If you are not familiar with Jake Peavy's pitching mechanics, here is the link with commentary:
http://www.chrisoleary.com/projects/Baseball/Pitching/ProfessionalPitcherAnalyses/JakePeavy.html
OK, I know he was a Cy Young award winner. But as I have said in the past, those pitchers who push off the rubber do not have long careers. Jake tore the insertion of his right latissimus dorsi off the intertubercular groove of the humerus. Take a look at the videos and give me your opinion as to what about his mechanics could have caused the injury.
6 comments:
The combination of Peavy's mechanical issues are obviously the cause of this injury. If you look at the first clip on o'leary's site in frames 26 and 27 you can see how the stress placed on his upper body due to the inverted L position of his pitching arm. It might be simplistic, but look how how his uniform under his right arm is stretched as a result of his arm action and imagine the stress being placed on his lat.
Combine this with the timing issue and the fact that he locks his glove side knee, which looks to put more stress on the upper body through the pitching motion, and you can see why an injury is possible.
His throwing arm is still in the cocking phase and his hips are nearly square to the plate already. Besides his hand stays below his elbow way too long.
Wouldn't suprise me if someone told him that the longer he has to accelerate the harder he can throw the ball. In theory that is true but functionally true only to a certain point and then can become anti-productive.
In the vid from behind where is his decerlation coming from? The one at the top of the page from teh side shows a better decleration however.
Good comments guys. I found it interesting that on one of the local news stations, an MD mentioned the fact that this injury is unusual as the muscle/tendon is strong enough to left the entire body weight up into a pullup. But if we look at force/velocity issues, coupled with the lats econcentric function at the hip and shoulder we know it's a lot more complex than that. I wonder what kind of pitch he was throwing, and how that may have contributed to the injury?
I was also thinking that due to whatever off-field training/lifting Peavy has done he could have a serious enough strength imbalance going on that's added to the problems caused by his mechanics.
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