Short Post on Pitching Mechanics

Hey all! Just wanted to make a quick post on pitching mechanics. We recently had a kid come into the clinic with elbow pain. After examining the elbow, we came to the conclusion that he likely had an Ulnar Collateral Ligament tear (Tommy John). I found a picture from a few months prior of the same kid simulating his throwing mechanics in the clinic.

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To shorten this somewhat long (and boring) story, I will tell you this:

I performed a video analysis of this kid pitching on flat ground while in our physical therapy clinic. Myself and another therapist told the kid and his father that if he continued to throw like this that he would place large amounts of stress on his throwing arm and greatly increase his chance of future arm troubles. They told us that he was working with a pitching coach is St. Louis that WANTED their pitchers to throw like this. The therapist and myself were stunned. Why would ANYONE teach pitching this way??? Look at the picture below:

This was a video that I paused exactly at the moment of lead-foot contact with the ground. Look at his right arm (throwing arm). It is almost perfectly horizontal. This is bad.

When a pitcher's lead foot makes contact with the ground, his trunk/shoulders begin to rotate toward home plate. When their trunk begins to rotate, their throwing shoulder should already be at or near full external rotation. This means that, in the picture above, his right arm should be VERTICAL (forearm up and down), NOT HORIZONTAL (forearm going left and right).

I have a couple of pictures here of Hall-of-Famer Greg Maddux at different points in his career when pitching. In both pictures, his lead foot is making contacting with the ground, his trunk/shoulder is beginning to rotate forward toward the plate, and his throwing arm/forearm is vertical.

Maybe there is a reason he had a long, and more importantly, healthy Major League career.

Here's a link to a blog entry I made about a year ago on Why Some Pitchers Always Seem to Have Arm Trouble.

Just some food for thought if you are a pitcher or are the parent/coach of kid(s) that pitch.