Baseball 2013: Here Come the Flamethrowers

A growing number of fastball pitchers are throwing at speeds reached by only a handful of hurlers a decade ago.

The Wall Street Journal—March 28, 2013

Stephen Fealy, M.D., is a specialist in the field of shoulder, knee, elbow, and ankle surgery at Hospital for Special Surgery. In a recent article from The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Fealy comments on pitching velocity of baseball players.

At Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, orthopedists and biomechanists place dozens of sensors on pitchers and have them throw in front of a series of infrared cameras that measure their motions and turn the windup into a three-dimensional computer graphic. Then they analyze the data to try to see if all the parts of the body are synchronizing, with each of the six separate actions of the motion flowing methodically from one into the next.

"It's about being strong in the core, the glutes [rear end], the hips and the obliques, and that's what everyone is working on," said Stephen Fealy, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon at Hospital for Special Surgery and a pitching consultant to the Major League Baseball Players Association.

The reporter, Matt Futterman, also included a video about pitching and the work done at the Leon Root, M.D., Motion Analysis Laboratory at Hospital for Special Surgery. Matt interviewed Howard Hillstrom, Ph.D., about the pitching study and the Motion Analysis Lab and Michael Levinson, P.T., on mechanics and the throwing performance program.

Read the full story at wsj.com.

View the video on the HSS motion analysis lab that uses 2-D and 3-D video technology to research and improve the throwing motion of baseball pitchers.