Do baseball pitchers improve mechanics after biomechanical evaluations?

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine how often flaws in pitching mechanics identified from biomechanical analysis are corrected. The biomechanics of 46 baseball pitchers were evaluated twice, with an average of 12 months (range 2–48 months) between evaluations. Pitchers were healthy at the time of both evaluations, competing at the high school, college, minor league or Major League level. After warming up, each participant pitched 10 full-effort fastballs. Automated three-dimensional motion analysis was used to compute eight kinematic parameters which were compared with a database of elite professional pitchers. Flaws—defined as deviations from the elite range—were explained to each participant or coach after his initial evaluation. Data from the second evaluation revealed that 44% of all flaws had been corrected. Flaws at the instant of foot contact (stride length, front foot position, shoulder external rotation, shoulder abduction, elbow flexion) or slightly after foot contact (time between pelvis rotation and upper trunk rotation) seemed to be corrected more often than flaws near the time of ball release (knee extension and shoulder abduction). Future research may determine which level athletes or which training methods are most effective for correcting flaws.

Keywords:

• Kinematics
• training
• amateur
• professional

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Dave Fortenbaugh, Ph.D. and Tony Laughlin, M.S. for their assistance in data collection and processing, and Ebony Thompson for her assistance in literature review.