New Book I'm Reading- The Arm: Inside the Billion Dollar Industry of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports

[Majordave]

Started reading this book this past Saturday. VERY interesting read as far as I'm concerned. My son threw 88 as a lefty at age 16 but said he didn't want to pitch in college due to how sore his arm was after an outing. I purposely spared over using him as a pitcher during his youth. I coached him from age 5 until 19 and did not let any of my pitchers overthrow. I inherited some pitchers with sore arms each summer from their high school seasons but did not believe in riding a good pitcher just to win. Unfortunately I saw much overuse of the better pitchers by my opposing coaches over the years.

The author, Jeff Passan, covers MLB pitchers, MiLB pitchers, ex-MLB pitchers, high school phenom pitchers, youth pitchers who have had Tommy John surgery and the doctors who perform the surgery.  It also discusses players who have had one and sometimes more TJ surgeries.  I'm only ten chapters into the book and hate putting it down.  

The book also covers a local young stud from the KC area, Riley Pint, who has managed to throw pitches in the upper 90's without arm trouble and another kid from Manhattan, KS suffering from elbow pain seeking medical consult from a KC area doctor about whether or not to have TJ surgery (he hasn't so far).

A free preview section that I read on Amazon.com discusses a Seattle area mad scientist type pitching arm lab called Driveline where scientific guys who love baseball study pitchers and how to push the limits of conventional baseball wisdom on how to strengthen the arm, rehab injured pitching arms, etc.  Some of the pitchers there throw 105 mph plus. Haven't heard whether or not any of them have been signed by any MLB clubs yet.

All in all this book has really grabbed me to this point.  It's a rather long read at 368 pages.

Cheers.

[udbrky]

I definitely want to read this. I knew of Kyle Boddy at Driveline through another forum that he used to frequent. He's doing some really interesting stuff.

 

He and Eric Cressey are doing cutting edge arm stuff. Another great source is mobilitywod.com

 

Driveline had a few MLB rehabbing clients. Trey McNutt is on a minors deal with the Padres and worked out there this past winter.