I had this discussion the other day. My only thought is that modern day pitchers throw harder than guys did in the past. There is a dramatic velocity increase from as recently as the late 80's. The understanding of the mechanics of baseball has improved so drastically over the last 2 decades, especially pitching. Those in the biomechanics industry are constantly working on finding the most powerful and efficient ways to throw to get the most out of an arm. My thought is that the increased strain on the arm is due to the focus on the maximizing of velocity, thus causing a raise in arm injuries. Walter Johnson and Nolan ryan threw as hard or harder than anyone ever, but there are plenty on exception to this even in todays game.
Solid discussion.
Solid discussion.
<TABLE height=280 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=760 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD align=middle width="100%" bgColor=gold colSpan=3 height=30>Dr. Mike Marshall's Pitching Coach Services </TD><TR><TD align=middle width="20%" bgColor=gold height=200>
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</TD><TD vAlign=top align=left width="80%" bgColor=white colSpan=2 height=200> Dr. Mike Marshall knows the injurious flaws in the 'traditional' baseball pitching motion that injures baseball pitchers. Dr. Marshall knows what 'traditional' baseball pitchers have to do to eliminate all pitching injuries.
In his fourteen years of major league baseball career, Dr. Marshall used this knowledge to set numerous major league records, including the four most prestigious closer relief pitching records.
1. Most appearances - 106
2. Most closing innings pitched - 208
3. Most consecutive appearances - 13
4. Most games finished - 84
Dr. Mike Marshall also knows the mechanical flaws in the 'traditional' baseball pitching motion that decrease release velocity, release consistency and the variety and quality of pitches pitchers can throw. Dr. Marshall also knows what baseball pitchers have to do to correct these mechanical flaws.
Today, Dr. Marshall says that, if he had known what he has learned since he retired from major league baseball before he pitched major league baseball, then he would have set many more records and won many more Cy Young Awards.
Dr. Marshall freely shares his knowledge. Without charge, readers can watch the eleven sections of his two and one-half hour Baseball Pitching Instructional Video, read his Coaching Baseball Pitching book and download his training programs and, lastly, Dr. Marshall will personally answer all emailed questions.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
PayPal
$1,000 Challenge
Academic Credentials
Articles
Certified Marshall Baseball Pitching Coaches
Equipment Vendors
FREE Baseball Pitching Instructional Video!!!
FREE Baseball Pitcher Interval-Training Programs!!!
FREE Coaching Baseball Pitchers Book!!!
Professional Baseball Credentials
Question/Answer Files
Research Study
Special Reports
Speaking Engagements
Video and High-Speed Film Analysis of Dr. Marshall's 2007 Baseball Pitchers
</TD><TD vAlign=top align=left width="80%" bgColor=white colSpan=2 height=200> Dr. Mike Marshall knows the injurious flaws in the 'traditional' baseball pitching motion that injures baseball pitchers. Dr. Marshall knows what 'traditional' baseball pitchers have to do to eliminate all pitching injuries.
In his fourteen years of major league baseball career, Dr. Marshall used this knowledge to set numerous major league records, including the four most prestigious closer relief pitching records.
1. Most appearances - 106
2. Most closing innings pitched - 208
3. Most consecutive appearances - 13
4. Most games finished - 84
Dr. Mike Marshall also knows the mechanical flaws in the 'traditional' baseball pitching motion that decrease release velocity, release consistency and the variety and quality of pitches pitchers can throw. Dr. Marshall also knows what baseball pitchers have to do to correct these mechanical flaws.
Today, Dr. Marshall says that, if he had known what he has learned since he retired from major league baseball before he pitched major league baseball, then he would have set many more records and won many more Cy Young Awards.
Dr. Marshall freely shares his knowledge. Without charge, readers can watch the eleven sections of his two and one-half hour Baseball Pitching Instructional Video, read his Coaching Baseball Pitching book and download his training programs and, lastly, Dr. Marshall will personally answer all emailed questions.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE height=280 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=760 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD align=middle width="100%" bgColor=gold colSpan=3 height=30>Dr. Mike Marshall's Pitching Coach Services </TD><TR><TD vAlign=top align=left width="55%" bgColor=white height=200><CENTER>Question/Answer Files
</CENTER> I came online in the year 2000. Immediately, readers sent me questions. Since then, I receive questions every day. I cannot wait to wake-up and get to my computer. I love the questions, the challenges to my theories and everything about my Question/Answer files. I lose myself and time with your questions. I want to thank everybody who has sent me a question. You make my day.
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Question/Answer 2007
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<CENTER>Home Page drmikemarshall@earthlink.net </CENTER>
</CENTER> I came online in the year 2000. Immediately, readers sent me questions. Since then, I receive questions every day. I cannot wait to wake-up and get to my computer. I love the questions, the challenges to my theories and everything about my Question/Answer files. I lose myself and time with your questions. I want to thank everybody who has sent me a question. You make my day.
</TD><TD align=middle width="45%" bgColor=gold height=200>Question/Answer 2000
Question/Answer 2001
Question/Answer 2002
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<CENTER>Home Page drmikemarshall@earthlink.net </CENTER>
Mike Marshall is a ass-clown. He has some sort of arrangement where he will teach players with promising futures pitching for "free" at his own home. He makes you sign a contract with him stating that if you make it in baseball, he gets a percentage for duration of your career. Im sure he has good information, but his methods are seriously questionable.
A slider is more-or-less a generic pitch that can be thrown a number of ways, and is pretty much impossible to mess up your arm with. A sinker is 2 seam fast ball. If you are talking about a screwball then thats a different story.
A slider is more-or-less a generic pitch that can be thrown a number of ways, and is pretty much impossible to mess up your arm with. A sinker is 2 seam fast ball. If you are talking about a screwball then thats a different story.
044. Thank you much for your hospitality this week when I visited your facility. I would encourage anyone who has not visited your facility to do so.
I did notice that many of your students are still bringing the ball beyond their acromial lines. This somewhat surprised me because you put so much emphasis on correcting this flaw. It got me wondering how much of the success of your program not causing arm injuries is due to your iron ball and wrist weight program as opposed to your adherence to Newton's three laws of motion?
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What you see that you believe indicates that some of my pitchers take their pitching elbow behind their acromial line is when you see the baseball laterally behind their head. This does not mean that they have taken their pitching elbow behind their acromial line. This means that they are reverse rotating their shoulders too far. This is a flaw that, while it does not cause injury, does meaningfully decrease their release consistency. We continually work with those pitchers to get them to only take the baseball toward second base.
The key to understanding when pitchers actually do voluntarily take their pitching elbow behind their acromial line lies in the relative positions of their pitching hand and pitching elbow at the end of their transition phase. When they have their pitching elbow behind their body, but they have their pitching hand to their pitching arm side, that means that they failed to 'lock' their pitching upper arm with their body. This action permits them to voluntarily take their pitching elbow behind their acromial line. However, if, as with all my pitchers, they have their pitching palm facing upward and their pitching hand behind their body, then they have 'locked' their pitching upper arm with their body and cannot possibly move their pitching elbow behind their acromial line.
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045. I have an above average knowledge of the pitching anatomy. Where in your work do you provide a glossary or pictures that will help outline the muscles and bones you refer to and the various motions (pronate, supinate, midline, posterior, anterior, etc)?
Separately, Mark Cresse has a stable of capable coaches and instructors in his schools. To your knowledge, does Mark himself subscribe to your general philosophies on pitching? Does his personal background as a bullpen coach make him unique for pitching instruction? I am not looking for either an endorsement nor bashing of Mark one way or the other however my bias is that his background as a catcher limits his ability to impart knowledge and a pitchers "feel" to students.
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I do not provide a glossary in which I explain the terms that I use. However, it is on my list of things to do. In the meantime:
01. Forearm pronation means to rotate the thumb side of the forearm toward the little finger side of the forearm.
02. Forearm supination means to rotate the thumb side of the forearm away from the little finger side of the forearm.
03. Midline means the vertical middle of the body.
04. When athletes stand in the anatomical position with their arms hanging at the sides with their palms forward, posterior means to the back of their body.
05. When athletes stand in the anatomical position with their arms hanging at the sides with their palms forward, anterior means to the front of their body.
During 1974, 1975 and 1976, when I pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Mark Cresse was a young bullpen catcher. Although a very nice person, Mr. Cresse has no background that would make him capable of providing meaningful instruction for any baseball skills.
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046. This question is in response to your reply on question #44 of the 2005 questions. It concerns bringing the ball laterally behind the acromial line. Here is the first paragraph of your response:
“What you see that you believe indicates that some of my pitchers take their pitching elbow behind their acromial line is when you see the baseball laterally behind their head. This does not mean that they have taken their pitching elbow behind their acromial line. Rather, this means that they are reverse rotating their shoulders too far. This is a flaw that, while it does not cause injury, does meaningfully decrease their release consistency. We continually work with those pitchers to get them to only take the baseball toward second base.”
I understand how this impedes release consistency, but I am surprised to learn that this does not cause injury. It was my understanding that, if the ball reaches drive line height behind the back of the pitcher, then the first forward movement of the baseball is toward the third base line. That the inertial weight of the baseball causes the forearm to sling out to horizontal with the upper arm as the pitcher struggles to fight the fly out. I thought that this causes the olecranon process of the forearm to collide with the olecranon fossa of the humerus. Are you saying that this will not happen as long as the upper arm is locked with the shoulder? Isn’t the forearm moving independently of the upper arm? It seems like it would still fly out.
I now move on to the second paragraph of your reply:
“The key to understanding when pitchers actually do voluntarily take their pitching elbow behind their acromial line lies in the relative positions of their pitching hand and pitching elbow at the end of their transition phase. When they have their pitching elbow behind their body, but they have their pitching hand to their pitching arm side, that means that they failed to 'lock' their pitching upper arm with their body. This action permits them to voluntarily take their pitching elbow behind their acromial line. However, if, as with all my pitchers, they have their pitching palm facing upward and their pitching hand behind their body, then they have 'locked' their pitching upper arm with their body and cannot possibly move their pitching elbow behind their acromial line”.
My question is on your statement about the pitching palm facing upward (I assume at drive line height), which automatically prevents the elbow from going beyond the acromial line. What if the pitching palm is not facing upward? In this case, would the pitcher be susceptible to injury? In an earlier response you wrote this about the position of the screwball at driveline height:
“At release for my Maxline True Screwball, pitchers have to have the thumb side of their pitching hand forward with their palm facing away from their body. Therefore, to throw this pitch, pitchers do not have to have their pitching palm ever facing upward. One reason why my Maxline True Screwball is the least stressful on the pitching arm is that it does not require pitchers to reposition their pitching forearm after they achieve my 'Ready' position.”
In this case, could the pitcher lock his upper arm to his shoulder and still bring the baseball behind his back without risking injury? In your Flaws and Solutions video, it would be great if you spent some time demonstrating locking the upper arm to the shoulder.
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This is great stuff! I appreciate that you took the time first, to read what I write, second, to recognize what appears to be inconsistencies and, third, to send me an email that clearly points out your concerns.
With regard to why my pitchers do not injure themselves as a result of pitching forearm flyout when they take the baseball laterally behind their body:
During their transitions phase, 'traditional' pitchers take the baseball backward with their pitching palm facing downward and their pitching forearm still below their shoulder height. As a result, they raise their pitching elbow to shoulder height with their pitching palm still facing downward. (See Pedro on the latest Wheaties box.) From this position, to get their pitching palm to face upward as they have to do to throw the baseball toward home plate, they have to start to turn their pitching forearm over. I call this, 'late pitching forearm turnover.'
During this 'late pitching forearm turnover,' 'traditional' pitchers start to pull their pitching upper arm forward. As a result of their pitching upper arm moving forward and their pitching forearm moving backward, at some point, they suffer what I call, 'reverse pitching forearm bounce.' 'Reverse pitching forearm bounce' ruptures the Ulnar Collateral Ligament and snaps the Humerus bone.
After 'reverse pitching forearm bounce,' the horizontal centripetal force of the pitching upper arm slings the pitching forearm outward, which, as you correctly noted, causes the olecranon process of the Ulna bone to slam into the olecranon fossa of the Humerus bone, which damages the tip of the olecranon process and the hyaline cartilage that lines the olecranon fossa and, gradually decreases the elbow extension range of motion. Concurrently, the Brachialis muscle fights to prevent this collision, such that the attachment of the Brachialis muscle to the coronoid process of the Ulnar bone enlarges, which gradually decreases the elbow flexion range of motion.
However, your question is why do my pitchers not suffer the same fate? Two reasons:
First, because, if they perform my transition phase properly, my pitchers will no only have their pitching palm facing upward when it reaches driveline height, such that they will not have 'late pitching forearm turnover,' but they will also immediately raise their pitching elbow to the height of their pitching ear and point their pitchign elbow laterally away from their body. In this way, my pitchers lock their pitching upper arm with their body. As a result, when my pitchers start rotating their acromial line toward home plate, they will not only not have any 'reverse pitching forearm bounce, but they also will not generate the resultant horizontal centripetal force that slings their pitching forearm laterally away from their body.
Nevertheless, before they can drive the baseball toward home plate, they do have to return the baseball to their pitching arm side. Then, at some point of this sideways movement, they have to apply force to redirect the baseball toward home plate. Fortunately, without the 'reverse pitching forearm bounce,' they can easily overcome the minimal inertial force of the five and one-quarter ounce baseball.' But, because they may not always apply their-toward-home plate force at the appropriate instant, they will have inconsistent releases and because they decrease the length of their driveline, they will lose some release velocity.
Second, if they perform the start of my acceleration phase properly, my pitchers immediately start to powerfully pronate their pitching forearm. Pitching forearm pronation prevents pitchers from using their pitching upper arm to pull their pitching forearm forward. If they cannot use their pitching upper arm to pull their pitching forearm forward, then they cannot generate their horizontal centripetal force that slings the pitching forearm laterally away from the pitching arm side of their body.
I would agree that the pitching forearm moves independent of the pitching upper arm. The pitching upper arm moves as a result of the movement of the upper body. The pitching forearm waits until their body almost completes its forward rotation to start its powerful pitching elbow extension and pitching forearm, wrist, hand and fingers pronation.
As you again correctly noted, the pitching hand position that I recommend for my Maxline True Screwball does have the pitching palm facing away from the body when the pitching hand reaches driveline height. However, rather than a difference in the position of the anterior surface of the pitching forearm, this apparent inconsistency results from the positioning of the wrist, hand and fingers. That is, as evidenced by the pitching elbow being at the height of the pitching ear with the pitching elbow pointing laterally away from the body rather than downward, the pitching upper arm still locks with the body. Perhaps, I should have described the position of the pitching elbow rather than the pitching palm, but, even with this inconsistency, I felt the position of the pitching palm was easier to understand.
Rather than a separate Flaws and Solutions video, I plan to release a 2005 version of my Baseball Pitching Instructional Video. In it, I will include a thorough discussion of the flaws in the 'traditional' pitching motion and the solutions that I recommend in my pitching motion. The reason why I have not provided this discussion earlier is that I have to train pitchers to perform my pitching motion, I cannot simply pronounce the pitching motion of some well-known major league pitcher as perfect. I think that hundreds of thousands of destroyed pitching arms proves that the 'traditional' pitching motion has flaws. While several of my pitchers are closing in on my perfect pitching motion, as yet, I have not captured perfection on my high-speed film. Nevertheless, we are close enough to see what pitchers should do.
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047. I just discovered your website and your e-book today, and they are terrific. I'm a researcher working on an extensive study of the evolution (or devolution) of pitching over the three-plus decades since the Save statistic and DH were introduced. I agree with you that the DH is a travesty. I am also advising two West Point cadets who are doing their senior thesis on relief pitching, and have advised them to contact you with questions, so don't be surprised if you hear from them.
The primary area of our research interest which you might be able to help with is the question of fatigue. That is, fatigue within a game (more related to starters) and fatigue over a series of consecutive appearances (more related to relievers).
Obviously, even if you were not an expert on kinesiology and training methods, I would be interested in communicating with you because of your pitching record and your ability to pitch more often and more effectively than anyone. So I expect to ask a number of questions of you in the upcoming months, and hope to learn from your answers. (If you would prefer to answer all my questions at once in a phone interview, please let me know, as that would be fine with me. I plan to interview a lot of former relievers, particularly those who have been pitching coaches in recent years and have seen the changes in how relievers are used/misused.)
My question today, however, deals with starting pitching and a pet theory of mine which you are the perfect person to comment on. We hear all this talk in recent years about pitch counts and how the arbitrary 100-pitch limit is a fail-safe point beyond which most pitches lose their effectiveness. My pet theory is that time of game is a more useful guide to how long a starter might remain effective. There is at least a surface connection with the increases in time of game over the past couple of decades and the decline in effective innings pitched by starters. Of course there are other factors involved, such as how hard a pitcher has had to work.
My question is this: Is there a maximum amount of time for which a starter's arm can "stay warm"?
Grover Cleveland Alexander, Ed Walsh, and Joe McGinnity used to pitch both ends of a doubleheader in less time than it takes to complete one game now. I don't see how they could've pitched that much in one day if they had had to spread their work out over a 5 or 6-hour stretch. My guess is that the average pitcher can only stay warm (however you want to define that) for roughly 150 minutes. A generation or two ago, that was enough time to complete a game. In the past decade or so, that only gets you to the 7th inning. Is that why so few pitchers are effective past the 6th or 7th inning? Researchers have confirmed the statement of pitchers like Bob Gibson and Greg Maddux and many pitching coaches that the best way to get hitters out is to work fast and throw strikes. Pitchers today tend to dawdle and also waste a lot of time stepping off and making needless pickoff throws. Those who work fast and throw more strikes do tend to pitch longer into games. Is there a physiological reason why pitchers don't go as far into a game as they used to, and is it related to how long it takes to play the games?
It is fascinating reading your answers to questions, and I applaud your efforts to teach sound pitching mechanics that will help prevent arm injuries. I speak as someone who did nothing as a kid but throw (not competitively past Little League) and blew out my arm by my mid-20s.
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I look forward to many more questions from you and the young men studying relief pitching.
In my Coaching Baseball Pitchers book, I discuss how I recommend that managers use pitchers. For starting pitchers, I recommend that they never go more than three times through the line-up. However, I have additional guidelines. I recommend that, unless they are in the third inning, starting pitchers do not start their second time through the line-up. I recommend that, unless they are in the fifth inning, starting pitchers do not start their third time through the line-up. If you do the math, you will see that these are performance based determinants, not pitch counts.
Managers use pitch counts because they do not understand why the 'traditional' pitching motion destroys pitching arms. They mistakenly believe that fewer pitches with more rest prevents pitching arm injuries.
After I finished my professional career, I pitched amateur baseball. In one tournament, I started the 9:00AM game, the 12:00PM game and the 10:00PM game in the same day and threw a perfect game the next morning. That reflects the size of the substrate storage in my pitching muscles. With my interval-training program, pitchers can pitch every day for as long as they want.
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048. Are the problems caused by throwing pitches in which the arm supinates upon release (traditional sliders, curveballs, cut fastballs) related to just the turning inward phase of release or are they also related to the powerful pronation that occurs just after release? I'm asking because I recently came across some still photos of pitchers who have just released supinated breaking pitches and noticed that their arms are pronated to an almost grotesque position. I have a picture of Roger Clemens showing his hand turned completely over and his palm facing the sky immediately after release. I know supination is bad, but I'm just wondering if it's bad for reasons I hadn't previously considered.
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To make certain that we are talking about the same thing, forearm pronation occurs when baseball pitchers rotate the thumb side of their pitching forearm inwardly toward the little finger side of the pitching forearm. As a result, they turn their pitching thumb to point downward and even farther. That Mr. Clemens turned his pitching palm completely over, such that he turned his pitching thumb even farther than downward, is a very, very good thing. That means that he powerfully pronated the release of that pitch. That is exactly what I teach my pitchers to do with every type of pitch.
To throw the 'traditional' curve, slider and cut fastball, 'traditional' pitching coaches teach their pitchers to supinate their pitching forearm. They also teach their pitchers to turn their pitching palm downward during their transitions. They also teach their pitchers to raise their pitching upper arm to shoulder height while their pitching forearm is still below their waist, which causes 'late pitching forearm turnover. They also teach their pitchers to use their pitching upper arm to pull their pitching forearm forward before they completely turn pitching forearm to have their pitching palm facing forward, which causes 'reverse pitching forearm bounce' and generates 'horizontal centripetal force,' which causes the pitching forearm to dramatically move away from their body (pitching forearm flyout). When, on top of these pitching flaws, they also teach their pitchers to then supinate the releases of their pitches, they cause their pitchers to slam the olecranon process of their Ulna bone into the olecranon fossa of their Humerus bone, which causes bone chips, bone spurs and worse.
That all pitchers pronate their pitching forearm after they release their pitches shows the importance of the Pronator Teres and Pronator Quadratus muscles to the pitching motion. When pitchers learn to powerfully pronate before they release their pitches, including curves, sliders and cut fastballs, they not only prevent their olecranon process from slamming into their olecranon fossa, they also increase the force that they can apply and the quality of their releases.
I did notice that many of your students are still bringing the ball beyond their acromial lines. This somewhat surprised me because you put so much emphasis on correcting this flaw. It got me wondering how much of the success of your program not causing arm injuries is due to your iron ball and wrist weight program as opposed to your adherence to Newton's three laws of motion?
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What you see that you believe indicates that some of my pitchers take their pitching elbow behind their acromial line is when you see the baseball laterally behind their head. This does not mean that they have taken their pitching elbow behind their acromial line. This means that they are reverse rotating their shoulders too far. This is a flaw that, while it does not cause injury, does meaningfully decrease their release consistency. We continually work with those pitchers to get them to only take the baseball toward second base.
The key to understanding when pitchers actually do voluntarily take their pitching elbow behind their acromial line lies in the relative positions of their pitching hand and pitching elbow at the end of their transition phase. When they have their pitching elbow behind their body, but they have their pitching hand to their pitching arm side, that means that they failed to 'lock' their pitching upper arm with their body. This action permits them to voluntarily take their pitching elbow behind their acromial line. However, if, as with all my pitchers, they have their pitching palm facing upward and their pitching hand behind their body, then they have 'locked' their pitching upper arm with their body and cannot possibly move their pitching elbow behind their acromial line.
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045. I have an above average knowledge of the pitching anatomy. Where in your work do you provide a glossary or pictures that will help outline the muscles and bones you refer to and the various motions (pronate, supinate, midline, posterior, anterior, etc)?
Separately, Mark Cresse has a stable of capable coaches and instructors in his schools. To your knowledge, does Mark himself subscribe to your general philosophies on pitching? Does his personal background as a bullpen coach make him unique for pitching instruction? I am not looking for either an endorsement nor bashing of Mark one way or the other however my bias is that his background as a catcher limits his ability to impart knowledge and a pitchers "feel" to students.
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I do not provide a glossary in which I explain the terms that I use. However, it is on my list of things to do. In the meantime:
01. Forearm pronation means to rotate the thumb side of the forearm toward the little finger side of the forearm.
02. Forearm supination means to rotate the thumb side of the forearm away from the little finger side of the forearm.
03. Midline means the vertical middle of the body.
04. When athletes stand in the anatomical position with their arms hanging at the sides with their palms forward, posterior means to the back of their body.
05. When athletes stand in the anatomical position with their arms hanging at the sides with their palms forward, anterior means to the front of their body.
During 1974, 1975 and 1976, when I pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Mark Cresse was a young bullpen catcher. Although a very nice person, Mr. Cresse has no background that would make him capable of providing meaningful instruction for any baseball skills.
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046. This question is in response to your reply on question #44 of the 2005 questions. It concerns bringing the ball laterally behind the acromial line. Here is the first paragraph of your response:
“What you see that you believe indicates that some of my pitchers take their pitching elbow behind their acromial line is when you see the baseball laterally behind their head. This does not mean that they have taken their pitching elbow behind their acromial line. Rather, this means that they are reverse rotating their shoulders too far. This is a flaw that, while it does not cause injury, does meaningfully decrease their release consistency. We continually work with those pitchers to get them to only take the baseball toward second base.”
I understand how this impedes release consistency, but I am surprised to learn that this does not cause injury. It was my understanding that, if the ball reaches drive line height behind the back of the pitcher, then the first forward movement of the baseball is toward the third base line. That the inertial weight of the baseball causes the forearm to sling out to horizontal with the upper arm as the pitcher struggles to fight the fly out. I thought that this causes the olecranon process of the forearm to collide with the olecranon fossa of the humerus. Are you saying that this will not happen as long as the upper arm is locked with the shoulder? Isn’t the forearm moving independently of the upper arm? It seems like it would still fly out.
I now move on to the second paragraph of your reply:
“The key to understanding when pitchers actually do voluntarily take their pitching elbow behind their acromial line lies in the relative positions of their pitching hand and pitching elbow at the end of their transition phase. When they have their pitching elbow behind their body, but they have their pitching hand to their pitching arm side, that means that they failed to 'lock' their pitching upper arm with their body. This action permits them to voluntarily take their pitching elbow behind their acromial line. However, if, as with all my pitchers, they have their pitching palm facing upward and their pitching hand behind their body, then they have 'locked' their pitching upper arm with their body and cannot possibly move their pitching elbow behind their acromial line”.
My question is on your statement about the pitching palm facing upward (I assume at drive line height), which automatically prevents the elbow from going beyond the acromial line. What if the pitching palm is not facing upward? In this case, would the pitcher be susceptible to injury? In an earlier response you wrote this about the position of the screwball at driveline height:
“At release for my Maxline True Screwball, pitchers have to have the thumb side of their pitching hand forward with their palm facing away from their body. Therefore, to throw this pitch, pitchers do not have to have their pitching palm ever facing upward. One reason why my Maxline True Screwball is the least stressful on the pitching arm is that it does not require pitchers to reposition their pitching forearm after they achieve my 'Ready' position.”
In this case, could the pitcher lock his upper arm to his shoulder and still bring the baseball behind his back without risking injury? In your Flaws and Solutions video, it would be great if you spent some time demonstrating locking the upper arm to the shoulder.
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This is great stuff! I appreciate that you took the time first, to read what I write, second, to recognize what appears to be inconsistencies and, third, to send me an email that clearly points out your concerns.
With regard to why my pitchers do not injure themselves as a result of pitching forearm flyout when they take the baseball laterally behind their body:
During their transitions phase, 'traditional' pitchers take the baseball backward with their pitching palm facing downward and their pitching forearm still below their shoulder height. As a result, they raise their pitching elbow to shoulder height with their pitching palm still facing downward. (See Pedro on the latest Wheaties box.) From this position, to get their pitching palm to face upward as they have to do to throw the baseball toward home plate, they have to start to turn their pitching forearm over. I call this, 'late pitching forearm turnover.'
During this 'late pitching forearm turnover,' 'traditional' pitchers start to pull their pitching upper arm forward. As a result of their pitching upper arm moving forward and their pitching forearm moving backward, at some point, they suffer what I call, 'reverse pitching forearm bounce.' 'Reverse pitching forearm bounce' ruptures the Ulnar Collateral Ligament and snaps the Humerus bone.
After 'reverse pitching forearm bounce,' the horizontal centripetal force of the pitching upper arm slings the pitching forearm outward, which, as you correctly noted, causes the olecranon process of the Ulna bone to slam into the olecranon fossa of the Humerus bone, which damages the tip of the olecranon process and the hyaline cartilage that lines the olecranon fossa and, gradually decreases the elbow extension range of motion. Concurrently, the Brachialis muscle fights to prevent this collision, such that the attachment of the Brachialis muscle to the coronoid process of the Ulnar bone enlarges, which gradually decreases the elbow flexion range of motion.
However, your question is why do my pitchers not suffer the same fate? Two reasons:
First, because, if they perform my transition phase properly, my pitchers will no only have their pitching palm facing upward when it reaches driveline height, such that they will not have 'late pitching forearm turnover,' but they will also immediately raise their pitching elbow to the height of their pitching ear and point their pitchign elbow laterally away from their body. In this way, my pitchers lock their pitching upper arm with their body. As a result, when my pitchers start rotating their acromial line toward home plate, they will not only not have any 'reverse pitching forearm bounce, but they also will not generate the resultant horizontal centripetal force that slings their pitching forearm laterally away from their body.
Nevertheless, before they can drive the baseball toward home plate, they do have to return the baseball to their pitching arm side. Then, at some point of this sideways movement, they have to apply force to redirect the baseball toward home plate. Fortunately, without the 'reverse pitching forearm bounce,' they can easily overcome the minimal inertial force of the five and one-quarter ounce baseball.' But, because they may not always apply their-toward-home plate force at the appropriate instant, they will have inconsistent releases and because they decrease the length of their driveline, they will lose some release velocity.
Second, if they perform the start of my acceleration phase properly, my pitchers immediately start to powerfully pronate their pitching forearm. Pitching forearm pronation prevents pitchers from using their pitching upper arm to pull their pitching forearm forward. If they cannot use their pitching upper arm to pull their pitching forearm forward, then they cannot generate their horizontal centripetal force that slings the pitching forearm laterally away from the pitching arm side of their body.
I would agree that the pitching forearm moves independent of the pitching upper arm. The pitching upper arm moves as a result of the movement of the upper body. The pitching forearm waits until their body almost completes its forward rotation to start its powerful pitching elbow extension and pitching forearm, wrist, hand and fingers pronation.
As you again correctly noted, the pitching hand position that I recommend for my Maxline True Screwball does have the pitching palm facing away from the body when the pitching hand reaches driveline height. However, rather than a difference in the position of the anterior surface of the pitching forearm, this apparent inconsistency results from the positioning of the wrist, hand and fingers. That is, as evidenced by the pitching elbow being at the height of the pitching ear with the pitching elbow pointing laterally away from the body rather than downward, the pitching upper arm still locks with the body. Perhaps, I should have described the position of the pitching elbow rather than the pitching palm, but, even with this inconsistency, I felt the position of the pitching palm was easier to understand.
Rather than a separate Flaws and Solutions video, I plan to release a 2005 version of my Baseball Pitching Instructional Video. In it, I will include a thorough discussion of the flaws in the 'traditional' pitching motion and the solutions that I recommend in my pitching motion. The reason why I have not provided this discussion earlier is that I have to train pitchers to perform my pitching motion, I cannot simply pronounce the pitching motion of some well-known major league pitcher as perfect. I think that hundreds of thousands of destroyed pitching arms proves that the 'traditional' pitching motion has flaws. While several of my pitchers are closing in on my perfect pitching motion, as yet, I have not captured perfection on my high-speed film. Nevertheless, we are close enough to see what pitchers should do.
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047. I just discovered your website and your e-book today, and they are terrific. I'm a researcher working on an extensive study of the evolution (or devolution) of pitching over the three-plus decades since the Save statistic and DH were introduced. I agree with you that the DH is a travesty. I am also advising two West Point cadets who are doing their senior thesis on relief pitching, and have advised them to contact you with questions, so don't be surprised if you hear from them.
The primary area of our research interest which you might be able to help with is the question of fatigue. That is, fatigue within a game (more related to starters) and fatigue over a series of consecutive appearances (more related to relievers).
Obviously, even if you were not an expert on kinesiology and training methods, I would be interested in communicating with you because of your pitching record and your ability to pitch more often and more effectively than anyone. So I expect to ask a number of questions of you in the upcoming months, and hope to learn from your answers. (If you would prefer to answer all my questions at once in a phone interview, please let me know, as that would be fine with me. I plan to interview a lot of former relievers, particularly those who have been pitching coaches in recent years and have seen the changes in how relievers are used/misused.)
My question today, however, deals with starting pitching and a pet theory of mine which you are the perfect person to comment on. We hear all this talk in recent years about pitch counts and how the arbitrary 100-pitch limit is a fail-safe point beyond which most pitches lose their effectiveness. My pet theory is that time of game is a more useful guide to how long a starter might remain effective. There is at least a surface connection with the increases in time of game over the past couple of decades and the decline in effective innings pitched by starters. Of course there are other factors involved, such as how hard a pitcher has had to work.
My question is this: Is there a maximum amount of time for which a starter's arm can "stay warm"?
Grover Cleveland Alexander, Ed Walsh, and Joe McGinnity used to pitch both ends of a doubleheader in less time than it takes to complete one game now. I don't see how they could've pitched that much in one day if they had had to spread their work out over a 5 or 6-hour stretch. My guess is that the average pitcher can only stay warm (however you want to define that) for roughly 150 minutes. A generation or two ago, that was enough time to complete a game. In the past decade or so, that only gets you to the 7th inning. Is that why so few pitchers are effective past the 6th or 7th inning? Researchers have confirmed the statement of pitchers like Bob Gibson and Greg Maddux and many pitching coaches that the best way to get hitters out is to work fast and throw strikes. Pitchers today tend to dawdle and also waste a lot of time stepping off and making needless pickoff throws. Those who work fast and throw more strikes do tend to pitch longer into games. Is there a physiological reason why pitchers don't go as far into a game as they used to, and is it related to how long it takes to play the games?
It is fascinating reading your answers to questions, and I applaud your efforts to teach sound pitching mechanics that will help prevent arm injuries. I speak as someone who did nothing as a kid but throw (not competitively past Little League) and blew out my arm by my mid-20s.
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I look forward to many more questions from you and the young men studying relief pitching.
In my Coaching Baseball Pitchers book, I discuss how I recommend that managers use pitchers. For starting pitchers, I recommend that they never go more than three times through the line-up. However, I have additional guidelines. I recommend that, unless they are in the third inning, starting pitchers do not start their second time through the line-up. I recommend that, unless they are in the fifth inning, starting pitchers do not start their third time through the line-up. If you do the math, you will see that these are performance based determinants, not pitch counts.
Managers use pitch counts because they do not understand why the 'traditional' pitching motion destroys pitching arms. They mistakenly believe that fewer pitches with more rest prevents pitching arm injuries.
After I finished my professional career, I pitched amateur baseball. In one tournament, I started the 9:00AM game, the 12:00PM game and the 10:00PM game in the same day and threw a perfect game the next morning. That reflects the size of the substrate storage in my pitching muscles. With my interval-training program, pitchers can pitch every day for as long as they want.
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048. Are the problems caused by throwing pitches in which the arm supinates upon release (traditional sliders, curveballs, cut fastballs) related to just the turning inward phase of release or are they also related to the powerful pronation that occurs just after release? I'm asking because I recently came across some still photos of pitchers who have just released supinated breaking pitches and noticed that their arms are pronated to an almost grotesque position. I have a picture of Roger Clemens showing his hand turned completely over and his palm facing the sky immediately after release. I know supination is bad, but I'm just wondering if it's bad for reasons I hadn't previously considered.
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To make certain that we are talking about the same thing, forearm pronation occurs when baseball pitchers rotate the thumb side of their pitching forearm inwardly toward the little finger side of the pitching forearm. As a result, they turn their pitching thumb to point downward and even farther. That Mr. Clemens turned his pitching palm completely over, such that he turned his pitching thumb even farther than downward, is a very, very good thing. That means that he powerfully pronated the release of that pitch. That is exactly what I teach my pitchers to do with every type of pitch.
To throw the 'traditional' curve, slider and cut fastball, 'traditional' pitching coaches teach their pitchers to supinate their pitching forearm. They also teach their pitchers to turn their pitching palm downward during their transitions. They also teach their pitchers to raise their pitching upper arm to shoulder height while their pitching forearm is still below their waist, which causes 'late pitching forearm turnover. They also teach their pitchers to use their pitching upper arm to pull their pitching forearm forward before they completely turn pitching forearm to have their pitching palm facing forward, which causes 'reverse pitching forearm bounce' and generates 'horizontal centripetal force,' which causes the pitching forearm to dramatically move away from their body (pitching forearm flyout). When, on top of these pitching flaws, they also teach their pitchers to then supinate the releases of their pitches, they cause their pitchers to slam the olecranon process of their Ulna bone into the olecranon fossa of their Humerus bone, which causes bone chips, bone spurs and worse.
That all pitchers pronate their pitching forearm after they release their pitches shows the importance of the Pronator Teres and Pronator Quadratus muscles to the pitching motion. When pitchers learn to powerfully pronate before they release their pitches, including curves, sliders and cut fastballs, they not only prevent their olecranon process from slamming into their olecranon fossa, they also increase the force that they can apply and the quality of their releases.
Mario Soto ended his career trying to throw a slider, because his pitching coach wanted a 3rd pitch for him.
Mike MArshall is not an ass clown, the ass clowns are the pitching coaches across america, on high school,, mlb, and ncaa levels that have no clue on teaching or pitching.
Mike MArshall had 106 appearences in 1 season
One guy getting hurt does not make it a common occurrence. If you ask pitchers how they got hurt 80% will tell you it was on a fast ball. I know a number of guys who had surgeries and none were on sliders. Throwing a slider is a 1/4 turn in the wrist or half the hand placement of a curve, in other words it has very little strain on your arm.
I respectfully disagree about Martin though, his writings may look convincing but he has a very bad reputation in baseball. People who own prominent baseball schools are among the biggest group of shady characters i have encountered... and that is a few. I am not necessarily saying his information is bad b/c i am not to familiar with it, i am saying his set up is ridiculous!
I don't know your background in pitching, you might be tom house for all i know... but i do know more on the subject than i do anything else (dont know if thats good or bad for me).
I just saw Marshall on Real Sports on HBO..There is no doubt that he has the best method for teaching young pitchers the best way to avoid injuries..But pitching off the other foot takes alot of getting used to. Most pitchers aren't about to totally change their style after years and years of the conventional way drilled into them..From what Marshall said, the bulk of the pitchers who come to him are not the big league type pitchers, but the younger pitchers who have gotten hurt one too many times and are looking for an alternate method. It's basically made up of pitchers who were on their last legs..And it either met quitting baseball alltogether or doing it Marshall's way..
But I doubt this style of pitching will ever make it to the big leagues, because what it would mean is it would basically put the 30 or so other team pitching coaches with their conventional pitching styles out of business..They'll never allow this to happen in pro baseball.
But I doubt this style of pitching will ever make it to the big leagues, because what it would mean is it would basically put the 30 or so other team pitching coaches with their conventional pitching styles out of business..They'll never allow this to happen in pro baseball.
whats odd also is the 4 man rotation vs. the 5 man rotation...... i think Billy Martin in his last stint with the A's was the last manager to use the 4 man rotation but it was common the years before........
id go back to the 4 man rotation, especially the first 2 months of the season, when rainouts and days off are more frequent.....
the guys now are weak, compared to those guys....... go try and pull drysdale or gibson for a closer in the 9th...... yeah, good luck with that one...
id go back to the 4 man rotation, especially the first 2 months of the season, when rainouts and days off are more frequent.....
the guys now are weak, compared to those guys....... go try and pull drysdale or gibson for a closer in the 9th...... yeah, good luck with that one...
