But I thought instead of sharing the past glories, many of which I do not remember, I thought I’d pass along this little bit by Noam Scheiber on pitching in Slate magazine:
Glenn Fleisig, a biomechanical engineer who studies pitching at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala., has calculated that about 80 Newton-meters of torque act on an elite pitcher's elbow when he throws a fastball. The ulnar collateral ligament connects the humerus and ulna—two of the bones that come together in the elbow. To test the outer limits of the ligament's strength, Fleisig subjected cadaver elbows to increasing amounts of rotational force.Gives new meaning to the “dead ball era.”
These experiments showed that an average person's UCL snaps at about 80 Newton-meters. Smoky Joe Wood said that he threw so fast he thought his arm was going to fly off. It turns out he wasn't far from the truth.But what this really means is that pitch speed is unlikely to go higher in the foreseeable future:
Why do sprinters keep getting faster while baseball pitchers seem to have maxed out? Because track athletes don't approach the limits of what human tendons and ligaments can handle.Hitters may keep getting bigger and stronger, but pitching is unlikely to get any better. Time to move those fences back.
update: Joe Attanasio did a nice job singing the National Anthem today. I admit I feared the worst.
