quote:You cannot support any of your "notions" with real research.
Yes I can. See "Effect of Pitch Type, Pitch Count, and Pitching Mechanics on Risk of Elbow and Shoulder Pain in Youth Baseball Pitchers" by Stephen Lyman PhD, Glenn S. Fleisig PhD, James R. Andrews MD, and E. David Osinski MA. On page 465 of this article, the authors make the following statement...
"In fact, two mechanical flaws, backward lean in the balance position and early hand separation, correlated with a decreased risk of elbow pain. Two other flaws, a long arm swing and arm ahead of the body at the time of ball release, correlated with a decreased risk of shoulder pain."
When the authors talk about the "arm ahead of the body at the time of ball release" they are talking about pronation (and more importantly something that I call Early Pronation). The only way to have the arm in this position at the Release Point is to be actively pronating at (and more importantly well before) that moment.
One thing to keep in mind when reading this paragraph (and article) is that the use of the term "mechanical flaw" is unfortunate (if not a bit misleading). I believe that the authors do not mean that doing these four things will hurt your velocity or control. Instead, I believe that they are just saying that these four things differ from what they believe are ideal mechanics.
Of course, that makes me wonder about the veracity of their model of the ideal pitching motion.
quote:You fail to produce a replica of your desired mechanics.
Dr. Marshall is working on that as we speak. Once the ground dries up (and it stays light longer), I'll start posting some clips myself.
quote:You look at a series of still pics from not different games mind you but different seasons. You string them up for your expert analysis with no way of having a clue as to the timeframes involed.
I'm doing the best I can given my limited resources (and have never said otherwise). I like the resolution I get by stitching together still photos and also like that I get the equivalent of several hundred frame per second photography. Finally, I correlate my sequencing with what I see in videos.
When it comes to injury diagnosis, the timeframes involved aren't nearly as important as the orientations of the parts of the body at critical moments.
I would appreciate the assistance of anyone who can get me access to the photographer's wells of major league ballparks.
quote:Yet from this you never fail to notice a "potential" career ending injury just waiting to happen.
That's overstating things. I do think that every major leaguer is vulnerable to injury, but I think that some major leaguers (e.g. Freddy Garcia and Zach Duke) are less vulnerable to injury while others are more vulnerable to injury (e.g. Mark Prior).
I would never say, as Dr. Marshall says, that every major leaguer will injure themselves.
quote:If the pitcher has been injured in the past, heck your the real real expert then. When in truth you dont have a clue as to what caused the guys injury other than pitching, there is no proof to anything you say.
No, I don't have proof but I do have some theories. I'm trying to test those theories by making predictions and sitting back and seeing what happens. That's the way science works.