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Monday, March 05, 2007

Article on Cain's Mechanics Up on The Hardball Times

As I had noted previously, Carlos Gomez was going to analyze Matt Cain's mechanics. The article is up on The Hardball Times: Bringin’ Some Serious Cheese: Matt Cain.

It kind of makes you fall in love all over again with Matt Cain. Man-love, of course. :^) The low down:
  • He's among the quickest around
  • Arm action as close to ideal
  • His lower body uncoils into his upper, with a "stepover" move that adds MPH
  • "Great, powerful, aggressive finish."

The only worrisome comments is that "shoulder problems" cropped up twice in the article. First in the section on Arm Action, about how his shoulder loads and unloads. Second, in the section on At Release, apparently Cain does an old school "yanking the glove into the hip" that the author feels would increase the likeliness of shoulder problems plus lead to an inconsistent release point, which would account for his high walk rate.

FYI: he kindly let me know that his Lincecum article will be done in a few more days.

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3 comments:

  1. obsessivegiantscompulsiveTuesday, March 06, 2007 5:54:00 PM

    Meaning his tempo in starting his windup and then releasing the ball. The way the author does it is he counts how many frames ticks off from start of the windup to release (see his prior article on THT about, I think, Dice-K). He mentioned that Oswalt (a typical comparison to Lincecum, by the way) is around the fastest and that Cain is a frame or two behind, which he said was nothing to be ashamed about.

    If you look at the video again, you will see his hand tuck in, like he was holding a football (with the glove as the foot ball). I'm no expert either, but that is what I believe the author meant by pulling his glove into his hips. I think the preferred way is that the glove points outward in the follow through (but I'm not sure where it goes when done, there must be a preferred path but I'm not sure).

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  2. AnonymousWednesday, March 07, 2007 1:50:00 PM

    Here's what I mean the glove arm "pulling into your hip." As a comparison, here's Randy Johnson...check out his glove arm,

    http://graphics.jsonline.com/graphics/sports/brew/img/may04/randy518.jpg

    Martin, excellent blog....I hope you also enjoyed the Lincecum article as much as I enjoyed writing it.

    Carlos Gomez (aka ChadBradfordWannabe)

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  3. obsessivegiantscompulsiveWednesday, March 07, 2007 3:20:00 PM

    Thanks Carlos, for the compliment, much appreciated!

    And yes, I did greatly enjoy the Lincecum article, thanks again.

    So I assume you mean that Randy Johnson is doing it correctly (I noticed by playing both Cain and Lincecum's articles on my desktop, that Lincecum's is similar to Johnson, correct? It was hard for me to see, I had to try over and over again). Thanks for the photo and take care.

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