By Mike Takeuchi
Reprinted Article
Despite currently residing at the bottom of the American League West standings, the Seattle Mariners may just be ahead of the game.
Just like sabermetrics has revolutionized the sport in terms of analyzing baseball statistics and turning them into plausible outcomes, modern physiological science is replacing long-held and often incorrect tenets in how ballplayers are trained. And Mariners General Manager Jack Zduriencik is counting on local resident Dr. Marcus Elliott to be at the forefront of this movement in the sport.
After years of research and practical training while working with elite athletes individually as well as the NFL's New England Patriots and the NBA's Utah Jazz, the Harvard trained-Elliott is now the Director of Sport Science and Performance for MLB's Seattle franchise. Hired at the start of spring training this year, the owner of Santa Barbara's Peak Performance Project or P3 is currently working with the organization's entire minor league roster while making plans to work with the Big League club next year.
"We are just trying to do things that work for us, things that are necessary as you look at ways to improve players' performance by embracing sabermetrics and helping them achieve their maximum physical potential," Zduriencik said. "And Marcus' cutting-edge approach is what we were looking for."
In addition to his long resume', that included doing research with South African running guru Tim Noakes (his "The Lore of Running" is the definitive book on the sport), the 44-year-old has worked extensively with baseball players for several years-including local Major Leaguers Ryan Spillborghs and Virgil Vasquez, as well as the White Sox Carlos Quentin, Twins outfielder Delmon Young, and Detroit Tigers and American League Rookie of the Year candidate Brennan Boesch.
While working in other sports, the amiable sports scientist has long held a fascination with baseball players. While watching their moments, he believed that the first key was recognizing the need for different training programs for athletes of different sports, knowing the tools the athlete possesses, and then bringing to them a sophisticated, higher level of training.
"Some trainers insist there are no differences in training athletes in different sports," Elliott said on Wednesday. "That couldn't be farther from the truth. In basketball, players like (Jazz guard) Deron Williams work on their athleticism. In baseball, the main thing is hip rotation-something that trainers who have been around for 20 years still haven't grasped."
The Santa Barbaran cringes when discussing other training techniques such as "three sets of ten reps" weight training and flush runs", three to five-mile training runs pitchers are bound to do the day after they throw to "flush out" lactic acid supposedly incurred while on the mound [In several online publications, such as the Harvard Medical Review and Scientific American, lactic acid buildup is caused by anaerobic glycolisis, or the breaking down of energy that is caused by anaerobic activity (such as sprinting) for a period of around one to three minutes without rest or recovery. It takes a pitcher about three seconds to throw a pitch that is followed by a 30 second recovery].
"A pitcher would have to sprint down from the top of the stadium to the mound, throw the pitch, and do it again without complete recovery to build lactic acid," Elliott said. "When I was up in Seattle, I asked (former Seattle and current Rangers pitcher) Cliff Lee if he still ran after starts, and he admitted that he hadn't in years."
Elliott added that players in the same sports who even play the same position can have completely different needs and points to left fielders Young and Boesch as the perfect examples. While Boesch is in his first year in the Majors, the fifth-year veteran Young is coming off a sub-par year by his standards.
"I saw a strong kid, who hadn't been exposed to the intricacies of how his body worked," Elliot said on April 5. "In addition to flexibility and core strengthening, we worked on his right ankle mobility. Being a right-handed batter, Delmon generates all his power from that leg. Also, it would definitely help in his speed on the bases and in the outfield."
"Coming in, my body was naturally tight," Young said on. "Once I started getting into the routine, it began to open up and I was able to increase my strength and improve my speed while having better form. I haven't felt this good since 2005."
It seems to be working-the 24-year-old is currently batting .308, 24 points higher than in 2009, has already exceeded his RBI totals, and is one home run shy of the previous year.
Elliot said that Boesch's situation was much different in that he only needed a refinement in his training.
"Brennan had all the intangibles that make up a decent ball player, good eye-hand coordination, heart, and the ability to deal with failure over and over-plus he was just a beast," Elliott said. "But the one thing he was lacking was the rotational power from his hips that prevented him from hitting home runs."
Boesch, who began coming to Santa Barbara three winters ago and now makes his off-season home here, began to notice the difference in 2008 while in the minor leagues.
"After my first off-season with Marcus, I felt like I had some more power, but I also noticed that I was able to increase my speed and become more flexible," Boesch said on May 23. "I was pretty greedy in wanting myself to become a better baseball player, and he's helped me satisfy my thirst."
The numbers don't lie, his personal hitting coach Craig Wallenbrock said. While pointing out his Boesch's first season in the Majors (.329 average with 12 home runs, and 50 RBI), the longtime coach, who tutors or has worked with Ryan Braun, Chase Utley, and Travis Ishikawa as well, said that Elliott was the type of specialist he had been looking for in a long while.
"I was skeptical of most of the trainers I've met, because they were into the cookie cutting mode of building strength," Wallenbrock said. "And it wasn't functional for a baseball player. Marcus was the first guy I came across that really understood the movements of the sport. And after working together for a few years, he is someone I could trust anyone with and because of his positive attitude, someone I enjoy working with."
While flattered by the praise, Elliott took great pains in saying that contemporaries Glenn Fleisig and Alan Jaeger as well as a few others were doing equally important work in the evolving science. However, the Harvard Medical School graduate was the first to be hired by the team. After several talks with general managers as well as the Angels Mike Scioscia, someone Elliott greatly admires, after meetings with Zduriencik and Carmen Fusco, the Mariners were the first team to commit to him.
"The Mariners were committed from top to bottom to commit to a program by hiring two full time staffers and agreeing to add one more a year until all levels are staffed," Elliot said. "They recognized that you can't pay a young kid fresh out of college with limited experience $10,000 a year to handle multi-million dollar ballplayers."
Although he has yet to work with the Big League team, Elliott already recognized he is taking on a larger challenge than he was used to. On his first day on the job in February, he met the entire minor league program, a group that more than covered the infield of the team's main spring training practice field in Peoria, Arizona. Since then, he has traveled several times to Seattle to meet with team officials and players on their Triple-A affiliate in Tacoma.
He is high on several players including pitcher Michael Pineda, a right-hander whose velocity jumped from the low 90's to 97 on the gun and infielder Dustin Ackley. While Pineda was in single A, Ackley was drafter out of the University of North Carolina last year. After performing "off the charts" in their first exposure to the program in spring training, both are currently in Triple A-one step from the Major Leagues.
"We are still early in the process, the timing was not ideal, right before spring training," Elliott said. "It will be better in the off season so the players will have time to get a full winter of training and instruction and gives us the opportunity to for us to monitor everyone's progress. It's heartening to hear these kids getting excited about this even though their current season isn't over yet."
At a bumping P3 on Saturday, while his wife Nadine played coach to their very energetic son Keean (31/2), and fed strawberries to the fruit-stained mouth of daughter Kira (10 months), Elliott went over progress graphs on the big screen with Mariners scout Dennis Gonsalves. Gonsalves thought so much of the program, he and his wife Rose drove up from Torrance to have their son Gabriel assessed. With youth, high school, college, and professional athletes working out around them, the message was clear. They knew what Seattle may soon know-that the future is now.
No comments:
Post a Comment