UTK Special 1/8/24

Yamamoto's Javelin

Rob Friedman - better known as Pitching Ninja - posted a great video showing Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s mechanics and training:

I was immediately reminded of a video I did back in 2006 (I think) about Tim Lincecum for MLB.com. Sadly, I can’t find that video, but there’s plenty that show Lincecum’s motion, which I compared to a catapult. My one concern about Lincecum was that he was so flexible in his back, allowing him to arch and launch, that any loss of flexibility there would have negative impacts. That’s common in men as they age - ask anyone my age to arch their back and you’ll get some colorful responses - and turned out to be a major issue.

Granted, I doubt Lincecum was out there doing back bends like Yamamoto, which almost reach the Cirque du Soleil level. What we have is a successful pitcher doing some things outside the norms and having success - great success and reward in Yamamoto’s case. That leads to everyone else trying to figure out why and in this instance, it’s one many are interested in.

“Short” pitchers don’t have as much success as the classical “tall with a big butt” model that scouts love, despite many examples outside this. Roger Clemens or Justin Verlander is going to excite scouts more than Greg Maddux or Pedro Martinez, or even Randy Johnson, even against the lack of evidence that one is better than the other. If all those pitchers told they’re not big enough can pick up a javelin and suddenly get a big contract, we’re going to see a lot of javelins next off-season.

As for the javelin training, I certainly have nothing against it and there’s biomechanical similarities. The weight of a javelin in competition is set at 28 ounces for men, but I bet it won’t surprise you to find out there’s weighted javelins for training. I’m not sure which Yamamoto uses. The worry I have is that while javelins are an interesting form of training, potentially a combo of added weight and long toss, there’s also a high incidence of Tommy John surgery in the sport.

I noted in the past that the second Tommy John recipient was a Russian javelin thrower - who I believe I have identified as Vasily Yershov - and while there’s simply not as many javelin throwers as baseball pitchers, leading to less surgeries and research, the rates and return stats are remarkably similar. However, javelin throwers actually come back at a lower rate, though my guess after reading several studies is that Olympic and pro level throwers have a very small window without as much chance at reward. The fourth best pitcher in baseball last season just signed a $70m deal with the Cardinals; the fourth best thrower in Paris this summer won’t even get a medal.

(As an aside, I checked the Diamond League, the pro athletics circuit, and the winner of each discipline gets $30,000, which is about a day’s pay for Sonny Gray.)

While I think Friedman’s analysis of Yamamoto is spot on, I do want to highlight a couple things. First is the low leg kick, which I don’t feel is the same as a slide step in either form or function. A slide step is a quick move to be quicker to the plate at the sacrifice of some force/velocity. Yamamoto’s is intentional and more standard for him, but there’s more hip swing and pelvic rotation than most. He’s using the weight and momentum of his leg to drive him forward, rather than shifting the weight and center of gravity as a Nolan Ryan-style high kick does.

In fact, most modern pitchers don’t even do it “right”, if the Ryan style kick is the ideal. To remind you, here’s a quick video of Ryan:

Pay attention to where his knee moves. It’s at or near his shoulder at its peak, but it comes down below his waist before he’s moving forward significantly. This “tall and fall” style has gone in and out of fashion, but it’s more a timing mechanism than generating momentum. (I couldn’t find any video of Ryan out of the stretch!)

Compare that to Justin Verlander:

Verlander’s knee doesn’t come as high as Ryan’s, but he also doesn’t drop it that low. I’m not sure if that’s a function of moving forward quicker, or if he has the core strength to hold it up more. Verlander also has a bit of the “hipping it forward” like Yamamoto with his leg, though not as drastic. I remember a story from one of the early ASMI conferences I went to, where Dr. Glenn Fleisig showed a stick-figure motion capture of Roger Clemens. Clemens had an odd “tick-tock” movement at his core, but was strong enough to have his body catch up. Verlander’s isn’t similar, but I think his strength allows him to make a move like that that most can’t.

Lifting the leg and dropping it back down isn’t something I’d change on a pitcher I worked with, but I would often question why they were doing it at all. If what they’re doing is functionally a slide step, why bother with the rest? Yamamoto’s linear leg motion might be more efficient, though I’ll wait to see the Dodgers publish his kinematics. (Pause for laughter.) Seriously, someone take PitchAI out to Dodger Stadium or Camelback Ranch for me.

Yamamoto’s training techniques are hardly a silver bullet or automatic scholarship generator. As with Lincecum, the likelihood is that Yamamoto is an outlier, even an N of 1. Trying to re-create any pitcher or say that there’s “one true mechanical pattern” is folly. A lot of people have tried and failed.

***

I’ve been sitting on this one for a while, but SABR finally announced it.

Think about this: these five people have never been on the same panel publicly.

The SABR conference is already a great event, but this panel is an event in itself. Add in Keith Woolner and others from the early days of Prospectus and I can imagine those readers and those inspired by their work will want to be there. It’s an honor for me to moderate this and I hope many, many UTK readers will be there.