Driveline Mechanics analysis of Brandon League
Apparently, League's mechanics are very unique.
almost 2 years ago
$cHu
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Yeah... uh... LL is not a fan of Driveline Mechanics.
Pitching in general is a violent action on the body. There is no evidence that things like “hyperabduction” lead to injury. Every pitcher faces injury at some point, but it has more to do with the physiological makeup of the person than the mechanics of throwing. In other words, pitchers vary in the amount of violence their body can handle. Until there is evidence that pitchers who throw a certain way get injured more frequently, this kind of analysis needs to be taken with a 10 lb. bag of salt.
Also, he thinks League might make some starts with the Mariners. We all know this is false. Technically there is a chance, but there is also a chance League becomes a janitor at the local grocery store.
Even the main author admits as much.
I’ve come around to thinking that I need to re-develop my thoughts on pitching mechanics, and while I still strongly believe in a lot of what I’ve said before, rehashing the same thing over and over again isn’t all that productive.
Oh, you're right
Well maybe he did then, but that same author did write another post with a bunch of the same old jargon like “scapular loading” since then, though to be fair he didn’t explicitly relate it to injury potential this time.
When you say "LL is not a fan of..."
are you speaking for everyone on the site, the authors, or… what?
De Gutibus non disputandum est
by Bearskin Rugburn on Mar 1, 2010 7:37 AM PST up reply actions
LL's general philosophy.
Good analysis is what is preached here. Bad analysis is not acceptable. Driveline Mechanics may present a good analysis, but it is based on highly questionable science.
It’s a FanShot so it’s not big deal. I wasn’t trying to stop this kind of thing from being posted in the future, it was more of an FYI. You just won’t find many people who adhere to the LL philosophy and think DM as interesting.
Yeah I'm with you. I didn't mean to come of so dickish
I just think people tend toward orthodoxy on this site and that’s never a good thing. If you had presented your arguments as your own I’d have had no problem whatsoever with the comment, but referring to LL as an entity with a single opinion made it sound too much like a doctrine.
De Gutibus non disputandum est
by Bearskin Rugburn on Mar 1, 2010 9:40 AM PST up reply actions
What if he had said
“The LL community in general is not a fan of…”
or
“DM has been criticized many times here at LL…”
?
I agree that you don’t want to see a kind of ossifying dogma restrict expression of contrary views, but you also don’t want to be fighting the same damn battles over and over with folks who have just arrived and haven’t caught up with what, for want of a better term, might be called “established wisdom.”
Meh, don't worry about it.
I think it was an appropriate question for Bearskin to ask and for me to answer. No reason to get caught up in the semantics of my original statement.
I think the more common usage of unique is
along the lines of rare, not one-of-a-kind. That said, it would have been better to choose a more suited word.
Yeah, like Wilder said
This whole school of thought is basically the definition of pseudo-science and we don’t generally like to perpetuate it here.
*cough*
And no one noticed the connection?
Also, the hate for DL on here is completely unwarranted, the stuff being preached over there has actual scientific merit. Chris O Leary talks about very similar theories and has received letters from the people who do this stuff for a living telling him that there is actual scientific fact behind them, there is obviously something worthwile here.
If you don’t think hyperabduction negatively affects the shoulder, raise your elbow above your shoulder, do you feel the tendons in the shoulder tightening a lot more than if it was at shoulder level? Now, imagine doing this while throwing 90 miles an hour.
If there was no basis of fact in this type of analysis, why is every pitcher who shares Mark Prior’s arm action injury prone, and nearly all of those who don’t tend to avoid major arm issues?
I ask this sincerely.
I thought I recalled Will Carroll always insisting that his mechanics were great but he was just abused. I don’t really follow this stuff.
Tom House, who built his mechanics, said that, everyone parrotted him.
But if his mechanics weren’t perfect; in fact one of the worst examples ever and the reason he hasn’t pitched a major league game in 4 years, would you honestly admit it and completely ruin you and your school’s reputation in the process, seeing how it’s what they teach all their pitchers? The Cubs front office gets way too much undeserved flak over this.
Oh yeah, Anthony Reyes has the same arm action, went to Tom House’s school as well, guess where he is now. Dontrelle Willis, useless. Max Scherzer, a history of shoulder problems. Jordan Zimmermann, Tommy John Surgery. Joel Zumaya gets a new arm every year. Brandon Mccarthy, always injured. Shaun Marcum, TJ. AJ Burnett, TJ. Josh Johnson, TJ. Chris Carpenter, TJ. BJ ryan, TJ and now a junkballer who cant throw a strike. Billy Wagner, TJ. Fransisco Liriano, TJ.
You would think that with a list of big names this long, infact longer, of shining examples of why Mark Prior’s arm action sucks would be enough to convince this blog that what is being done at driveline has some sort of truth behind it, but apparently not. There is a lot to determine what causes pitchers to be injured, but i’ll be damned if mechanical flaws are not the foremost reason.
Show me the list of pitchers with the same mechanics who haven't had major injuries.
Put them side-by-side. Don’t tell me there aren’t any.
I'm having trouble finding any with long careers.
The list I can make up for what you stated consists of little more than players with young careers or they are relievers who don’t pitch much anyways.
Brandon Morrow off the top of my head, already showing signs of a major injury likely occuring soon though.
Drew Storen, a college reliever who doesn’t pitch many innings anyways.
Rick Porcello, still young.
You get the picture.
I call bullshit.
If there was no basis of fact in this type of analysis, why is every pitcher who shares Mark Prior’s arm action injury prone, and nearly all of those who don’t tend to avoid major arm issues?
Mark Prior was considered to have perfect mechanics.
If you don’t think hyperabduction negatively affects the shoulder, raise your elbow above your shoulder, do you feel the tendons in the shoulder tightening a lot more than if it was at shoulder level? Now, imagine doing this while throwing 90 miles an hour.
People have different flexibility levels. What might be difficult for you to do, others have no problem doing. And if it hurts to throw a ball because of your mechanics, you are obviously hurting your arm. Injury likely has nothing to do with the mechanics of the person, only with his or her physical limitations.
The physical mechanics of the human body is a real science, but there is no substantial evidence any particular arm action is worse than any other. Pitching is a violent action no matter which way you throw the ball. Major injuries cannot be predicted for anyone with the way they throw. It only takes one mistake to exceed a pitcher’s physical limitations to cause a major injury to occur.
I will say this about the mechanics of pitching: a pitcher can control the movement/speed by changing their mechanics. This is why teams and pitchers focus on mechanics. As for injury, if it hurts with the way you throw, then it will probably lead to injury.
More power to the people at DLM for researching the mechanics of pitching, but right now it is mostly theory.
The issue is with your methodology
The evidence you provide to back up your claims is pretty much entirely anecdotal.
Here’s what we know: Pitching is incredibly stressful on the human body and can lead to a wide array of injuries. There’s a difference between recognizing that and claiming you know exactly which motions cause which stresses at what points in the human body, because we don’t know that at all and you’ve got a long way to go to make those connections. Stress mechanics is an incredibly complicated field that y’all are wayyy oversimplifying.
by OlSalty on Mar 1, 2010 4:08 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
Read these, especially the first one.
http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2008/8/8/589372/biomechanics-and-you
http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2009/7/27/964592/on-elbows-and-curves-in-young
It's hard to convince people to let you eat them if you're an asshole. - Thingray
Never taking Mark Prior and perfect mechanics as anything but a lie and so should everyone else
But all of this is blatantly obvious. AS I SAID, there are many factors that determine a person’s susceptibility to injury, but if the percentage of major league pitchers showcasing mechanical flaws having a major arm/shoulder injury is much higher than those who dont, which is fact as far as I am concerned, and this in spite of individual genetics, mechanics clearly have a major impact on how healthy the pitcher will be. People complain about the evaluation being too simple to have any merit, but what if 90% of evaluating a pitcher is little more than looking for specific defects as early warning signs, and working from there? It’s not like we are all different species, we are all made (at least attempted to be) the same.
The implication being that you know way more about this than someone who's studied it at post-graduate level
by Graham MacAree on Mar 1, 2010 9:06 PM PST up reply actions
This is American Graham.
And by “this,” I mean the internet. We’re all honest, salt-of-the-earth types who prefer unprovable anecdotes to your highfalutin schooling. Maybe you should keep your book learning in communist England where it belongs.
I'll try responding in your language.
All of this is blatantly obvious. AS I DIDN’T SAY YET, there are many factors that determine a person’s susceptibility to injury, but if the percentage of blog commenters showcasing logical flaws thinking they know whether a pitcher will be healthy than those who don’t is higher than those who don’t, which is a fact as far as I’m concerned, and this in spite of people trying to help them buck their genetics, nobody knows at all how much mechanics affect how healthy a pitcher will be. People complain about the evaluators not knowing what they are talking about, but what if 90% of the people trying to help pitchers by changing their natural arm motions are causing them injury because they don’t know any better and listen to people like you. It’s not like anybody actually knows what’s going on in human joints while they’re being stressed, no matter how much they talk about inverted W’s.
Please read that first article above. Graham just scratched the surface of showing what nobody knows about biomechanics, including all the supposed experts.
It's hard to convince people to let you eat them if you're an asshole. - Thingray
Elbow above shoulder.
If you’re going to say that having your elbow above your shoulder while doing a violent action will lead to injury apply it to all sports. I’m thinking of swimming, in particular, butterfly. If the elbow above shoulder thing caused injury 100% of the time then all butterfliers would have shoulder issues, which is not true at all, seeing as I do not and I don’t know a single one that does.
by Kirk on Mar 3, 2010 1:57 AM PST via mobile up reply actions
Don't be silly
Nobody is saying that elbow over your shoulder causes injury 100% of the time. It may be more likely to cause injury, and that’s what all of these guys are getting at.
No, that's not what they're getting at
They say that it is more likely to cause an injury. Flat out.
by Graham MacAree on Mar 3, 2010 7:35 PM PST up reply actions
Yes. And I agree that it is incorrect at this time to be making definitive statements like that
However, I was objecting to the strawmen set up that the mechanics guys say certain traits will result in an injury all of the time.
Opisgod
Can you please do a FanPost on Driveline Mechanics of the 10 pitcher’s you believe will be most likely get injured next year due to mechanical problems, and the 10 pitcher’s you believe are least likely. I will bump it to the front page, and give it a link to THT as well.
The reason I ask for this is that nearly all of the mechanical experts these days are basing much of their opinions off of anecdotal evidence, and while some of the ideas stated may have some validity, it’s certainly not enough. So if you would be willing to go out on a limb and test your theories, you would get a lot more respect and it would help to legitimize them.
by vivaelpujols on Mar 1, 2010 10:04 PM PST reply actions 1 recs
Yeah, and it's often retroactively applied too
These sorts of biomechanical analysts certainly do predict that certain guys are at risk for injuries, but I haven’t seen much follow-up where they see how accurate their predictions are. After an injury, of course, there’s always an explanation.
Yeah
I don’t neccesarily think that biomechanical analysis is useless just because it’s a very complicated subject and most models are just going to be generalizations. but I do think it has to be tested.
How should I go about doing this?
I should obviously do more than just a list though…
List each pitcher in each group
And make a couple of notes about their bad traits and their good traits. You could also show some pics or .gifs to help illustrate you points.
Perhaps not
But may Opis wouldn’t object to making a comprehensive list? Something like 50 pitchers in the “good” group and 50 in the “bad” group would a pretty good sample.
That would be better, but there's another small sample issue regarding time
Because their argument is that certain mechanics will adversely a pitcher’s career moreso than “normal” mechanics. If those results come back negative someone could easily claim that just because the injury didn’t happen this year doesn’t mean it won’t happen or that those mechanics will not be the cause of it.
It would probably be better to isolate a single mechanical action they believe is more likely to cause injury to a particular part of the body, identify a number of minor league pitchers who share that particular mechanic, and run a cohort study on them over the course of their careers compared to a control group of pitchers they believe have no glaring mechanical issues. If their study group has a higher rate of injury to that part of the body, then they’d have some evidence. That, of course, would take a lot of time and effort, so I doubt anyone on the internet is going to want to do it, but I don’t see a way of providing reliable evidence for these claims without it. Pitchers get injured so much it’s hard to prove a correlation between a mechanical action and an injury without doing a much more in-depth study.
That would take a while
But 20 wouldn’t be a stretch right now, just gotta find a couple of hours to dedicate to making it.
Thanks so much
And I would take Satly’s suggestion above: try to isolate one single trait that you believe is detrimental towards injury, like the inverted W.
by vivaelpujols on Mar 3, 2010 10:34 PM PST up reply actions
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