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SaberSeminar Breakdown Part 1: PLEASE SAVE THE PITCHER

Sorry about the wait, there was quite a bit of information to breakdown. I really enjoyed my time at the SaberSeminar and learned a tremendous amount. I tried to present you guys with the most important points and break it down into categories to keep everyone focused in on one topic. Today's topic was probably the most prevalent and important part of the event and has been a topic that I have been dialed into for a quite awhile.


Glenn Fleisig: The True Relationship between Pitch Velocity and Elbow Stress: A Biomechanical Study:

Glenn Fwanted to quantify the relationship between Velocity and UCL tears. Here was his findings.

- High School

- 57% of TJ Surgeries

- Collegiate: 0.86 Surgeries per team per year(almost 1 per team a year, take a moment think about it and realize how bad that is)

- Pros

- 15% of minor league pitchers have the surgery

- 25% of Major league pitchers(likely due to age and experience) have the surgery

- 80% MLB pitchers return from TJ surgery. There is a 12-18 months return to performance. Once they return there is relatively no change to performance after surgery (after ½ a season to). The 80% also means that some do not come back fully (John Lamb anyone)

What causes this problem? Amount of pitching is number one as always when discussing these topics. Second is condition, nutrition, and rest, make sure that if you have a kid playing baseball give them some rest, If they are pitching 80% of the year the odds of injury go up exponentially. Third is mechanics and pitch types, This is the area I am most interested in, there are a lot of player that just aren’t getting the most out of their bodies (Garrett Richards, Tyson Ross) instead of just doing weighted ball training to increase velocity (more on that later). Lastly is velocity and effort which is rolled into the previous reason for injuries. There were 40 surgeries in 2008, that number has risen to 160 in 2016.

There is a relationship between fastball velocity and Elbow Varus torque, the harder they threw the greater the torque. Every Pitcher is different (it is not a one size fits all approach) which makes it so difficult to determine what is best for an individual player. Effort matters more that Velocity, if a pitcher has easy velocity(term we hear a lot before the draft) or if the player is making the most of their body, velocity shouldn’t mean as much. Sidearm pitchers have less torque on the elbow, likely due to the lesser velocity. There wasn’t a correlation of innings pitched after TJ surgery and risk of re-injury, so inning limits aren’t really as important as much as monitoring the pitcher and gauging where he is at after every outing. 65-75% of shoulder injuries make it back, so while TJs are bad shoulder injuries are worse and have actually been going down as TJs have risen.

Interesting note: The faster you threw the worse your ERA & WHIP but Higher the WAR, that is probably due to WAR being centered around FIP, (Terrible stat that everyone uses) which only measures strikeouts, walks, Hit batsman, wild pitches, and Home runs, so when a pitcher gives up a single, single, bases clearing double *cough Bud Norris cough* the will change be less in WAR vice if he gave up a solo home run and still gets the save.


Will Carroll: Saving The Pitcher 2017: A Data-Driven Approach:

Will took us on a history lesson to start his presentation. He discussed how far we have come in evaluating pitching injuries. Saving the Pitcher written by Carroll himself was one of the first books discussing the problem with how pitchers have been handled. Next thing that happened was the introduction of Pitcher Abuse Points a stat developed by Baseball Prospectus. Now we have begun the data collection phase with using such devices as the Motus sleeve, Statcast, Trackman and the Rapsodo device.

The development of biomechanical devices have enabled baseball to finally see real time what is actually going on in the arm of a pitcher. The best to use are wearable devices as you can uses them anywhere versus optical which are usually big, expensive and only able to be used in certain environments. What is the new topic that has been discussed within in those that are on the forefront of the pitching movement is the discussion around Acute and Chronic pitching. Acute here means what happens in the short term during your pitching cycle (what does a pitcher do during, after, and in between starts), Chronic means what happens in the long term (how much do you pitch during the season, what do you do in the offseason). This is all about achieving a balance in the pitchers lives, bad balance equates to injuries. Then Will went on to advertise the product the company he represents produces and that is the Motus sleeve. The Motus sleeve tracks throws not pitches, because they believe pitches are not the only problem. He advertised the Motus one and then said they are coming out with a Motus concussion but that was all he could say about it.

Kelvin Yeo, Seth Daniels: Rapsodo Pitch Tracking system intro:

Kevin introduced a new pitch tracking system called Rapsodo. Rapsodo measures:

-Velocity

-Strike

-Break

-Total Spin

-Spin Axis

-True Spin

-Spin Efficiency aka what amount of spin goes into creating break

Rapsodo can be used for softball, development and design a pitch and can also be used to provide a baseline for gauging a player’s performance. The Hit tracking function is coming soon although it will be similar to Statcast and other programs that do the same thing.


Chris Geary: Review of Sports Medicine In Baseball, 2017:

Chris informed us of the Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. He also informed us about Articular Cartilage injuries, which basically are injuries that are hard to fix because there are not many cells in those areas (cells actually do the healing in your body if you did not know).


Mike Reinold: An Update on the Effect of Weighted Balls Training on Arm Stress, Range of Motion and Injury Rates:

Mike started off here by stating that there is a correlation between the rise of weighted ball programs and the increasing velocity. He showed us a graph of the different weights for balls and the highest risk of injury was the balls that weigh less than normal baseballs(Have you ever tried to throw a wiffle ball as hard as you can it hurts), next highest injury prone baseballs were the weighted ones. Mike then gave us a rundown of his program. Knee, rocker, and run and gun throws with a max of 35 throws each(small amount actually). He had both a control group(normal baseballs) and a Weighted ball group. Results of the study:

-80% improved velocity among the Weighted ball group (12% had decreased)

-67% improved velocity among the Control group (14% had decreased)

-The Weighted Ball group gained 5 degrees of external rotation

-Out of 44 players who participated 4 had injuries all among the weighted ball group, two of them were UCL tears.

-The injured players showed an external rotation increase of 10%

Some more findings from the study include that the Weighted Ball programs do not increase arm strength or arm speed and in fact it may be the opposite. The reason that weighted ball programs word is because they increase the layback of the arm or the external rotation. Throwing 8 months of the year makes a pitcher 5 times more likely to be injured. Finally long toss does in fact increase the stress on the pitcher's arm. For more information check out Mike Reinold’s website.

This is where I am going to shamelessly plug a pitching program called TopVelocity. Brent Pourciau has a program that is more about using the pitchers entire body to increase velocity. Brent views pitchers as athletes and thus treats them as such. This program has a ground up approach, what I mean by this is they literally work from the flow up to one strengthening and two fixing the mechanics of a pitcher to get more out of the body without increasing injury risk and in fact their goal is to prevent injury. If you know a kid that is looking for pitching programs I recommend Brent. Brent has been around for a long time before most of the weighted ball programs and the MLB and baseball have been trending towards the direction of TopVelocity recently. Check it out at Topvelocity.net or watch their Youtube videos and see for yourself (I am in no way being paid for this, I am just trying to broadcast a great pitching program).


Part 2 will be the information shared by the executives and former player.


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