Since 2007, I have been trying to make the point that the primary factor, when it comes to injuries in baseball pitchers, is Timing.

By Timing I mean the position of the pitching arm when it starts to rotate and come under load.

Yes, there are other reasons why baseball pitchers get hurt, but I believe Timing problems are the biggest problem.

So that others can understand and replicate the method I use to make my predictions, I have recently published a piece that lays it out in detail...

O'Leary Study of Timing in Baseball Pitchers

Given the reception to the Douoguih Study of the Inverted W and Timing in Baseball Pitchers, I don't expect the people of 2018 to believe a word I say.

If you don't believe the word of an independent M.D., who didn't contact me until AFTER his study was completed, you're not going to believe me.

I don't care.

I'm not doing this for you.

Instead, I'm doing this for the people of tomorrow.

For the people who want to understand the realities of Innovation and what it takes, and what one must endure, to get the word out about a serious problem.

Thesis

Baseball pitchers get hurt when they have problems with their Timing.

When their pitching arm isn't in the correct position when their shoulders start to rotate and their pitching arm comes under load.

Method

What I am going to do is put together a study of Timing in baseball pitchers that uses the simplest method that I can come up with that will still yield statistically significant results.

My goal with the method is to make it...

  1. Completely transparent.
  2. So simple that anyone who has the ability to go frame by frame through a video clip can create the input data.
  3. So simple that anyone who has the ability to go frame by frame through a video clip can verify the input data.

This method draws upon a simple method for judging the Timing of baseball pitchers that led to my successful prediction about the health of Johan Santana with the Mets, which was one of the first of my many successful predictions about injuries in baseball pitchers

Johan Santana's Pitching Mechanics

Johan Santana March 2013

The method I used to make that prediction was very simple. I simply looked at the position of Johan Santana's pitching arm at the moment his shoulders started rotating, his pitching arm side elbow started rotating around toward Home Plate, and his pitching arm came under load.

This simplified method will not catch all injuries to pitchers, but it will catch a lot of them.

  1. Measure External Rotation of the pitching arm.
  2. When the pitching Arm Side elbow stops moving vertically and starts rotating around toward the target.
  3. Using a (completely or mostly) centered, center field view, ideally in line with the shoulders of the pitcher as they start their stride forward toward the plate. In line with the center line of the field is acceptable. The father the camera view gets off this access, the more skeptical the viewer should become of the results.