… in the last two weeks, Matt Chapman has hit as many major-league home runs as anybody not named Charlie Blackmon, Bryce Harper, or Mike Trout, and gotten on base more than 40% of the time to boot. We’re just about 10% of the way through the 2018 big-league schedule, and Matt Chapman is leading the major leagues in WAR.
This won’t last, probably. So this isn’t a piece about how, because we’re already X plate appearances into the season, A’s fans should believe that Chapman is going to sustain the .650 slugging percentage he’s put up so far and become the second coming of Sal Bando but with more power, or whatever. This is a piece about how Chapman has already had an extremely good 16 days at work, and about what he’s been doing differently during those 16 days. If you’d like to make this piece about the future, go for it. That’s on you, though. This is a piece about what Matt Chapman’s doing now.
Why Des Linden is a badass from the viewpoint of a Michigander who’s been paying attention:
Des pretty much had to pitch her way onto the Brooks-Hansons OG Distance Project after she graduated from Arizona State because her personal bests didn’t attract much attention from the bigger professional groups. She was persistent and earned her spot on the team.
“People” also didn’t think she was good enough to be barking up the professional tree because her 5,000-meter PR was something slower than 16 minutes.
As a Cali native and an ASU grad “people” also, also didn’t think she could handle the Michigan weather. (HAHA JOKES ON YOU)
She ran Boston for the first time in 2007, running 2:44.56 …that’s 11 years ago. She’s been banging away at the marathon for a long time.
… It’s so rare, in our hot-take, quick-to-outrage world, that there comes a story that everyone can feel good about and not carp about on Twitter. It’s not that you’re a cynic about these things, but people, being people, are human. They’re fallible. They make mistakes in judgment that can be disappointing. But Ingram produces similar reactions in everyone — genuine joy at his accomplishment, given the work he put in over a decade to get here.
Called up by the Lakers from their G League affiliate, the South Bay Lakers, to play the last two games of the NBA season, Ingram didn’t just show up. He thrived as if channeling Roy Hobbs. Against the best team in the league, the Houston Rockets, he scored 19 points on 6 of 8 shooting, including 4 of 5 on 3-pointers. The next night, against the LA Clippers, he didn’t shoot it as well, making just 2 of 9 shots. But he had six assists, three rebounds and two steals, finishing with a +23 in 35 minutes on the floor.
The purpose of this study was to assess biomechanical differences among overhand, three-quarter, and sidearm arm-slot professional baseball pitchers. It was hypothesized that kinematic-and-kinetic differences would be found among the three groups, with sidearm pitchers demonstrating greater movement along the transverse plane, and overhead pitchers demonstrating greater movement along the sagittal plane. Based upon arm-slot-angle at ball-release, 30-overhand, 156-three-quarter, and 21-sidearm pitchers were tested using a 240-Hz-motion-analysis-system, and 37 kinematic-and-kinetic parameters were calculated. One-way-analyses-of-variance (α = 0.01) was employed to assess differences among groups. The comparisons showed the sidearm-group had less shoulder anterior force, whereas the overhand-group had the least elbow flexion torque. At ball release, trunk contralateral tilt and shoulder abduction were greatest for the overhand-group and least for sidearm-group. Additionally, the sidearm-group demonstrated the lowest peak knee height, most closed foot angle, greatest pelvis angular velocity and shoulder external rotation. The overhand-group had the greatest elbow flexion at foot contact and greatest trunk forward tilt at ball release. The greater elbow flexion torque and shoulder external rotation exhibited by sidearm pitchers may increase their risk of labral injury. Conversely, the lower shoulder anterior force in side-arm pitchers may indicate lower stress on shoulder joint capsule and rotator cuff.
… I recently found myself reading about Zajonc’s cockroaches thanks to a new study, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and led by Andy Sparks, of Edge Hill University in Britain, on the role of spotters in bench press performance. Numerous studies over the years have shown that working out with a personal trainer leads to greater gains in strength, but the reasons have never been clear. Is it that trainers give better advice, or set tougher goals, or yell motivational slogans at you? Or is their mere presence an ergogenic aid?
In the new study, Sparks and his colleagues asked 12 volunteers, all with at least a year of weight-training experience, to perform three sets of bench presses at 60 percent of their one-rep max, all to failure and with two minutes of rest between each set. They did this test twice, on two separate days, once with two spotters on either side of the bar and once with no spotters visible. (The spotters were actually still there but were hidden behind a screen so the volunteers couldn’t see them while lifting.)
As expected, the volunteers managed to squeeze out more reps when they knew the spotters were watching than when they didn’t know.
Originally used in critical monitoring situations in hospitals and aerospace, heart rate variability (HRV) analysis is a sensitive measure, and when used with care can provide valuable insights on how well your body is coping with training and adaptation. It has now become popular amongst athletes thanks to the availability of easy to use apps and accurate sensors.
However, HRV products can appear deceptively simple, and you do need to take care when both measuring and interpreting HRV to get the most out of it. In this article, we will list some of the common misconceptions about training with HRV, and how they can be avoided.
1. HRV doesn’t tell me any more than my resting heart rate (HR).
Examine the influence of rehabilitation training loads on return to play (RTP) time and subsequent injury in elite Australian footballers. Design
Prospective cohort study. Methods
Internal (sessional rating of perceived exertion: sRPE) and external (distance, sprint distance) workload and lower limb non-contact muscle injury data was collected from 58 players over 5 seasons. Rehabilitation periods were analysed for running workloads and time spent in 3 rehabilitation stages (1: off-legs training, 2: non-football running, 3: group football training) was calculated. Multi-level survival analyses with random effects accounting for player and season were performed. Hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for each variable were produced for RTP time and time to subsequent injury. Results
Of 85 lower limb muscle injuries, 70 were rehabilitated to RTP, with 30 cases of subsequent injury recorded (recurrence rate = 11.8%, new site injury rate = 31.4%). Completion of high rehabilitation workloads delayed RTP (distance: >49775 m [reference: 34613-49775m]: HR 0.12, 95%CI 0.04-0.36, sRPE: >1266 AU [reference: 852-1266AU]: HR 0.09, 95%CI 0.03-0.32). Return to running within 4 days increased subsequent injury risk (3–4 days [reference: 5-6 days]: HR 25.88, 95%CI 2.06-324.4). Attaining moderate-high sprint distance (427-710m) was protective against subsequent injury (154-426m: [reference: 427-710m]: HR 37.41, 95%CI 2.70-518.64). Conclusion
Training load monitoring can inform player rehabilitation programs. Higher rehabilitation training loads delayed RTP; however, moderate-high sprint running loads can protect against subsequent injury. Shared-decision making regarding RTP should include accumulated training loads and consider the trade-off between expedited RTP and lower subsequent injury risk.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Air Force Research Laboratory from
Survival — it’s the first thing an ejected pilot contemplates once safely on the ground.
A survival situation could span days and the Air Force is taking advantage of advancements in technology to allow ejected pilots to survive for longer periods of time.
Researchers from the Junior Force Warfighters Operations in the Air Force Research Laboratory Materials and Manufacturing Directorate are increasing a pilot’s capability to survive, escape and evade through near-term, short-turnaround projects.
“We are developing materials that will last longer in operational environments so that isolated personnel have the equipment readily available,” said Capt. Jason Goins, JFWORX team member.
Ask most coaches, and hydration doesn’t need a sensor. Thirst and urine color are perfectly good indicators—the darker urine, the more dehydration. Experts in the field note that these indicators are 100% analog, pervasive, intuitive, and reasonably accurate. Still many look to digital hydration sensors to dramatically impact sport.
How close are we to seeing hydration tech on the market?
Currently, hydration tech is mostly comprised of an immature group of technologies and user interfaces. Advancing these technologies and interfaces involves trial and error. The good news is that hardware and software platforms for building hydration-sensing systems are becoming more hackable. This means undergraduate and graduate engineers (and entrepreneurs) can prototype new devices easily and gear them to targeted user groups. Hackathon events, especially at top engineering schools, provide incentives and a setting for ideas to gestate and for the work to emerge.
An ambitious startup in Beijing has started shipping systems using its own designs for machine-learning SoCs. Horizon Robotics ultimately aims to power millions of cars and smart cameras with its AI chips. … So far, the company has shipped two 40-nm chips with custom blocks to accelerate neural-network inferencing jobs for self-driving cars and smart cameras. It is now working on a 28-nm generation and has plans for 16-nm chips. It also develops its own software and cloud service.
The NFL has named Dr. Nicholas Theodore Chairman of the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee, a board of independent and NFL-affiliated physicians and scientists, including advisors for the NFL Players Association. The committee brings together some of the foremost experts in brain and spinal trauma to advise the league on neuroscience, concussion and other health and safety issues.
Dr. Theodore is the Donlin M. Long Professor of Neurosurgery, Orthopaedics and Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Director of the Johns Hopkins Neurosurgical Spine Center. His research focuses on trauma, brain and spinal cord injuries, minimally invasive surgery and robotics. He has also served as the team neurosurgeon for the Arizona Cardinals and as a consultant to the Arizona Diamondbacks and Phoenix Coyotes.
Joel Embiid and Robert Covington can’t wait to ambush T.J. McConnell. It’s mid-February and McConnell, a 26-year-old undrafted point guard for the Philadelphia 76ers, is about to give a postgame on-court TV interview after notching his first career triple-double. But before McConnell can get a word out, Embiid and Covington fly into view and give him an impromptu shower.
“Triple-doublllllllle!” The Process shrieks.
McConnell is drenched. And cold. But he doesn’t seem surprised by their celebratory beverage of choice: alkaline water. The Sixers are one of the league’s most water-mad teams; they stock their team plane and practice facility with Essentia, and McConnell has been drinking the alkaline water since his rookie season. “I was the type of person who thought water is water is water,” McConnell would say later. “I wasn’t educated enough to know the right water to drink.” These days, he gets six cases of Essentia a month sent directly to his house.
… “Truthfully, the available data sets on draft prospects are less robust, so modeling or projecting based on historical evidence is more of a focus,” Colangelo said. “I know that there is a push, industry-wide, to install cameras both at the college and international levels, so we will potentially have more comparative data to rely on.”
The Sixers will be ready when that happens. In the meantime, they’re improvising.
They’ve already begun sifting through candidates for an 11th position on the staff: a draft analytics expert.
“They’ll leverage data and video on prospects,” said Sixers analytics chief Alex Rucker. “They need to love basketball. Love video. And be able to make sense of it independently.”
… For large numbers of encounters between randomly selected opponents, opponent ability averages out. But we cannot assume that players are randomly paired in practice. For one thing, managers often assign their best defenders to mark the most dangerous attackers, so that dangerous attackers face stronger opposition than their less dangerous counterparts. Percentage success rates will therefore underestimate the ability of the dangerous attackers and overestimate the ability of the less dangerous ones. The same thing applies to defenders.
Here I use the ’Bradley-Terry‘ model to explicitly model opponent ability. A key question is how the Bradley-Terry ratings compare with the duel success rate, and we shall see there are some surprising differences in how certain players are evaluated.
But first, let’s look at some general features of duels and how they fit into the wider picture.
… Offensive Coordinator 1: “One of the first things I look for is competitiveness. That’s a word that’s brought up when you talk about Drew Brees and Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. They hate to lose almost as much as they love to win. It was that way in high school and earlier. Losing hurt them. That’s probably No. 1 for me. The kid has to hate to lose in everything that he does. He has to be driven to win.”
Offensive Coordinator 2, via text: “1) Character. No shot if you don’t have it. 2) Quick processor of information — done with pre-draft techniques: tests, visits with the player. 3) What was the upbringing of the player like? Usually a somewhat-stable childhood is a good indicator. 4) Is he outgoing and a people person. I don’t know many star QBs that are introverts. They may be in public, but not around teammates, coaches and staff. 5) Does he get serious when he talks football or is he just a goof-off. You want guys who are going to take the job seriously and already have a mindset of how important it is.”
Offensive Coordinator 3: “You’re looking for someone smart, tough-minded, confident, ultra-competitive, ability to raise up those around him, clutch/cool under pressure.”