The baseball season is a little over three weeks old and we are already hearing of many injuries to the players, especially the pitchers. For example, a headline of the few days ago read, “Padres fear another pitcher may be lost.” Sadly, their fears have come to fruition. He is the third pitcher that they have now lost.
What is especially disturbing is that the pitcher now says that he has been experiencing pain over the last few weeks. But because he was able to “loosen” the arm he continued to pitch. But yet, common sense should have been enough to tell him that after all these years of pitching and experiencing several surgeries on his pitching arm, he would know that when he feels pain it is the body’s way of telling him that something is amiss.
If you have been reading my blogs, you’ll know that I predicted that such occurrences would happen. It was really a no-brainer to do this. In fact, you can do this for just about any major league baseball team — as well as other sports teams. Why? Because teams do not look at the two main reasons why injuries occur.
First and foremost is pitching mechanics or as I like to say, pitching technique . In order to examine pitching technique to determine if there are potential reasons for injuries to occur, you must first have a specialist on board who is capable of doing visual biomechanical analyses.
The specialist must have a firm grasp of what constitutes effective technique and understand the physics and purpose behind every joint action in the sequence of events that take place during the pitch. Compare this to what present-day baseball pitching coaches do. They watch a pitcher pitch without any knowledge of what takes place during the heart of the throw and try to make corrections in the before and after aspects of the pitch — which have no effect on what takes place in the middle of the throw.
Second the specialist should be able to determine from the biomechanical analysis (and some simple strength exercises) where there are potential physical weaknesses as they relate to the throwing motion. He must also know enough about specialized exercises with which the pitcher can develop strength exactly where it is needed. In other words, he can develop strength in a specific joint action or actions that are in need of improvement or correction.
This is highly specialized work but the kind of work that is needed on this level of play. Teams pay multimillion dollar salaries to the players but nothing for specialists who can keep their players healthy and performing at the highest level possible. And then they have the gall to complain or make lame excuses on why the team is not doing well.
But as the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. They get the players if they have enough money but they do not get any support staff to make sure that the players are capable of performing as expected and doing so for many years.
For more information on this topic read Build a Better Athlete