Please Allow Myself To Introduce...
Myself

5/21/2008

This piece was originally published on 5/21/2008 on Baseball Digest Daily.

Where I'm from, which is the Midwest, it isn't polite to walk into a room (virtual or otherwise) and just start making pronouncements and generally spouting off. Instead, it's better to first let people know who you are and where you are coming from. Given that, let me use this, my first article, to introduce myself.
     When the sun is up, I work with my brother at Efficion Consulting, helping small and mid-sized organizations build ecommerce web sites that are affordable, flexible, and easy to use. In addition, I have just finished a book called Elevator Pitch Essentials that explains how to create an effective elevator pitch and also write about -- and consult with companies interested in understanding -- the relationship between pain, change, and innovation.
     When the sun sets, I am magically transformed into a pitching and hitting analyst and instructor. I am based in St. Louis, Missouri and work with clients ranging in age from kindergarteners through minor leaguers, teaching them proper pitching mechanics and rotational hitting.
     My work on pitching mechanics and injury prevention is followed by scouts and others from at least two major league baseball teams. I also do some consulting related to the Major League draft, and my clients want to see if I can help them identify pitchers who are more, or less, prone to experiencing pitching-related injuries.
    The people I am working with do not want me to disclose who I am working with both so that they can have an edge over the competition and in case I turn out to be crazy.
    I got (back) into the world of baseball when my now 12 year-old son started pitching for his baseball teams and I became his pitching coach and, by default, the pitching coach for his teammates. In the first game of the season, I brought in a relief pitcher -- who I call "G-Man" -- who threw two nice, hitless innings. G-Man didn't throw very hard, but he seemed to be able to drop the ball on top of the plate and cause hitters to swing over the top of the ball. As a result, before the next game I asked G-Man if he wanted to be the starting pitcher. He told me that he wasn't sure if he should, because the inside of his elbow was killing him.
     I didn't know much about pitching injuries at the time, but I was very careful with my pitchers because my baseball career never progressed beyond grade school due to shoulder problems. As a result, I told G-Man's dad that I was going to shut him down while I tried to figure out what was going on with his elbow. After admittedly going a little crazy, reading literally every journal article that I could find on pitching injuries, and studying the work of people like Dr. Mike Marshall, I came to understand that the root cause of G-Man's problem was that he was inadvertently supinating his forearm through the release point and throwing a slider as a result. That created the sharp vertical break on his pitches, but also put a tremendous load on the inside of his elbow (e.g. the Medial Epicondyle). I taught G-Man how to pronate all of his pitches and his elbow problems disappeared as fast as they appeared.
This experience, and my own shoulder problems, opened my eyes to the possibility that a relationship existed between pitching mechanics and injury problems. As a result, I decided to start analyzing the pitching mechanics of major league pitchers, looking for patterns of differences that might explain their different fates.
     I knew from my experience troubleshooting large computer systems that the easiest way to see a difference pattern is to compare things at the extremes, so I decided to compare two groups of pitchers. The first group was pitchers like Greg Maddux, Nolan Ryan, and Roger Clemens, who have had long, relatively injury-free careers. The second group was pitchers like Mark Prior, Chris Carpenter, and BJ Ryan, who have had, short, injury-plagued careers.
     As soon as I did this, I began to notice differences in the arm actions and timing of these two groups of pitchers. It turns out that the pitching mechanics of long-lived pitchers like Greg Maddux, Nolan Ryan, and Roger Clemens are distinctly different from the pitching mechanics of injury-plagued pitchers like Mark Prior, Chris Carpenter, and BJ Ryan. I think those patterns of difference in their pitching mechanics, which I describe using terms like the Inverted L and Inverted W, go a long way toward explain their different fates.
     It is my hope that with my columns and blog posts I will open your eyes to the possibility that there is logical reason why some pitchers are injured while some aren't and convince you that pitching and other coaches can and should do something to fix this problem. I also hope that I will improve the game of those of you who are still actively pitching and hitting by giving you some pointers on how to pitch and hit.