High volumes of baseball pitches thrown by an athlete are associated with fatigue, which can decrease performance and increase injury risk. A system to identify certain biomechanical factors that have been linked with pitcher fatigue would be beneficial for the sport as a method of providing objective quantifications of a player’s risk of becoming over-fatigued. The team used motion capture to evaluate collegiate and major league (Pittsburgh Pirates) level pitchers, and conducted data exploration and analysis of the results on the parallel datasets. This included factors such as mechanical variation, joint range of motion, rate of force development, performance metrics, kinetic chain, rest time, and joint forces/moments. From the team’s data exploration, select candidate biomechanical factors were identified as the strongest indicators of fatigue, and were used to develop a fatigue metric. This metric included three biomechanical factors/outcomes, which characterized a pitch as “fatigued” upon failure of these factors/outcomes. The results presented a correlation between an increase in “fatigued” pitches as the number of pitches thrown increased.

• This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

Creator

• Murray, Crystal
• Kokernak, Charlotte
• Johns, Kyle
• Ngan, Amy

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• 105241
• E-project-042623-112344

Keyword

• Fatigue Metric Development
• Baseball
• Major League Baseball
• Motion Capture
• Baseball Pitching
• Biomechanics

Advisor

• Troy, Karen

Year

• 2023

Sponsor

• Pittsburgh Pirates Major League Baseball Organization

Date created

• 2023-04-26

Resource type

• Major Qualifying Project

Major

• Biomedical Engineering
• Management

Source

• E-project-042623-112344

Rights statement

• In Copyright

Last modified

• 2023-06-22