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Major League Baseball is in the middle of an arms race. Pitchers are becoming more and more expensive, as we saw with some of the nine-figure contracts handed out this offseason.
It’s good to have Dr. Arnel Aguinaldo in San Diego.
“I’ve always had a vision of building a state-of-the-art biomechanics lab specifically for baseball. Baseball pitching and hitting are kind of my specialty.”
Arnel is a professor of biomechanics at Point Loma Nazarene University. More than a decade ago, he started building equipment for sports-specific labs. One day, over coffee with Padres assistant general manager Josh Stein, he proposed a grander idea.
On Monday, the seeds of science bloomed.
“Basically, my vision is coming true,” Aguinaldo said.
With funding from the Padres, a new biomechanics laboratory has opened on PLNU’s Balboa campus. Everyone in the Friars system, from the majors to the minors, as well as Sea Lions players, can train there, but it can be a little nerve-wracking when you step in for the first time.
“If you like to geek out on this, I mean this is really cool stuff. It’s literally rocket science applied to baseball,” Aguinaldo says.
We’re talking about a complete setup of 20 cameras here. Full motion capture technology that shows how a pitcher works inside and out. Ball tracking devices such as Trackman, Rapsodo, Edgertronic, etc. This is a device that instantly tells you how a pitcher is throwing a pitch and how it moves in the air. The mound and batter’s box feature force platform technology to measure balance and force distribution. They have bats equipped with sensors to show batters the best way to attack the strike zone.
Or, more simply:
“We’re trying to find ways to move their bodies efficiently,” Aguinaldo says.
Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla was an early adopter of this new technology and understood how it could help not only improve but extend players’ careers.
“At the end of the day, players need to be educated, players need to understand how they move and what’s best for them,” Niebla says.
Every pitch creates an avalanche of information. But numbers are meaningless if they are not applied correctly. A team of biomechanists collects everything and feeds it into the pipeline. Niebla is a filter for players to get only the most important tidbits.
“Eventually the information gets to me. And with that information, I can see the coaching part of it a little bit more clearly,” Niebla says. “I think the most important thing is how do you take that information and narrow it down to the root of the problem?”
While baseball may be fun, the core of this lab is a research facility. While it will develop better baseball players, it will also develop the next generation of biomechanists and kinesiologists.
“Really, our main focus is on our students. We want our graduate students to have a really good experience and learn cutting-edge biomechanics to improve athlete performance and lower the risk of injury. We want people to understand how they can use science,” says Aguinaldo.
Therefore, a biomechanics laboratory must support several competencies, including the most important one: availability.
Listen: NBC 7 San Diego’s Darnay Tripp and Derek Torgerson take to the mic as On Flyer covers all things San Diego Padres. Interviews, analysis, behind the scenes…the ups, the downs, and everything in between. Tap here to find On Friar wherever you listen to podcasts.
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