Headlines
As reported by The Hartford Courant, July 27, 2004.
Pitching Mechanics
By William Hathaway
As 14-year-old pitcher Michael Spracklin of Farmington winds up, he has more television cameras trained on him than Barry Bonds at the All-Star game.
Researchers at the Center for Motion Analysis at Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford hope that what they learn by analyzing the moves of Spracklin and other young baseball pitchers will keep their young arms healthy enough to face down the next generation of sluggers.
Studies of young pitchers are desperately needed because more and more of them are showing up at doctors' offices with damaged shoulders and elbows, said Dr. Carl Nissen, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Connecticut who is conducting a study of young pitchers at Connecticut Children's Medical Center.
"It's an epidemic," said Nissen, who has performed surgeries on a dozen young pitchers' elbows in just the past six months.
Nissen and other researchers are using imaging technology at Connecticut Children's Medical Center to find out exactly what goes wrong with young pitchers' arms.
The most common explanation for arm injuries is that young pitchers throw too many innings and throw too many pitches such as curveballs and sliders that put too much strain on their underdeveloped bodies.
Though those explanations may turn out to be correct, "the reality is that it is almost all folklore," with few scientific studies to support the conclusions, Nissen said.
Already, motion analysis of five young pitchers in a pilot study has challenged at least one long-held Little League canon - that the curveball puts undue strain on a young child's arm and shouldn't be thrown until at least puberty.
Nissen said detailed motion analysis of Spracklin and other young pitchers showed that, when properly thrown, the "12-6" curveball - one thrown straight overhand with a snapping motion of the wrist - generates less force on the arm than a fastball, the stock pitch of pitchers of all ages.
But at least one study has found that pitchers using curveballs and sliders at a young age experience more arm problems.
"That's very clear," said Glenn S. Fleisig, chairman of research at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala., a leader in the field of pitching mechanics.
Though Fleisig's own motion studies have shown that the curveball exerts about the same force on the arm as a fastball, it demands the use of a different set of muscles than a fastball, and that can generate arm pain, Fleisig said.
Fleisig, Nissen and other experts do agree that throwing an excessive number of innings is probably the chief cause of arm problems in young players and that extended seasons of six months, nine months or even all-year participation in organized baseball are taking a serious toll on young arms.
Old-time professional pitchers may have been able to throw a high number of innings later in life because they did not play organized baseball on a year-round basis, Nissen and Fleisig suggest.
"The risk of arm pain is statistically correlated to the number of pitches thrown per game, per season," Fleisig said, "although, we did not prove that surgery and injuries result."
Nissen said more scientific study is needed to confirm common wisdom - or to debunk it.
"If you talk to a coach and tell him you can't pitch a kid more than one six-inning game a week, and he can only throw 65 pitches, he may say you are full of B, you have no proof," Nissen said. "And he's right."
What happens to a fatigued arm is just one question the Center for Motion Analysis wants to answer with its sophisticated imaging technology.
When Michael Spracklin throws with motion sensors attached to his body, images from a dozen cameras translate data from the sensors into digital images - which show up as a mobile, three-dimensional green-tinged skeleton on a computer screen. Nissen, along with Slyvia Ounpuu, director of the motion center, and other researchers then can examine from many angles the complex set of movements that make up a single pitch, picking up movements that are invisible even to the most well-trained pitching coach.
"We really don't know exactly how kids actually pitch," said Ounpuu, who said the center wants to conduct more research on young pitchers.
Pitching mechanics in adults have been well-studied, especially in an era when top major-league pitchers can demand annual salaries in excess of $10 million, but young pitchers have not been extensively examined, she said.
For instance, experts say that youngsters get hurt often because they fail to use the lower part of their body to generate power in their pitches and instead rely solely on their arms.
And carefully studying pitching mechanics may help coaches find new ways to prevent injuries to youngsters, she said.
For now, coaches and parents should take common-sense precautions to protect young pitchers from injuries - and from their sometimes pushy parents.
"If he says his arm is tired, don't blow him off as a little kid," Fleisig says. "Take it seriously."
Bill Spracklin says he carefully monitors his son Michael's innings throughout the year and often talks to his coaches about his workload.
And, Nissen said, parents who envision their child throwing at Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium someday should realize that an elbow operation resulting from overuse can end that dream quickly. "They are never the same."