Baseball: Supination Vs. Pronation

I didn't watch baseball for like 10 years. From 2004 to 2014. When my team (Expos) moved I didn't watch it or follow it anymore. I play baseball sometimes for fun and stuff but I didn't follow it for a full decade.

The exhibition games in Montreal lately and the talk and the Cro and the mayor and everyone trying to get the team back has me following it again big time. It's different  now than 10 years ago I can tell you that much. I can say WITH CERTAINTY from what I see that most if not all of the roids are gone....at least the whacky whacky hormone ones at least.

There's things in the baseball world I missed a lot...and now that there's some hope that my team might come back....I gotta follow it again. I like the Royals, I like the Mets....I like those pitching teams...I love how the Royals run the bags.

I miss this shit, man. I do.

I wanna talk some baseball, I really fucking do, I want to talk more about the science end of the game right now though instead of something funner. I've been reading shit's that getting me up into a jabroni of a tizzy lately, I must say. I want to rap loose about the Supination vs. Pronation debate...which is not very talked about...outside of hardcore mechanic circles.

I want to first define what Supination is and what Pronation is before we even get started because... if you follow this debate online the main search result is: "What is Pronation?" and we can't have a buck debate if most maw flippers don't even know the terms even.

I'm interested in this lately because Science is coming into the equation here and it's not looking pretty. I'm not happy with University people's "findings" and the articles being published in accredited academic journals at this point. All the S vs. P meta-data journal articles were done on CADAVERS (non-living bodies)...the findings are close to useless and absurd. I'm just gonna tell you straight up what the heck all this crap is. Okay?


Let's Define These Terms of Terms

Supination

What the heck is Supination? In pitching mechanic terms we gonna deal with arms so....Supination is the act of turning the arm out as you make your arm motion....you corkscrew your arm out pointing away from yourself. It is the act of turning it "Out" and that's basically it. It's not hard to understand what Supination is.

When I was a kid at grade school, kids used to impress each other and make each other flip by turning their hands back or I used to curdle my fingers into my hand sorta...we called it beng "Double-Jointed" but that was just nonsense talk. You CAN stretch like this...it's hard...you don't need "two-joints" but you can. The thing is...why would you want to?

Now, what is Pronation?

Pronation

Well if you're not OUT then you IN like Doug Flynn, no? Basically, yeah. Every human on earth who has arms...I'd say 99.9999% of humans with functioning arms....can turn their dumb arms In pretty much a billion times easier than they can turn their arms Out.

This lady for instance can pronate to the point of the arm being upside down:

She's not "double jointed"

In like Flynn

She can do that because that's Humans base setting...we can turn In WAY MORE than we can turn Out. If she would have tried to go Upside Down with her arm by going Outwards she would have done an incredible  amount of damage to her body. Turning In to go around is actually pretty easy. That's just the base setting of the Humanistic Body As Such...we can go In with our dumb arms but we can't go Out.

Try it right now...try to Upside Down your Arm by going In/Towards yourself and see how far you get...now try to Upside Down your Arm by going Out/Away from your body....which one was easier? Yeah if you're like any other person then In/Towards was way easier and you got farther.

That's just how our bodies are...it's plain fact. Plain as day. plain as rain. The Arm can go In way better than it can go Out. Get used to it.


What Does this Mean?

Many baseball pitches rely on Supinating the arm..an act which is not compatible with the human body. Coaches want the arm out and the hand back...both are unnatural motions to us...yet pitchers are expected to train the supination muscles in the arm to the point where they can endure throwing 100+ pitches every 4-7 days (plus training and warm up pitches). Many have trained these muscles to do that and it is downright an act of masochism.

Maybe they love the pain, I dunno. I've worked very hard jobs in my life...and I can attest that a body will develop a Love for Pain...and it feels good to deal with it and feel it and grow from it...but we have to factor in that injuries to pitchers and time spent on the disabled list is something that happens to almost every pitcher at some time in their life at this present time. Scouts, owners, coaches and the like get heart attacks when their gem of a young arm gets injured. Can pitchers who are impervious to injury be developed? Nope. Can you develop pitchers less likely to get devastating injuries? Yes.

The Scientists are getting into it and their findings so far have been jabroni-esque, I will say, many of their published findings are in the terrain of... "oh Pronation 'aint shit, baby" sort of angles...but like I said these articles being published have been on cadavers. They cut up dead arms to see how developed the S-Muscles and the P-Muscles were in dead dudes. It is data that I don't consider relevant.

Yes, as the cadaver data suggests, you can train Supination muscles to be wicked powerful and tough but you're still dealing with muscles that are not designed to do the task being assigned to them. If the dead arms had over-developed Soup muscles then good for them....it doesn't change the actual facts for living (non-dead) humans.

If you throw soup pitches for long periods of time you WILL damage your body... an incredible amount.... no matter how much you've trained those muscles. You cannot make dat funk da p-funk!


Let's Look at Two Pitches, Ok?

I'm gonna use the top Google search videos for the two popular pitches in question and then go from there....Okay?

A Supination Standard Curve Ball:

This man is teaching the 12-6 curve and he's telling kids not to "turn the door knob" too much (OUT) although the pitch is designed with the hand opening out on release...and even though he says kids shouldn't snap off and "turn the door knob" (why are door knobs designed for supination? good question)...that's how you sell this sucker...that's how you get the fuck spin off this shit...you turn the door knob on it...you SNAP OUT....you whip out and snap off OUTWARDS with the hand. This is a poorly designed pitch.

A Pronation Screw Ball (again the first how-to google result video I got, nothing fancy):

Haha, he uses the word Pronation in it. I couldn't have asked for two better videos and they just happened to be the top google search terms for "how to throw curve" and "how to throw screw."

When the screwball first came out, people hated it, it was such a break from the normal procedure that everyone thought it was so stupid...but it is designed for a HUMAN BODY and not some kind of backward ALIEN body.

It's not new to baseball....Carl Hubbell, Tug McGraw, Mike Marshall, and Fernando Valenzuela amongst others mastered it and had amazing careers. None of them had Tommy John to replace the supination muscles....in fact one of those names in the above sentence introduced Tommy John surgery to Tommy John (my homeboy Marshall). The Man of the Science Mike Marshall introduces the Baseball World to the Science World with that recommendation to Tommy John.

Semantics get in the way a bit too. Japanese pitchers love the screw ball but they refer to it as the "Shootoh" or the "Gommu Gommu No Shootoh Sanzen Sakai Hyakuhachi Poundo Ho." The Japanese LOVE the screwball and understand the science of it. Basically, "Shooto" is the name for "screw ball" in Japan. It's not, in any way/shape/form a different pitch.... it is literally the screw ball... so all the Japanese guys who throw the Shoot-Oh are screw ballers too. Watch Dice-K whip a "Gyro-Ball" which is another fancy fucking name for the screw ball:

From the 9 second mark to the 11 second mark you can see his hand go towards himself instead of away. It is 100% a beautiful pronation pitch that doesn't destroy his arm. Whether you call it a "shoot-oh" a "gyro-barrooh" or a "100 pound dying pheonix three styles succession of my ancestors pitch" it's still the pronation break pitch in physical terms.

That's the shit he threw in Japan but when he came here to the West...he had to become a standard Curve/Change/Fast/Slider pitcher.....and what did you ("you" as in those who paid him to come here) get out of it? Tommy John surgery, that's what. Let him throw two-seamers and shoot-ohs all day and he would have pitched for 10 more years for the Red Sox.

Dice, who I saw pitch as a Met at those Jays/Mets exhibtion games in Montreal live and in the flesh before they sent him to Vegas....he looked good but.. like a fish out of water, I knew something was wrong with my boy ...this Legend was okay from the age of 19-25 in the Nippon League but only lasted two full years in the American League? Why? They wanted to change his shit and they fucked up their investment. His two-seamer and shoot-oh/gyro/screwball (whatever you want to call it) combo would have lasted another decade before breaking down. Well, then again maybe he would have got homesick and went back....he's a human... when thinking in retrospect.... it's not all this "would've this and could've that business" ..though I'm sure his demotion to Las Vegas (the Macau of the West) wasn't all that of a terrible ordeal for him.

I remember, Irabu, he pitched for Montreal and probably had fun....but a as a Yankee he was tormented into suicide. He blew his head off, as my friend Hide the Ultra Bide told me. Homesick is a real disease...so I can't just say in regards to anyone "this would have been or that would have been" ..... Rest in Peace, Mr. Hideki Irabu, I saw you pitch in Montreal at Olympic Stadium live on three occasions... people think because I'm not religious that when people die it does not break my heart,, but, yeah, it does.

Sports and Science: The Universes Collide

I'm a Mister Inbetween when in comes to Sports colliding with Science. I love Science like shit and I love Baseball like crazy. I'm really a Mr. In Between when it comes to Soup versus Pro, g. In this collision of worlds...I'm like this:

Yeah, I mean...I understand the science types...they play with cadavers and dead bodies and pretend like they're smart....yet due to their non-hands-on experience they are maybe but mere jabronies. Oh wait, that song above is a little too old...I'm more modern-ish.... I'm more In Between like this kinda In Between.......

I am actually In Between. Baseball and Science are like literally my two favorite things and just like I can see why the Science World doesn't understand the Basball World... I can see why Baseball people don't like Sciencey-smart guys too. The good ole baseball boys have been doing their country-honed methods for a century and don't want any smarty pants g-units to tell them what they are doing wrong...but sadly they are doing a lot of things terribly wrong. They sit around and chew tobacco and pretend they are smart.... everyone in both worlds are sitting around just pretending they are smart... and never learning from one another.

Everyone pretends they are smart...but....when can both these worlds just Collide in Perfect Harmony? Can the things that are Right from the world of Science and the things that are Right from the World of Baseball just combine at some point and merge..and stop being perpetually In Between?


Conclusion

Pete Rose? Who cares, man. Honestly.

Mike Marshall is the black balled player who deserves to be a Hall of Famer. This guy deserves to have his name in the Hall of Fame....twice (for player and doctor).

Mr. In Between

Add-on Note ( Sept. 06/ 2015): I didn't find a good video of the slider the other day for one of those sections but here's a good explanation of the slider and the supination it requires to be effective: 

Like Carlton and Gibson mastered...this pitch has a nasty break that moves horizontally from one end to the other....but it requires a GREAT DEAL of soup to throw it and has a high risk factor when it comes to arm damage.

The Greatest of People who are not Presently in the Baseball Hall of Fame

I write a lot about Expos stuff...because I miss them. I don't want to be bias though so I'm going to write a baseball piece about non-Expo related matters for a change.

I don't follow much baseball any longer (after 2004) but if it was from 1986 until 2004 then I know a lot about that era. Also, with internet these days it's becoming easier and easier to look into past eras (data logs, video logs, newspaper articles, etc.)

Alright, so other than Timmy Raines, here's a quick look at some other great mans that are not in the Hall of Legendary Fame.

Alan Trammell

I was more into the National League back int the day but I followed AL too. Two guys that were fixtures in the AL back in my day were a tandem of middle infielders in Detroit. The second baseman was Sweet Lou Whitaker and the shortstop was Alan Trammell.

Aside from Cal Ripken Jr., Trammell was the premier shortstop in the AL during the eighties and into the nineties. Over in the NL the main guy was Ozzie Smith. Let's look at these players career stat lines, even though Gold Gloves are an arbitrary judge-voted stat I will still include them. First look at the stat lines without the bias of knowing who's name is next to the stats:


Player A: .767 OPS, 1231 Runs Scored, 1003 RBI, 236/345 Stolen Bases, 4 Golden Gloves (in 9376 plate appearances)

Player B: .788 OPS, 1645 Runs Scored, 1695 RBI, 36/75 Stolen Bases, 2 Golden Gloves (in 12883 plate appearances)


Player C: .666 OPS, 1257 Runs Scored, 793 RBI, 580/728 Stolen Bases, 13 Golden Gloves (in 9396 plate appearances)


Players B and C are in the Hall of Fame, yet player A is not. The stats denote the following:

A: Trammell
B: Ripken
C: Smith

Now, I think defense is a huge part of the game and I think Ozzie Smith was a great player...(but, let me finish)...there's no way anyone can say that Ozzie Smith was a better player than Alan Trammell under any circumstances. I love Ozzie, but, he was a gimmicky guy, he'd take the field by doing a series of acrobatic flips and tumbles...

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6-BgGHQt24)

I admit this was a fan favorite gimmick and totally awesome but doing parlor tricks doesn't make you win more games. If people were voting for the Barnum and Bailey Circus Hall of Fame then I could understand why Ozzie Smith would be a first balloter while Alan Trammell is left out, but this is not the circus Hall of Fame, it's the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Smith and Trammell have similar plate appearances and played in the exact same era (albeit in opposite leagues), there is no conceivable way that Ozzie Smith is a first ballot inductee while Trammell  doesn't even get in. This is kind of absurd.

I dunno, maybe Trammell should have done a magic show or a couple of card tricks prior to taking the field to ensure the voters liked him better. Having an OPS over 100 points higher won't make you better than the Wizard of Oz, you needed a gimmick dude.


Mike Marshall

This one is cheating a bit because Mike Marshall did pitch for the Expos but either way Mike should be in.

Marshall pitched for 9 different teams in his career. He started with the Tigers then quickly went to Seattle, Houston, and then to Montreal...he pitched for 4 different teams in his first 3 years in the bigs. Why? Mike earned the label of "non-conformist" early on in his career and was not the type of guy coaches and management wanted around.

Mike Marshall has an interesting back story. He was a Man of the Science and he took a strange approach to pitching that most would not have considered. He took a fully full-on scientific approach to pitching. The physics and kinetics or the movements the arm makes while trying to achieve the right speed/movement/break on pitches are understandable to the human brain that wishes to observe them. Knowing the biology of the human arm will also help you understand how to manipulate it and operate it in a way that will not cause excessive damage to the arm.

Marshall perfected the pitch called the "Screw Ball" with his scientific approach to pitching. The pitch is basically a breaking ball that breaks the OPPOSITE direction of the throwing arm (a right handed pitcher would throw a pitch that broke away to the right of his arm instead of to the left).

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7DcddkBtos)

I respect Men of The Science

His early coaches in Detroit, Seattle, and Houston told Mike not to throw this crazy ass science pitch because they viewed it as being retarded. Umpires and opposing coaches accused him of cheating or using a substance (spit, vassaline, root cream oil, etc.) to break the ball like that.

Marshall didn't want to stop throwing the pitch which he believed wasn't retarded and he knew wasn't cheating. This refusal won him the label of "non-conformist" throughout the league and almost got him blackballed by baseball.

The fourth team Marshall wound up with in his first 3 major league years was the recently added Montreal Expos franchise. Still in the expansion years and losing game after game, coach Gene Mauch told Marshall that he didn't give a shit what kind of pitch Marshall wanted to throw because the team wasn't going to be in contention in 1970 anyway.

Mike freely developed his scientific take on the screw ball and by 1972 was pitching over 100 innings out of the bullpen for the Expos while putting up ERAs of 1.78 (not bad). He went on to put up similar stats out of the pen for the Dodgers and even won the Cy Young award in 1974.

People who watch baseball now a days have to understand that pitcher use was different in these bygone years. Now a days a starter does 5 innings, then a middle man comes in to do 2 innings, then a set up guy comes in for the 8th, and finally a closer in the 9th. Even in a low scoring game of 2-1...we see a team use up to 5 pitchers.

Back in the day it was 4-man starting rotations, you had one or two good pitchers in the pen, and a bunch of bums to pitch in blowouts and meaningless/nothing-on-the-line games. Healthy starters used to get close to 400 innings pitched per year and some relievers used to get well over 100 innings per year.

The "best" relievers now a days are judged by the Saves stat...yet it is probably the most gimmicky and pointless stat ever. How many games are won and lost in the eight innings prior to the ninth? Is the ninth inning some sort of magic inning where if you keep the opposing team to a goose-egg in that inning you automatically win the game? No. There's nothing more special about shutting a team's hitters down in the 9th inning than the 4th inning or any other inning.

People fawn over 50 saves in a season from guys like Hoffman or Gagné...but some pitchers who achieved that only pitched fucking 55 innings all season long. What's next? The left handed specialist who pitches to 50 batters all year but has a 1.50 ERA is an all-star? I don't think so.

Marshall would work in close to 100 games a year, finish out 75 of them, get 12-15 wins, and rack up 20 to 30 saves. Mike pitched over 200 innings out of the bullpen the year he won the Cy Young. The year reliever Eric Gagné won the Cy Young out of the pen he pitched in only 82 innings and won only 2 games. Trevor Hoffman saved 53 games one year...but only pitched in 73 innings all season.

Can a reliever from that era make the Hall? Yes, Goose Gossage did...and truth be told Goose's career stats are pretty similar to Mike Marshall's and Goose never won a Cy Young in his career. Plus Mike Marshall was a Man of the Science too.

Goose is in, but Mike only received 1.5% of the vote when his name came up. Odd, in a way.


Dick Allen

Mike Marshall was labelled and stigmatized as being a "non-conformist" and trouble maker, another player, Dick Allen, was perceived under much worse labels. Dick's name around the league was never in good standing and it really hurt him when Hall of Fame voting came up.

His back story is interesting too and his label as a trouble maker was undeserved as well. Dick came up through the Phillies system at a time where Frank Thomas (no not THAT one, this Frank Thomas was an ugly white guy) was a fan favorite and recently added to Phillies organization. Frank was an old veteran guy of 35 years old and he was pretty old school. He'd make fun of the black guys on the team and the way they shook hands (soul shakin') by pretending to be down and offering up a hand for a soul shake...but then Frank would grab the kid's thumb and pull it back as hard as he could.

Dick Allen even as a "kid" was a pretty big dude, we're talking a low-center of gravity 5'11 187 pounds. When he was coming up in 1964 he didn't really care for the way Frank Thomas was abusing the trust of the sacred soul shake with the brothers on the team. He told the 6 foot 3 / 200 pounder Frank Thomas right to his fucking face that if he pulled that shit again with the soul shake that he'd get him back. 

Truth be told, Frank kept pulling the stunt and lo...Dick Allen got mad and apparently Thomas hit him with a bat...leading to a violent fight.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uWvkxj-C64)

As told by that historian, Thomas was released and Allen was forbidden from talking to the press about the incident. The Philadelphia papers framed the altercation with Allen as the antagonist and Thomas as the protagonist. The fans in Philly took to booing and hating on Dick Allen every time he took the field in his home park of Connie Mack Stadium.

The label of Dick being a trouble maker took shape at that moment and it never let up. Allen had an OPS of OVER 900 in his rookie year (earning the rookie of the year award in 1964)...yet was the most hated player in Philadelphia history. That's kind of fucking ludicrous. It's abso-ludicrous.

Dick went on to have an OVER 900 OPS his whole entire career...finishing with a .912 career OPS. Yet his max Hall of Fame voting % only climbed to 18% at its highest point. Maybe he needed a gimmick too like Ozzie Smith...oh wait, he even had a gimmick.

Hey, listen to Dick's sweet singin' voice from his album. If you don't feel whimsical and begin remembering fond memories of a past love while listening to this song then you probably have no emotions: 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJDDs7ohpJk)

...and when Deceeeeember came and my dreams still echoed your name...

Jeez...he had a killer career and a gimmick, what do the voters want? No one can ever tell. You can see from his voice that he's a soft and caring guy. Obviously swimming in the fish bowl of hate which was Connie Mack stadium in the mid-sixties was difficult for him and the jeers didn't exactly roll off his back.

Dick took to writing things in the dirt while in the field. People saw this as a sort of protest from a trouble maker...but it wasn't that. He would write things like his mother's name while he played and listened to the boos...or sometimes he'd even write "boo" in the dirt.

This wasn't a trouble maker, this was a soft hearted guy trying to deal with constant emotional stress. His dirt scribbles were just something to regain his composure and to lean on. That's why he'd write something like his mother's name in the field..to lean on it.

Remember that Simpsons where Homer explains why he has no pictures of Maggie in his home? It was because they were where he needed them most...at his horrible job. The pictures were something for Homer to lean on at a place where he hated being. Dick Allen's scribbles were more along those lines than a trouble maker trying to provoke the fans as it was perceived back then.

Conclusion 

Trammell, Marshall, and Allen were really good at baseball.