No Red Flags On Garrett Gould

When reading scouting reports on Garrett Gould, one would get the impression that he carries significant injury risk because of poor mechanics. Every report i've seen has at least made a passing mention about his potentially problematic mechanics, so I decided to take a quick and dirty look at them.

Up until this point, there's nothing I find out of the ordinary.

There's some deviation from the norm here, as he tilts back a decent amount. This leads to an oddity with his arm circle.

Just to clarify though, "different" is not synonymous with "bad".

As you can sorta tell, Gould doesn't really take a traditional arm circle to the throwing position. Instead, he drops his hand down vertically and then scap loads horizontally to get his arm in the upright position.

You can see what i'm talking about here. As far as the actual action goes, there's good and bad to this, in my opinion.

Some people don't like the scap loading at all, some think it's okay, and some think it's necessary to throw hard. Personally, I don't think the action is ideal, but it's not that dangerous in and of itself. Moreover, I believe it's a lot less likely to lead to timing issues than the usual alternative action of picking the ball up with your elbow.

Speaking of timing, Gould's seems to be fine. At footstrike, his arm is in the upright and ready position. I believe we would see some minor reverse rotation if we got a different angle, but i'm not overly concerned about it yet.

My least favorite part of his mechanics, by far, is his finish. He's off balance and and his follow through is violent. I don't mind the former so much, but the latter concerns me. Please, somebody fix it.

Overall though, I hardly come away as worried as the experts did. Granted, I am only seeing one video from one appearance and one angle. However, any deep mechanical concerns I had about him have been slightly alleviated for now. To be sure, he's less than ideal, but I still like him all the same.