Stephen Strasburg faces the knife

Story from ESPN:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5502866

The reason may have more to do with "ligament limitation" than pitch counts or overuse. Some will also point the finger at questionable mechanics. Some combination of the two seems to be about right. The risk posed by the questionable mechanics will certainly increase as you approach the dreaded ligament limitation.

THE LIMITATION:

From the San Diego Union-Tribune

Is there a Speed Limit?

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060807/news_lz1s7speedlim.html

By Sam Mellinger
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

August 7, 2006

But while the world record in the 100 meters keeps falling – nine times since 1968, twice since Maurice Greene's 9.79 in 1999 – nobody has knocked Ryan out of the record book or Dalkowski out of memory.

Basketball players are taller, quicker and more athletic. High jumpers jump higher. Long jumpers jump longer. Swimmers swim faster. Even baseball hitters hit balls farther.

Pitchers, though ...

“About 100 mph seems to be the maximum,” says Glenn Fleisig, a biomechanical engineer who has worked with big-league teams at the American Sports Medicine Institute. “You won't have faster top speeds than before. But you can have more people near the top speed.”

The reason that's true, the reason that the 2056 Cy Young Award winners won't throw any faster than this year's winners has everything to do with physics and the limitations of the human body.


.....Faster speeds come from better energy transfer from legs to trunk, trunk to shoulder, shoulder to elbow, elbow to hand. In physics, it's called the kinetic chain. In sports, it's called coordination.

“You can always make people stronger,” Fleisig says. “But it's not going to translate into more ball velocity.”

Which is why Roy Oswalt is 6 feet, 185 pounds and throws upper 90s and the meathead at your gym is 6-4, 240 and probably couldn't break glass.

It also helps explain why more pitchers have upper-90s fastballs than ever before. Presumably, Bob Feller or Bob Gibson or Christy Mathewson or Steve Dalkowski never studied biomechanics. For whatever reason, they just naturally threw with outstanding mechanics, maximizing their already-freakish potential.

As technology and knowledge advance, more pitchers benefit from knowing the proper technique to throw closer to their bodies' capability.

Fleisig calculated that about 80 newtons of torque are put on the elbow when a top-level pitcher throws a fastball. He also studied cadaver elbows, testing their durability to force. The ligament in most elbows snaps around 80 newtons of torque.

And that's the problem with throwing much faster than 100. There comes a point where more torque stops making the ball go faster and starts making the elbow snap. That will be true as long as there is no accepted way to significantly strengthen that ligament.

Ligament limitation can also explain why athletes in other sports are doing things only dreamed of 20 years ago. Sprinters, for instance, aren't close to reaching what their tendons and ligaments can take. No single movement from a sprinter puts as much stress on any ligament, tendon or bone as a pitcher puts on his elbow.

THE ??-ABLE MECHANICS

From Project Prospect

Stephen Strasburg: Great or the Greatest?
by Lincoln Hamilton
November 22, 2008


http://projectprospect.com/article/2008/11/22/stephen-strasburg-great-or-the-greatest

There are a few videos of Strasburg on youtube. After breaking them down like the Zapruder film I've made a few assements. Here's what worries me:

He brings his elbow too far back during the scap load phase of his delivery.
While hard to tell from the video, given his arm angle upon release and his follow through he seems to have a supinated release.
His follow through is really bad. There's significant arm recoil and he finishes basically standing up.
Obviously he does some things well, I mean he throws 99 mph with great control. However, there are enough red flags that I believe he's a major injury risk. That does not mean he will absolutely get hurt, just that he's more likely to other people. Without taking him to ASMI (American Sports Medicine Institute) labs and getting specific joint load data, no one can say for sure.



Conclusion:

While I think it's likely Strasburg will eventually be scarred by a surgeon's blade, right now I would advise the Nats to still take him first next June. He's so good, historically good, that his level of talent is very rare. There isn't a Joe Mauer or Mark Teixeira in this draft to compete for the No. 1 spot. So I'd grab Strasburg, hand him a giant sack with a money sign on it -- after I lose a fiddle contest with Scott Boras -- let him dominate for a couple years then turn him into my Herschal Walker. Despite being "injury-prone", Mark Prior has managed 650+ innings, Kerry Wood over 1,200, A.J. Burnett 1,300+, and Ben Sheets over 1,400. Can you imagine the haul if Chicago would have traded Prior in 2004? Besides, maybe Strasburg really is a once-in-a-generation freak who can handle extra stress.