The Tigers have fired Al Avila

[1984Echoes]

4 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

Cody says organization is more important than the coach, but I think he has it at least a bit backwards. If the parent club's hitting coach is not driving the organization on this kind of thing, who can/will? Isn't it his job to be the expert in hitting development tech?

And again, why does Hinch get a pass on this? Coolbaugh works for him and is manifestly not performing. 

The Tigers supposedly already have sophisticated video mechanics analysis equip - do they stow it all away under the bleachers at Joker Marchant for the season when ST ends?

They can't find the "ON" button.

[1984Echoes]

48 minutes ago, sabretooth said:

In all seriousness, this needs to be explored.  I watched Max Fried take care of a very good ATL lineup throwing a ton of 70s Curveballs (the pitch largely displaced by the hard slider) and 80s changeups...

I was just thinking this the other day...

Organizational philosophy should be to learn to change speeds above all else, and command & control... 

Add sliders and such after mastering the first two.

There may be exceptions as Randy pointed out with natural high-spin guys like JV... and yes, hopefully Jobe falls into that category also...

[gehringer_2]

39 minutes ago, RandyMarsh said:

Verlander was always a high spin guy

Verlander's spin pitch was his FB, and that is a different animal. The underhand spin on the FB is from the natural roll off your fingers - hand size, finger strength, skin texture, finger joint configuration and elasticity all provide that without any axial torque on the elbow. Of course there is still torque on the elbow with all pitches, but you aren't adding any extra twist throwing a 4 seam fastball.

My totally unscientific impression is that throwing pitches where you pull your thumb down and rotate you palm outward - basically the slider is probably more dangerous. On the other hand the rotation on a curve is overhand, you are rotating your thumb up and your palm in. Just stand with your hand up and your elbow at 90 deg and  flick your wrist down while pushing your thumb forward, then flick it down while also rotating your thumb down. Even in that simple exercise you can feel the difference in stress on your ulnar tendon thumb down compared to thumb up

[chasfh]

The slider is the hardest pitch on the elbow, but it’s also the most effective pitch that a lot of pitchers can thrown for strikes. Split-fingers are harder to hit, but hardly anyone throws them because they’re so hard to throw in the first place, let alone for strikes.

[gehringer_2]

12 minutes ago, chasfh said:

The slider is the hardest pitch on the elbow, but it’s also the most effective pitch that a lot of pitchers can thrown for strikes. Split-fingers are harder to hit, but hardly anyone throws them because they’re so hard to throw in the first place, let alone for strikes.

It's probably a misplaced hope, but if we ever get an automated K zone, it might be to the relative advantage of guys that throw changes and curves because the pitch which is diving downward is the most difficult for an ump to call, so a pitcher in today's game is left with more doubt than with a FB or slider that even if he throws a good curve in a key situation, the ump is going to miss the call.

[Edman85]

I would be willing to bet the fastball is harder on the elbow than the slider. I know I have read otherwise back in the middle part of last decade, but fastball velocity has increased significantly of late.

[chasfh]

I think its the extra torque the pitcher puts on the elbow to make the movement happen that really makes the slider more dangerous to the ligaments. I believe pitchers put practically as much force into throwing the slider as they do the fastball.

[gehringer_2]

8 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I think its the extra torque the pitcher puts on the elbow to make the movement happen that really makes the slider more dangerous to the ligaments. I believe pitchers put practically as much force into throwing the slider as they do the fastball.

I agree generally, though it might be useful to make the distinction between the hard slider (~90 pmh) - at about 5-6 mph less than the FB (i.e. Fulmer) which is probably thrown just as hard as the FB, and the 'slurvier' kind of 82-85 mph slider/'horizontal curve' that some other guys throw.

Edited August 24, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Edman85]

On 8/24/2022 at 5:44 PM, chasfh said:

I think its the extra torque the pitcher puts on the elbow to make the movement happen that really makes the slider more dangerous to the ligaments. I believe pitchers put practically as much force into throwing the slider as they do the fastball.

Velocity is the biggest driver.

And torque is an overused term that really doesn't have much to do with this.

[Edman85]

https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/2017/02/fastballs-offspeed-pitches-comparative-relative-elbow-stress/

[gehringer_2]

22 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

Velocity is the biggest driver.

And torque is an overused term that really doesn't have much to do with this.

At the end of paper they get to an interesting conclusion about velo normalized stress which points up how complex that analysis might be. My other question would be how well the stress measurement sleeve actually models the distribution of the overall stress on the individual components within the joint. If you put one stress on the elbow that is borne by bone and another that creates a riser on the UCL, the question is whether your external measurement is able to capture that difference.

[1984Echoes]

That looks like it matches exactly what I said:

An Org's first priority with a young pitcher should be to master changing speeds, including a changeup, and command and control, over developing sliders and curveballs. Changeups look like they are the least stressful...

Add a slider or curve or split or whatever once a guy has got to High A and is at least 21 y.o.

But that's just a guess/ my opinion.

I hope Jobe stays healthy... all the way.

[Tiger337]

2 hours ago, Edman85 said:

And torque is an overused term that really doesn't have much to do with this.

The article does say: "fastballs result in higher torques on the elbow.

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, 1984Echoes said:

That looks like it matches exactly what I said:

An Org's first priority with a young pitcher should be to master changing speeds,

And to Edman's basic point, I wouldn't argue that throwing flat out all the time isn't a bad idea. Our poster boy for longevity, Verlander, has always added and subtracted from his FB through the course of a game, saving his max effort pitches for when the need is greatest. 

But the key thing there is that in order to do that, your stuff has to be good enough that you can get an out at enough ABs without having to throwing your hardest to take that load off your arm.

[1984Echoes]

9 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

... But the key thing there is that in order to do that, your stuff has to be good enough that you can get an out at enough ABs without having to throwing your hardest to take that load off your arm.

That's probably the trick right there...

No greater temptation for a young pitcher who might be struggling in-game than to just all-out fire away at full blast...

[Edman85]

7 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

The article does say: "fastballs result in higher torques on the elbow.

True, but they are overusing torque too. At least in my training in mechanics there aren't really torques applied to a joint. (Note that I have seen moments applied to a joint, but torques are a specific type of moment, and it is possible there are subtleties in biomechanics compared to mechanical systems that lead to that terminology)

Torque tends to be a term overused by people who don't know physics trying to sound smart. Not saying that is what Chaz was doing here because Driveline fell into that trap too, so there is some literature out there. I've just noticed that in ads and a lot of sport discussion. Torque, to me, is effectively a twisting force. I would call the load in question on the elbow a moment, since there is likely some moment couple leading to internal stresses. Perhaps the load causing suppination/pronation of the forearm could be called a torque. I just hear it often in situations where the load being talked about is a point load.

When I was looking at research on elbow mechanics in pitching 15ish years ago when I had access to academic papers they called it "distraction" forces.

Either way, the dynamics of any mechanism are clear: higher velocity = higher loads = higher stress. Since the elbow is stabilized by ligaments that cannot be strengthened, it is very clearly the weakest link, and becoming even more so as we are training pitchers to throw harder, there is very little we can do to strengthen that weakest link.

Edited August 27, 2022 by Edman85

[Edman85]

A few other notes...

The pitching motion has a very fast peak stress on the elbow, dependent, yes on velocity, but also on timing. If you can sync everything up in the body just right you can reduce the load. This is likely why pitching fatigued is such a problem and why injuries can cascade.

Every pitcher's bone/muscle structure is different and will have different optimal mechanics.

Edited August 27, 2022 by Edman85

[buddha]

1 hour ago, Edman85 said:

 

Torque tends to be a term overused by people who don't know physics trying to sound smart.

that's probably why avila drafted torkelson...

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Edman85 said:

Torque, to me, is effectively a twisting force.

a 'torque' is just the moment that a rotating member is capable of generating. They are the same quantity. Some would say the distinction is that moment refers to something static and torque refers to something dynamic (i.e. a beam experiences a 'moment' while an engine produces 'torque'.)  so it depends a little on what branch of physics vs mechanics is your thing. In either case it's the vector product of a force times the distance from some available axis of rotation. But as a practical matter, if you have a beam connected as a radius to a shaft,  mechanical stresses on that beam are the same whether the shaft is rotating to produce torque 'X' or is at rest with a moment 'X' being applied to it.

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, Edman85 said:

The pitching motion has a very fast peak stress on the elbow, dependent, yes on velocity, but also on timing. If you can sync everything up in the body just right you can reduce the load.

YES! This is a great point. In mechanics you'd call it 'impulse'. The energy provided to the ball is the integral of the force applied over the time it's applied.  You might think of it like having a person pedaling a bike vs a motor turning the pedals. The person only produces force in the middle half of the down stroke of each leg, the motor supplies force continually, thus the cranks on the bike will see roughly twice as big a moment being pedaled by a person as they would being turned by a motor to produce the same energy output to the bicycle because the person supplies the energy in half the time. (This comes into play in a big way also with diesel engines. They produce a hammer blow every time a cylinder fires, so the power train for a diesel has to be rated for much more torque than that of a gasoline engine that produces the same HP more smoothly.)  In theory, two guys who are the same size can throw the same velo and have different peak stress on the joints depending on how evenly their arm generates force throughout the pitching motion.

It's what people are getting at when they sense from observation that a guy has a 'violent delivery." But as you note, since physiology is so particular to the individual, the actual maximum loads inside the joint, and how much load each person's ligaments can bear,  can be hard to pin down based on what you see/measure in the gross motor output. (and Max Scherzer says 'Hi").

Edited August 27, 2022 by gehringer_2

[chasfh]

The article also made these two points:

when controlling for velocity, breaking pitches are more stressful of joints than fastballs. Of course no one throws their slider or curveball as fast as their four-seamer, but this would suggest that those pitches with less separation between the two are more susceptible to problems arising from throwing a hard breaking pitch versus their four-seamer.

How the various pitches are thrown also drives how much stress is distributed throughout the throwing limb. They point out that curveballs “are often held in forearm supination for longer than fastballs … [it’s also] very possible that how the stress is distributed within the elbow as the throw is occurring causes issues … [more importantly,] we also don’t know how stress increases as one pitcher throws 75 MPH vs 90 MPH. When a pitcher is warming up, what is the stress on his arm when he is throwing at 65 MPH? At 80 MPH? 90 MPH? Maybe knowing how that relationship changes will give us a better idea of how offspeed pitches are different than fastballs.“

So of course it’s not as simple as 100% fastball velocity or 100% offspeed torq … er, arm-twisting. 😁 And they tacitly admit that more study is needed. I wonder whether anything has been published in the 5-1/2 years since this was put out?

[Longgone]

14 hours ago, Edman85 said:

Velocity is the biggest driver.

And torque is an overused term that really doesn't have much to do with this.

There's also the misconception that you need to severely pronate the arm to create spin, whereas it's more putting the hand and fingers in position to allow the ball the spin out of the hand. 

[gehringer_2]

24 minutes ago, Longgone said:

There's also the misconception that you need to severely pronate the arm to create spin, whereas it's more putting the hand and fingers in position to allow the ball the spin out of the hand. 

yes but maybe no. The rotational energy in the ball still has to come from the arm. A RH pitcher's slider rotates CCW on the axis running from the plate to the mound. Applying that rotational energy to the ball requires the hand/arm to accept a CW moment on that axis. As noted before, in the case of the spin on a fastball, the axis of rotation is 1st to 3rd and the energy that drives that rotation is provided by the gross rotation of the arm at the shoulder in the throwing motion rather any specific need for pronation of the lower arm. That is a difference in physics that is real. The difference it makes injury wise may debated, but not that the forces are different.

Edited August 27, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Longgone]

58 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

yes but maybe no. The rotational energy in the ball still has to come from the arm. A RH pitcher's slider rotates CCW on the axis running from the plate to the mound. Applying that rotational energy to the ball requires the hand/arm to accept a CW moment on that axis. As noted before, in the case of the spin on a fastball, the axis of rotation is 1st to 3rd and the energy that drives that rotation is provided by the gross rotation of the arm at the shoulder in the throwing motion rather any specific need for pronation of the lower arm. That is a difference in physics that is real. The difference it makes injury wise may debated, but not that the forces are different.

I have no idea what you are referring to as "gross rotation" of the shoulder, in the case of a slider, the arm action for a fastball and slider are identical, until the very end of the process, when the hand and fingers change position.

[gehringer_2]

16 minutes ago, Longgone said:

I have no idea what you are referring to as "gross rotation" of the shoulder, in the case of a slider, the arm action for a fastball and slider are identical, until the very end of the process, when the hand and fingers change position.

the large overhand rotation of the arm at the shoulder, the overhand throwing motion itself, creates angular momentum on the rotational axis of the FB (a line from 1st to 3rd) because it's on the same rotational axis as the spin of the fastball. You don't have to add anything to the existing angular momentum inventory at the release point for a FB to have it's normal backspin. The overall overhand motion does not create angular momentum on the spin axis of a slider, which is 90 deg away, i.e, from home to the mound. The statement "hand and fingers change position" is correct and is the key. They don't change position without additional forces being applied.

Edited August 27, 2022 by gehringer_2