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Peterson Gets To Work

Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson brought 11 pitchers with him to Birmingham, AL, this week for a complete biometric evaluation, The Kansas City Star reports (registration required).

Inside a big building with a mound, pitchers put on tight black outfits. Little balls covered with silver reflective material are then taped to their shoulders, arms, wrists, torso, hips, knees and feet.

Under the watch of overhead cameras shooting 240 frames per second, pitchers throw to a bullpen catcher. A computer captures the reflection from the balls and translates the images into what look like stick men on a video screen.

Separately, the pitchers are recorded both by a standard video camera and another that shoots the equivalent of 500 frames per second. The result is a super-slow motion image.

Peterson said that without the video, seeing a pitcher's motion is like trying to read the license plate of a car zooming by at 90 mph.

The results are then put through a 35-point evaluation, a program on which Roger Clements and Tim Hudson are said to have scored the highest.