Quick Word On Snell’s Plant Foot

by ~ September 11th, 2009 at 2:22 am

Ever since this Shannon Drayer tweet…

Minor adjustment by Adair, wanted to get his front foot pointing towards the plate rather than to the 3rd base dugout

…Jeff Sullivan of Lookout Landing has been paying a lot of attention to that foot (post 1, 2, 3), noticing whenever it  goes out of whack.

Jeff noted in one of the posts that this was an adjustment that he had to make when he pitched, and it certainly was for me as well.  It’s a common inefficiency, and while it should be an easy fix, sometimes it takes a long time to break the bad muscle memory.

There are so many things going on in a pitching motion that it gets difficult to pay a lot of attention to that foot plant.

But sometimes, even if you’re trying to point towards home plate, your spike will catch before your foot is pointing in the right direction.  A lot of a pitcher’s velocity comes from hip/shoulder separation– that is, the hips opening up first, using core muscles to pull the shoulders around.  But if the hips open up too early and pull the shoulders around too early the pitcher will end up using his shoulder to produce more power than is safe.  To avoid opening up too early pitchers are often taught to keep their toe pointing towards third base as long as possible, turning it towards home plate at the last possible moment.  The toes lead the hips, hips lead the shoulders and shoulders leads the throwing arm.  So, if you’re trying to turn your foot at the last possible moment, you can imagine how the foot may not make it if the timing isn’t right.

This may be happening to Snell, but it’s more likely that he’s just doing it “wrong” subconsciously (</pitching mechanics 101 tangent>).

Pointing the foot anywhere but home plate will result in inconsistent command and can place unnecessary stresses on the body.

For Snell’s next start I’ll be paying attention to his plant foot, and perhaps I’ll try to chart how many times he gets it right (home) and wrong (off center).  I’ve been wanting to talk a little bit about his mechanics anyway, so if the plant foot is still an issue I’ll go deeper into how the crooked foot may be effecting his performance and the rest of his motion.

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  • FelixElRey

    As a physical therapist who teaches pitching mechanics, I can say that we teach throwers to land with their foot pointed at 1 o’clock (11 o’clock for lefties). The reason is pretty much what you said. Pointing at 3rd base essentially blocks off your hips and doesn’t allow the pop in the hips to start the throwing whip. Pointing to the plate forces premature hip opening decreasing the hip pop and forcing a long, dragging of the arm and leads to injuries as you are forces to throw “all arm”.

    …not saying we’ve got it all figured out and everyone else is wrong, but that’s what we teach and the reasoning behind it.