Phil Coke and the Kinetic Chain.

Many moons ago, I wrote a piece on the kinetic chain.  It’s an integral system to baseball, describing the flow of energy from the very tip of a pitcher’s toe to the baseball he wishes to hurl toward home plate.  Without it there is no velocity on the ball.  The ball would merely go from the pitcher’s hand straight to the ground while merely attempting to reach terminal velocity.

With a pitcher it is easy to see that the arm does plenty of work to get the ball to the plate.  But the truth of the matter is that the arm, shoulder, hand, wrist, elbow…are more there for providing control to the ball.  The curve on a curve ball, giving some chin music, jamming a hitter inside.  That’s what the arm does.

The lower half of the body however, gives the pitcher velocity and basically all of it too.  Moving the pitchers weight forward, rotating the body through the pitch–those are all more valuable towards creating velocity then any muscle the arm could ever provide.

Now I’ve had to fight this point with people.  I don’t get why.  Yes you can make your arm throw a ball pretty hard while flat footed, your arm is just gonna start to hurt pretty darn quick.  Plus I guarantee you are throwing well below 50mph regardless.  MLB pitchers prefer to reach 90mph at least.  So whenever I am presented with this argument I whip out my evidence.  Today we have Phil Coke.

Phil Coke when healthy can get a velocity on his pitch from anywhere from 92-94mph.  Not bad for a lefty.  Recently enough Phil Coke suffered an ankle injury.  What’s his velocity now?  As of the 2011 season he is averaging about 91.7mph.  I’m assuming that the average is closing in on normal because he is recovering as evidenced by his August average of about 94mph.  Now I shouldn’t have to say more at this point.  Phil Coke hurts Phil Coke so there for Phil Coke can’t pitch like Phil Coke.  But my transgressors would at this point say something along the lines of “something is mechanically wrong.”  No duh.

Ok, so now a more descriptive explanation.  It is a bit of a human instinct to avoid pain.  We avoid getting hurt and avoid making things hurt that are already hurt.  It’s the big reason why we created pain medication.  Hurting isn’t good.  Suffice to say that if Phil Coke has a hurt ankle, he’s not gonna wanna have to feel his hurt ankle.  But his job involves him using his feet to effectively make non hittable strikes.  So to do his but still avoid feeling his source of discomfort, Phil will subconciously decide to use other muscle groups to try and accomplish what he was able to do before using his now injured body parts.

These new muscle groups are not accustomed to generating the velocity he needs to be the same old effective Phil Coke.  They are for one not conditioned for doing so.  His other muscles have had years of training to throw a baseball 93mph.  The others have not.  Secondly, they may have no chance in hell of ever being able to throw that velocity.  Some muscles just have very little to do with pitching and more resemble a “passing through” point with the kinetic chain.  So where the legs now lack in generating velocity, now a pitcher will try to compensate with the ever popular “arm.”

Like I said above, the arm holding the ball is more or less there to give the ball accuracy and movement.  Not velocity.  Yes it gives some, but it can only handle so much of a workload before you start to affect other things (such as how long your elbow will stay together).  Without accuracy all the velocity in the world wouldn’t matter.  I’d rather see a 91mph fastball get placed accurately than see a 94mph one get thrown way too high.

In the world of baseball, pitching injuries are the worst thing.  From blisters to a hangnail the very facets of a pitchers of ability can be greatly affected.  Something like a bone bruise could really throw off a pitchers game simply because he cannot transfer energy effectively through his body.  So yes, while you may give a position player a few days of rest and some DH time to recover from something simple–go ahead and just throw your pitchers on the DL.

Pitcher Analysis: Al Alburquerque

Ahhhhh…the new fun pitcher to watch.  A new man who loves to strike them out.  And ever since Zumaya’s arm ‘sploded Tigers fans needed someone fun to watch.

But Al Al isn’t without err.  He walks way to many.  A problem of many guys who like to see how far above 95mph they can throw.  At some point these guys prefer to throw the ball really hard instead of try to get the out.  With all that said Al likes to keep the damage to the minimum.  He has an LOB% of nearly 80% and in 33 innings he has yet to give up a home run.  That HR stat, it’s quite impressive for a man who only uses two pitches.

Now for the pitches.  Mr. Al has two that he likes to use.  He has a fastball (of both the two and four seam varieties) that he throws at 95+mph.  He also has a slider that he absolutely loves and clocks it at around 85mph.  Now normally for a relief pitcher two pitches are fine and I’d classify the breaking pitch (slider) as basically his “change-up” but in the case of Al Al I’m just gonna go ahead and say that the fastball is his “change-up.”

Why would I say that?  Well, Al throws his slider more than 50% of the time meaning it’s the fastballs that keep the hitter off balance instead of the breaking ball.  It’s a strange setup because normally a pitcher establishes the fastball and then moves on to the other pitches.  But Al Al seems to be a bit of a hipster when it comes to pitching tradition.

Now on to a chart or two.

Albuquerque release chart

What a strange release point.  Straight over the center of the plate.  Why?  Off to the video…

http://mlb.mlb.com/shared/flash/video/share/ObjectEmbedFrame.swf?content_id=16172067&topic_id=&width=400&height=254&property=mlb

Yep.  Just as I thought.  The only thing touching that pitching mound is his big toe.  Nothing wrong with that.  Other than that it’s a pretty low release that stays pretty consistent.

Mechanically Alburquerque is very smooth.  He gets from point A to Point B with very little effort–no extra motions, no stupid little stops–and seems to naturally generate quite a bit of velocity.  He may use the slider too much but as long as it’s effective and he keeps locating it the way he does it’s not a big issue for a relief pitcher.  He keeps his release generally consistent and a solid mechanics keep him deceptive as well.  Overall I’d have to say that the Tigers have a very solid pitcher in Al Alburquerque.

Pitcher Analysis: Adam Wilk

So I went to Mariners game and what started off good, got pretty bad when relief pitching started to come in.  So to keep myself entertained I tuned myself in to the man pitching the 9th and watched his mechanics as best as I could from a bit of a distance (but from behind home plate).

So to start off lets look at Adams bare stats, so far he’s pitched in 3 games for the Tigers and features a 4.05 ERA with a 5.81 FIP and currently has an incredibly lucky .200 BABIP.  He features an upper 80′s fastball with a slider to break up the monotony.

Enough boring numbers…lets talk about the interesting stuff.

So I was sitting there and what caught my was how the GS leg planted after it kicked.  It was basically landing way off toward the first base line.  Well, that’s really letting his body fly open and his release has to be a bit later to get that ball to go back over the plate and really late to get it inside on a righty hitter.  He’s basically a side-arm pitcher so, just in my mind that makes it a bit more difficult to release correctly.

Adam Wilk Release Point

So I started watching closer, if I see one thing I’ll probably see another so I started to pay attention to his arms.  And I saw what something a lot of pitchers do wrong and something a bit more unique.  I saw him swing his arm into the cocked position all wrong, very herky jerky and incredibly rushed.  Wilk’s is rushed in a special way, it’s rushed to where when he decides to load his shoulder blades, he only has time to bring one back and then cock the arm.  Overall none of that is good for his shoulder/elbow because the loading rate is putting extreme stress on his joints, but also the awkward position he’s putting his arm in is doing him no good either.

Did I mention none of this is good for his control either?  Might have something to do with those extra runs he gave up to the Mariners.  Maybe I’m just bitter still after having gone to my first Tigers loss.  But at any rate, it’s something for him to work on.

Pitcher Analysis: Bronson Arroyo

That’s a good way to start this analysis off.  The stupid leg kick of Bronson Arroyo.  Question is:  Does it make the rest of his mechanics stupid?  And does the stupid equal wrong?  These are the questions I set out to answer.

The Goofy

Watch the video above.  Aint that goofy?  Sooooooooooo weird.

So he kicks his leg out straight in front of him.  I know it’s weird.  But it’s not necessarily bad.  Potential problem yes.  But as long as the ball is doing what it’s supposed to than there really isn’t anything to worry about.

The Good

Strangely enough, after such a weird beginning, Arroyo does a lot right.  So really Bronson Arroyo is a bit of a poster boy for good mechanics, minus that beginning glitch.

I’ll just checklist the good stuff.

1. Aside from the goofiness of the beginning of the kick, he gets the knee nice and high.  I like this because it makes it easier to get good timing with the next thing.
2. The break of the hands comes at the moment the body begins to move forward.  This is essential to setting things up the rest of the wind up and delivery.
3. The arm is swung behind the body versus dropped and brought up.  This controls loading rate and maintains proper timing toward delivery.
4. Nice long stride with the GS leg that lands on a bent knee versus a straight knee.  A straight knee kills the kinetic chain and of course puts unnecessary stress on the knee.
5. The elbow goes through a nice smooth loading stage.
6. I can draw a straight line from the finger tips in one arm to the finger tips in the other as the PAS arm travels through the arm slot.
7. The GS leg is re-straightened  at the point of delivery allowing all the energy generated to be transfered to the ball.

The Bad

Arroyo doesn’t do much wrong.  But there are a couple of minor problems.

1. When the shoulders are loaded he brings the elbow of his PAS arm above shoulder level.  Since he has a pretty smooth loading rate and doesn’t over load this isn’t a huge issue.
2. The glove doesn’t end up in a proper position.  Not a mechanical issue, but I don’t like my pitchers to end up with a liner in the face.

While weird mechanics are in fact…weird.  It doesn’t mean that they are necessarily bad.  Every delivery has small dangers but mechanically speaking, Arroyo’s aren’t anything to be particularly worried about.

What Happened to Jose? (pt. 2)

Ok finally I’ve gotten around to finishing my Jose report.  Some notes that I didn’t cover in my last post:  Jose had elbow tendinitis which is an inflammation of the a tendon in the elbow.  So that means the problem was physical, but my work shall not be fruitless.  Maybe I can find what caused or led to the tendinitis.

First step in the process is to find the video.  Off to the webz.

Found one.  No he’s not in his Tiger uniform.  But that’s not important.  We need video of him not only pitching successfully, but healthy.  Now really I’m assuming both because for all I know that pitch was out of the strike zone and he was pitching hurt while doing it, but I have to assume right now.

The Good

Doing the good stuff is kinda boring but ill do it anyway.

• Nice high leg kick.  Establishes the timing strongly.
• I can draw a straight line through his shoulders from the cocked position on to release.

The Goofy

Watch the end of the video.  It’s full of things that can hurt a pitcher, mostly in the “he looks like he’s gonna start hitting himself” kinda way.

The Bad

Here’s the fun stuff.

This a screen capture from the video.

This is a big problem.  Look at the right arm.  It is separated from the glove hand before the body has started moving forward.  So right now the arm is ahead of the body.  In order to create proper timing Valverde must now either go incredibly slow with his arm or add a pause.  Now I’ve had small arguments in the past about over compensation of other joints, more particularly when it comes to fire ballers, but I believe it to be true of all pitchers when the do either something mechanically wrong or have an inhibitive injury in another part of the body.  The joint I see most often getting over compensated is of course the elbow because most pitching mechanics out there have some sort of timing error.  Some are minor, others are pretty severe.  Jose’s is severe.  Now his over compensation probably comes in spurts.  Those innings where he just can’t find the strike zone are the biggest culprit.

More then likely in those moments Valverde’s arm is lagging behind his body messing up his release point.  In order to adjust on the fly he probably increases the loading rate on his elbow.  This increase in loading rate leads to an increase of stress on the joint itself.  Keep up the stress on the joint for long enough, pain in some form for some reason shall ensue.  In the case of Jose Valverde, it was right elbow tendinitis.

I’m not really saying that Tigers fans should be particularly worried about Jose.  For most of the season Jose should be fine.  But it’s those last couple months that this type injury has the strongest potential of sneaking up on a him just because of the shear length of an MLB season.  The likelihood of late season breakdowns only increases as he gets older as well.  Good news is that this type of injury can be prevented.  Watching his pitch count is key.  Especially when he’s having trouble finding the strike zone.  Doing this will significantly cut down on the wear and tear on his body.  Personally I’d give him 30 – 35 pitches on a good night (enough to pitch 2 innings if necessary) and 20 if he just isn’t finding the strike zone.

What’s happened to Jose? (pt. 1)

Jose Valverde started off his season for the Detroit Tigers putting up great numbers.  He pitched 34 innings up to June 28th (approximately the all star break) and put up a .53 ERA with 32 strike outs.  Not bad at all.  Since than he has a 6.58 ERA in 26 innings pitched, but has still managed 29 strikeouts in that time.  But still it’s been ugly at times.  The question is what’s wrong?  Since I like the pitching aspect of this game, I guess I’ll be the one to explore.

First thing is to check out his release in the first half and compare it to the second half.

First Half:

Second Half:

Now I see that his release point is a bit higher in the second half of the season.  This is the first thing I shall note.  Something more important than release point is the actual location of the pitch.  No one cares about release if the result is good.

First Half Locations:

Second Half Locations:

And this is why we look at the location chart, because at first glance theres not much difference.  But that is why you must than pay attention to the pitch types as well.  Even though the locations are technically in the strike zone, I see sliders hanging and cutters not cutting.  Something else that is noteworthy is that the difference here is not that great.  But what makes me believe that once again release is his problem is simple percentages.  First half of the season Valverde got his outs about 30% of the time via ground out.  Second half:  16%.  Big difference which helps reinforce my point.

Next I want to find out what’s going on here behind the mechanics, but I’ll save that for Pt. 2.

Pitcher Analysis: Brian Bannister

OK it’s been awhile since I’ve made any sort of post, but it’s been for good reason.  Wasn’t quite sure how to get back into the swing of things so I figured I’d just start with some pitcher analysis to get my thoughts working again.

Before this thing starts to look like a Tigers blog, I’m gonna do a post on a Kansas City Royal.  Your first thought is like “oh sweet, Greinke post!”  Wrong.  Brian Bannister.  Wanna know why?  Mostly because I can and because he has some interesting things to his mechanics.

The Good

• Starting at the beginning we see a good, high leg kick and that he moves his hands in good unison with his leg as it comes up.  This leads too…
• Proper breaking of the glove and throwing hand.  This is essential in timing and arm slot which both equate to proper release point.
• This bullet point doesn’t have much to do with good pitching but his glove hand ends up by his arm pit.  This is more of a face protection thing for those hard liners.
• I don’t see this too often so this is definitely note worthy.  But Bannister brings the ball to the cocked position very well.  Very nice smooth motion there.  This takes lots of stress off the major joints in the arm such as the elbow and shoulder where most of the loading takes place.
• Very good hip rotation.  This is where a lot of the velocity of the pitch should come from.  This is the birth place of the pitching kinetic chain.

The Goofy

• I see one strange thing with this motion really and I’m working off whatever I can find off of YouTube/MLB.com.  The follow through after the pitch is full of awkward motion.  So much so that I first thought he was throwing the ball really funny.  But the reality is that he starts his follow through correctly with the arm going to the opposite side of his body, but than he quickly brings it back so it’s now moving directly away from home plate.  I put this under “goofy” because it’s not incredibly dangerous but it does have it’s dangers.  It puts stress on the joints, namely the shoulder.  Basically it’s negligible for him because the rest of his delivery is pretty sound with all the momentum and velocity coming from the proper sources in the chain.  So Bannister gets one “goofy.”

The Bad

• Normally bad things are easy to find, but I see nothing really in Bannisters delivery to cause me any sort of extreme alarm to just go ahead and label it “bad.”  Congrat’s Brian, you aren’t mechanically “bad.”

So there you guys have it, Brian Bannister is pretty interesting.  Good mechanics with an interesting quark.  Hopefully this is my foray into more frequent analysis.  As always, comments are appreciated.

Comparing Perfect Games: Who’s More Perfect?

What a year in pitching, as of right now it’s June 17th and there have already been three perfect games.  Officially only two but we all know that there have been three.

So the question begs to be asked, who pitched the most perfect game?

Determining what embodies a really good pitching performance is hard because it’s a matter of perspective.  Obviously going as many innings as possible while giving up a limited amount of runs is the ultimate goal, but since we’re dealing with three perfect games here, our criteria has to be a bit more critical.

So we set up our criteria for a perfect game and our grading system.  First off I will be giving each player (Dallas Braden, Roy Halladay, and Armando Galarraga) points based upon how they do.  First place in each category gets 5 points, second gets 3, and third gets one measly point.

The categories:  I will be judging off of grouder/fly ball ratio, ball/strike ratio, overall pitch count, strike outs, and release point.

So now I analyze.

Ground Out/Fly Out Ratio

Armando wins this one hands down.  Of the 28 outs he recorded in his perfect game, 14 were ground outs.  By my own personal judgment, grounders are more efficient outs to get.  Second place goes to Halladay who got 29% of his batters faced out via the ground ball.  So third place?  That goes to Mr. Braden, with a paltry 26% of batter getting out via the ground out.

Ball/Strike Ratio

Armando hit the strike zone 76% of the time.  Roy Halladay hit the K-Zone 62% of the time.  Braden hit the strike zone 70% of the time.

Armando, once again you win.

Pitch Count

Now Armando won this category hands down.  88 pitches through 28 total batters faced.  Halladay?  115 pitches.  Braden?  109.  It’s not even close.  Apparently when you attack the strike zone and get efficient outs, your pitch count stays wayyyyy down.  Now that’s impressive.

Strikeouts

This is more of a measure of “nastiness.”  The strikeout is probably the most embarrassing way to get called out during a game.  Great pitchers make batters look silly.  Halladay wins this category.  He struck out 40% of batters.  That’s an insane number.  Coming into second place is Dallas Braden with 22% of batters struck out.  Galarraga brings up the rear with 10% struck out.

Sorry Mando, you can’t win ‘em all.

Release Point

Release point is an indicator of consistency in mechanics.  It also doubles as a “nastiness” indicator because it indicates deceptiveness in the mechanics.  While Mando and Halladay were pretty close, I have to give this category to Halladay because there are no real extreme outliers.  Dallas, once again you get third.

Tallying the Score

Armando Galarraga:  19 points

Roy Halladay:  15 points

Dallas Braden:  11 points

So Armando, I award you the most perfect of perfect games.  Seeing as I’m a poor college student, the notoriety of winning a competition on my blog is all you get.

All information used in this post was gathered from Fangraphs.com and/or TexasLeagures.com

Keeping Tabs on Rick…

I did a little story after Rick Porcello’s last start discussing the mechanical issues that have been causing his issues on the mound.  The obvious answer was his arm slot was highly inconsistent.  This lead to less sink on his pitches.  Sinkerballers like sink on their pitches.  Trust me.

So I figured, lets see if there been any changes?  Looks like there have been some positive ones.

To save me some time I’m just going to link you guys to the PitchF/X charts, courtesy of TexasLeaguers.com.

My main focus is the release point chart.  Compared to the 2 starts I previously analyzed, this is a vast improvement.  It’s still not consistent enough to be truly effective but improvement is what we’re looking for.  Ideally you like to see those dots line up as much as possible.  While the up down position is probably most important, the horizontal position is more telling of how the batter is seeing the ball out of the pitchers hand.  The wide spacing means that it’s a bit easier to pick up on Ricks pitches still.

Now I want to look at the Spin Movement plus Gravity chart and the Pitch Location chart.

In the first chart we see location based upon spin movement of the ball plus the added effect of gravity.  I love this chart to be honest.  What we see in the chart is that Rick’s 2-seam fastball is staying down and inside on right handed batters as well as his change-up.  That’s a hard pitch to hit.  When we look at the actual pitch locations in the next chart, we are confirmed in seeing that a significant proportion of Ricks 2-seamers and change-ups were hitting that low inside corner on right handed batters.

Like I said, that’s a hard pitch to hit.  But if your release is giving a tip a split second before the bat reaches the plate, Major League batters know how to adjust.  But Rick’s improving, and based on this data I’m encouraged that more improvements will come.  I’m not thinking AAA any more for Rick, but maybe shutting him down for a start so that he can focus on his mechanics in bullpen sessions might do him some good.

Pitching Tall, Bad or Good?

A while back I talked about Phil Cokes mechanics and discussed how he “pitches tall.”  What I mean by that is that he doesn’t get lower to the ground when he comes forward with his velocity.  My reaction to this is that it restricts his velocity by not allowing him to take the maximum possible stride toward the plate.  But the question I recently found myself asking is this, is getting lower to the ground going to actually add velocity?  If so, is it necessary for everyone?

So I investigated, and pretty much got my answer right away.  I started by looking at a known hard thrower, Justin Verlander.  Guess who doesn’t lower himself toward the ground?  Justin Verlander.  And in a comparison between the aforementioned Phil Coke and Justin Verlander, I checked their average fastball velocities.

Verlander:  about 95mph

Coke:  about 93mph

So Verlander gets about 2mph more on his fastball than Coke,  and in the most important areas, they are pretty comparable mechanically.  That basically means that both have nice smooth motions.  But the question still must be asked, where does the extra velocity come from for Verlander?

So I looked at the top of the player profiles at Fangraphs.com and got my answer.  Big discrepancy in their heights.  Verlander is 6’5″, Coke is 6’1″.  Combining that information with the visual aid of video, I guessing that Verlander can more easily achieve a greater stride length than Coke.  Ah answers…I like them.  But to explain the answer I’ll explain the importance that I feel a bigger stride has on the result of the pitch.

• It decreases the distance between you and your target at release. If you can shave a few feet off of that 60 ft. distance legally, why not?  Remember, deception is a key part of pitching.
• Kinetics.  I talk about ‘em all the time but that forward motion is vital.  I tell people this to prove my point.  Stand put while throwing a ball as hard as you can and than throw the ball again while taking a step forward.  Guess which one achieve better velocity.

So, is pitching tall bad or good?  The true answer is that it depends on your height, or at least the design of your frame.  If most of your height is in your legs than you can probably achieve your maximum velocity without having to get lower to the ground.  But if you’re shorter then velocity can be added, or at the very least deception increased by maximizing your stride length toward the plate.