Spandrel Analytics

Lets analyze now Mr. Lincecum’s pitching technique. I think that some aspects of his mechanics are his main future career threats. Looking at the frontal plane, before the release of the ball, Mr. Lincecum does a left lateral flexion of the upper body together with the neck. It is at that point, that he is performing his maximum rotational speed. The structure at the cervical and lumbar level probably looks like this: Think about what is happening in the spine structure when the rotation is performed in that particular body position. The vertebrae are acting in angle respect to each other, creating areas of high pressure (fig. above). Also, if the space between the vertebrae is already diminished there is a high risk of lateral facets rubbing each other with its consequent risk of fracture. And Mr. Lincecum has already antecedents of lower back and neck problems. In September of 2009, when he was put in Disabled List because of back spasms and inflammation, he mentioned that he “ha...

It is irresistible to write about a player that is featured everywhere and that earned the nickname of “The Freak”. I had to go to the dictionary, I’m still foreign, to find out what the people meant with “freak”. I learned that “it is something or somebody unusual, unexpected or abnormal”. Then I started to research why the people consider him in that way, and I arrived to the conclusion that we are many times stuck with irrational standards that come from historic believes. We learned that pitchers have some characteristics and without any critical thinking, we accept forever that they should look and perform in some particular way. And when somebody appears different, instead of rethinking our standards, we consider him/her a freak. Well, the discussion in the media is centered now in when his shoulder will be injured, and everybody was wrong. He is healthy and also “world champion!!! Even more freak…the freak of the freaks ever!!! The problem is that we keep comparing him with the ...

After a tremendous effort to lose weight during the last off-season to save his job, Mr. Pablo Sandoval is suffering today from a hand fracture. Everybody is surprised and the media cries the bad luck of Mr. Sandoval. It is well known that Mr. Sandoval has a history of body weight fluctuations that he is struggling to control. As a consequence he received a strong warning from the club management at the end of 2010 asking him to lose weight. This is why an athlete, like him, that sees his job under risk, is capable of jeopardize his own biology and end in a worse situation. To comply with the club request Mr. Sandoval started in November 2010 a rigorous training and dieting process that he described in a 2:47 minutes video clip in his web page. The goal was to lose 35 pounds of body weight before the beginning of the 2011 season. In order to do so, he engaged in a low carb and high protein diet accompanied with a high intensity physical training program. By February 2011...

Sadly, my predictions became reality and too soon for Mr. Eric Chavez. Today he added a fracture in his fifth metatarsal of the left foot to his already long list of injuries. As I already explained in the previous posts, Mr. Chavez has a high risk of getting injured and today he demonstrated it. And even though the media that covered the event considered that this injury does not have any relation to any previous situations, I will show you that actually today's fracture is most likely a consequence of a succession of training and rehabilitation mistakes. Since 2004 Mr. Chavez was at least 32 times in Disabled List, and in 6 occasions his absence from the game was related to surgeries. Therefore, most probably he was suffering pain and discomfort each time before he was placed in Disabled List. We can then assume that in a high percentage of his MLB career Mr. Chavez was dealing with pain, inflammation and movement impairment. The usual treatment in those cases is the administr...

In baseball, lower back injuries account for 2 to 5% of all injuries occurrence. Being this data available and unchanged for more than 15 years (Dick R, 2007), we would expect that the professionals in charge of the health and performance of the MLB athletes should have already in place a well set-up system for the prevention of this type of injuries. However, several publications indicate that the type, causes and proportionality of injuries did not change and that actually the injury numbers seem to be increasing year after year (Conte S, 2001). Eric Chavez low back pain history is a well known example that shows that no matter how many injuries of the same kind occur, and with a clear association to the sport’s technique, there is not yet in place a methodological process to prevent and/or solve them. To illustrate it, we can review from the available public information and some videos that I took, how Mr. Chavez has change from being a baseball star to a constantly injured athlete...

As we all know, Eric Chavez was considered few years ago one of the top baseball athletes in US. Immediately after joining the MLB his career started to be adversely affected by injuries. Comprehensive information is necessary to understand the causes of his injuries and the results of the many treatments that he received. But we can still, with the available public information, make some analysis and have some conclusions that hopefully will help to prevent repeating this unfortunate athletic history. The information below shows the sequence of injuries “reported”. Please observe carefully the time when they occurred, the type of injuries and they recurrence. INJURIES BY ANATOMICAL LOCATION Date On                Date Off           Transaction Days Off   Games Off                 Injury Lower Back 2004-08-15          ...