Search

Objectives To determine whether increasing pitching distance for adult baseball pitchers would affect their upper extremity kinetics, full-body kinematics, and pitched ball kinematics (ball velocity, duration of ball flight, vertical and horizontal break, strike percentage). Design Controlled laboratory study. Methods Twenty-six collegiate baseball pitchers threw sets of five full-effort fastballs from three different pitching distances (18.44 m, 19.05 m, 19.41 m) in a randomized order. Ball velocity, horizontal and vertical break, duration of ball flight, and strike percentage were computed by a ball tracking system, while pitching kinetics and kinematics were calculated with a 12-camera optical motion capture system. Repeated measures analysis of variance was utilized to detect significant differences among the three different pitching distances (p Results No significant differences in pitching kinetics and kinematics were observed among the varying pitching distances. Ball velocity and strike percentage were also not significantly different among the pitching distances, however, the duration of ball flight and horizontal and vertical break significantly increased with pitching distance. Conclusions Increasing pitching distance may not alter upper extremity kinetics, full-body kinematics, ball velocity or strike percentage in adult pitchers. However, as pitching distance increases the duration of ball flight and amount of horizontal and vertical break also increase. Increased ball flight duration could be an advantage for the hitter while increased ball break could help the pitcher. In conclusion, it is unlikely that moving the mound backwards would significantly affect pitching biomechanics and injury risk; however, the effects on pitching and hitting performance are unknown.

Objectives To determine whether mound height is associated with baseball movement (velocity, spin and break) and baseball pitching biomechanics (kinematics and kinetics). Design Controlled laboratory study. Methods Twenty collegiate baseball pitchers threw five fastballs and five curveballs from four different mound heights (15 cm, 20 cm, 25 cm, 30 cm) in a randomized order. Ball movement was computed by a ball tracking system, while pitching biomechanics were calculated with an 11-camera optical motion capture system. Repeated measures analysis of variance was utilized to detect significant differences among the four different mound heights (p Results There were no significant differences observed for ball movement. There were seven significant kinematic differences for fastballs and eight kinematic differences for curveballs. Although these differences were statistically significant, the magnitudes were small, with most joint angles changing by less than 2°. There were no significant kinetic differences for curveballs, but five kinetic parameters (elbow varus torque, elbow flexion torque, elbow proximal force, shoulder internal rotation torque, and shoulder anterior force) varied with mound height for fastballs. In general, fastball kinetics were 1%–2% less from the lowered (15 cm, 20 cm) mounds than from the standard (25 cm) or raised (30 cm) mounds. Conclusions Lowering the mound may not affect a pitcher’s ball movement, but may slightly reduce shoulder and elbow kinetics, possibly reducing the risk of injury.