Jameson Taillon’s road to recovery took him down baseball’s new path

As he went through it, Boddy read about what Tezuka called the “elbow spiral” motion, or, in essence, a shorter arm path. It was a common throwing motion seen in professional pitchers in Japan, which Boddy theorized was caused by the great volume of throwing they did. In the text, Tezuka advocated for the shorter arm path, in which the initial, back-side part of the motion does not extend the arm toward second base as Taillon did; rather, it kept the arm nearer the body. It was more like how a quarterback threw.

In technical terms, the core concept married external, or outward, shoulder rotation to supination of the arm, meaning the forearm was in a forward-facing, more relaxed position. Supination is the opposite of pronation, the twisting of the forearm that forces the palm outward and thumb toward the ground. Pronation happens naturally as pitchers release the ball and follow through. But Tezuka posited there should be no pronation of the pitching arm at that early stage of the throwing motion like Taillon and many others did.

By condensing the throwing motion, it also better allowed for the proper sequencing of the delivery. If one thought about it as an engineer, one was essentially reducing unnecessary parts.

“It was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is an interesting concept,’” Boddy said.