Relationship between pitching mechanics and biomechanical efficiency of college baseball pitchers

Abstract

Biomechanical efficiency of baseball pitch is considered to be a better indicator for evaluating pitching skills. Since there is a relationship between elbow varus and elbow mechanics during the arm cocking phase, we attempted to include this variable in the multiple regression analysis to improve the understanding of the biomechanical efficiency of baseball pitching. The fastest pitching of 68 college baseball pitchers was used for analysis. The regression results showed that maximum elbow flexion angle (β: -2.615, p: 0.003), shoulder external rotation angle at the moment of maximum external rotation (MER) (β: 2.881, p: 0.004), maximum trunk rotation velocity (β: -0.333, p: 0.001), trunk rotation angle at the moment of stride foot contact (SFC) (β: -2.031, p:0.006), time between maximum pelvic rotation velocity and maximum trunk rotation velocity (β: 1.238, p: 0.023), and shoulder abduction angle at the moment of SFC (β: -2.048, p: 0.033) correlated with biomechanical efficiency and explained 45% of the variance in biomechanical efficiency. Therefore, further improvements in elbow mechanics during the arm cocking phase, based on improvements in early pitching mechanics, may help to increase pitching velocity per unit of elbow varus torque.