|
Stephen Strasburg's pitching mechanics are the root cause of his
injury problems, first with his elbow, then his shoulder, and now
his "wrist".[1]
Stephen Strasburg's
Timing Problem
2010
See how, in 2010, Stephen Strasburg's pitching arm was FLAT and
not UP...
Stephen Strasburg's
Timing Problem
2010
...when his shoulders started to turn?
Stephen Strasburg's
Inverted W
And his pitching arm started to come under load?
That's bad.
It's a serious, and increasingly common,
Timing flaw that I call
Flat Arm Syndrome.
Stephen Strasburg's
Flat Arm Syndrome
And Strasburg's fate has gone pretty much exactly as I predicted
it would in
August 2008...
...because his mechanics in some of the frames I have
seen aren't quite as bad as Mark Prior's, and at times he sometimes
makes the Horizontal W, rather than the Inverted W, there is a
chance that Stephen Strasburg could have a career more like
a John Smoltz. In that case, he would be effective for
periods of time but would also struggle with elbow and shoulder
problems.
While Stephen Strasburg's pitching mechanics have improved over
the years, he's far from fixed.
This is my core, and latest, piece on Stephen Strasburg's pitching
mechanics. My older pieces include...
Stephen Strasburg's
Pitching Mechanics
Stephen Strasburg's pitching mechanics are best known for his
Inverted W, the infamous arm action
with the pretentious name. However, and as I first explained in 2007
with respect to Mark Prior, the Inverted W
isn't the core problem.
Timing is.
As I said, about Stephen Strasburg, in a 2010 interview...
What the not so durable guys do is they take their
elbows back but they also take them up. Now, that's actually
painful to do, but it's not that bad in and of itself. The problem
is that when you take the elbows back and up, you can end up with
a Timing problem.
By Timing, I'm referring to the position of the pitching arm...
Stephen Strasburg's
Inverted W
...when the shoulders start to rotate.
Stephen Strasburg's
Timing Problem
Strasburg Frame by Frame
 Stephen Strasburg - Frame 17 Stephen Strasburg - Frame 18 Stephen Strasburg - Frame 19 Stephen Strasburg - Frame 20 Stephen Strasburg - Frame 21 Stephen Strasburg - Frame 22 Stephen Strasburg - Frame 23 Stephen Strasburg - Frame 24 Stephen Strasburg - Frame 25Notes
1. I say "wrist" because I have some concern that problem may
actually be with Strasburg's shoulder; a serious problem called
Thoracic Outlet Syndrome or something similar.
|
