Is Jeff Francis the Next Mark Mulder?
It was recently announced that Jeff Francis has been having shoulder problems. While some people have been using this as an opportunity to pound on me and to say that this proves that I don’t know what I’m talking about, the truth is that I’m not totally surprised by this. As a result, and like the whole Freddy Garcia experience, I am using this as an opportunity to refine and improve my theories. Back in October of 2007, I took a quick look at the pitching mechanics of Jeff Francis. While I mostly liked what I saw, at the time I stated that I had some questions about Jeff Francis’s arm action, and in particular his low Pitching Arm Side (PAS) elbow, and wondered whether he was going to end up like Greg Maddux or Mark Mulder. I now think that Jeff Francis is fairly likely to end up like Mark Mulder because they are both LHPs who share a common problem; they both pull in early with their Glove Side (GS) elbows which creates a subtle timing problem and increases the load on their shoulde
