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Home Sports Twins starting pitching thriving post All-Star break with help of stick figures

Twins starting pitching thriving post All-Star break with help of stick figures

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Twins starting pitching thriving post All-Star break with help of stick figures

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“That’s our internal version of it,” Verhoeven said. “It’s just a way to take everything out of it. When you’re looking at video, angles are different, there are baserunners, there is a catcher. We want to present it in a way where they can just focus on the information, where you just see the body movement and you can really focus in on the differences between one outing to the next, or even a pitch type.”

There are hundreds of data points in a pitcher’s delivery, a mountain of numbers. That is where Verhoeven excels, according to Twins pitchers. The way he presents results to one pitcher might be completely different than another based on a pitcher’s preferences. Verhoeven and Twins pitching coaches are good at identifying corrective exercises and drills to use between starts.

López, for example, often throws around 20 pitches in his primary bullpen session between starts. He said he uses the first 12 pitches as a focus on mechanics to build muscle memory. The last eight pitches are about execution.

“[Verhoeven] can make something complicated sound and seem simple, which is what you want,” López said. “You want to simplify things. It’s hard to hear you need to do X-amount of degrees of that, X-percentage of your body height.”

There are, of course, variables for every outing. Nobody can feel their best every day across a six-month season. But biomechanics give players a chance to compare themselves to a specific start or stretch of games.

Relievers are more likely to consult them when they’re struggling, Cole Sands said, because it’s harder to make changes when they’re pitching so often. Biomechanics also can help hitters with their positioning, generating energy for their swings.

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