The Importance of Footplant

Of all the moments in a pitcher's delivery, footplant is the most important. It's when a pitcher harnesses the slope of the mound and begins funneling his body's momentum into the ball. It needs an explicit definition because everything in the delivery is moving so fast at footplant that the difference in one frame can lead viewers to see completely different things. More problematically, it lets the viewer see exactly what they WANT to see by blurring the definition each time. Did a pitcher fly open or stay closed, was his arm late or on time, did he stay back or get out front? Without a standardized definition of footplant, analyzing mechanics is impossible.

Why video can be misleading

Watch the same clip of a pitcher from different angles, and you will think footplant was different in each one. Clips are too blurry, FPS too low, and angles too varied to get any sort of agreement between other people, and even yourself, on when footplant happened. This clip from the 1st base angle of Shohei Ohtani is the best example. Look at how close his foot stays to the ground without becoming firm. From a different angle, you might think his foot had touched down at any number of frames before it actually did.

So how should we define footplant?

The best way to define footplant is in a way that is felt by the pitcher. At footplant, a pitcher's foot is the furthest thing in his body from the ball. He can't feel when his cleat first brushes a speck of dirt. On video it might look like he's on the ground. But our goal is to translate the video into actionable feelings a pitcher can use. Which means that even when his entire foot is touching the ground, there's still a moment where its too light to register. No force is being absorbed or applied by the leg at this point. It's a small, unimportant signal that the brain doesn't pay much attention to. But he definitely feels when a jolt of energy has shot from the ground into his leg. It's the moment the front leg firms up, and a ripple of momentum is created that will eventually emanate up the body and into the ball.

And luckily, this definition for footplant is also the most visible one. It's the moment we see the ripples of the pant leg pull taut or reverse direction and the front knee stops moving. At this moment there's an immense reversal of energy as the front leg collides with the earth and the earth pushes back. An influx of energy floods the pitcher, traveling from the front leg, up through the pelvis, the torso, the arm, and into the ball.

It's why we spend so much time defining a single point of a pitcher's motion - because it's the most important one. The sooner the pitcher releases the ball after footplant, or the more distance he can travel in the same amount of time, the more likely he is to throw it fast. Which means being in the correct position at footplant is paramount to success.

Analyzing the Elite: Paul Skenes

Now let's take a look at these clips of 2025 Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes and apply the Stockyard Baseball definition of footplant. For Option A, when his foot has barely begun brushing the ground, we can see that his foot is still moving and nowhere near firmly planted. In option B, his whole foot is touching the ground, but foot PLANT implies a level of firmness and stability into the ground we don't see yet. Finally for Option C, his foot has completely steadied, which means energy can begin to flow upward into his leg and he can actually feel this benchmark in his delivery.

If we compare Option A with Option C, his body is in significantly different positions, which drastically impacts our understanding of pitcher mechanics. Depending on how we determine footplant, the hips, the shoulders, and arm could all be considered either open or closed. Which is why having a conversation about pitching mechanics is impossible without a mutually understood definition of footplant.