Introduction:Coaches are required to need to be able to evaluate players’ performance on the field. Therefore, in order to evaluate pitching motion regardless of the experience level of the coach, the a baseline of the criteria is needed. The purpose of this study was to create evaluation criteria for pitching motion that can be used in actual sports coaching.
Methods:In this study, we created evaluation criteria for pitching motion by extracting common elements from medical science papers, literature, and players’ subjective opinions. To examine the validity of the evaluation criteria, we scored the motion of Japanese Major League Baseball (MLB) and Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) pitchers based on the evaluation criteria and conducted a correlation analysis of the evaluation scores and ball velocity. To analyze the objectivity and reliability of the evaluation criteria, we calculated the inter- and intra-subject agreement of the evaluation scores given by six former NPB pitchers, coaches, and medical staff who had experience working in the field of baseball.
Results:There was a significant positive relationship between the evaluation scores for the second half of the pitch and the maximum and average ball velocity. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for the evaluation scores within inter and intra subjects of the entire pitch phase were all above 0.7.
Discussion:The results of this study suggest that the evaluation criteria we have developed have a certain degree of validity, objectivity and reliability. This indicates that there is no significant difference between the observation skills of experienced baseball coaches and medical professionals and the evaluation criteria we have developed.
