Baby Steps

The Cubs made some news yesterday with the hiring of former pro-softball player Rachel Folden.  A college standout at Marshall University as well as a five-year veteran of the National Pro Fastpitch League, Folden will be the “lead hitting lab tech [this according to the press release] and fourth coach” for the Cubs’ rookie league team in Mesa, Arizona.

Folden is believed to be the first woman coach in organized baseball, to which I give a solid two cheers.  I’d offer three if she weren’t part of the “biomechanics” movement taking root in the national pastime.  The idea is to use machines to record athletes and show them how to maximize—dare I say, perfect?—their skill set.  You might say it’s about turning athletes into human machines.  Hmm.

I just don’t think this approach is going to work, other than to point out injury risks for pitching deliveries.  Baseball is all about tinkering, trying a little of this and a little of that.  A player sees someone else do something different and asks about it; we could be talking pitching grip or batting stance.  The old combines with the different to produce something new, and unique.  Biomechanics implies one true way, or what I would call a cookie-cutter approach.  I guess we’ll see.

It’s also interesting that the baseball establishment seems most comfortable with women doing new stuff, like analytics and now biomechanics.  I want to see if Folden becomes a base or bench coach for Mesa and then works her way up the organizational ladder in one of those capacities.  Now, that would be something.