the player perform and his discussions with the player, the minor-league coordinator diagnoses of the problem as simply a matter of a lack of experience with high-level competition and advises the manager and pitching coach to employ this player in situations that are less demanding yet allow that player to gain experience.

The thought process of an expert is one of seeing the bigger picture (domain expertise) based on his knowledge and experience, which allows him/her to make decisions more rapidly (autonomous symbolic manipulation based on past experiences) and with greater probability of success.

The $64 question: exactly what is the domain of player selection and development expertise?

Selecting and developing MLB players requires understanding of what constitutes high-level baseball performance. It also requires an understanding of how the human body creates high-level baseball performance. This understanding and its application are what “Beyond Moneyball; Player Development, the Science of Creating the Unfair Advantage” uses as the definition for the domain of player selection and development expertise. To the baseball veteran, these may sound somewhat trivial. But as with most things, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and no two people are capable of seeing the same thing the same way.

Next time: Player development an exercise in problem solving.

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Verlander and Bonderman: If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, Part 2

Paul Nyman — 2008-06-13T05:03:15+00:00

“When all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking.

(Part 1 can be found here)

In Part 1, I said the following, which I repeat because of its relevance to Verlander and Bonderman throwing baseballs:

1. The most crucial aspects of swinging and throwing are virtually invisible to the naked eye; they happen so fast and there's so much going on that it's virtually impossible for the naked eye and brain to process what is happening. Combine this with the infinite complexity of how the body creates movement and you have almost an impossible situation with respect to understanding how high-level performers swing and throw.
2. For reasons that can only be attributed to the "culture of baseball," team management and the people considered the most knowledgeable about how the body swings and throws and how to develop it (major league pitching and hitting coaches) are not the most knowledgeable in understanding how the body actually performs these tasks.

At best, what is called pitching and hitting mechanics analysis is almost exclusively qualitative: viewing and comparing video clips of a player and then attempting to use one's experience and intuition to explain the differences (if any). The primary methodology is to compare “before and after.”

But this analysis approach has severe limitations.

1. Rarely do we have enough information. When I am asked to do an analysis of a player I always request views representing the four points of the baseball diamond compass (views from home plate and each base). These views are almost never available for major league pitchers.
2. Thirty frames per second, the standard video display rate of TV, often does not provide the time resolution necessary to “see” what needs to be seen. This is especially true at the major league level of swing and throw performance.

Even with the best video footage, it still comes down to understanding how the body actually throws the baseball or swings the bat along with the analyst's experience. What constitutes “good” video analysis experience? The only answer I can give is that good video analysis requires the ability to explain using inference and induction using proven concepts about how a player should throw the baseball or swing a bat.

All videos are not created equal

Maintaining performance at the major league level is life on a knife edge. The smallest change in how a player throws or swings is the difference between playing at Fenway Park or playing in McCoy Stadium (of the Red Sox Triple-A affiliate).

In Part 1, I presented these comparisons of Verlander and Bonderman.

On the left, Verlander 2008 throwing 89 mph; on the right, Verlander 2007 throwing 99.

On the left, Bonderman 2008 throwing 90 mph; on the right, Bonderman 2007 throwing 95

If you see a significant difference those clips of Verlander or of Bonderman, you should be writing this article and not me.
I posted these comparisons to show how difficult it is to “see” how a pitcher can lose 5-10 mph off his fastball. More often than not, what you don't see or don't take into consideration is the difference.

Also, there are problems in attempting to decide about throw or swing mechanics using off-the-air broadcast video.

One is the need for consistency in camera angle and positioning. I always try to find clips that are from the same stadium and the same camera angle. Lacking that, I try to make sure that the clips are as close as possible to the same camera angle. I do that by picking reference points and comparing them. This picture illustrates that.

1. First, I look for a common baseline. In the case of these two clips, it's the edge of the standards that forms a horizontal reference line.
2. I create a reference point at home plate that approximates a point that would be directly in line with a point on the pitching mound (XYZ coordinates).
3. I then create a construction that approximates the camera angle (number of degrees from true center field view).

In the Verlander clips, the angles are approximately 33 degrees and approximately 35 degrees respectively. This gives me confidence that I'm looking at Verlander from same relative camera angle in both clips.

Why is this important? Because 30 frames per second does not capture the necessary dynamics of trying to throw abaseball more than 90 mph.

And then what you don't see

Much of what I understand about how the body throws or swings is based on physics—specifically, simulation models of the swing and throwing process. These simulations demonstrate the sensitivity of final throwing results to small changes in the throw process/sequence.

In the clips of Verlander and Bonderman, there is little perceptible difference in their deliveries that would "scream out" as a reason for their decreased velocity. There appear to be no major changes in mechanical components such as posture, arm action, tempo or overall sequencing of the throw. The key word here is "major”.

Enter the physics; the following is a simulation of throwing the baseball resulting in a release of 95 mph.

This simulation is based on actual throwing measurements, including duplicating the players' body mass and size as well as the rotational dynamics, the most important variable being upper torso angular velocity.

Typical values for upper torso angular velocity are approximately 1,200 degrees (1,176 degrees actual) per second.

This physics simulation is optimized for this upper torso rotation rate using typical values for moments of inertia of upper torso, upper arm, forearm and the ball.

Release ball velocity is approximately 95 mph and a “throwing time” of .070 seconds.

The same simulation as before except upper torso angular rotation velocity is 1,100 degrees (1,081 degrees actual) per second (8 percent reduction in upper torso angular rotation speed) resulting in a release ball velocity of approximately 87 mph and a "throwing time” of .070 seconds.

Rotation and connection of the most fundamental aspects of throwing velocity; a reduction by 8 percent of upper torso rotational velocity equates to approximately 8 percent decrease in throwing velocity.

But throwing time remains almost constant (.070 seconds). This would mean that putting two pitching clips shot from the same camera angle side-by-side at 30 frames per second (.033 seconds per frame) would show no difference in throwing mechanics yet result in almost in an 8 percent decrease in throwing velocity.

Side-by-side comparison of 87 and 95 mph simulations (.010 seconds per step) showing virtually no difference in throwing time

The point of that exercise is to demonstrate that small and imperceptible changes (imperceptible at 30 frames per second) can account for significant decreases in velocity. That also raises the question of how "good" is the analysis of those who depend on video to analyze how effectively players swing or throw.

“When all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Yes I do like the saying because of its relevance to the Verlander-Bonderman loss of velocity. Here are the same clips with additional footage after the release of the ball:

On the left, Verlander 2008 throwing 89 mph; on the right, Verlander 2007 throwing 99.

On the left, Bonderman 2008 throwing 90 mph; on the right, Bonderman 2007 throwing 95

What happens after the pitcher releases the ball can tell us (me, anyway) as much if not more about the pitcher's mechanics as what happens before he releases the ball.

What I see in both clips after the release of the ball is the effect on the body of residual rotational momentum.

Both Verlander and Bonderman exhibit significant residual rotation momentum after they release the ball. This is indicated by their “heading off” toward first base after releasing the ball.

The body doing this after releasing the ball can be either good or bad and the only real way to determine which is what happens to the baseball when this residual rotational momentum is or isn't present.

In the case of both pitchers, it appears that better things happen to the ball when there is residual rotational momentum that carries them "around" toward first base.

Many pitching instructors and coaches view this move toward first base after the ball is released as being a negative. To understand why requires understanding that pitching instruction historically holds that a player, especially a young player, is more likely to throw strikes by keeping his head and body going straight toward home plate. This may be fine for a Little Leaguer or a player who doesn't wish to pitch at a high level, but it is a potential kiss of death for anyone attempting to throw 90 mph or more.

Unfortunately, coaches and instructors at all levels have adopted this instructional mantra. They equate keeping ahead on a straight line with throwing strikes. To them, movement toward home plate after the release of the ball indicates extension to home plate and therefore greater "perceived" velocity. Unfortunately, attempting to get extension is the first cousin to "pushing" the baseball; i.e., killing velocity and ball movement.

My experience is that pitchers who exhibit residual rotational momentum toward first base (right hander) or third base (left hander) maintain what I call connection through the release of the baseball as opposed to disconnection toward home plate.

More "Sherlock Holmes" pitching mechanics sleuthing

The evidence of residual rotational momentum is the strongest clue in solving the Verlander and Bonderman velocity mystery. There are some less obvious clues, not as observable primarily because of the inability of video at 30 frames per second to capture the clues.

In this frame comparison, Verlander's throwing hand is higher on the 89 mph clip (left) and lower on the 99 mph clip (right). Also, Verlander's upper body is more closed off in the right-hand clip than the left-hand clip. This would mean that Verlander has to rotate through a longer distance faster to achieve the same release point time as the left-hand clip. Again I am talking about fractions of a frame (fraction of .033), illustrating the difficulty in attempting to identify and measure rotational speed differences. And very small differences in rotational speed can account for large differences in throwing velocity.

Again, note the difference in throwing hand position.

In the above clip, note the difference in throwing hand location in the follow through. Again without further video corroboration it appears that Verlander's throwing arm has followed through more rapidly in the right-hand clip (99 mph) versus the left-hand clip (90 mph), indicating greater residual rotational momentum (and connection).

The above clip shows a dramatic difference in body position after release of the ball. The right-side clip (99 mph) is indicative of significant rotational momentum followed through as compared to the left-side clip (89 mph).

Bonderman exhibits the same residual rotational momentum on his follow through.

In Part 1 cited this excerpt from a newspaper article regarding Verlander's recent increase in velocity:

But hitting the radar gun consistently in the mid-to-high 90s shows the extra work with pitching coach Chuck Hernandez is paying off.

Most of the work has been on his mechanics, with the goal of putting more stress on his lower body instead of his prized right arm.

It makes him a more effective pitcher and helps stave off arm trouble.

The human body is a very complex throwing machine, and I will be the first to say that there is no sure thing when it comes these types of analysis. All I can say is that with what I know about how the body throws the baseball, the only way that I can see how putting more stress on the lower body could reduce the stress on the upper body is by improving the throwing efficiency of the upper body.

Putting more stress on the lower body makes no sense. I suspect what Verlander is thinking is that increasing the momentum production of the lower body and efficiently transferring this momentum to the upper body increases the rotational efficiency of the upper torso. Rotational efficiency can be a combination of improving the rotational speed of the upper torso and improving the connection between the arm and the rotational momentum created by the upper torso. The lower body is capable of doing two things to help improve upper body by:

1. The generation and transfer of rotational momentum to the upper body.
2. Acting as a more effective anchor point for the upper body to work against.

The primary way to take stress off the arm is to take advantage of the natural time constant of the upper body-arm throwing system. I will save that topic for another day.

With respect to Bonderman, take your pick of any or all of the standard pitching coach dictums and most likely you'll find the reason he lost his fastball.

1. Stay back
2. Get to a balance point
3. Point the toe down
4. Stay tall
5. Push off the rubber
6. Keep your eyes on the target the entire delivery
7. Keep the head still
8. Point the glove at the target (not so often heard)
9. Take a short stride so you can drive the ball down
10. Pitch downhill
11. Take the ball out of your glove early so you get it to the launch position
12. Think fastball when throwing your breaking ball
13. Get extension, reach out to the hitter
14. Pull the glove to the hip
15. Don't move forward at leg lift; wait until you get to a balanced point over the rubber
16. Finish in a good fielding position
17. Keep your shoulder closed
18. Make sure you step with your foot on the line
19. Right hander, pitch from the third base side. Left hander, the first base side
20. Don't land on your heel
21. Land on the ball of your foot

More sleuthing.

In my initial investigation of Verlander I did an Internet search using search words including mechanics, Verlander and velocity and found several references to his and his pitching coach changing his mechanics. I also came across the following video clip of Verlander working with Chuck Hernandez, his pitching coach, and immediately the “lost velocity” red flag went up. Why? Because from my experience working with pitchers, apparently what Hernandez was working on with Verlander was “staying back,” which is intended to cure the problem of “rushing."

Verlander and Tigers pitching coach Hernandez doing a bullpen session early April

I then found the following commentary:

Tigers television commentator explaining Hernandez's changes to Verlander's pitching mechanics.

Unfortunately, it's been my experience that almost every pitching instructor thinks that staying back (slowing the delivery) fixes "rushing.” I say unfortunately because “rushing” is not rushing in the sense that the player is moving too fast with his pitching mechanics. Rushing is a rhythm problem. It's a sequencing problem of the body parts; i.e., the upper body gets ahead of the lower body. This gets interpreted by well-meaning pitching coaches as keeping the entire body back, slowing the delivery—a primary contributor to lost velocity and lack of control.

The video clip of Bonderman in Part 1 speaks to the same issue—pitching coach attempting to slow the delivery by attempting to modify the player's mechanics, having his "stay back."

Developing repeatable, high-performance throwing mechanics begins very early in a player's life. It also results in physiological and anatomical changes. It's been demonstrated that the throwing arm bone structure of a high-level pitcher is different than that of the non-pitching person. One of the more important structural changes is referred to as retro version of the humerus, a twist that the humerus develops which statistically appears to help throwing velocity because it increases the range of external rotation of the throwing arm.

Attempting to change a player's pitching mechanics after he has thrown a certain way while his body has been developing is a potential prescription for disaster.

The biggest witch hunt of them all

Pitching is doing everything to defeat the batter. Pitching is doing everything to win a baseball game. You can throw a baseball without pitching it but you can't pitcher baseball without throwing it. Major league pitching coaches are paid to win baseball games by helping the pitcher defeat the batter. They know virtually nothing about how the body optimally throws the baseball—the physics of throwing, biomechanics, physiology, motor learning. Coaches who think they can create a pitcher by changing the way he throws the baseball are in search of the biggest pitching mechanics witch hunt of them all.

White Sox television commentator's remarks regarding Verlander becoming a pitcher

My words of wisdom to any major league baseball executive: Never draft a player thinking that you can tweak or change the way he throws the baseball. In other words, if it ain't broke don't try to fix it. And even if it is broke, chances are you ain't going to fix it.

Epilogue

Wednesday, Verlander pitched a four-hit, one-run complete-game. I took a quick look at the first several innings. It appeared that he didn't throw anything but fastballs until the third. This was a significant departure from earlier in the season, when he was trying lots of change-ups. An adage that applies to all pitches but is particularly important regarding the fastball is "use it or lose it." The change-up has the potential to cannibalize the fastball, because often pitchers change their delivery in very subtle ways. I still don't like the way he's throwing; he seems to have less intent than he had last year. Time will tell.

Bonderman is currently on the disabled list due to a blood clot in his throwing shoulder.

The blood clot was caused by thoracic outlet compression syndrome.

"Think of the vein like a straw, and it was pinched," Tigers trainer Kevin Rand said. "That's what thoracic syndrome does."

And.

Definition:
The thoracic outlet is the area of the shoulder/neck where the nerves (brachial plexus) and blood vessels (subclavian vessels) pass from the cervical area toward the axilla. Thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) is a set of symptoms due to compression and/or irritation of these vessels and nerves. There is much controversy among physicians and diagnosing this syndrome is very difficult. It is often confused with carpal tunnel syndrome, brachial plexus syndrome, rotator cuff syndrome and bursitis.

Causes:

1. Disc protrusion, herniation or degeneration causing nerve impingement
2. Brachial plexus entrapment or subclavian artery compression in the interscalene triangle (usually between anterior and medial scalene)
3. Impingement at the cervico-axillary canal or the costo-clavicular space (firstt rib)—could be from carrying a heavy shoulder bag or bad posture
4. Fibrositis of the cervical and shoulder area (pectoralis major and minor, the posterior cervical triangle)
5. Cervical spondylosis -irritation or compression of the C3-C8 spinal nerves causing increased tension and spasm in anterior scalene muscles
6. Extra first rib (cervical rib)
7. Bone spurs on cervical vertebrae (may be called extra first rib)
8. Trauma such as whiplash (hyperextension) or other injury to the neck that results in scar tissue formation in scalenes which lead to compression
9. Trauma to the shoulder
10. Old fractures of the clavicle that limit space for vessels.
11. Postural distortions caused by pec minor and minor, SCM, scalenes, trapezius, levator scapulae; forward head, rounded shoulders, scoliosis (psoas imbalance), kyphosis
12. Loss of curvature in the neck due to Longus coli shortening
13. Excessive exercise leading to shortening of the shoulder and neck muscles
14. Shallow breathing -hypertrophy of scalene muscles
15. Postural changes due to pregnancy
16. Anterior scalene tightness
17. Pectoralis minor tightness

I will let those who wish to speculate on the correlation between pitching mechanics and potential injury decide whether Bonderman's attempts to change his delivery (staying back over the rubber) may have contributed to his condition.

I also stand corrected: Perhaps the biggest witch hunt is the one that attempts to correlate pitching mechanics and potential for injury.

Post-epilogue.

And then there is Dontrelle Willis....? (Where Have All the Pitchers Gone?)

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Beyond Moneyball: Player development Part 2

Paul Nyman — 2008-06-10T05:03:15+00:00

(Part 1 of this series)

Most major league baseball organizations will never find the Holy Grail. Why? Because the very thing that powers their baseball engine, the ability of the organization’s players to excel, to beat the competition, is considered by most organizations and players an “act of God”—unmeasurable, unquantifiable and spiritual in nature. The same attributes as found in the works of Picasso, Shakespeare and the Beatles.

"At first, nobody thought I would become anything like the baseball success I became," Zambrano said. "I was too clumsy and skinny. So I started out as a benchwarmer who played only during garbage time. But thanks to my faith in God, my hard work and God-given talent, I became what some people call a big star."

“What Scouts Look For In Pitchers. When scouting a pitcher the first quality a scout will look for is a strong arm. This is a God-given talent that can only be improved to a certain degree.”

John Kruk, the fine National League hitter during the 1990s, once said, "I'm not an athlete, I'm a ballplayer." Kruk wasn't putting himself down or being modest, and he had it right. An athlete is something you are, based on God-given talent enhanced by hard work and training. A ballplayer is something you can become whether you're a gifted athlete or not, and you can really only become one if you love the game.

“My fielding ability was adequate at best in the big leagues,” admits Bailey, who was a 6-foot-1, 188-pound slugger during his prime. “I think that I had God-given talent and a desire to play baseball. That’s what enabled me to play in the majors.”

"We want to save the kid for the New York Mets and for his own future," Green said. "I told him he's got God-given talent, and there are thousands that haven't been successful with God-given talent. He has to work between the lines. It's obvious one of the reasons we're sending him down is to get it through to him it's not all about bad luck."

“As far as baseball is concerned, it is a God-given talent because why can't everybody do it?”

"However, we've all been around players who've been gifted and not used that talent, and that's where Josh is. He's got to get back on the field and he's got to use that talent. Do we hold hope out? Absolutely. You would, too, with someone with that talent.

Simply put, extraordinary performance by baseball players at the major league level, is viewed by both player and organization as God-given talent, artistic in nature, supplemented by working your ass off. Therefore, most organizations operate on the principle that player selection is simply a matter of identifying talent (more recently, with some statistical analysis thrown in). Player development is best left to the “artists” (coaches).

Millions of words are spoken and written every year in an attempt either to explain or take credit for player selection and development success or failure. Yet year in and year out only one factor appears to have any significant long-term effect on this success: money. The more money the organization has, the less efficient it has to be to field a competitive baseball team.

Moneyball did breathe some new life into the MLB player selection process, “sabermetrics.” Sabermetrics created a flurry of activity, primarily in the hires of new young GMs with Ivy League degrees who then hired statisticians in a frenzied attempt to beat the system. Many of these hires became fires two or three years later. Sabermetrics has its limitations in terms of both actual and perceived results.

Any club that actually wants to use baseball analysis now to develop and maintain an advantage relative to their competitors has a tough task in front of them. They need to expand the scope of the data used for the analysis. They need to identify real changes that can be made in their operations if real phenomena are unearthed. They need to have people of sufficient skill to find these new discoveries. They need to develop a culture receptive to adopting the changes implied by this newfound wisdom. And finally, they need to find a way to keep other organizations from discovering the formula to their secret sauce. That’s a reasonable description of what clubs need from their search on the datafields of the game, and it’s precisely what baseball analysis cannot provide. Because baseball analysis is dead.
—Sept. 4, 2007 "6-4-3, For What You Are About to Receive," by Gary Huckabay, Baseball Prospectus http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6666

The good news is that every problem represents an opportunity. In the case of finding and developing MLB players, assuming an average current yield of two players out of 50 drafted, increasing this by one player each year increases one's player development efficiency by 50 percent; two players a year equals 100 percent and so on.

With success rates of two in 50, is it possible that major league baseball organizations simply do not know how to effectively select and develop players? Or, an even more scandalous thought: Is it possible that major league baseball organizations really don't know how to evaluate what they call "talent"? And that generating significant increases in yield on player scouting and development is simply a matter of understanding what “talent” really is and then how to develop that talent into a hitter or a pitcher?

In a perfect scouting-player development world, all prospects would possess five extraordinary tools. They consistently hit and get on base. They consistently hit for power. They throw 100 mph with phenomenal accuracy. They are vacuum cleaners in the field and gazelles on the base paths. But in the imperfect and real world of professional baseball, three tools dominate: hitting, hitting for power and throwing (pitching).

Eddie Bane: Every one of us knows that the bat is the most important tool in the world. We’re to the point now where we don’t add up the tool scores and divide by five. We add the bat about four times and then divide the other tools in. You have to hit as a shortstop now. You can’t get by just being a slick-glove guy.

“Beyond Moneyball's” message is a simple one: major league organizations (all baseball organizations?) do not understand well enough the most fundamental player attributes that determine hitting and pitching success or failure: how the very best players swing the bat and throw the baseball. That is the root of organizational failure—the inability to consistently field a competitive and successful team in spite of large payrolls. Understanding how players most effectively swing and throw not only requires intimate, specific knowledge of the processes but also the ability to apply this knowledge in a way that creates the most effective environment for player development.

How does one justify that contention?

Two years ago, Jim Callis of Baseball America wrote, about a study of the first 10 rounds of the draft from 1991 to 1997:

"we find that 90 college players (8.8 percent) and 77 high school players (8.4 percent) became at least major league regulars for a few seasons… Though colleges produced slightly more regulars, high schools won the race for above-average players. They came out ahead in terms of good regulars (3.2 percent vs. 1.5 percent) and stars (1.1 percent vs. 0.9 percent)."

Why do fewer than 5 percent of all players drafted in the first 10 rounds achieve above-average MLB performance? Why are some organizations more successful than others in developing major league players? Why do some players drafted in the later rounds become successful major league players? Do player selection and development decision-makers understand the similarities and differences between such functions as scouting, coaching and instructing? And, the $64 question: Does your organization really have the expertise to engage in player development?

And...

Do player development decision-makers have the necessary background and knowledge to recognize that words such as talent, style, good mechanics, hand speed, arm strength, etc. are subjective descriptors with very little qualitative or quantifiable meaning? Do player development decision-makers understand the difference between physical training activities that increase player performance amd those that are intended to maintain existing performance levels and prevent injuries? Do player development decision-makers understand that today's informational technology is capable of virtually real time player evaluation?

And the most fundamental question of all: Do player development decision-makers understand why far too many players who are capable of making it to the majors do not?

A few words regarding value.

In neoclassical economics, the value of an object or service is often seen as nothing but the price it would bring in an open and competitive market. This is determined primarily by the demand for the object relative to supply. Other economists simply equate the value of a commodity with its price, whether the market is competitive or not.

Intrinsic value refers to the contained value within—the worth of an entity independent from external circumstances or its value to humans.

Extrinsic value is value which arises because of an agreement: Although the intrinsic value of a $100 bill is not much more than the value of any similar piece of paper with a pretty picture on it, it has a practical value (an extrinsic value) of $100. If its issuing authority were to fail to honor the bill's value, it would soon become nearly worthless.

Perceived value (PV) is the difference between the evaluation of all the benefits and all the costs of an offering relative to perceived alternatives.

Replacement cost or replacement value refers to the amount that an entity would have to pay, at the present time, to replace any one of its assets.

In the most general sense, value is determined by supply and demand. If every player who ever played were judged to be of equal capability, we would have a limitless supply of players but a small demand (roster spots) as compared to supply. Players would then be literally a dime a dozen (this assumes that every player wants to play). The problem facing all organizations is assigning value to potential as well as existing players.

Attempting to use formal definitions of value and applying them to player valuation is simplistic at best. but it does help create a frame of reference.

Past and present performance is a significant component of the intrinsic value of a player. Other important factors would be age, physical attributes and emotional makeup. Using these parameters, overachieving veteran players in the prime of their career have greater intrinsic value than young players starting out. Sabermetrics is one way of attempting to establish a player's intrinsic value.

Replacement value or replacement cost would take into account the intrinsic value of a player relative to the needs of the organization. Replacement value is where sabermetric-type activities have their greatest potential value.

Extrinsic player value is determined by the MLB player agreement and Major League Baseball governing body. Examples are minimum wage, collective bargaining, slotting, the player draft, etc.

Perceived value results from belief on the part of major league organizations in the ability of a player to contribute to the organization's success. Player abilities to contribute are based on physical attributes, age of the player, mental makeup, past, present and most important of all, future projections of performance. The more history an organization has on a player, the greater the confidence factor in decision making.

Perceived value is what drives the draft selection process, and, to a large degree, player development. The draft is a decision-making process (as opposed to a problem-solving process) and all decisions are bets on the future.

The easiest decisions are ones that have zero risk associated with them. A scouting goal is finding players with “talent” that other teams are either unaware of or place lesser value on, while posing minimal perceived risk to the organization.

The actual bottom line for drafting and developing players is “perception of talent,” which is highly subjective. Therefore, any activity that qualifies and/or quantifies “talent” can increase the probability of making a good decision. This is where sabermetrics has made its greatest inroads, helping reduce subjectivity and, in the mind of those who use sabermetrics, adding information to the decision-making process.

Perceived value is also at work in a more insidious way: the perceived value of the “perceiver” (the scouting and instructional efforts). How does an organization place a value on those who are making the decisions on selecting and developing players?

Here's a hypothetical example of value judgment:

An MLB organization’s policy dictates that it will not sign any free agent at all, or any free agent costing more than minimum player wage. Thus, the only way this organization can succeed is to either trade for players of equal “cost” or develop players from within. The organizational requirement is to develop a minimum of six front line MLB players every year. This requires a level of performance of its scouting and player development functions far above the competition. The organization assigns a value (cost) to the scouting and player development functions as follows:

1. This organization determines what successful MLB teams are spending on scouting and minor league player development.

2. All other costs (overhead) are determined (minor-league operations, front office, stadium, etc.).

3. All of these costs are then subtracted from total anticipated revenue. For this organization, we'll say it equals $60 million (about what the Cleveland Indians, Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks spent in 2007 for player salaries).

4. By definition, the fixed cost of player salaries is equal to the number of players on the major league roster times minimum wage (assume for this example 25 x $500,000 = $12.5 million), which is subtracted from the $60 million of available player salary dollars. That equals $47.5 million.

That $47.5 million additional dollars (above and beyond what the best teams spend on scouting and minor-league operations) is the amount of money this organization can spend on scouting and player development. Stated differently, this organization can invest approximately $2 million per player on its major league roster every year on scouting and player development.

Another way to look at this is to take the $47.5 million and divide by the number of minor league teams in the organization (typically six), which would mean about $8 million additional per team spent on player developments.

Compare this to the actual development dollars being spent per minor league team—development as defined by coaching, instruction, special equipment and services that are specifically used for this purpose.

This exercise assumes a relatively linear relationship between player development and scouting dollars, one that says the more you spend on player development and scouting, the greater your chances of developing a major league player. And therein lies the problem for major league organizations. Exactly what is the relationship between developmental dollars spent and return on those dollars? What would be the return if an organization spent an additional $8 million per minor league team on scouting and player development?

Or stated differently, what is the value and cost for a major league baseball organization of increasing its player development success by 300 percent?

Major league organizations often put the least amount of player develpment dollars where they should be putting the most: the lowest levels of the organization.

Development efforts at these levels consist of the teams' hitting and pitching coaches, with occasional visits by the minor league pitching and hitting coordinators. The coaches at the lowest levels are the lowest paid and least experienced in instruction. The newest organizational hires are assigned to these levels. Why? Major league baseball, like many organizations, equates experience to value and position.

A significant drag on player development is the belief that years of playing and the level of play equate to coaching credentials. In reality. the best major league players usually do not make good or even mediocre coaches and instructors. Nor do years of experience necessarily equate to coaching and instruction expertise.

Ahead of his time is absolute understatement. He is the only hitting instructor that I honestly felt was too smart and too knowledgable for the professional scene. I know that sounds stupid, but the politics in our game, more often times than not, overshadow what an individual can offer to players.

Brad was not, and did not, put up with the BS of the professional game. He knew he could make hundreds of thousands of dollars giving lessons in his own backyard and the moment politics interfered with his career as a coach in pro ball, he was gone.
—Major-league baseball player commenting on a hitting instructor

The amount of dollars MLB teams make available for outside consulting services is another indication of how little they value and know about developing high-level hitters and pitchers. Recently, a major league team asked if I would consider evaluating one of its pitchers. I was told that the team could not pay more than $150 or so for this service, since it had a very limited budget for this type of expenditure. This team stands to lose thousands if not millions of dollars on unproductive players yet can not spend more than $150 to add 10 mph to its pitcher's fastball.

After I submitted my observations, this player was sent down to Triple-A to work on his mechanics. The report on MLB.com was that he was being sent down to work on location and control; in reality he was to work on his velocity. I also know this player's college pitching coach, who in the last three years has had six pitchers drafted in the first round. I called him to ask what he thought about this player's loss of velocity. We discussed his mechanics, and my initial observations were consistent with the coach's experience with this player. The coach also said this player, since being sent down, calls him every other day seeking advice because his major league pitching coach is unable to identify what this player should work on.

Another problem also exists on the supply side, as many "consultants" view it as a privilege to be associated with a major league baseball team. That depresses the perceived value of these services. Because MLB organizations do not understand how to develop swing and throw capabilities, they do not know how to place appropriate value on those activities most responsible for a player achieving those skills.

Their actions also speak to their belief that no one outside their organization knows more about player development.

“There is, for all practical purposes, no effective coaching in the minor leagues. None, nada. Yes, there is an exception here and there but generally it is hit-and mostly miss, well intentioned but off the mark, spotty, weak, and half-assed attempts at giving a player something correct that will make him better.”
—From Rob Elliis’ 13 Reasons Why Professional Baseball Cannot Offer Competent Hitting Instruction)

Expertise, be it organizational or individual, is necessary to excel in a competitive marketplace. For MLB organizations, player expertise determines their competitive and financial success. Organizational expertise is what determines which players take the field and how they perform.

An expert is a person who has learned to solve problems or answer questions relating to a particular "problem solving domain" or area of expertise. Much problem solving involves domain-specific knowledge. Domain-specific knowledge is what makes an expert an expert. http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch07_cognition/expertise_and_domain_specific_knowledge.html

"Domain expertise" is vital to any organization that is dependent on people for its existence. Stated differently, the more expert one is at performing a job or task, the greater the potential for success of the organization. This applies to all aspects of the organization, be it the player on the field or the person selling tickets. Expertise refers to the characteristics, skills, and knowledge that distinguish experts from novices and less experienced people.

“Someone widely recognized as a reliable source of knowledge, technique, or skill whose judgment is accorded authority and status by the public or his or her peers.”
—The definition of expert, Webster's New World Dictionary, 1968, page 168

“Experts have prolonged or intense experience through practice and education in a particular field"
—Wikipedia, 2005..

By those definitions, major league baseball players are the experts within their domain. They are consistently able to exhibit superior performance for tasks within their domain; hitting a baseball, throwing a baseball, fielding a baseball, running the bases, and more generally outperforming all others within their domain.

Janelle (1999) summarized the characteristics that distinguish the expert as follows:

1. Experts have greater task-specific knowledge.

2. Experts interpret greater meaning from available information.

3. Experts store and access information more effectively.

4. Experts can better detect and recognize structured patterns of play.

5. Experts use situational probability data better.

6. Experts make decisions that are more rapid and more appropriate.

In domains where experts and nonexperts are compared, domain-specific differences are accounted for by intense training rather than innate abilities. The logic behind this position is that while certain gross, general traits have been linked to genetic endowment (e.g., intelligence; Bouchard, 1997), the refinement of these traits into domain-specific abilities occurs only after years of intense training. Furthermore, there is no empirical support for the idea that there is a gene that predisposes an athlete to superior information-processing that is manifested only in a single domain; e.g., a gene for swinging a bat or throwing a baseball.

There are many ways in which the domain of playing baseball can be defined. MLB as a whole can be considered a domain. Within that domain there are sub-domains of expertise (owner, general manager, player development, etc.) The team as a whole can be considered a sub-domain.

From the perspective of player selection and development, the player domain must contain the attributes necessary to succeed at the major-league level: physical size and athleticism, technical expertise in swinging and throwing, and mental/emotional makeup—how he conducts himself. The confluence of these three properties creates the baseball player domain. This confluence can be represented by the diagram showing the intersection of physical abilities, mental makeup and movement patterns (swing and throw technique).

Within the player’s domain of excellence, two measurements of player value dominate: perception and statistics.

Perception is largely the domain of the front office, scout and coach and is based upon the accumulated life experience of the perceiver and therefore has an element of subjectivity.

Statistics are a more absolute measure of the player's intrinsic value. But statistics also have an element of subjectivity. What statistics does one use to determine value—batting average? won-loss record? ERA? WHIP? OBP?

As the distance from the playing field to the front office increases, the determination of organization and individual expertise becomes less measurable. The measures used to determine expertise become less well-defined. How does one measure scouting expertise? Is it by the number of players scouted? Is it by the number of players signed? Is it by the number of players who make it to the majors?

The same questions can be asked about the expertise of each member of the organization. In baseball, expertise is most often measured by the overall success of the organization. This is particularly true for those who are most visible such as team managers and general managers.

Judging expertise is often dependent upon the eye of the beholder. The average fan most often does not have the same perception of a GM’s expertise as would a fellow general manager. This is referred to as "domain specific" judgment of expertise.

Another example of this domain specific judgment is the difference between the All-Star team fans would put on the field versus the All-Star team players would pick. In other words, it can be difficult for nonexperts to identify experts. However, and it is a big however, people recognized by their peers as the experts do not always display superior performance on domain-related tasks. Sometimes they are no better than novices, even on tasks that are central to their alleged expertise.

There are several domains where experts disagree and make inconsistent recommendations for action, such as recommending selling versus buying the same stock. For example, expert auditors' assessments have been found to differ far more from each other than the assessments of less experienced auditors (Beddard, 1991). Shanteau (1988) has suggested that "experts may not need a proven record of performance and can adopt a particular image and project "outward signs of extreme self-confidence" (page 211) to get clients to listen to them and continue to offer advice after negative outcomes. After all, the experts are nearly always the best qualified to evaluate their own performance and explain the reason for any deviant outcomes.

Expertise and how one perceives and values it is fundamental to the player selection and development process. “Beyond Moneyball” explores the concept of player expertise and how it is perceived by professional baseball organizations in their attempts to select and develop players. Organizational expertise in decision-making and problem-solving are the primary metrics used to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of the player selection and development process.

Next time: Selecting good players is making good player selection decisions.

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Verlander and Bonderman: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Part 1

Paul Nyman — 2008-06-06T05:03:15+00:00

More recently, it appears that both Verlander and Bonderman possibly have turned the corner.

“Verlander started his windup and let loose a fastball.

The pitch felt so good that Verlander had to turn around and look at the radar gun display in left field.

It said '99.'

The at-bat ended when Mauer lined out to left but it was at that moment that Verlander finally felt like his old self”
—Detroit Free Press after Verlander's start versus Minnesota May 24

After making one quality start in his first eight starts this season, Bonderman has now made three in a row.”
—Detroit Free Press after Bonderman's May 27 start against Anaheim Angels

Why the turnaround?

Analysis of pitching and hitting mechanics is subjective at its very best. In the world of engineering, the process of designing something new and/or analyzing why something doesn't work is quite often heuristic. Heuristics are "rules of thumb," educated guesses, intuitive judgments or simply common sense.

Unfortunately, when it comes to pitching and hitting mechanics, intuitive judgments and common sense often fail. Why? At least two reasons:

1. The most critical aspects of swinging and throwing are virtually invisible to the naked eye. They happen so fast and there's so much going on that it's virtually impossible for the naked eye and the brain to process what is happening. Combine this with the infinite complexity of how the body creates movement and it's almost impossible to understand how high-level performers swing and throw.
2. For reasons that can be attributed only to the "culture of baseball," the people considered the most knowledgeable about to how the body swings and throws and how to develop those skills—management and coaches—are not the most knowledgeable people in terms of understanding how the body actually swings and throws.

At best, what is called pitching and hitting mechanics analysis is almost exclusively qualitative: viewing and comparing video clips of a player and then attempting to use one's experience and intuition to explain any differences. The primary methodology is to compare “before" and "after.”

But this analysis approach has severe limitations.

1. Rarely do we have enough information. When I am asked to analyze a player, I always request views representing the four points of the baseball diamond compass (views from home plate, first base, second base and third-base). These views are almost never available when attempting to analyze major league pitchers.
2. Thirty frames per second, the standard video display rate of TV, often does not provide the time resolution necessary to see what needs to be seen. This is especially true at the major league level of swing and throw performance.

Even with the best video footage, it still comes down to understanding how the body actually throws the baseball or swings the bat along with analysis experience. What constitutes “good” video analysis experience? There are no metrics or standards to measure it. The only answer I can give is that good video analysis requires the ability to explain using inference and induction, using proven concepts about how a player should throw the baseball or swing a bat.

And then there is the question of ability versus skill, ability being how well a pitcher can throw a baseball and skill being how effectively he can get batters out. Throwing versus pitching: You can throw a baseball without pitching it. but you can't pitch a baseball without throwing it.

Pitching coach and instructor “common sense”

Several months ago, I asked a friend of mine who's a former major league pitcher and pitching coach, and minor league pitching coordinator and pitching mechanics instructor, for a list of pitching mechanics “common sense.”

Here's when he sent me:

Anyway, some terms I have heard

1. Stay back
2. Get to a balance point
3. Point the toe down
4. Stay tall
5. Push off the rubber
6. Keep your eyes on the target the entire delivery
7. Keep the head still
8. Point the glove at the target (not so often heard)
9. Take a short stride so you can drive the ball down
10. Pitch downhill
11. Take the ball out of your glove early so you get it to the launch position
12. Think FB when throwing your breaking ball
13. Get extension, reach out to the hitter
14. Pull the glove to the hip
15. Don't move forward at leg lift, wait until you get to a balanced point over the rubber
16. Finish in a good fielding position
17. Keep your shoulder closed
18. Make sure you step with your foot on the line
19. RHP pitch from the 3rd base side/ LHP 1st base side
20. Don't land on your heel
21. Land on the ball of your foot

At least half of these (and more depending upon how they are interpreted by the player) are what I call velocity killers.

Most of these pitching mechanics common sense dictums are intended to do one thing: get the pitcher to throw strikes. Throwing strikes is the No. 1 priority of a major league pitching coach simply because at that level it's assumed that you know how to throw the baseball. Throwing strikes is perceived (and rightly so) as fundamental to getting batters out, winning games and job security.

Throwing strikes is also equated to mechanically repeating the delivery. And most of these pitching coach common sense dictums are an attempt to create a repeatable delivery.

And then there is “uncommon” sense—what some call "science.”

The fundamental principle of developing voluntary movement patterns is trial and error. We are not born to swing or throw; we acquire those skills through experimentation.

All voluntary movement is initiated by the desire to fulfill a goal, to achieve the desired result.

As we undertake a new movement task, we search for those posture and muscle actions that produce the desired movement result. Our trial-and-error search ends when “goal” equals “result.” At the beginning of the movement learning process, our universe of movement pattern variations is very large. As time goes on and movement proficiency increases, our options become more restricted simply because we have eliminated less efficient movement patterns.

Most coaches and instructors carry this to what they believe is the ultimate conclusion: Activities such as pitching a baseball and throwing strikes are best achieved with little or no movement variability, with the ability to repeat the pitching delivery precisely.

Yet movement research yields results that may contradict this belief.

Movement variability can be considered at several levels of analysis. At one level, the amount of change exhibited within a movement can be quantified by examining the range of motion exhibited about the joints during an action (intratrial) (2). Vereijken et al. (1992) measured intratrial variability during a ski simulator task by calculating the standard deviation of joint angles within each acquisition trial. In their study, it was shown that the variability of knee angles for a group of novices increased as a function of practice, particularly during the early learning phase.

Movement variability is more commonly defined as the degree of change in coordination patterns between trials (intertrial). For example, Schollhorn and Bauer (1998) provide an example of how the coordination patterns of elite athletes can vary during training. A clustering algorithm was applied to joint angle and angular velocity data from two discus throwers, and it was shown that the amount of clustering across throws differed between each athlete's training sessions. Such interesting findings question the commonly held view of expert performance being characterized by invariant features at all times.

In more general terms, variability has also been considered as the amount of variation between the coordination patterns of a group of individuals (interindividual). For example, Button, Davids, Bennett, and Tayler (2000) had to use an individual kinematic analysis of expert catchers due to the large amount of between-participant variability in a simple one-handed catching task. In summary, it seems that, several studies support Bernstein's (1967) observations that an increase in skill level may be associated with increasing movement variability in joint-space (both within and between individuals) via the release of degrees of freedom.
—Examining movement variability in the basketball free-throw action at different skill levels: Motor Control and Learning, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, Sept. 1, 2003.

More major league pitching coach "common sense”

I found the following from an article in the Detroit Free Press quite interesting.

But hitting the radar gun consistently in the mid-to-high 90s shows the extra work with pitching coach Chuck Hernandez is paying off.

Most of the work has been on his mechanics with the goal of putting more stress on his lower body instead of his prized right arm.

It makes him a more effective pitcher and helps stave off arm trouble.

Immediately two questions come to my mind.

1. Exactly how does putting more stress on the lower body relieve stress on the arm?
2. Exactly how does one put more stress on the lower body to relieve stress on the arm?

The article goes on further to say:

"When you're out there you really don't want to think about it," Verlander said. "Obviously my stuff has been all right, but I'm not a low-90s pitcher.

"So we knew something was kind of awry in there. And we have been working to fix it. I thought today was a big step for me."

Which raises the question, did his attempt to put more stress on the low body to relieve stress on the arm lead to “so we knew something was kind of awry in there”?

Some snooping and sleuthing

We begin our qualitative analysis of Verlander and Bonderman by comparing a clip of them throwing “well” (last year) to a clip of them throwing not so well (this year).

On the left, Verlander 2008 throwing 89 mph; on the right, Verlander 2007 throwing 99.

On the left, Bonderman 2008 throwing 90 mph; on the right, Bonderman 2007 throwing 95

There are two aspects to analyzing throws or swings: The developmental (what the player can do more efficiently and effectively to increase performance) and the fix-it analysis to restore degraded performance to a previous higher level.

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 clips they sent me and those I was able to find online showed almost no difference in how the player threw the baseball, which is more typical than not for high-level performers such as major league pitchers. In explaining the difficulty of doing an analysis with limited video information I said it reminded me of the "Sherlock Holmes And the Case of the Silk Stocking" mystery I saw several weeks ago on PBS.

Specifically, when Holmes said to the police inspector, “When all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

The problem is that there is little discernible difference between Verlander throwing 91 and Verlander throwing 99 and Bonderman throwing 95 and Bonderman throwing 90, at least to my eye, and therefore one must rely upon other means to get at the “truth.”

So, next time in this series on Verlander and Bonderman: When all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

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Beyond Moneyball: Player development

Paul Nyman — 2008-06-03T05:03:15+00:00

Crystal-ball what the next move of the Moneyball folks will be. OBP and defense are now starting to be correctly valued; what (other than the draft) will be the next big thing that is undervalued that smart teams will take advantage of?
—Ed, Philadelphia

I think the key word in the question is the plural "folks." The spread of the Oakland approach to the game—trying to measure more accurately the value of players, and find inefficiencies to exploit—means that there are fewer inefficiencies to exploit. Obviously the draft is the biggest opportunity, if an opportunity it is; that is, if there is ever any better way to evaluate amateur players. Beyond that, I don't know. The health of pitchers' arms, perhaps?
— Michael Lewis, on Baseball Prospectus

Lewis' book Moneyball talks about how the Oakland Athletics use sabermetrics to enhance their player selection productivity, what Lewis terms "the art of creating the unfair advantage.” Moneyball also exposes major league baseball's soft underbelly: how MLB organizations actually do select and evaluate players.

This series, "Beyond Moneyball," is written from the perspective of an MLB outsider who specializes in player development but was not born or brought up in the professional baseball establishment. “Beyond Moneyball” looks in depth at the controversy Moneyball started, “stat versus scout,” by re-examining the major league player selection and evaluation process, including sabermetrics. But is sabermetrics really a better way? And what happens after the player is evaluated and selected?

“Beyond Moneyball” introduces the concept of “scouting biometrics.” It explores the most sacred player attribute, “talent,” and how to "develop" it. Using research from the scientific disciplines biomechanics, physiology, motor learning and development expertise, the series will make the case for this: At the professional level, player development is almost nonexistent. Making it to a major league roster is determined almost solely by the MLB player draft.”

“The draft has never been anything but a f**king crapshoot,” Billy has taken to saying. “We take 50 guys and we celebrate if two of them make it. In what other business is 2 for 50 a success? If you did that in the stock market, you go broke.
—Billy Beane on the MLB draft, Moneyball, page 17)

The starting point for player development is the major league draft, held this week and every spring. The current process consists of 50 rounds (up to 50 players per organization). In other major sports, the NFL has a six-round draft (for a 55-player roster) and the NBA two rounds (15 players per team). The MLB draft provides each organization with equal opportunity to select the absolute best baseball players in the world. And I do mean world. At the beginning of the 2007 season, 29 percent of major leage players and 46 percent of those in the minors were born outside the United States, according to an AP article last year.

The draft works to the extent that no organization has a draft selection advantage in terms of available players. Unless a team chooses to trade its draft pick, the draft order is from worst to best, based on the previous year's team performance. What upsets drafting parity is the very thing that the draft was created to prevent, the economic advantage of one team over another. Dollars dictate players' "signability," (known as the Scott Boras syndrome), so money is a significant factor in the draft. Teams with deep pockets continue to have an advantage over those that do not.

Free agency is an alternative to player development. Contending teams are created in part through acquisition of free agents rather than total dependence on the organization’s draft and player development efficiencies. But with more than 50 selections every year from the best baseball prospects in the world, why should any organization have to depend on free agency to build a contender?

The reality is that at any given time, major league organizations are lucky to have two or three players per minor league team who are considered prospects.

Graham believes the foundation of a successful, self-sustaining organization is the drafting and developing of young talent. His aim is to have three legitimate prospects on each of the Pirates' minor-league clubs and to have each of them properly nurtured to play in the majors.
— http://www.post-gazette.com/pirates/20011204pirates1204p3.asp

One would think with the choice of 50 players a year from the amateur ranks, foreign nationals who do not have to go through the draft process and players who were previously signed by other teams and have become available, there should be more viable prospects in an organization. The numbers just don't seem to add up.

Organizations such as Minnesota and Oakland do continually outperform others with respect to getting the most return for player dollars expended. But even their numbers don't equate to what one might expect from choosing more than 50 players every year from the world’s talent pool of players.

As with many things in life, looks can be deceiving.

Once a player is drafted, he usually is assigned to a minor league organization. Ideally, the competitive level is such that it allows the player to succeed while at the same time stretching his capabilities. Player success creates motivation and the right level of competition develops greater skill. These are concepts embodied in what is called "deliberate practice." How rapidly a player advances through the minor leagues is a function of his success at each level of competition. Players who make it to the major leagues spend on average four to five years in the minors.

MLB organizations like to cite draft statistics to affirm the success of their draft decisions. The percentage of players taken in the first round who make it to the major league roster is significantly greater than from any other round. According to MLB statistics, there is a direct correlation between the round you are drafted in and your probability of making it to a major league roster. The biggest statistical difference is between first-round and second-round selections. After that, the percentage of players drafted in each subsequent round who make it to the majors decreases in a relatively consistent manner. (“Doctoring The Numbers, The Draft,” by Rany Jazayerli, Baseball Prospectus May 13, 2005).

Statistics can be very informative, but they also can be misleading. In looking at players who make it to the majors by draft round, there is the potential for statistical bias. Here's why:

The theory of deliberate practice states that expertise is a function of time and environment. The longer a player competes, the greater the potential for developing the necessary skill and expertise to compete at the major league level. The main reasons draft statistics are potentially flawed are these variables:

1. Performance: The player continues to do well and advances as expected.
2. The amount of money and time invested in the player.
3. The player's physical attributes—size, athleticism, etc.; i.e., what many consider the “player potential”..
4. Whether the player has a “Godfather” within the organization (an individual who has a personal investment in the player and is in a position of authority).

The more money invested in a prospect, the greater the opportunity afforded to that prospect to fail and still be given the time to succeed. As one former major league player put it, first-round “draft choices don't have to succeed until they reach the major league level.” The rationale behind this statement is straightforward. Major league clubs have a lot of money (and ego) invested in their early-round draft choices.

Developing the high-level swing and throw techniques necessary to succeed in the majors is a process of repetition and refinement. The highest form of practice is the game situation. The more opportunity you have to play and the higher the level of play, the greater the probability of developing the skills necessary to succeed.

There is at least one other advantage to being drafted in the first round: It follows you for the rest of your playing life. Players who are drafted in the first round and subsequently released by their team have a far greater chance of being picked up by another team, in no small part because of their previous draft selection number.

A significant number of late-round draft choices do make it to MLB rosters. One of the more notable examples is Mike Piazza. As the story goes, he was drafted in 1988 by the Dodgers in the 62nd and last round as a favor to his family—his father was a close friend of the Los Angeles manager, Tommy Lasorda.

Piazza is an example of what I believe is a significant obstacle for every organization attempting to select and develop players, the use of the word "talent.” The word should be banned from every organization's scouting and player development vocabulary.

I had a conversation with someone who knew Piazza. The person told me that Piazza used his swing in the batting cage for hours, at times until his hands bled. That's what is termed "deliberate practice."

Kenny Rogers, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Shane Spencer, Paul Lo Duca, Wade Miller, Roy Oswalt, Mark Buehrle, Marcus Giles, Junior Spivey. That's a fairly impressive list of major leaguers. And they all have something in common (besides being major leaguers, of course)—each remains with the team that selected him in Round 20 or later of baseball's annual draft.
— http://www.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20020514&content_id=24879&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=null

The financial structure of the draft, the monetary drop-off that exists between first and subsequent rounds, implies that there is a significant drop-off in “talent” as the draft progresses. It is the contention of "Beyond Moneyball” is that there is gold in the lower draft rounds, assuming you know how to prospect for it. There is also a lot of fool’s gold if you do not.

What Moneyball started.

“A RELIGIOUS WAR is taking place in baseball, and it has a fair share of gurus, zealots, scribes and heretics. The fight, not unlike the one between PC and Mac, is about belief in different operating systems. On one side are the traditionalists, who cling to an old system that relies heavily on the opinions of "baseball men," such as scouts and team executives, to divine a winning combination of players with a grasp of time-honored fundamental baseball. What was good for John McGraw, manager of the 1903 New York Giants, is good for Jack McKeon, manager of the 2003 world champion Florida Marlins.

On the other side are the progeny of new information age, who view the traditionalists as a flat earth society and believe in substituting data for subjectivity whenever possible. These people have a name, thanks to last year's best-selling book by Michael Lewis: Moneyball guys. Lewis' book (SI, May 12, 2003) was about the new operating system. Specifically, it was about how the Oakland A's, under general manager Billy Beane, have used the system to run a successful franchise (October excluded) on a shoestring budget.

Business people hailed Beane as an innovator who took the romance out of building a team and treated ball players as stocks, with his own prescriptions for managing risk. Many baseball people, however, bristled at Lewis' depiction of Beane as an infallible mastermind and of the traditionalists as rubes. Some writers and commentators sympathetic to the traditionalist school took a similar harsh view of both Beane and the book. What follows is Lewis' response: less an epilogue to Moneyball than a new offensive in baseball's holy war.”
—Introduction to “Out Of Their Tree,” Michael Lewis, Sports Illustrated), March 1, 2004.

Beyond Moneyball…

If you strip out the “sex and violence” (the sizzle), Moneyball chronicles a “thinking out of the box” approach by Beane and his use of statistics and mathematical modeling (sabermetrics) to help evaluate players as opposed to the long-held scouting practices centered on physical attributes. Moneyball contrasts how scouts and coaches traditionally evaluate players (talent) to the use of statistical factors (on-base percentage, slugging percentage, etc.) and their impact on winning or losing baseball games.

Key words here are “evaluating” and “selecting.” Moneyball does not address what continually eludes all levels of baseball: “How does an organization definitively, quantitatively not only evaluate 'talent,' but develop it?” Moneyball also raises the issue of what organizational thinking is necessary to provide the greatest potential for player development. It does not deal with the question “after the player is drafted, what does an organization need to do to develop the 'talent' necessary to produce winning sabermetrics numbers?“

Today, the debate rages, albeit not nearly as publicly as it did upon the release of “Moneyball.” It is not so much scouts vs. stats anymore as it is finding the right balance between information gleaned by scouts and statistical analyses. That the Moneyball draft has produced three successful big-league players, a pair of busts and two on the fence only adds to its polarizing nature.
— http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-moneyball081706&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

“Beyond Moneyball” continues where Moneyball left off and outlines this next step in gaining the unfair advantage.

Next time: "In search of MLB’s Holy Grail."

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Crossing the Bridge: A closer look at what happened to Barry Zito

Paul Nyman — 2008-05-13T05:02:15+00:00

(Previous articles in this series Zito1, Zito2, Zito3)

This series of articles started with “A Bridge Too Far…..” We are now at the “Zito Bridge,” but before we attempt to cross, a brief review of how we got here.

1. There is no such thing as good pitching mechanics, simply because no one can agree as to what they constitute. What does exist are good throwing mechanics as defined by physics, biomechanics, kinesiology, physiology and motor learning and control. Throwing a 95 mph fastball, no matter who throws it, requires the same physics.

2. Pitching is doing everything necessary to defeat the batter. An important (most important?) aspect of pitching skill is throwing the baseball. It becomes a lot easier to get the batter out if you possess speed, location and movement. Speed, location and movement are a result of effective development and use of the kinetic chain.

3. Throwing a baseball is the result of optimizing the kinetic chain/sequence processes. There is the physical component to throwing; i.e., muscle, connective tissue, nervous system or what might be called the "active” part of throwing a baseball. There is also a mechanical (passive) component, governed by the principle of the compound pendulum, the sequential transfer of momentum from feet to fingertips.

4. The mechanical (the mechanics in “pitching mechanics”) aspect of throwing is exclusively the product of rotation and maintaining connection to that rotation.

5. The body throwing a baseball is a “throwing system” and is subject to the principles of complex dynamic systems. Complex dynamic systems exhibit chaotic behavior; simply stated, small changes in any aspect of the throwing process can have significant (positive or negative) effects on the final result.

6. Left handers, by virtue of throwing with that arm, can succeed in spite of throwing the ball with less than maximum efficiency. Many left handers never learn how to throw the ball with the greatest efficiency and effectiveness.

7. Throwing instruction is nonexistent at the professional level, and what constitutes good throwing mechanics is not understood at a level necessary to help players such as Barry Zito. Players are drafted because they know how to throw the baseball (velocity, velocity and more velocity). A player's throwing skill is developed through a trial and error process, starting when the player is very young. All that professional baseball can hope to do is turn throwers into pitchers.

These are some of the factors that not only explain what happened to Zito's fastball, but are the keys to finding it again.

In the first article I observed similarities between what happened to Steve Avery and what is potentially happening to Zito. Both are/were 6-foot-4, 200-pound left handers who burst on the MLB scene at a young age and experienced great success for several years, followed by a downward spiral. Zito's apparent decline is occurring over a longer period, but there are significant similarities.

Zito and Avery both have/had marginal throwing mechanics, a common characteristic of left-handers. They also possess physical abilities and attributes (size, strength), and of course, most important, both throw left handed.

The reason generally given for Avery's decline is an injury he suffered in September of 1993. The injury was reported as a torn muscle under his armpit.

He was selected to the All-Star team and had a record of 16-4 entering the Sept. 12, 1993 game against the San Diego Padres. Avery lost and sustained that injury. Many blame Avery's heavy workload as a young pitcher for his injury; he had started 135 major league games before reaching 24. Avery was never again the same pitcher, although he ended the year 18-6 with a 2.94 ERA, a phenomenal record for a team's fourth starter. (Wikipedia 2008)

In 1994 Avery had a record of 8-3, and other than his ERA, his statistics were in many ways better than previous years particularly his strikeouts to innings pitched ratio. Physical examinations showed no indication of problems from the previous armpit injury. What is not generally known is the problem Avery was having on the home front.

Avery began to struggle in 1994, a season in which he spent much of the season traveling between Atlanta and his home in Detroit after his wife gave birth prematurely to a son weighing just two pounds. Avery began the season 5-1 but saw his ERA balloon as he dealt with his personal trauma. "It was hard to do something when your heart was elsewhere," Avery told Baseball Weekly after the season. "Looking back on it now, I can say it affected me more than I thought." (http://www.baseballlibrary.com/ballplayers/player.php?name=Steve_Avery_1970 )

What actually happened to Avery? As I said previously, when I first saw Avery throwing a baseball for the Red Sox in 1997 I was very much “intrigued” (shocked) by his throwing mechanics. His mechanics were quite different from what, at the time, I considered good throwing mechanics. I became very curious as to how his 1997 throwing mechanics compared to his 1991-1993 mechanics. I was able locate video clips of him from those years and did an extensive comparison of the 1997 Avery to the 1991-1993 Avery.

To my surprise, Avery's 1997 mechanics, as strange as I thought they appeared, were not that much different than his 1991 mechanics. (Welcome to the wonderful world of the human body throwing a baseball—there is an infinite number of ways to use your body to throw the ball.) I learned a lot about how the body throws a baseball from Avery's clips, but possibly the most important lesson that his mechanics taught me is that small changes can have significant effects on the final result. Years later, I came to understand this phenomenon as chaotic behavior, a property of dynamic systems.

My speculation is that possibly the injury did play a role in Avery's demise. It altered how he threw the baseball “just enough” (as opposed to a chronic debilitation) to compromise his ability to throw with the same effectiveness he had before the injury. And, quite possibly, the injury combined with the problems he was having with his family (and subsequent loss of playing time) created a situation where his body forgot how to throw the baseball.

One of the most powerful mechanisms for destroying a player’s ability to throw effectively is the need to perform if there is some debilitating factor present (Dizzy Dean’s broken toe being one of the more famous examples).

Several years ago I did an analysis of Avery's mechanics for a friend who is the pitching instruction coordinator for a major league team. This analysis is available at http://www.setpro.com/THT/AveryAnalysis.wmv .

Avery at his best was more of a north-south thrower, which is the precursor to the throwing problems Avery developed (Avery began pushing the ball).

Before 1997,Avery possessed an east-west component to go along with his north-south delivery. For whatever reason,s Avery lost most of his east-west component, resulting a significant decrease in the mechanical “step up” effect (whip effect, compound pendulum). I also call this disconnection, of his arm from the rotation of the torso.

Figure 1. 1997 Steve Avery on the left. 1991 World Series Avery on the right.

The bottom line is that Avery not only lost 4-5 mph off his fastball but also suffered movement and location problems. Why? Because he became much more dependent on muscling the ball as opposed to optimally throwing the ball.

I see the same thing happening in Zito's delivery.

Figure 2 on the left Zito 2008 throwing 84 mph. On the right Zito 2000 throwing 89 mph.

Seeing these problems is so difficult because at the major league level competition it takes only a small change in mechanics to decrease velocity by 5 mph (or more), making it virtually impossible for the coach or instructor to see the difference. And seeing is only at best half the problem. Seeing is one thing. Fixing is another.

The two tools I have found most beneficial for understanding how the body throws the baseball are physics and physiology—the combination is also call biomechanics. Pitching mechanics or throwing mechanics are both poor cousins to what is really happening when the body throws the baseball.

In my previous article I tried to show how physics simulations are used to better understand the throwing process. From a physiological (and kinesthetic) perspective I find three-dimensional simulations of the throwing process vitally important to understanding how the body throws the baseball. To create these simulations you have to understand not only the physics of the throwing process but also how each body part is contributing when it throws the baseball.

Figure 3. Zito 2008 3D throwing simulation.

Pushing the ball is the most common and also the most insidious throwing problem. A common form of pushing is also described as muscling the ball. Pushing the ball occurs when there is a break in the rotational sequence (kinetic chain). Attempting to get extension toward home plate is the most common cause of disconnection. Attempting to get a release point out in front or on top of the ball truncates rotation and contributes to a linear finish (disconnection). As previously stated, a north-south delivery has a greater propensity for disconnection.

You can be a north-south pitcher if you have a certain amount of east-west (translational) rotation. But even the smallest loss of translational rotation can spell disaster for a north-south pitcher, as is the case with Zito.

Disconnection occurs when rotational connection is lost between successive elements of the kinetic sequence. The simulation in Figure 4 demonstrates the disconnection principle.

On the left-hand side we have a "connected" compound pendulum. On the right-hand side we have a compound pendulum which is connected until shortly before what would correspond to releasing of the ball (or making contact with the bat).

Figure 4. Compound pendulum on left staying connected. Compound pendulum on right disconnecting just before “release” of the ball.

The compound pendulum (on the left) stays connected achieves a maximum velocity at release point of the ball of 70 fps (feet per second). The compound pendulum on the left (that is disconnecting just before release) achieves a velocity just prior to release of 50 fps.

There are a number of rotational centers when throwing the baseball. But the most important ones based on my observations are rotation around the front hip joint, rotation of the shoulders around the upper spine, and rotation of the scapular as it slides along the rib cage. These of the primary rotational centers responsible for creating a whipping action.

Also critical to the whipping action is creating the “loop” in the throwing arm. This loop is composed of raised-forearm-upper arm-humeral joint. The loop is created primarily by the inertia of the forearm during rotation of the shoulders and bending forward to the upper torso. The key here is rotational connection must be maintained—a constant pulling action of each successive segment of the chain toward a rotational center point.

For emphasis I have illustrated the rotational path of the connected pendulum and the rotational/disconnection path of the disconnecting pendulum.

Figure 5. Path showing connection versus disconnection

In comparing clips of Zito from early 2000 when he was throwing 89-90 mph to now, there are small but significant differences in his delivery.

Figure 6 on the left Zito 2008 throwing 84 mph. On the right Zito 2000 throwing 89 mph.

The first thing that I noticed was the height of the glove side arm during the throwing process. If you look at Zito's delivery in 2000, he separates the glove and ball hands in a more horizontal manner—more in the transverse, or east-west plane). In 2008 he has much more of a teeter-totter release. The glove hand is raised much higher during the throwing process.

You also can see that his front shoulder is elevated much more in 2008 as compared to 2000.

Also, look at the height of the front foot at the same point of delivery. Not only are his shoulders elevated, but his front hip is also elevated. Again, this promotes “teeter-totter” and is cannibalizing rotation around the spine.

If we look at the body just after release of the ball you can see that he's bent over more. Look at the position of his head—it is bending down almost below the shoulder line.

One potential consequence of losing east-west rotation is a decrease in forearm layback (action rotation of the shoulder). That rotation is critical in terms of developing a whipping action. There are several critical aspects in creating this loop. The greater the amount of forearm flexion, the greater the potential throwing velocity. In the picture below you can see that the amount of forearm flexion in 2008 appears to be somewhat less than in 2000.

What's also critical about the whipping process is getting the forearm to lay back in the rotational plane of the shoulders. The greater the north-south (teeter-totter) delivery, the greater the potential for the forearm to not lay back in the rotational plane of the shoulders.

And then we have that “funky” action of the posting legs after release in 2008, as compared to what I call a well-behaved posting leg in 2000.

More often than not, I learn as much about a player's throwing effectiveness from watching what happens to the pitcher's body after release as what happens before the release. In particular, look at how Zito's rear leg passes through what I consider a very awkward-looking configuration as compared what his posting leg is doing in 2000. This indicates pushing the ball forward.

The action of that posting leg also suggests loss of rotation of the pelvis and upper torso around the front hip joint.

The back leg action in 2008 as compared to 2000 possibly indicates that Zito is not rotating around the front hip joint as efficiently as he did in 2000.

It is possible that Zito, like most pitchers, coaches and instructors, believes that the further he releases the ball out in front , the greater his advantage. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Attempting to release the ball out iront or extend to the batter is the quickest way to degrade velocity and movement. It becomes a vicious cycle, because as he tries to release further out in front and get more on the ball, he becomes more linear, which promotes more muscling of the ball and loss of mechanical advantage. The more he tries to muscle the ball, the less control he has. One of the most telling effects of this is missing high with the fastball

Tthese differences in Zito's 2008 mechanics as compared to his 2000 mechanics are enough to create a 4-5 mph velocity decrease along with control problems.

In closing I've taken the liberty to construct a 92 mph Barry Zito.

Figure 6 A 92 mph Barry Zito.

Should a representative of the Giants (or Zito) wish to contact me I would be very happy to share my thoughts on what it takes to design and implement a 92 mph Zito……

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Exactly what are effective throwing mechanics?

Paul Nyman — 2008-05-02T05:02:15+00:00

This is the third in the series of articles in an attempt to explain why/how Barry Zito lost his fastball. Check out parts one and two.

My previous article (In the Beginning God Created Heaven and Earth… And the Ability of Man to Throw Left-Handed) extolled the virtues of being a left-handed pitcher, but there is also a "dark side.".A left-handed pitcher’s velocity often teeters on the edge of his left-handed ability to deceive the batter. And it doesn't take a significant velocity decrease (Zito) to nullify the advantage of being the left hander.

Left handers have had an advantage over the hitter since day one, and because of this often throw with less efficiency (never really having to learn how to throw the baseball) as compared to their right-handed counterparts. This also leads to the inability to make throwing adjustments (dial it up) because they don't know what it is to be throwing efficiently.

Left handers who lose their velocity do continue to have an advantage over their right-handed counterparts, often as left-handed specialists. Or a select few (Jamie Moyer, Tom Glavine, Kenny Rogers) become exceptional pitchers (knowing how to get the batter out). Exceptional pitchers are rare, be they right (Greg Maddux) or left handers, simply because after one or two times through the batting order MLB hitters can make the adjustments.

Throwing a baseball: an exercise in dynamic systems, and complexity…

Figure 1 The “balance” between defeating the batter/pitcher.

Diagnosing and making changes at the highest levels of throwing performance is difficult because small changes, quite often imperceptible even to the most experienced pitching coach, can have dramatic effects on performance. This same principle of small differences (changes) is echoed in the following exchange between Varos McCracken , a sabermetrics consultant, Gary Huckaby another sabermetrics consultant and Eddie Bane, the Angels’ scouting director and a former top pitching prospect himself.

Voros McCracken: "I would say that you know almost as much about what a guy's going to do in the big leagues from his Triple-A stats as you do from his major league stats."

Gary Huckaby: "I'll go further and say exactly as much."

Eddie Bane: "That doesn't surprise me, but I don't believe it. I won 15 games in Triple-A two years in a row. I won seven games total in the major leagues. The level of play is completely different. I led the league (Triple-A) in ERA both years. I wasn't good enough to pitch in the major leagues."

The human body, especially with respect to developing voluntary movement patterns, is a complex dynamic system and is subject to the principles that govern all complex dynamic systems.

"Dynamical systems theory has emerged in the movement sciences as a viable framework for modeling athletic performance. In dynamical systems theory, movement patterns emerge through generic processes of self-organization found in physical and biological systems (see Chapter 7 of Williams et al., 1999 for an overview). (Dynamical Systems Theory: a Relevant Framework for Performance-Oriented Sports Biomechanics Research)

An example of what 4 or 5 mph can do for a left hander (any pitcher), is the run that Kenny Rogers had in the playoffs of 2006 (three games, 23 innings, 0.00 ERA, 19 strikeouts). What is unfortunate is the controversy created by the alleged substance on Rogers' glove. It's unfortunate because the attention given to that was a convenient explanation for his dominance while ignoring the potential real reason, his ability to crank his fastball up 4-5 mph over what it had been during the season.

Chaos theory: Explaining the difference between a 90 mph and 85 mph fastball...

Dynamic systems can exhibit chaotic behavior.

"Lorenz had discovered that small changes in initial conditions produced large changes in the long-term outcome.The term chaos as used in mathematics was coined by the applied mathematician James A. Yorke. The concept means that with a complex, nonlinear system, very (infinitely) small changes in the starting conditions of a system may result in dramatically different outputs for that system." ("Chaos Theory" http://www.crystalinks.com/chaos.html).

As applied to pitching/throwing mechanics, especially at the highest levels of performance, small changes in mechanics can create significant results in terms of speed, location and/or movement. And for anyone whose job it is to work with and hopefully develop high level throwing or swing performance, the concepts/principles of dynamic systems and chaos explain much of the unexplainable.

Figure 2 above represents a mechanical simulation of throwing the ball.

Some golfers may be familiar with the “Iron Byron” swing robot that was used to test golf balls. The simulation in Figure 2 has the same attributes except that it is throwing a ball rather than swinging a golf club. The maximum ball speed in this simulation is approximately 86 mph.

Figure 3. A difference of only .01 seconds reduces speed by 8 MPH

In Figure 3, everything is the same as in Figure 2 except I have changed the length of time that the arm stays flexed. In Figure 2, I am holding the arm flexed for .02 seconds into the simulation. In Figure 3, I am holding the arm flexed for .01 seconds into the simulation. A difference of only .01 seconds. Yet this change has dramatic results on the final throwing of the ball, achieving a maximum speed of only 78 mph—an 8 mph difference from the previous simulation.

The point of these simulations is to demonstrate the effect of chaos on dynamic systems; i.e., that small changes in throwing mechanics can have dramatic effects on the results of the throw. This is something that is not fully understood or appreciated by most who engage in what is called pitching mechanics. More often than not, words such as "style" or “talent” are used by coaches and instructors to explain the unexplainable.

What constitutes effective throwing mechanics?

Before attempting to answer this question it's important to distinguish the difference between pitching and throwing: You can throw a baseball without pitching it, but you can't pitch a baseball without throwing it. This emphasizes that pitching is all about defeating the batter. And throwing is an integral component of the pitching process.

But throwing in itself does not constitute pitching. And this is where the water begins to muddy; i.e., the difference between pitching mechanics and throwing mechanics. In reality, there should be no difference, but more often than not what is deemed as good pitching mechanics is more about defeating the batter than it is about throwing a baseball.

Effective throwing is efficient use of the body to throw the baseball. Effective throwing is the least amount of wasted effort necessary to achieve the desired throwing result.

There are two primary components at work in throwing a baseball: strength and mechanics. The strength component can manifest itself in several ways. The good way is when the strength component works in conjunction with the mechanical component primarily in the form of maintaining what is called connection during a transfer of momentum from the larger body parts (torso) and the arm itself.

One interesting aspect of throwing is that once the momentum has been drained out of the torso, the action of the arm is far more passive and active. The arm behaves more like a whip (buggy whip “popper”) that has been driven by the body.

The negative aspect of arm strength is when the arm itself becomes the primary mechanism to throw the baseball. This can also be described as “disconnection.” Disconnection means the arm has lost its ability to receive/transform momentum from the body. A consequence of this disconnection forces the arm-shoulder complex to become more active than it should in terms of throwing a baseball. The player is trying to make up for the lack of efficient transfer of momentum by “muscling” the ball to the plate.

The kinetic chain or kinetic sequence...

All attempts to analyze the throwing process require understanding what is called the kinetic chain or kinetic sequence. When coaches and instructors are talking about using the body to throw the baseball. they are talking about the kinetic chain.

Figure 4. The Kinetic Chain

The kinetic chain/sequence is the development and transfer momentum from the larger body parts (muscle groups) such as the legs, hips and torso to the smaller body parts such as the shoulder, upper arm, forearm, hand and finally the ball. This is also described as the distal to proximal sequence, distal being the most distant point from the ball (the feet) and proximal being the closest point to the ball (the hand/fingers).

Efficiency of throwing is not the same as throwing velocity. Efficiency simply measures how effective momentum is developed and transferred from segment to segment, the ultimate destination being the ball. Velocity not only depends upon efficiency of transfer, but also the magnitude of momentum created during this process.

Another way of viewing this sequence is called the summation of velocities. That is, as the kinetic chain sequences from proximal to distal, each segment increases in velocity, as depicted in Figure 5.

Figure 5. The summation of speed principle

Rotational movement equals velocity….

There are two mechanisms for transferring momentum along the kinetic chain. The first mechanism is inter-segmental transfer due to muscle activity. The ideal situation is that when a preceding segment in the chain has reached maximum velocity, the muscles connecting this segment to the next segment such as hips to mid-torso contract at the point where the hips have reached maximum velocity.

Not only do we have the velocity of the hips to start with, but we then gain additional velocity due to the pulling (contracting) action of the muscles between the hips and the torso, which transfers the momentum of the hips to the mid-torso. This process continues up the chain but becomes less of a factor as the sequence progresses to the arm.

The second mechanism and one of the most critical in terms of players achieving maximum throwing velocity is the multiplier due to what is called the compound pendulum effect. The compound pendulum effect occurs when you have two or more masses connected in such a way as to rotate around a central axis such that momentum is transferred from one mass to the next.

Figure 6. Effects of rotation and the principle of the compound pendulum.

Figure 6 demonstrates a compound pendulum versus a rigidly connected system. The compound pendulum is the diagram on the left and is composed of a series of masses ranging from 90 pounds to five pounds connected by flexible cords.

The rigidly connected system on the left contains the same masses connected by rigid links. All else is identical between the two simulations and both systems are under the falling effect of gravity. The velocity of the most distal point (the smallest mass) is being measured frame by frame. The maximum velocity of the rigidly connected system is approximately 30 feet/second (fps). The maximum velocity of the compound pendulum (masses connected by flexible cords) is approximately 55 fps.

This simulation demonstrates several principles that are vital to maximum throwing efficiency. It demonstrates the transformation velocity effect of the compound pendulum. This velocity transformation (amplification) is a result of the physics (whipping effect) associated with rotational motion. It also emphasizes the effect of “lag” between the segments. A rigidly connected system cannot create the same final velocity as a system that allows sequential transfer momentum from segment to segment (compound pendulum).

Throwing a rotational baseball is a "two parter."

Throwing involves a strength component and there is a mechanical component. The mechanical component is how the body accelerates the ball using momentum transfer, the kinetic chain or kinetic sequence; the same principle that results in the cracking of a whip.

The cracking of the whip when throwing a baseball is the mechanical component (the “mechanics” in “pitching mechanics”) and is totally dependent on body rotation. There are two primary sources of rotation. The most talked-about rotation is hip and shoulder rotation around what is called the transverse body plane. The second less obvious rotation is rotation in the body's sagittal plane.

Figure 7. The body’s three planes of movement.

A cricket bowler is a very good example of rotation to throw a ball in the sagittal plane because of the restriction on the extension of the arm

"Bowling the ball is distinguished from simply throwing the ball by a strictly specified biomechanical definition. Originally, this definition said that the elbow joint must not straighten out during the bowling action. Bowlers generally hold their elbows fully extended and rotate the arm vertically about the shoulder joint to impart velocity to the ball, releasing it near the top of the arc. Flexion at the elbow was allowed, but any extension of the elbow was deemed to be a throw and would be liable to be called a no ball. This was thought to be possible only if the bowler's elbow was originally held in a slightly flexed position. In 2005, this definition was deemed to be physically impossible by a scientific investigative commission. Biomechanical studies showed that almost all bowlers extend their elbows somewhat throughout the bowling action, because the stress of swinging the arm around hyperextends the elbow joint. A guideline was introduced to allow extensions or hyperextensions of angles up to 15 degrees before deeming the ball illegally thrown" (Wikipedia 2008)

Figure 8. Cricket bowler 100 mph

Coronal plane movement is typified by side to side movement (first base-third base) and is generally considered wasted movement with respect to throwing a baseball toward home plate.

Using the body to throw the baseball, the “bow-flex-bow.”

Athletic activity involving the generation of speed and power is typified by eccentric-concentric muscle action. The eccentric refers to a lengthening of the muscle. Concentric refers to the shortening of the muscle.

For example, to achieve a maximum standing vertical jump height, a countermovement precedes the actual jump itself. The countermovement does several things. It creates a longer distance over which to apply force. The act of going down before reversing direction generates and stores energy in connective tissue, which then can be released in the opposite direction. And it more readily prepares the muscle to reverse direction and contract more powerfully.

This same eccentric-concentric cycle can be seen in pitchers; I call it the "bow-flex-bow” cycle. This cycle describes the sequence of first bending at the waist then arching the back and then unarching the back and bending forward during the throwing cycle.

This movement can be thought of as being analogous to the cracking of a buggy whip, were first the handle of the whip is flexed backward, creating a loop in the “popper.”

Figure 9. The “buggy whip” sequence.

I first noted this phenomenon in Nolan Ryan. Later, I created a little graphic showing the cycle in the delivery of Mike Mussina.

Figure 10. Mike Musina demonstrating “bow-flex-bow” sequence

North-south vs east-west...

When the body throws the baseball, all three planes come into play and, as might be expected, their interaction can create throwing mechanics which may be subject to "interpretation." The real issue is what body movements result in the greatest effect on throwing efficiency.

Typical pitching instruction and analysis focus more on rotation in the transverse plane than any other body movement. Hip rotation and separation are two of the most commonly used terms to describe or emphasize what the body should or should not be doing when throwing the ball. Often, arm slot is focused or discussed separately, when in reality arm slot is a product of what the body is doing.

For example Randy Johnson is a “transverse plane” thrower. His primary rotational mechanism is around the transverse horizontal plane, which creates a lower arm slot. This also may be thought of as a “east-west” thrower. Most pitchers (left or right handed) are east-west or west-east throwers.

Figure 11. Randy Johnson transverse horizontal plane thrower.

On the other extreme is the north-south thrower. North-south body action creates/promotes a higher arm slot, a more over-the-top delivery. A north-south torso action lends itself to a “teeter-totter” action of the shoulders. The lead shoulder will initially be elevated, hips leading the way, and then the front shoulder will drop and the back shoulder elevate. North-south body mechanics require a high slot for throwing efficiency. Andy Pettitte is a good example of a north-south thrower.

Figure 12. Andy Pettitte’s “North-south” mechanics.

The most efficient way to use the body to throw the baseball is to maximize the contribution from both transverse and sagittal planes. Sandy Koufax was a great example of this.

Figure 13. Sandy Koufax North-south-east-west mechanics.

It is my observation that few players are able to optimally use both planes to create and develop momentum for the arm. Of the two planes, pitchers who throw north-south (more sagittal plane) incur more velocity degradation than those who are more east-west. One potential advantage of north-south is greater strike zone latitude; the strike zone has greater tolerance for missing high-low then it does side to side.

To better demonstrate the importance of rotation, body action, and arm action, I've created a graphic which I call the “rotational momentum throwing plane.”

Figure 14. The rotational momentum throwing plane.

This animation depicts Tim Lincecum throwing a baseball. The flat cylinder that you see centered around his upper spine represents the momentum plane that the arm and ball wants to follow to generate and take advantage of the rotational whipping effect in throwing the ball.

Tempo…

Tempo is the fuel that drives the east-west-north-south engine. To my knowledge, SETPRO was the first to really emphasize the importance of tempo, to the point of developing a measurement from highest point of knee lift to release of the ball.

There is reasonable science behind this measurement. It goes along with Nolan Ryan's belief/statement that the higher he lifted his leg, the greater his velocity. The key to this is being able to extract the momentum out of the leg lift at the right time in the delivery.

A faster tempo from highest point of the knee lift to release of the ball creates more greater momentum (mass X velocity) in the early part of the delivery, which can then be used/transferred according to the kinetic sequence.

I determined that on average hard throwers averaged approximately 22 frames on a VCR from highest point in their knee lift to the release of the ball. Average velocity throwers were somewhere around 26 frames. And the problem velocity pitchers more often than not were greater than 26 frames. Of course these relationships must be taken in conjunction with all other aspects and are not a hard and fast rule.

One interesting measurement is that Randy Johnson's time from high knee lift to release is approximately the same as Billy Wagner's (about 22 frames). One would think that Randy Johnson’s time from high knee lift to release should be longer than Wagner’s because he's almost a foot taller.

A lef -hander’s tempo correlation was the same as for right-handed pitchers; i.e., faster tempos were typically associated with greater throwing velocities. It also correlated in that left handers had a tendency to have longer tempos, which is consistent with reduced velocity.

I will repeat: Show me a left hander who throws like a right-hander and I believe that pitcher has a greater probability for success than the pitcher who throws like a left hander.

Arm action…

Arm action is one of the most important aspects of throwing, yet one of the least understood, at least from the standpoint of optimizing arm action for throwing a ball.

One way to understand arm action is to think of throwing a baseball as analogous to the buggy whip. A buggy whip has a long tapering slender handle to which is attached a “popper.” The body from feet to shoulders is the handle of the throwing buggy whip, and the arm is the popper.

Creating a loop in the popper (elbow flexion, wrist extension) is crucial to creating whipping action. The abduction of the scapular along with the upper arm in conjunction with a flexed forearm along with the wrist and hand creates the throwing loop. How this loop is created (movement pattern of the arm) has a pronounced effect on the throwing-whipping action.

There are various types of arm actions/configurations. One of the more talked about is called the inverted W, which I first described after observing the arm action of John Smoltz. Arm actions can vary from the inverted W to what is termed “slinging.” For example, Smoltz is an inverted W, while Roy Oswalt is a slinger.

There seems to be no predominant type of arm action. In my observation, left handers are subject to the same statistical distribution as right handers.

What is critical in all arm actions is creating external rotation of the shoulder. Torso rotation (transverse and sagittal) creates the change in direction necessary to cause the forearm to lay back (external rotation of the throwing shoulder). The forearm lays back as a result of its inertia; i.e., a sudden change in direction (rotation of the upper torso) leaves the forearm behind.

Another observation is that inverted W type arm actions typically lend themselves to more effective breaking balls (curveballs, cut fastballs). Slinging arm actions lend themselves more toward slider-type actions.

Initially, I felt that in inverted W had a slight advantage in terms of generating velocity. But, after 15 years of observation, I think velocity is pretty much a wash. Both types of arm actions can generate high velocities.

Glove side or front side action…

Glove side or front side action is all about symmetry. Simply stated, the glove arm and the throwing arm are mirror images of each other. Smoltz’ delivery is one of the best examples of this symmetry.

Figure 15. The lead arm/front side symmetry of John Smoltz

Some describe the action of the glove or front side as pulling the glove to the chest or moving the chest of the glove. I believe that both of these descriptions are inaccurate as to optimal use of the glove side.

The glove arm has three primary functions properly for the baseball. First is the symmetry aspect. From a nervous system standpoint, it is much simpler for the body to create equal and opposite.

Second is the momentum aspect. There is appreciable amount of momentum that can be generated in the throwing momentum plane as a result of glove side action.

And third is the completion of scapular action. During the throwing process, there is abduction of both the throwing arm and glove on scapula. The bringing back together again of the scapular is critical to optimally throwing a baseball.

Next time: Crossing the bridge; a closer look at what happened to Barry Zito’s fastball...

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In the beginning God created heaven and earth…

Paul Nyman — 2008-04-18T05:03:15+00:00

Left-handed pitchers are almost an enigma in baseball. Every team wants them but few can figure out how to develop them. Even if they are not very good they will probably have a job in some team's bullpen. Most lefties are considered soft tossers or control artists and the ones that can "bring it" are considered gems. In the minors there are few of these power lefties and the ones that do exist top this list.
—Baseball Examiner

In the first article in this series, “A Bridge Too Far,” I started the quest to understand the how and why of Barry Zito's lost fastball (what little he previously had). It's simply the result of never learning how to throw a baseball efficiently. The how and why of Zito's lost fastball is the how and why of throwing mechanics (as opposed to pitching mechanics), along with what makes the pitcher successful at the major league level.

Finding Zito's lost fastball requires an understanding of throwing mechanics (as opposed to pitching mechanics) and what makes a pitcher successful at the major-league level.

It is generally accepted that left-handed pitchers usually have an advantage over their right-handed counterparts at all levels of baseball. Why? As with all questions of pitching mechanics, there is as much mystique as there is fact. For example, many baseball people believe that a left hander's ball moves differently than a right hander's ball. Some will tell you that left handers throw differently because of the left brain versus right brain “thing,” that left handers are “wired” differently.

I became interested in left-handed pitchers because of their ability to succeed with a lesser fastball than their right-handed counterparts. Understanding how left handers throw could tell me something about how the body throws by studying the fastball exception rather than the fastball rule.

Going back in time to find video of the best who ever threw the baseball has helped me understand how the body optimally throws the baseball.

Hall of Fame left handers Herb Pennock and Carl Hubbell were not your typical left-handed pitchers; they knew how to throw the ball.

My answer to why left handers can succeed with less pure stuff than their right-handed counterparts is the same explanation as why/how a fastball rises. The physicists tell us that a fastball doesn't rise, because there is not enough translational and rotational speed to totally overcome the effects of gravity. But players who faced fireballers such as Nolan Ryan will swear that his fastball rose!

Physicists will explain this apparent contradiction by saying that Ryan's ability to throw the ball 100 mph did not give the ball time to fall as much as someone throwing 90 mph or less. And because hitters don't see 100 mph fastballs as often as 90 mph ones, pitches approaching 100 mph may appear to rise because they (we) expect the ball fall more. In other words, our eyes and brain trick us into thinking the ball is rising.

This same phenomenon or principal can be applied to a batter facing a left-handed pitcher. As hitters grow up, they do not face many left-handed pitchers, especially quality ones. At the younger/lower levels of amateur baseball, 90 percent of the pitches they see come from a pitcher throwing from the right-hand side of the mound.

Most hitters do not develop the same comfort level facing left-handed pitchers as they do right handers. This disparity continues up to and including the major leagues. The same phenomenon also helps explain why some people believe that pitches thrown by left-handed pitchers move (behave) differently than the same pitch thrown by right-handed pitchers.

Mel Antonen has observed in USA Today that most left-handed prospects are graded on a lower scale. "They get drafted when a right hander with similar talent doesn't. They get more time to develop in the minor leagues. And if they become established in the majors, they can turn a 10- or 15-year career into a 20-year run and pitch into their 40s."

In general, the velocity of left-handed pitchers is lower than that of right handers. The average major league fastball is 88-90 mph. A right hander with an average velocity less than 88 mph is more an exception than the rule. But a significant number of successful left-handed pitchers throw fastballs in the 86-88 mph range, especially those who are considered left-handed “specialists.”

Left handers who don't have good fastballs have another possible advantage: Hitters dial in their swings to the pitch speed they most often see. At the major league level, it is typically an 88-90 mph fastball. A left hander throwing in the 84-86 mph range can upset a hitter's timing, especially if the hitter doesn't see left handers frequently. But MLB hitters will adjust (that’s why they’re MLB hitters) and it's not unusual for a left hander (or right hander) to get through the order the first time and encounter problems the second time through.

All of which would appear to be the good fortune of being a left-handed pitcher. But there is a nasty potential side effect: A left hander may never really have to learn how to throw the baseball.

What constitutes effective pitching?

In my previous article, I made the point that you throw baseball without pitching it but you can't pitch a baseball without throwing it. I also said pitching instruction is everything that is necessary to defeat the batter, whereas throwing instruction is how to optimally move the ball through time and space. And, the article said, "pitching mechanics" is really a misnomer. It should be referred to as throwing mechanics.

In trying to better understand how the body optimally throws the baseball, I distinguish between skills and abilities. The skill of getting the batter out is the skill of pitching. Attributes that are important to developing the skill of pitching are demonstrated in the following diagram.

The physical aspect of pitching skill

Abilities such as strength, physical size, muscle composition, connective tissue, range of motion, flexibility, nervous systems, etc. are all physical attributes that play an important rule in the ability to develop pitching skill. Professional baseball understands this, as evidenced by the amateur player draft (with emphasis on physical size of the pitchers). But again, left handers receive a special physical dispensation. Major league clubs are more willing to take a chance on an undersized left hander than they are on an undersized right hander.

Often, that's a mistake, as evidenced by pitchers such as Tim Lincecum and Johnny Cueto.

Hall of Famer Steve Carlton and future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson have physical attributes.

Mechanical aspect of pitching skill

Simply stated, this is the ability to efficiently and effectively throw the baseball. Efficiency means throwing with the least amount of effort while developing speed, location and movement of the ball. Attributes such as a quick arm and arm speed are highly sought after. Also there is a somewhat mystical quantity that has to do with effort. Scouts want to see pitchers who can throw 95 mph with minimal effort, as opposed to what they think is maximum effort. What they're really talking about is being able to throw with no wasted, unproductive movements. There is no such thing as maximum effort.

Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax may have had the best pure “stuff” of any lefthander.

Mental aspect of pitching skill

All voluntary movement is the result of doing what is necessary to achieve a goal. The intent to throw is the most critical aspect of the throwing process. From a pitching perspective, this means that the intent to get the batter out is the most important part of the pitching process.

Intent affects all aspects of getting the batter out—type of pitch, location of pitch, speed of pitch, movement of pitch, etc.; all are determined by the intent of the pitcher. The mental aspect of pitching is what allows pitchers, whether right handed or left handed, to be successful without having the best throwing mechanics or physical attributes.

Hall of Famers Warren Spahn and Whitey Ford knew how to get batters out.

A few words about intent and maximum effort pitchers: Quite often I hear the term "max effort pitcher" used as a negative regarding a player's pitching (throwing) mechanics. How do you throw a baseball 100 mph without maximum effort? Here is a clip of Nolan Ryan. By the expression on his face and looking at the muscles in his neck, I would say that Ryan, while he may not be putting his maximum effort into the pitch, is coming pretty close.

When people call a player's mechanics “max effort,” I believe they are saying he doesn't use his body to throw efficiently. That's because unless the player is putting close to 100 percent of his effort (intent) into throwing the ball, he is not going to succeed at the major league level.

A few more words regarding individual differences: No two people will respond identically to the same situation or same stimulus. This difference is embodied in the principle of individual differences, which applies to just about every aspect of human behavior, ranging from how the body responds to training to how effectively and efficiently the body acquires movement skills.

Optimal flexibility varies considerably. These two teammates underwent similar training programs through high school and college. Variants of flexibility may lead to variance of techniques, selection or profiling of sport. The athlete being stretched in the first picture was a national champion in the freestyle stroke; the athlete being stretched in the second picture was a national champion in the butterfly stroke. Performances is the product of flexibility, strength and neuromuscular integration.

This principle of individual differences as applied to throwing a baseball is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it helps explain how players succeed at hitting and pitching by being different. On the other hand, not fully understanding or appreciating the principle leads to misinformation regarding how the body optimally swings and throws. Two words that I find frequently used in player selection and development as “fudge factors”—words used to explain the unexplainable”—are “talent” and “style.”

In throwing a baseball, the biggest abuse of individual differences is attempting to predict injury based on how the player appears to be throwing the baseball. Factors such as strength, flexibility, neuromuscular integration all combined to create a unique capability in every individual. Attempting to judge a player's mechanics as being either good or bad based upon a single, stereotyped set of mechanics is a potential exercise in futility.

Some left handers who throw like left handers

These are players who don't look to be using max effort and are also not throwing very efficiently. One of the first left handers who caught my attention was Denny Neagle, because at the time I was trying hard to understand the role of arm action. Neagle was listed at 6-foot-2, 215 pounds, with a fastball 86-88 mph. Neagle's arm action is “soft,” as is his entire delivery. Left handers have a tendency to sling the ball. Yet Neagle still got batters out and was rewarded with lucrative contracts.

Early on I used Neagle as an example of how not to throw the baseball.

Another left hander whose delivery I consider one of the worst I’ve viewed is a player I thought several years ago would be out of baseball but seems to be doing quite well. Mark Redman has atrocious arm action, but is another testimonial to the rule that if you are left handed and you can pitch (location, changing speeds and movement), you will be handsomely rewarded.

One left-handed pitcher who personifies the combination of adequate throwing mechanics and very good pitching mechanics (how to get batters out) is Andy Pettitte.

His success is in no small part due to his consistent ability to throw a 90-plus mph fastball along with his pitching smarts.

“Old Men Rivers” are players who have found the right combination of intent to throw and reasonably decent throwing mechanics for their physical abilities. This combination leads to longevity. One of the great potential advantages of a left-handed pitcher is the ability to minimize wear and tear on their body if they can find and maintain the minimum velocity necessary to get batters out. These four pitchers have managed to do this.

Old men (by MLB standards) throwing a baseball. From top left clockwise, Jamie Moyer, Tom Glavine, Randy Johnson and Kenny Rogers.

Show me a left hander who throws like a right hander, and I will show you a pitcher with potential to be very successful. Left-handed pitchers who throw like right handers have a greater opportunity to achieve MLB success than their right-handed counterparts.

One of the more blatant examples of how little MLB pitching coaches really know about pitching mechanics was the trade by the Mets of Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano. The word on the street was that the Mets' pitching coach, Rick Peterson, thought Kazmir’s mechanics needed to be changed to prevent future injury. Apparently Kazmir did not agree, and hence the trade.

I found it quite interesting because I fell in love with Kazmir’s mechanics the very first time I saw him throw baseball (high school video clip).

I will also say that it appears that Kazmir’s mechanics have changed his since high school, and in my opinion not for the better. Possibly that's a subject for another day.

Some of the young guns who have right hander “stuff,” starting top left-hand corner and going clockwise: Scott Kazmir, Erik Bedard, C.C. Sabathia and Dontrelle Willis.

Erik Bedard throws the ball well, having led the American League in strikeouts last year. He also has a very interesting baseball history.

A Franco-Ontarian, Bédard began his baseball career in the Orleans Little League and the Ontario Baseball Association. He pitched he 1992 Orleans Junior Red Sox team which beat Glace Bay in the 1992 Canadian Championship. Bédard did not play high school baseball, which is the norm in Canada due to the short season. Just 5-foot-4 and 120 pounds as a senior, he grew seven inches and gained 30 pounds during the summer between graduating from high school and beginning college. He accompanied a friend to a tryout at Norwalk Community College in Norwalk, Conn., and made the baseball team as a walk-on

While in college, he added 10 mph to his fastball, gained another 30 pounds, took the "lowest level" non-credit English language course to enhance his knowledge of the language, and became a junior college All-America.

Bedard has the throwing tools to be a successful left hander. At least the Mariners think so.

Willis burst onto the baseball scene in 2003 as much for his funky delivery as for his success on the pitching mound. Willis’ delivery was a throwback to the likes of Louis Tiant. And Willis can throw the ball. He had statistically solid years from 2003 until last year. His ERA jumped, as did his home runs, and his ability to locate seemed more a problem than in previous years. It would be interesting to compare his mechanics of 2003 to what he was doing last year to see if he is another potential victim of MLB coaches making his mechanics “look better.”

Sabathia is probably the most interesting of all. The Cy Young Award winner in 2007, he has gotten off to a shaky start. And then there is the little matter of his pitching for contract this year. The hot stove talk before the season began was whether Sabathia would break Johan Santana’s contract record. (The three largest contracts for pitchers
all have gone to left handers—Mike Hampton, Zito, and Santana.

Sabathia has been a workhorse for Cleveland since 2001, averaging almost 200 innings a year. Hde can get it up there (fastball consistently in the low 90s). But I never liked the way he threw the ball—a portion of his velocity is simply due to his size, in my opinion.

Raw throwing ability does not guarantee major league success. You still have to know how to pitch. But given two pitchers of equal throwing ability, the left hander has a greater chance of achieving success.

Still, the same things that work for a left hander are also working against him. And in some ways, the left hander is on a more precarious precipice than his right-handed counterpart.

Next: What the Lord giveth, the MLB hitter taketh away—and exactly what are effective throwing mechanics?

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