The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players

by Ben Lindbergh

Bauer’s and Boddy’s passion for technology brought them together. But their relationship deepened over another shared passion: the biomechanics of throwing. In 2013, his first season with the Indians, Bauer had grown concerned about pain he’d developed during the previous season with Arizona. Since then he’d been dealing with groin, back, ribs, and biceps pain and discomfort that he’d never experienced before. “It was very clear I needed to make a [mechanical] change if I was going to last ten years in the big leagues,” Bauer says. He had tried to mimic Lincecum, which was logical in that Bauer was also an undersized right-handed pitcher. But Bauer was well aware that in 2012, Lincecum had started to break down; he was finished as an above-average pitcher by age twenty-eight. “The long-term effects of moving that way and not being built muscularly or structurally to be able to handle that started piling up,” Bauer says. “I was on the same track [as Lincecum].”