Jeremy Bonderman injury analysis explained through Pitch FX
For those of you who having heard, Jeremy Bonderman will miss the rest of the season in order to undergo surgery for a blood clot resulting from Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (TOS). I didn't write about it until now because I wanted to look through the pitch FX data to see if there was anything we could really discern and I found out that Pitch FX can be more truthful sometimes than any athlete.
The axillary vein when compressed is a very big issue due to the large volume of blood flowing through it. (see image)
You can also see based on the location the axillary vein is basically right where the arm meets the trunk of the body. A lot of times the pain can feel like general shoulder soreness or having a fatigued arm. Clots in the circulatory system are extremely dangerous as they can dislodge and eventually potentially cause strokes, heart attacks or more. I won't bore you with the details of the surgery other than that they have to remove a piece of rib and repair the vein as well. This will keep him out the rest of the year including the post-season as rehab is conservative due to the circulatory system aspect of it.
But has it been the cause of his issues on the mound? While I'm sure that it wasn't helping things, let's look at the Pitch FX data over his many starts to see if things have been worsening. One start didn't get measured correctly according to MLB so I threw that one out.
Just taking a look at it at quick glance, it appears that he wasn't consistent in any aspect of his game. Release point across each start overlaps some but it spreads out over 1.5 feet horizontally and over a foot vertically. I suspect that if his arm wasn't feeling completely normal he was trying to use his lower body and trunk more to get the pitches to act "normally". As he relied on this his arm became more of a "wet noodle" and less likely to be move about in space in a consistent manner. Looking at his average release point in the chart below it, you can see that even though it doesn't appear as bad, it still varies quite a lot for an average of 90 pitches per start.
His velocity on his pitches is also erratic. Up down Up down and then it's a big jump up and then down again. I can't explain the completely erratic nature of his velocity on all his pitches. I wonder if the data is somewhat corrupted but I doubt that.
After these two, I look at the movement of his pitches, his speed versus vertical movement (I don't care all that much about horizontal movement), and avg movement per pitch type per start. Again, reproducibility is non existent.
So, let's look at this a different way, let's start with the results and work backwords. Rotoworld.com first began to question the health of his arm back in mid to late April, specifically 4/24/08. They began to question this after he displayed extremely poor command over back to back starts where he couldn't find the strike zone. Both of these starts in particular have the furthest horizontal release point with it being almost at the bottom of his total release point zone. His average velocity started to tail off significantly at that point and then over the next several days. His average horizontal movement was the most and the average vertical movement was near the lowest amount on all his pitches over all of the starts.
To summarize this means to me that he was dropping down, trying to relieve some pressure off his shoulder and the vein. By dropping down he was throwing more in the horizontal plane and less in the vertical plane causing his movement to suffer as well as his pitch command.
| | | | Average | Speed | | | | | | | |
| FA | 81.31 | 72.13 | 79.54 | 72.95 | 81.50 | 70.70 | 71.84 | 83.57 | 85.03 | 81.84 | 82.82 |
| SI | 82.20 | 79.25 | 80.34 | | 81.36 | 79.50 | | | | 78.10 | |
| CH | 76.68 | 76.00 | 74.99 | 75.40 | 75.57 | 76.26 | 78.12 | 79.13 | 79.47 | | 76.83 |
| SL | 77.20 | 75.13 | 74.50 | 74.98 | 75.15 | 75.52 | 77.97 | 78.02 | 78.78 | 75.46 | 76.14 |
| CU | | 73.55 | 73.60 | | 75.40 | 74.87 | 74.90 | | 76.10 | | |
| | | | Average | Horizontal | Movement | | | | | | |
| FA | -12.51 | -7.68 | -9.80 | -7.23 | -13.25 | -12.35 | -7.35 | -10.31 | -9.54 | -7.54 | -8.23 |
| SI | -18.20 | -11.50 | -17.79 | | -17.60 | -15.81 | | | | -11.51 | |
| CH | -9.66 | -6.10 | -7.72 | -4.03 | -7.82 | -10.57 | -9.20 | -11.59 | -7.64 | | -10.23 |
| SL | -6.43 | 1.20 | -5.89 | 2.76 | -8.55 | -2.50 | 1.06 | -0.83 | -0.60 | 0.75 | 0.55 |
| CU | | 1.45 | -8.30 | | -6.83 | -6.61 | 2.07 | | 0.647 | | |
| | | | Average | Vertical | Movement | | | | | | |
| FA | 4.65 | 7.48 | 2.57 | 9.91 | 7.64 | 7.15 | 7.16 | 7.01 | 6.10 | 8.60 | 9.04 |
| SI | 6.61 | 8.56 | 7.08 | | 6.63 | 7.47 | | | | 10.06 | |
| CH | 1.10 | 4.08 | 1.12 | 2.07 | 0.92 | 3.13 | 3.83 | 5.99 | 3.08 | | 8.13 |
| SL | 0.63 | 0.68 | 2.31 | 2.68 | 1.37 | 0.10 | -0.12 | 0.00 | -0.34 | 1.86 | 2.21 |
| CU | | -2.41 | -0.79 | | -3.55 | -0.64 | -3.62 | | -2.48 | | |
This to me is one of the ways I think Pitch FX can actually help the baseball players, management, and fantasy baseball owners. As an Athletic Trainer, my first priority is always to the health of the players though. This kind of data could be examined more to possibly predict in the future that something is wrong that the pitcher isn't relaying. I'm sure that some of the MLB teams are looking at this and I hope that all of them do. Having this sort of data is hugely helpful and the next step would be to include the footstrike moment and note that on an x/y plot.
As a fantasy baseball owner, you can look at these graphs and see that something isn't right. Bad starts happen so one start is not a good reason to get rid of someone. However with a couple of starts in a row, looking like the above, and then getting whispers from the hometown newspapers and Rotoworld.com means you should unload him ASAP.
