While perusing baseball-related academic journals in preparation for our podcast (sorry, it was just as painful for me writing that as it must have been for you reading that), I came across the following, which I thought this was interesting:
Justin Tammany at Hardin-Simmons University and others found that a pitcher's velocity increases by 3.6% when grunting during their release. The study, “The Effect of Grunting on Overhead Throwing Velocity in Collegiate Baseball Pitchers” used randomized sets of grunting and non-grunting conditions to investigate whether a baseball pitcher’s motion might benefit from the same kind of noisemaking that has been found to improve tennis players’ serve speed by almost 5%. Tammany's results were based on a sample of 24 NCAA D3 pitchers.
Why might this be important? Separate research conducted by David Whiteside, now Director of Performance Science for the Yankees, found that every 1% increase in pitch speed produced a 2.3% improvement in a pitcher’s fielding independent pitching (FIP).
Here's an ungated copy of the study:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350729791_The_effect_of_grunting_on_overhead_throwing_velocity_in_collegiate_baseball_pitchers
Justin Tammany at Hardin-Simmons University and others found that a pitcher's velocity increases by 3.6% when grunting during their release. The study, “The Effect of Grunting on Overhead Throwing Velocity in Collegiate Baseball Pitchers” used randomized sets of grunting and non-grunting conditions to investigate whether a baseball pitcher’s motion might benefit from the same kind of noisemaking that has been found to improve tennis players’ serve speed by almost 5%. Tammany's results were based on a sample of 24 NCAA D3 pitchers.
Why might this be important? Separate research conducted by David Whiteside, now Director of Performance Science for the Yankees, found that every 1% increase in pitch speed produced a 2.3% improvement in a pitcher’s fielding independent pitching (FIP).
Here's an ungated copy of the study:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350729791_The_effect_of_grunting_on_overhead_throwing_velocity_in_collegiate_baseball_pitchers
