Hi everybody, before I begin, I wanted to express my appreciation to the Lonestar community as it has been among the most supportive of the work I do for Baseball-Intellect and I guess you can say readers here have been among the most "link-happy" readers.  I wanted to reward you guys for the support given to me.

I am creating two fan posts--one being a follow up on my article on Neil Ramirez and the other being a review of three draft prospects--Tim Murphy, Clark Murphy, and Corey Young.  I will also pop in periodically to answer any questions people might have.  I have to leave for now, but will be back later this afternoon.

As for Ramirez, there is an interesting comment in the fan shot posted by t ball from NoNameOnCard.  Here it is:

I don't know if it's selection bias or not...

but in the fastball and curve videos he picked to show Ramirez’s delivery, Ramirez’s motion is remarkably consistent. Typically, even the best pitchers in the game have more of a variance between their fastball and curve.

Eisenberg mentioned it briefly, but when coupled with Ramirez’s stuff, the deception this creates is otherworldly.

I looked earlier so I’m not sure if Eisenberg fixed it, but the sideview wasn’t working properly this afternoon. The high elbow is really only a concern with regard to timing. From the front-view photos, it’s hard to tell exactly when his elbow drops back down. Typically, problems only occur if a pitcher picks that elbow up and then drags his arm behind his shoulders while still picking up the ball.

Eisenberg mentions some violence in Ramirez’s delivery, but the examples he shows really don’t accent that point. In fact, the examples he chose look pretty impressive from a mechanical standpoint with the elbow position being the only obvious question mark.

Just my opinion, feel free to react or not.

It touched on several points and hopefully I can help expound on some of the points raised:

1. Thank you for pointing out the graphic of Ramirez from the side angle was not working.  It is fixed now for everybody to see.

2. Ramirez's motion is certainly consistent...this is where his athleticism helps him

3. Selection Bias - this is obviously part of the limitations on using video, but I do my best to take a pitch representative of what the pitcher usually throws...unless I try to make a point about the problems a pitcher exhibits.  The fastball is typical for him.  The curveball was among his better one's thrown.  His motion, as mentioned earlier is similar for each pitch type.

4. The high elbow...that's an excellent point of when the elbow drops back down because the point of maximum stress on the shoulder is the actual rotation to release, not the point in which the elbow rises above the shoulder.

Personally, I'm not big on predicting injuries.  I just take note of the risk factors involved.  I collected clips from most of the 30+ pitchers who had either a torn labrum or rotator cuff and there was no single mechanical attribute that showed up in each pitcher, or even a majority of the pitchers.  You had pitchers with a wide variety of mechanics and arm actions.  It's easy to take a few pictures of injury prone pitchers with similar mechanics and make it appear a high percentage of pitchers with those mechanics get injured.  But that's not really the case.

I'll go more into pitcher injuries in future articles.

5. Violence...it doesn't really show up in the behind the catcher views.  You'll notice in the side view that Ramirez's velocity isn't easy...it's sneaky, but he appears to use a lot of force with each pitch.  I reference the hat almost being knocked off his head after the release of each pitch.

I would recommend watching Ramirez in full-speed (see pick 44) to get a good feel for how deceptive he is and how forceful the release of each pitch is.  He has tremendous arm speed.

But remember, violence/aggression does not equal injury.  Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

In any case, comments like the one by NoNameOnCard do an excellent job of generating discussion and allow me to expand on what I write in each article so thanks again.