Injury Report: Joel Zumaya

by Kyle Boddy on Jul 27, 2008 6:01 PM PDT in Injury Report Comment 2 comments

Tigers' reliever Joel Zumaya left the game with "tightness in his tricep." Tightness in the upper arm (tricep and bicep muscles) are indicative of torn or damaged elbow ligaments. As I pointed out in a previous post, Zumaya's arm is still horizontal when his shoulders turn (possibly as a result of his W-arm positioning), thus increasing the load on his Ulnar Collateral Ligament due to unnecessarily violent external rotation about the shoulder.

As always, we'll monitor the situation at Driveline Mechanics. There's a lot to like about Zumaya (specifically his straight-forward stride), but there's a lot of mechanical flaws. Don't let the 100 mph fastball fool you; Zumaya is high-risk.

Kyle Boddy

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Kyle,

I enjoy your site and your view of what is going on each player’s mechanics. I would say I visit every week or two to check up on your new stuff, and I have a link up on my site to yours.

I just read your comment regarding Zumaya about how “Tightness in the upper arm (tricep and bicep muscles) are indicative of torn or damaged elbow ligaments”.

This is actually not true. The Biceps and Triceps can be tight, or feel tight, without elbow ligament damage being present. If you have a simple muscle strain, the muscle itself will become tight during the acute and subacute phases of healing.

So, while a tight elbow could indicate an elbow ligament problem, I tight Bi/Triceps does not.

by Chris on Aug 3, 2008 11:11 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs