Twins starting pitching thriving post All-Star break with help of stick figures

The day after a Twins starting pitcher completes his start, he will meet with pitching coach Pete Maki in front of video monitors to evaluate what went right and wrong during the outing. The debrief, as one would expect, is an in-depth look at pitch sequencing and how their game plan worked.

Along with the batter-by-batter breakdowns, there is another postgame report starting pitchers value. It’s a summary on the pitcher’s mechanics, assembled by Martijn Verhoeven, the club’s sports science research lead.

The biomechanical report quantifies all the parts in a pitcher’s delivery. Think stride length, stride direction, the speed a pitcher turns his torso, the shoulder angle at foot plant — “Everything you can imagine,” Pablo López said. Verhoeven will create a comparison between how a pitcher moved in his last start vs. the best starts in his career.

“Once they have a database with the way you move, then it’s easy for Martijn to flag if there are any trends going in the wrong direction,” López said. “It’s a team effort for Martijn and the pitching coaches to be like, ‘OK, when you throw your best quality fastball, we know that your stride length is between 95-98% of your body height. Sometimes when you stride 100% or more, then your fastball loses its best shape and it doesn’t have the same power.’ It’s very interesting.”

López, who has yielded a 2.25 ERA over seven starts since the All-Star break, credited Verhoeven’s help after each of his past two home outings. In his past three starts, he’s thrown 25 of his 26 fastest pitches this season.

“He does this really cool thing when requested,” López said. “He sends these stick figures comparing one specific start to previous starts, or all of 2023, and we’re able to kind of pinpoint where the mechanical issue may be.”

Most teams prioritized biomechanics over the past half-decade, and the Twins made it a part of all their minor league levels. Verhoeven, who grew up about 20 minutes outside of Amsterdam, has worked with the Twins since 2018. He had a visiting scholarship at California Berkeley, then went to graduate school at the University of Georgia to study kinesiology.

The stick figure animations are like watching a skeleton of a pitcher’s delivery.

“That’s our internal version of it,” Verhoeven said. “It’s just a way to take everything out of it. When you’re looking at video, angles are different, there are baserunners, there is a catcher. We want to present it in a way where they can just focus on the information, where you just see the body movement and you can really focus in on the differences between one outing to the next, or even a pitch type.”

There are hundreds of data points in a pitcher’s delivery, a mountain of numbers. That is where Verhoeven excels, according to Twins pitchers. The way he presents results to one pitcher might be completely different than another based on a pitcher’s preferences. Verhoeven and Twins pitching coaches are good at identifying corrective exercises and drills to use between starts.

López, for example, often throws around 20 pitches in his primary bullpen session between starts. He said he uses the first 12 pitches as a focus on mechanics to build muscle memory. The last eight pitches are about execution.

“[Verhoeven] can make something complicated sound and seem simple, which is what you want,” López said. “You want to simplify things. It’s hard to hear you need to do X-amount of degrees of that, X-percentage of your body height.”

There are, of course, variables for every outing. Nobody can feel their best every day across a six-month season. But biomechanics give players a chance to compare themselves to a specific start or stretch of games.

Relievers are more likely to consult them when they’re struggling, Cole Sands said, because it’s harder to make changes when they’re pitching so often. Biomechanics also can help hitters with their positioning, generating energy for their swings.

“It’s stuff we already know is going on,” starter Bailey Ober said. “We’re just able to put numbers and exact quantifications on what we’re feeling. We’re able to double-check what we’re feeling. If it lines up, we can go ahead and try to make some adjustments.”

Introducing biomechanics in the minor leagues not only gives the staff more data points in a player’s career, but it can aid development.

“Zebby [Matthews] increased his velocity a ton over the course of the year,” said Verhoeven, referring to the rookie starter. ”Part of that was driven by some of these mechanical improvements. That really informs the next Zebby, right?”

Verhoeven didn’t watch much baseball while growing up in the Netherlands — “I had seen maybe five games before I started working with the Twins,” he said — but he’s played a role in the Twins’ pitching success.

Twins starters have recorded the fifth-lowest ERA (3.55) in the majors since the All-Star break despite injuries to Joe Ryan and Chris Paddack.

“Everything is so driven by results,” rookie starter Simeon Woods Richardson said. “As long as I can work on it every day, I can get comfortable with it. But it’s one of those things that results happen when you do it right.”