Dr. Arnel Aguinaldo, a professor of biomechanics at Point Loma Nazarene University, played baseball in high school, but he was quick to point out he is better at analyzing the mechanics of a curveball than he is at hitting one.
“I wasn’t very talented,” Aguinaldo, who has a Ph.D. in health and human performance from Concordia University in Chicago, said with a laugh. “Hence, I’m a scientist.”
PLNU, in partnership with the Padres, formally opened its new biomechanics lab on the school’s Kearny Mesa campus in February. The Padres formally opened their season against the Dodgers on March 20 in Seoul, Korea. The Padres’ home opener will be at 1:10 p.m. on March 28 versus the Giants.
“I have always been into whatever is cutting edge for pitching,” said Justin James, PLNU head baseball coach. “When Arnel and his crew started to do some of the more advanced stuff, I was all in about changing practice and doing whatever I had to do to get that data. I was open-minded to anything that was going to be beneficial.”
The partnership announced back in June of 2023, is a $2-3 million enterprise with split funding. The lab is utilized by both Padres and Sea Lions players.
During previous seasons, the Padres had biometric data analyzed by third-party companies.
“We have an amazing bio-mechanist – Dr. A – who works for the University,” PLNU athletic director Ethan Hamilton said. “As a university, we are fortunate to have his expertise and I think the Padres got excited about that. I think they also got excited about the opportunity for this to not only help them but on some level, the rest of the community could utilize it.
“I think the win for Point Loma is this is an amazing recruitment for students going into this program – you are going to get to collect data as high-level as the San Diego Padres. From an athletic standpoint, I love the ability we have to run some of our athletes through there and be part of the same data collection analysis.”
The lab incorporates ball tracking, motion capture, and force platform technologies, allowing for the analysis of pitching and hitting mechanics, especially regarding the efficiency of an athlete’s movement.
“We measure kinematics– the geometry of human movement – as well as kinetics – quantifying the forces and torques that cause that movement,” Aguinaldo said. “We try to simplify that and come up with a few bullet points that we work with the coaches and players that are specific to them and try to give them a three-dimensional map of what they are doing, with potential areas of improvement for performance and lowered risk of injury.”
Be it the Padres or PLNU, Aguinaldo said the process works best seeing each athlete multiple times a year so that a baseline can be established.
“It’s not any different than if you wanted to get your cholesterol checked,” Aguinaldo said. “We recommend that you routinely check your kinematics, especially during a season. Then we get a good map of their ebbs and flows and their mechanics throughout the year.”
Count Padres ace Yu Darvish was an early fan of the lab.
“I think this technology is beautiful,” Darvish said, through a translator, at the lab’s official opening.
Aguinaldo had previously worked in gait analysis, at Children’s Hospital, San Diego, running the laboratory, assisting patients who had trouble walking. Going from the mechanics of walking to pitching was a natural progression for him.
“It was dictated by technology,” he said. “Motion capture and force platform technology advanced enough that we could accurately and reliably measure the kinematics and kinetics of pitching. You see this evolution.
“When I first came out of grad school a lot of Major League Baseball had never even heard of biomechanics and certainly were not interested in incorporating them into their player development operations. Fast forward to the last five years and every organization has a bio-mechanist on staff or is working closely with a university – like the Padres.”
James said the lab is already having a positive impact on the PLNU baseball team.
“Not only from learning how their body moves, but I’m learning how to coach them – what drills to give them more or less of,” he said. “The pitch design element that the lab has is helping our pitchers develop better breaking balls and clean up some of their fastballs. That has been the biggest influence.”
