Dodgers Pitching Coach Preparing to Deploy More Flexible Training Methods
If there's one thing the Los Angeles Dodgers franchise prides itself on, it's being progressive.
The team is always tinkering with its processes behind the scenes, looking for an edge in a competitive industry to win at the highest level. Any advantage a team can unearth, the better chances it has at consistently being among the best in the sport.
Although spending on player contracts gets the most attention, the Dodgers have dominated the National League West for more than a decade in large part because of their under-the-hood investments in the best, most useful training and analytical tools.
That includes tools designed to keep players healthy. When it comes to starting pitching, the 2023 season was a unprecedented gut-check. Clayton Kershaw, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, and Walker Buehler spent all or part of the season on the injured list, robbing manager Dave Roberts of four-fifths of an ideal Opening Day rotation.
With that in mind, it appears the Dodgers might be taking a new approach with at least one pitcher. Pitching coach Mark Prior echoed these sentiments in an interview with SiriusXM MLB Radio.
According to Prior, the goal is to approach things in a way that keeps pitchers both healthy and effective. Every player has a different method of competing at the highest level. By being flexible with different approaches, the team believes it can best maximize a player's potential.
Recent acquisition Yoshinobu Yamamoto is an example of this premise. He's been the best pitcher in Japan for the last handful of years. While many ballplayers in the United States rely upon weightlifting as a way to get stronger, Yamamoto reportedly goes the other way.
Rather than lifting weights, he's all about muscle flexibility. This includes participating in a host of stretching exercises. Not only is he a yoga enthusiast, he focuses much of his training on keeping his body balanced.
Yamamoto is constantly working on hip and leg flexibility. This is done with a host of wooden blocks, as well as your standard yoga mat. Reportedly, he's also into throwing both mini soccer balls and javelins long distances to warm his arm up.
While these practices might be atypical for the average big leaguer, it's seemed to work wonders for Yamamoto. As such, the Dodgers are set to bring over the pitcher's "biomechanical guru," trainer Osamu Yada, from Japan to continue his work with Yamamoto during the 2024 season.
As Yamamoto and others have proven, there's no right way to become an established starting pitcher. However, as the Dodgers are aiming to do, the accumulation of as much information as possible could lead to a refined method for preserving their starting pitchers' health.
