More on Mussina
Posted by: Peter Abraham - Posted in Misc on Apr 12, 2007 
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Mike Mussina: “It’s not that bad. Geno (trainer Gene Monahan) thinks he can have me throwing again on the weekend. I don’t feel too bad.”
Joe Torre: “We’re waiting for a day or two to see where we are. It doesn’t seem to be a full-blown one.”
Expect to read a lot in the next two days about Marty Miller? Who’s Marty Miller you ask? He’s the team’s new “director of performance enhancement.” That’s a fancy way to say he’s the new strength and conditioning coach.
With so many player suffering muscle strains, Miller’s work will come under question. Several players said his stretching routine is different than what they were used to.
Catch you tomorrow. Catching a plane at 9 a.m. here and heading to Cali.
Now, that is the kind of information you just don’t get from places like ESPN until it’s all over the papers. Thanks for being so on the ball and passing on useful information so quickly Pete.
Safe flight out…
Thanks for the info. Lets hope that is the case. But the same was said for Wang and we saw that happened with him. Clemens must be sitting back relaxing and waiting for the open check book.
Thanks alot for the info Pete. Do you by anychance have any background information on this Marty Miller guy? I would think the boss would pay top dollar for the man that’s in charge of protecting his $190 million investment. I know injuries are a natural part of the game but this is too much. We’ve had 5 muscle strains and the season isn’t even 2 weeks old. There is something seriously wrong here.
Tottally off topic here, but in case anyone is interested Chase Wright pitched lights out today to earn a win for Trenton. He pitched 7.0 scoreless with 1 hit, 1 walk and 10 K’s. He looks very good.
Mike R.
He looks damn good. When all is said and done, I’m betting he wins more major league games than Sanchez, Ohlendorf, Rasner and Clippard combined.
I’m on board with you randyhater. I don’t want to be one of those fans that annoints prospects on two games, but I think he could be the yanks top pitching prospect as early as next year. (Once Hughes hits the show)
I don’t see Wright as having that high a ceiling, but I think he can be useful very soon.
[...] Someone really ought to teach the Yanks had to stretch. First, we lose Wang, then Hideki and now Mussina to a hamstring bug. Mussina claims he’ll only miss a start, but that’s what everyone said last year about Robbie Cano before he missed 35 games. [...]
his is the website of Marty Miller’s assistant…..it tells you all about them and this guy has a huge ego!!! http://www.mlstrength.com/
i’d guess they wait three days and then DL him. as pete said, it’s always worse with hamstrings.
at this point, they’d BETTER sign clemens this year.
Forget about Clemens. Forget about Hughes.
The Yankees need to see if they can reaquire Sidney Ponson from the Twins.
Wright’s first time out was 7 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB and 9 Ks.
So in his first two outings at Trenton, his line is
14 IP, No runs on 3 hits, 1 walk and 19 strikeouts.
Ian Kennedy at Tampa also had a good game yesterday, losing a heartbreaker 1-0. 6 IP, 1 R, 3 hits.
The pitchers in the minors have, for the most part, pitched very well.
Something’s definitely wrong here. Torre said it was a coincidence, but no way do this many players get hammy injuries in a streak like this. One or two you have to expect but this is one of the very reasons they have a strength and conditioning coach. Remember when we were all shocked by the stiffness and poor play in the first few games in the cold at the Stadium? Maybe it was the new stretching, work out and warm up technique.
Cashman was quoted recently as saying that the team offered the players this conditioning program but that the players could opt out and do their own thing. Some apparently did. I wonder if more are opting out now. Is there any correlation between those who opted out and those who were injured?
I really hope its the weather and the early season stuff and not the trainer or the program.
For the teams sake
murphydog,
Good point. It may be that the guys who opted out are the ones getting injured. I read that Pettitte was doing a squat routine that was not recommended by the team’s personnel, but that his own personal trainer told him to do.
But, I’m hoping this is all unfortunate, unhappy, coincidence. As Cashman said, the Yankees are not the only team getting injuries this early.
What’s more important, however, is getting through these injuries, which, for the past 2 seasons, the Yankees have done admirably. Fortunately, no team in the American League is running away with anything, lots of around-500 ball being played so far.
They need to bring back Giambi’s old strength and conditioning coach. That dude knows baseball.
murphydog-
you, of course, remember us having this same conversation on this blog a week ago when i said the yankee pitchers were not not ready to begin the season. i blamed cashman because i said no position was created that covered pitching performance and conditioning. getting a pitcher ready and a positional player ready are two separate things. i asked dana cavalea , the yankee conditioning coach, on his short lived blog (that was still up the first week of the season) ( at the time of wangs hamstring injury) why wang was running sprints. he replied right away that he couldn’t comment on specific yankee stuff, but that a hamstring injury is created by a pre existing weakness in the hamstring that would blow out doing any number of things.
i politley replied that i thought throwing a lot was a more appropriate way to train a pitcher . i didn’t push it because i knew he would be in trouble the moment the yankees found out he had a blog. it’s gone now, but that was the party line on hamstrings from the yankee conditioning coach.
a position needs to be created that is strictly a pitching and performance coach position. cashman has to do it. it’s not in guidry’s job description. rick petersen combines the two jobs for the mets, but you are not going to find another rick petersen out there. he’s always been ahead of the curve.
some people think sabermetrics is advanced baseball. i think what rick petersen is doing with sports technology is advanced baseball. he ,in the pre season, takes most of the pitching staff to an alabama pitching institute to do biomechanical studies and give them conditioning programs to get ready for the season. he did this with oakland and now the mets.
there’s no guarantee with pitchers and injuries. mets pitchers go down too, but if you look at the record, what peteresen is doing gets results. it’s a management oversight to spend hundred million on pitchers and zero dollars on a separate pitcing and conditioning coach. cashman is 100% in charge. who’s fault is it, but his, if no position exists?
cashman has done a great job on trades and bringing young talent into the system, but one of the problems with having him wrest power from tampa was that tampa was the place where people who actually played the game were and are. old school conditioning was better than no program at all. if cashman does want to do something new school, he needs to take a good look at petersen’s program and implement a similar one with the yankees.
sorry for the long post, but this oversight by cashman really ticks me off.
Good post, Randy I. I cited your post of a week ago about this very topic on another blog but I could not recall the author, not locate it amidst the troll posts and fools screaming for Cashman to be fired.
The pitching position required different physical skills than an everyday player and thus different conditioning needs. It appeared to me across the board the starting pitching staff was not ready for the season. But I could not pin the blame on Guidry since it seems like it was more of a conditioning issue than a coaching issue. Also the weather in NY was assuredly adverse to start.
An organization of the Yankees’ depth should have every aspect covered and this seems to be a critical avenue to achieve greater success.
Thank you for bringing this topic up as it is especially prevalent with the rash of injuries.
Randy, are you suggesting Cashman eliminated a position that provided the old school conditioning in favor of nothing?
In my opinion, creating a position of a pitching performance and conditioning coach is overblown. These professional athletes have been given performance and conditioning on a daily basis when they entered professional baseball. Some pitchers have their own personal trainers or training techniques and many are not willing to change their regimen. For the most part, they have been successful – they’ve made it to the top rung of their sport!
Rick Petersen is a fine coach, but his training regimen doesn’t seem to be any more successful with the Mets than any other team – they have as many pitching injuries as anybody else.
Genes, attitude, and age of the individual have more to do with influencing the success of a professional’s conditioning and performance than creating another specialty position.
Paulâ„¢
the problem is that no one really knows how to train pitchers. the japanese do it totally different then here with much more throwing ,and their pitchers are none the worse for the wear. i think the old school jim kaat used to say you rust out before you wear out. the old oriole pitching coach bamberger used to have the oriole pitchers throwing all the time like mazzone believes today. that oriole staff had four twenty game winners i think, so he was doing something right. i think he learned that from sal maglie though i’m not certain of that. throwing a lot has always been controversial and limiting pitch count is the new thing ,but no one knows if it really helps. it, of course, does no one any good to throw too much when they are injured, but matsuzaka didn’t seem to have any trouble last year when he was throwing 130-140 pitches for a month at a time. his arm looks pretty healthy still.
it’s not just pitch count though. it’s all that biomedical stuff that rick petersen gets into that’s important too. if you have good mechanics, throwing a lot shouldn’t hurt you.
will carrol at baseball prospectus is a good source about pitching conditioning and health, but he’s not really an expert either. he wasn’t a player or coach nor does he have any sports medicine or biomechnical degrees. the fact he’s considered an expert shows how little is known about pitching performance and conditioning.
just look at how ready the mets pitchers came out of spring training and contrast that to the yankees. that alone should have alerted cashman he needs to do something.
“Randy, are you suggesting Cashman eliminated a position that provided the old school conditioning in favor of nothing?”
he got rid of people like neil allen who taught wang his sinker. cashman replaced him with kerrigan because he wasn’t part of the tampa faction. that’s just one example.
cashman of course thought he replaced the old school conditioning with something, but it’s turning out to be worse than nothing. look i’m not bashing cashman here. like i said before, he’s done a lot of good progressive stuff here with trades amd adding young players to the organization, but there’s still a black hole in the organization as far as pitching performance and conditioning goes. if you think hughes is getting sophisticated cutting edge training you’d be wrong. the yankees are doing nothing like what petersen does. pitchers do get injured with him too ,but if you look at his years with oakland and the mets, his approach is better than anything else out there. the yankee have the resources to be cutting edge. they should be taking off from what petersen has started.there’s more cutting edge technology available to baseball than just statistical analysis.
I remember reading that the Yanks pitchers make a trip to Dr Andrews place in Alabama for evaluation on a regular basis also
It was a while ago, so no link
Meanwhile, Daniel Bard, who Yanks passed on in first round, taking Kennedy instead, lasted just 1 2/3 innings in his second unimpressive start. He gave up 6 earned runs. His ERA through 2 starts is almost 15!
Randy 1
Just curious as to how you know what the Yanks are or aren’t doing with their pitchers in terms of conditioning, etc?
Thanks
I think the conditioning issue cuts both ways. El Duque is already hurt, Oliver Perez can’t throw the ball over the plate, and all of the Mets bullpen pitchers, with the exception of Wagner, are nursing assorted injuries.
While the biomechanical stuff is interesting, I don’t think it makes pitchers better, which is what you are looking to accomplish.
I don’t think you can create a universal set of conditioning drills for pitchers because each of them throw the ball, and rely on different muscles because of their different deliveries, a different way.
Its been my experience that when someone from outside baseball comes in and tries to alter the conditioning of pitchers, more injuries are the result.
Personally, I prefer the “Old School” way with pitchers. Have them stretch and throw everyday. If you look back in history at the guys who have held up the longest, its been guys that adhered to that routine.
Babe Ruth was an incredible pitcher as well as an amazing hitter, and is the greatest baseball icon there ever has been and likely ever will be.
Let’s take a lesson from him and stick the entire team on a regimen of hot dogs and beer.
Im pretty sure the Yanks will take their time with Moose and not rush him back.
I hope Karstens is healthy not to mention Mr Wang.
“Just curious as to how you know what the Yanks are or aren’t doing with their pitchers in terms of conditioning, etc?”
sverlyn-
i’m just reading between the lines. i don’t know exactly,so i’m making my best guess based on what info i can find. dana cavalea, a yankee conditioning coach, had a blog on during ST and the first week of the season that was accessible to anyone. it’s been since taken off the blogosphere. i’ve been interested in pitching for a long time so i keep my eyes open for info about training and pitching performance. i do know that it’s an area that the experts have a hard time coming up with a consensus on the best way to train pitchers. it’s a fascinating subject because there is such a diversity of opinion out there.
i’ll say it again though that i think in this day and age it’s time for the yankees to use all the technology available to them and to blend old school with new school and come up with a cutting edge pitching training program. i think it’s so important that a new position needs to be created to implement it. training johnny damon and training chien-ming wang are two different things. one size doesn’t fit all.
I agree with your take on the beneftis of forward thinking when it comes to training/conditioning. But, your theory that the Yanks aren’t doing X or Y is just wild guessing on your part. I posted that I remember reading that they sent their pitchers to Andrews biomechanics lab.
If you say “don’t know exactly,so i’m making my best guess ” it’s probably better not to criticize the Yanks for doing or not doing certain things regarding their pitchers
sverlyn-
it’s wild guessing on your part that it’s wild guessing on my part. i said it was my best guess, not wild guessing. here’s a link to the place you were talking about: http://www.asmi.org/
here’s a link to what i was talking about: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=.....ent=safari
1) The Yankees did not do their homework when the hire the two clowns.
2) Marty Miller’s assistant…talking about…experience. The guy…what’s his name…Dana…helped out Jeff Mangold during 6 weeks of spring training; and he has experienced. So much experience that he has own website. Another experienced GURU want to be.
3) Ofcourse Cashman is not blaming the two clowns for the injuries…because if he did…he would look like the ring leader of the clowns. HE HAND PICKED THEM.
Marty Miller is one knowledgeable motivating conditioning expert that I have had the pleasure of working with in the past. His knowledge of how to train outweighs the supposed knowledge many of his player’s claim to have. If they give Marty a chance, he can prove himself. For those players who believe they have been doing things correctly and don’t want to try new, improved approaches to training — just stick your head in the sand….and don’t possibly be better than you have been.
If these athletes were airplanes, and their injuries were engine malfunctions or other problems, the maintenance chief would have been fired by now. As much as I like him, Cashman is dodging his responsibility possibly because he did hand pick them. They need to change their maintenance, er, I mean conditioning regimen.