7/16 Gameday Thread: Groome, Shawaryn , & Owens

The command and velo issues are purely mechanical but wouldn't be surprised if its in his head now.  His delivery has become increasingly worse over the years.  I am not a pitching coach but do have extensive education in biomechanics.  I've looked at the same point in his delivery from multiple years.  This years is by far the worse.  His movement strategies are limited from a mechanics standpoint.  His brain has to choose a movement option based on the feedback it gets from the body and the actual bony positions it can achieve.  From long distance, Owens can not achieve the bony positions necessary to give him better movement options when coming toward the plate.  He side bends and moves too much in the frontal plane signaling he doesn't rotate thru his trunk and hips well.  If I can't rotate my body, the next natural strategy is to bend.  The lack of rotation creates a lack of loading AND an inefficient delivery because all of his energy is no longer directed toward the plate to maximize velocity...its heading off to the side.  This leaves the arm to do all the work when it should do very little in regards to loading.  It should just be the end of the whip.  This also creates control issues because it becomes harder to "stay on top of the ball" or "finish downhill" or "get extension" (choose a pitching term they all mean the same thing) because he is almost falling to the side.

Unless these are addressed then you forget about it and that is very very sad. 

It's kind of pathetic how bad the Portland roster is. At least the big league team has a lot of young talent still growing who are already performing so they have time to fill the void.

Lin and Travis have been a good examples of a team using organizational depth that isn't highly rated but still valuable. Yes we need more top end talent now but these are the guys who are almost as important to very good teams needing depth reinforcements.