Jason Knapp to make organizational debut tonight
He'll start for Lake County tonight according to Tony Lastoria.
over 2 years ago
JP_Frost
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Yup … that’s the dreaded “inverted V” if I ever saw one.
by FallsTribeFan on Aug 11, 2009 10:32 AM EDT up reply actions
I hate you for making me look. Also! They think everyone’s headed for arm injuries.
by FredOx on Aug 11, 2009 10:52 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
There’s a nice feeling of certainty, isn’t there? All pitchers will have arm problems of some sort. The only question is whether their careers will be affected. So if you say, Knapp’s destined for injury, and he never gets hurt, you get to talk about how he’s an exception to the rule; you’re not wrong, he’s just an outlier. Contrast that against saying a guy has good mechanics, then watching him rip his shoulder out of its socket in a year — you become unambiguously wrong.
Should mention, I don’t extend this to Kyle, who I think does a pretty nice job of simply pointing out things he likes and doesn’t about a guy’s delivery.
by fleerdon on Aug 11, 2009 11:06 AM EDT up reply actions
the fact is that the kind of seat of your pants analyses being performed only tell a small portion of the story… unless you know a pitcher who will let you cut open his arm and measure tensile strengths of his ligaments, peak force of his muscles, and their exact orientations, insertions, origins and whatnot, you’ll never get the full picture… and i don’t know a pitcher who’d let me do that
by gorilla_baller on Aug 11, 2009 11:10 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
So if you say, Knapp’s destined for injury, and he never gets hurt, you get to talk about how he’s an exception to the rule; you’re not wrong, he’s just an outlier. Contrast that against saying a guy has good mechanics, then watching him rip his shoulder out of its socket in a year — you become unambiguously wrong.
Well said. As you noted, I have moved away from these types of statements and instead focus on pointing a few things out while building my pitcher risk database.
As for Knapp, a still photograph doesn’t say everything, and video I’ve found on the Internet (awful quality from home plate of Knapp simply warming up in high school) isn’t good enough to work off of.
Webmaster of Driveline Mechanics
http://www.drivelinemechanics.com - An Unconventional Look at Scouting
Guess you can’t banish a guy from all SBN sites.
"Lotta heart in Cleveland." - Ian Hunter
by Denver Tribe Fan on Aug 11, 2009 11:23 AM EDT up reply actions
I assume you’re referring to E5 — he posts at Fear The Sword (Cavs site) frequently and he’s as crazy as ever. He alternates between making idiotic comments and contradicting himself. And he’s always bashing the Indians (he’s become a Red Sox fan since the banning — he said he wants to root for teams with big money to spend). He’s so annoying; I wish we could just ban him from there.
by Buckeye Brad on Aug 11, 2009 11:48 PM EDT up reply actions
I think we can agree that someone who switches their fan affiliation because they aren’t liked on the internet, especially to the Red Sox, pretty much sucks
He sure showed us! What a loss.
No, not you. Your helmet!
by PatBordersHelmet on Aug 12, 2009 10:56 AM EDT up reply actions
I think he proved that he sucks long before he changed affiliations.
"Lotta heart in Cleveland." - Ian Hunter
by Denver Tribe Fan on Aug 12, 2009 10:29 PM EDT up reply actions
What is the deal with this? If the inverted V thing is bad, why are teams allowing pitchers to keep doing it? Are some pitchers only effective if they’re allowed to continue with bad mechanics?
by cleveland teamer on Aug 11, 2009 10:49 AM EDT up reply actions
i don’t think there is a consensus that the “inverted v” or the “inverted w” are awful. there is a community on the internet (mainly driveline mechanics and that chris o’leary guy) who seem to be convinced that this is the case, but the evidence for their case isn’t particularly data-driven. as i understand it, there is also a significant chunk of the baseball community that doesn’t feel that way (hell, doesn’t tom house actually teach the inverted W)?
the commenters at driveline mechanics are just like the posters at fangraphs, SBN boards, and elsewhere in that they basically parrot back the opinions of one or two original sources of knowledge without doing any of their own analysis or critical thinking. . . what i’m trying to say is that there is a big echo chamber effect in there.
If you don't respect Aaron Laffey, I will fight you.
by Cap'n Snegiryov on Aug 11, 2009 11:00 AM EDT up reply actions
and on the subject of the inverted w or v or whatever, it’s a timing thing… in and of itself it’s pretty benign… i can stand and make an inverted w now pain free… it’s when it becomes complicated by foot strike and arm orientation at footstrike, etc. that things can get dicey
at least by the logic they use at DLM and o’leary
by gorilla_baller on Aug 11, 2009 11:07 AM EDT up reply actions
That’s exactly it.
Also, they seem to hate the “elbow above the shoulder” delivery … it’s not the “V” so much as the angle the “V” takes.
by FallsTribeFan on Aug 11, 2009 11:12 AM EDT up reply actions
I think there’s also got to be some acknowledgement that we’re not talking about a normal population set here. If these guys weren’t already kind of freakish in joint strength and mobility, they wouldn’t be professional baseball players to begin with, right?
by fleerdon on Aug 11, 2009 11:17 AM EDT up reply actions
but there’s still variability amongst elite athletes… fielder (father or son) will never have the same flexibility as an upton, while the upton’s probably won’t be able to possess the raw power of a fielder
by gorilla_baller on Aug 11, 2009 11:23 AM EDT up reply actions
Absolutely.
MY OP isn’t to say that Knapp will wash out … far from it.
I just hope what looks like some sketchy mechanics can either be fixed, or he succeeds regardless.
by FallsTribeFan on Aug 11, 2009 11:28 AM EDT up reply actions
Thinking back to CA’s comments about “pre-hab” in the Annual, I wonder if the Indians don’t think they’ve found some conditioning solutions to mechanical issues. Like, there’s only so much you can do to fix how a guy throws, and the Indians could very well be wrong, but surely there’s more to it than looking at pictures. To them, this may just be another way to buy low on a guy.
Of course, I can’t play catch for 10 minutes without making my elbow hurt, so this is pure conjecture on my part.
by fleerdon on Aug 11, 2009 11:12 AM EDT up reply actions
but just like all conditioning the degree to which your body responds will ultimately be determined by genetics… which leads me to believe that some pitchers, however sound their mechanics might be, are simply predisposed to injury… others, with atrocious mechanics might never get hurt because they’ve been blessed with insanely strong ligaments or whatever
by gorilla_baller on Aug 11, 2009 11:17 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
If I recall correctly, the origin of the Inverted W Bad! analysis was an attempt by Chris O’Leary (after-the-fact) to explain why Mr. Perfect Mechanics suffered so many injuries.
the degree to which your body responds will ultimately be determined by genetics
No. The number of pathways between your “genes” and the phenotype of a major league pitcher are vast and very few of them are simply deterministic in any meaningful sense.
Are you saying that material strength of, say, a ligament, is the same across the population? Or randomly distributed with no connection to genetic makeup?
I’m saying there is no gene that codes for ligament strength and that there are a lot of multidirectional processes which occur between the genes which are involved and the final outcome of a functioning ligament. Very rarely can you say, “______ is genetically determined” and be meaningfully correct. Likewise, very rarely can you say, “Genes have nothing whatsoever to do with _____________” and be correct.
by APV on Aug 11, 2009 12:42 PM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
What kind of other determining factors – if not a soup of genetic makeup – are there for materials strength? This question is in earnest.
i was never referring specifically to ligamentous strength… i was simply saying that the degree to which a person adapts to a conditioning program designed to strengthen their shoulder or elbow or whatever, will be largely determined by their genetic makeup
i’m not a research biologist and my genetics background consists of fruit flies and punnett squares, but everything i’ve learned has told me that genetics plays an enormous role in how you adapt to exercise
by gorilla_baller on Aug 11, 2009 1:20 PM EDT up reply actions
Just a pet peeve of mine. Public discussions of genetics, and even far too often scientific discussions of genetics, create a false sense of a simple relationship between gene and complex end product (i.e., “gene for cancer” or “gene for intelligence”). It’s a bad habit, particularly as the public availability of genetic information becomes increasingly common.
There’s really nothing remotely conclusive in that study. First, the relationship between individual genes and protein expression is very poorly understood. Science has minimal grasp on the concepts involved, often not knowing what it doesn’t know. Second, the actual mechanisms involved in male pattern baldness are also fairly poorly understood. No one even really knows how Rogaine works, for example, just that it does.
The findings here are really just a correlation, along with an educated guess. Also, other studies have shown other, non-X (and thus not tied to the maternal side) chromosome involvement in male pattern baldness.
That’s not to say the educated guess is incorrect, just that we don’t know that is correct. Also, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Long story short, maternal genetic influence is likely generally more important than paternal influence, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Also, the simplistic extrapolation that a maternal grandfather’s hairline will necessarily determine his daughter’s son’s hairline is, well, a simplistic extrapolation.
Hairline is inherited from your mother’s father. Sexual prowess is inherited from your father’s mother.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
What, that she was lousy?
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
by Jay on Aug 11, 2009 2:53 PM EDT up reply actions 4 recs
I feel like you’ve become more jocular as the Indians have sucked more. You must have been hilarious in the 70s.
by NickFantana on Aug 11, 2009 3:41 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
I’m now chuckling at the image of six-year-old Jay running around tossing zingers at the other first-graders about their poor pigtail-pulling technique.
by Logodaedalus on Aug 11, 2009 5:28 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
That’s what my Mom says. I still can be very, very nice, when I want to be, which is sometimes.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
You’ve been nice to me before.
Who needs affection when you can have blind hatred?
by ClemsonGirl on Aug 12, 2009 11:18 PM EDT up reply actions
That feels like a well-baited trap and not a spontaneous setup. Either way, that was not only awesome but it will also be making its way into my little bag of tricks for a rainy day.
Everybody should get ice cream every day.
I feel that if you are going to rec Jay’s, you should be reccing mine as well, because the intent was the same but expressed with opposite meaning. Perhaps mine doesn’t read the way it should
All of this is clear. That doesn’t mean it’s equally funny.
by Logodaedalus on Aug 11, 2009 7:06 PM EDT up reply actions
This bugs me a lot as well. Almost as much as discussions of “finding the part of the brain responsible for” X. The latter is worse for me because it’s not just the public, but many actual scientists, who talk that way.
by Logodaedalus on Aug 11, 2009 3:10 PM EDT up reply actions
i was simply saying that the degree to which a person adapts to a conditioning program designed to strengthen their shoulder or elbow or whatever, will be largely determined by their genetic makeup
I have a bit of an issue with this statement. First, to state that response to exercise or conditioning is determined “largely” by genetics is misleading at best. That’s only the case when every other factor (diet, supplementation, technique, parallel conditioning, etc.) is controlled for. I think it would take a level of specialty expertise that I’m not sure even exists yet to determine how much of the variation in conditioning response experienced by athletes is determined by genetics. It stands to reason, though, is that it’s just one of many factors.
Also, the topic of genetics is not as simple as the genetic code passed along at birth. Epigenetics is a relatively new concept that demonstrates how environmental influences can alter genetic response and the degree of genetic impression. The very fact that we’re only now realizing this from a scientific standpoint amply demonstrates how little we know, and further how hopelessly simplistic the public’s take on genetics is compared to reality. In short, we should all probably stop speculating on this, because the smartest thing we can collectively state here is that this conversation is over our heads.
Epigenetics is a relatively new concept that demonstrates how environmental influences can alter genetic response and the degree of genetic impression.
I was thinking along these lines as I was reading this. In this case (the ligament development) there are environmental factors (we’re talking in and out of the womb events that impact the development) even before the baby is born that set in place life long changes.
I would find this all very interesting if I had slightest #$%^ing clue what you people were talking about.
by fleerdon on Aug 11, 2009 4:48 PM EDT up reply actions
talking about responses to exercise and conditioning
by gorilla_baller on Aug 11, 2009 1:12 PM EDT up reply actions
What is the deal with this? If the inverted V thing is bad, why are teams allowing pitchers to keep doing it?
Because maybe, just maybe, amateur analysis isn’t gospel.
Steel Nick
What I’m trying to say is, breaking down the mechanics of a pitcher is cool and all, but we shouldn’t use it as a base for injury prediction.
Steel Nick
at the current juncture true… but the methodology of clinical biomechanics is changing every day which in turn impacts sport biomechanics… it isn’t unreasonable that given the interest in the subject that in the next decade a more comprehensive model of tissue failure in overarm throwing athletes couldn’t be developed
by gorilla_baller on Aug 11, 2009 11:54 AM EDT up reply actions
Nice link, thanks. That’s what my question meant…was wondering if those guys had any credibility.
by cleveland teamer on Aug 11, 2009 12:06 PM EDT up reply actions
And getting an athlete to change something with the possibility that it will reduce effectiveness is a tough, tough sell.
Stuart Dean
by stuart dean on Aug 11, 2009 11:43 AM EDT up reply actions
as i read this again it almost sounds like the beginning of a seinfeld standup
so what’s the deal with the inverted W? It’s not a W, and it’s not inverted!
(cue sweet bass line)
by gorilla_baller on Aug 11, 2009 11:27 AM EDT up reply actions
Ouch!
If you told me that you’d pay me the major league minimum for 4 years (before my career-ending injury) and all I had to do was throw like that, no way would I sign up.
This is Victor's home. Victor Jose, you too.
That’s, what, $1.6 million for four years and a chance of injury outside of normal aches and pains? I’ll take it.
Steel Nick
Don’t even ask me if I’d roid or not. Hell, I don’t want to even know the answer…
Stuart Dean
by stuart dean on Aug 11, 2009 12:52 PM EDT up reply actions
Actually on them last week to reduce swelling on herniated disk. My disposition swang from depression to that of a wounded bear…
Stuart Dean
by stuart dean on Aug 13, 2009 10:01 AM EDT up reply actions
The last time Lake County saw Jason Knapp:
7 IP, 1 H, 1 BB, 14 SO.
by FredOx on Aug 11, 2009 9:43 AM EDT reply actions 4 recs
I’m headed out to the Captains game tonight, I’m planning on bringing my camera, if I get any good pictures, I’ll post them here.
I’ve never posted pictures here before, how would I go about doing so? Thanks in advance.
by millionairesrow on Aug 11, 2009 9:59 AM EDT reply actions
Put them on flickr, imageshack, anywhere that hosts pictures from your computer. copy the image url and paste them after you hit the little tree button.
Steel Nick
Actually, I don’t think that is necessary for FanPosts. I think FanPosts now allow you to upload directly to SBN as you draft your article.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
i’m almost more excited for hagadone… lefty who tops out at 98 with a comfort zone around 93? DEFINITELY not related to sowers or laffey
by gorilla_baller on Aug 11, 2009 11:19 AM EDT up reply actions
Given that somebody else drafted him, this almost goes without saying.
by fleerdon on Aug 11, 2009 12:01 PM EDT up reply actions
Not too esoteric, but it inevitably brings to mind images of Estelle Getty, which is undesirable.
Why not go one step further and call him Constantine?
by Logodaedalus on Aug 11, 2009 5:33 PM EDT up reply actions
curse you for not including a subject line
by Logodaedalus on Aug 11, 2009 10:01 PM EDT up reply actions
This picture will give me nightmares.
Who needs affection when you can have blind hatred?
by ClemsonGirl on Aug 11, 2009 10:57 PM EDT up reply actions
Not that there is any chance you would, but you really shouldn’t read Hellblazer, then. Particularly the Garth Ennis years. Garth Ennis scares me more than a little.
Hellblazzer is amazing, particularly Brian Azzarrello’s work on it
"sometimes the internet is hard for me." - ClemsonGirl
by world dictator on Aug 12, 2009 9:14 AM EDT up reply actions
Brian Azzarello: True Clevelander. There’s a probably-baseless rumor that he’s working with HBO on an adaptation of 100 Bullets. Also check out Joker, if you’re not squeamish.
Don’t plan on it. Not my thing. I don’t watch horror movies, I don’t like bloody movies. I just avoid stufflike that at all costs.
Who needs affection when you can have blind hatred?
by ClemsonGirl on Aug 12, 2009 11:19 AM EDT up reply actions
Haha I know this pic. I google imaged “high ceiling” the other day looking for pics.
by supermarioelia on Aug 11, 2009 5:28 PM EDT up reply actions
you know he has pitched already right?
3 IP, 3H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 5 SO
by JP_Frost on Aug 11, 2009 12:12 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
shoulda been a reply
i did not… BUT… still excited nonetheless
by gorilla_baller on Aug 11, 2009 12:22 PM EDT up reply actions
i did not… BUT… still excited nonetheless
by gorilla_baller on Aug 11, 2009 12:21 PM EDT reply actions
Checking the transactions column .. appears as though the Indians signed their 32nd round pick … Matt Packer.
He was draft-eligible sophomore … who listed $200,000 as the starting point for any negotiations … led the nation in ERA at Virginia.
Just got back from the Captains game. Overall, an OK outing by Knapp. I’ll preface my comments by stating that I’m certainly not a scout, but many of the hitters were getting around pretty late on Knapp’s fastball, but he certainly wasn’t blowing people away. He has a pretty long delivery out of the windup. Other than that, it was hard to a great read on two innings of work. Knapp is a physically imposing guy, he was noticeably larger than most of the other players. I took some pictures and posted them on flickr if anyone is interested, the link is below. If there is a better way to post these, let me know and I’ll try to accommodate.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20425953@N02/sets/72157622015490864/detail/
by millionairesrow on Aug 11, 2009 9:50 PM EDT reply actions 4 recs
Thanks for taking the time to put these up. It’s hard to tell a whole lot from still images, but I think we all love to be able to actually take a look at the guy putting up the numbers. I know the first picture in the set was taken during warm-up tosses, but I like to pretend it’s live game action and the 3B is in his own little world. Makes me feel better about some of the stuff Jhonny does.
Everybody should get ice cream every day.
I noticed newbie LGT-favorite Preston Guillemet’s great start getting some love on STO before the game last night. Has anyone seen his delivery? I’m not sure how often I’ve seen something like it.
Steel Nick
Image 84 has him going beyond 180 degrees front arm to back arm. Is that still a bugaboo?
I remember UTK recounting some comment Dr. Andrews made at an ASM seminar that when he sees that, he makes a mental note that the depicted pitcher will be in his office some day…
Stuart Dean
by stuart dean on Aug 12, 2009 11:15 AM EDT up reply actions
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