There are actually baseball training equipment that helps with the placement/usage of the lead arm:

Link here

There are others, that I've used, but I don't have the time to look up those products...

The audio version is free, and it's worth listening to just to hear Will Carroll's baffled reaction to that bit about Barry's arm size. BP should get some major kudos for this one.

The brace stuff is interesting and the statement Silva dropped is the true shocker.

I think the D-Backs are waaay overpaying for Byrnes. They must not really be sold on Carlos Quentin at all. I would probably give Quentin a better chance to be a better ballplayer over the course of this deal.

Speaking of swings, Carlos Gomez had another of his great articles on mechanics at The Hardball Times: Link

I agree that the article is overblown but the author's point is that Barry has a brace and other players don't and thus he is getting an unfair advantage over other players. As everyone has noted - 75-100 HR? - he is just wanting attention with his outrageous assertion that has no explanation how he came up with that number.

Thanks for the info on Barry's brace maker. 15 years means that he started with Barry in 1993, when Barry first joined the Giants. It also means that he started with the "slim" Barry as many of his detractors describe him, and yet his arm size has not changed during those years, including the years that he was accused of using Balco steroids. Who else would know this better than Silva?

Of course, the caveat here is that he can say whatever he wants and if he wants to protect his client (and/or keep working with his client)he can. We have no assurances that this is the truth.

But that's the same with everything that Greg Anderson has said and done as well, we don't know what's the truth there either, whether he was truthful or just had a lucrative practice trading on his relationship with his childhood friend by creating a lie with other athletes that his buddy got that way by using Anderson's stuff.

Same with Bonds's mistress, and her story smells more the longer it takes the IRS to substantiate her claim that he cheated on his baseball card income.

Hmmm, just realized something. Barry had his bustout year in 1993 with us, he hit more homers that year than he ever did before. And that's over 15 years. So a 75-100 projection would mean 5-7 extra homers per year. Eh, that's still very high, that's 10-20% extra HRs per year. That still seems too much of a gain just from enforced mechanics. The way I see it, you still have to have good batting mechanics to begin with, even if you have a brace helping you.

And that gain is particularly high since Eric Walker of training A's Alderson fame has noted the era of "Silly-ball" since 1993, when there was an explosion of HR hitting unlike any era before. That alone probably explains a lot of the extra homers that Barry has hit after 1993.

And I thought I would end with this thought I just had: it would be hypocritical of Aaron to complain of getting unfair help when it is known that the Braves pulled in their fences to help him reach and beat Babe Ruth. How many homers did that help him out with? His HR/AB rate increased 50-100% between his late 20's to his late 30's, leading to him continuing to be a consistent 40's HR guy through his career and in fact setting a career high when he was 37 years old and hitting 40 HR when he was 39 years old. Maybe he doesn't reach Ruth if he didn't get such help from his park.

His HR/AB started peaking at age 35, which was higher than his previous peak at age 28 by 6%, then topped that at age 37 and again at age 40, which was 34% higher. But overall, his homerun rate increased 47% when comparing his HR-rate from 35 to end versus 34 and younger. As people like to note about Barry, that reverses 100 years of baseball history with Aaron increasing his homerun rate nearly 50% after age 35.

He hit 203 homers from the age of 35. Reducing his HR rate by 47% to his youthful rate would result in only 138 HR, or 65 HR less than before, meaning he would have ended his career at 690 HR. Add in the fact that most hitters don't hit as well for HR after 35 as they did before 35 - see Mays for example - and one can speculate that Aaron might not have passed up Mays if not for the help he got. But who knows, maybe Aaron was unique, like Ted Williams was in increasing his HR-rate late in his career.

Another way to look at it is to examine HR-rate by home and away in Atlanta. From 1966-68, his HR-rate at home was 7.0% vs. on the road 5.4%. So he was benefiting from home already. Then after that to 73 when he had his last power year, he had a 10.7% HR-rate at home, 6.3% HR-rate away. Applying that rate to his home numbers would result in 48 less homers, or 707 HRs. If he was that close, he probably would have played one more year, but he only had 10 his last year, so passing the Babe would not have been a slam dunk there.

Like Bonds and his possible use of PEDs, we'll never know how much help Aaron got from his ballpark.

Actually, to me, that's about the market value for Brynes right now. Look at what Matthews Jr. and Pierre got, and if you pro-rate Roberts contract to a full season (because he's really a platoon player), that's roughly $10M per season. Still Zoinks, just because that's the market value doesn't mean that it's not outrageous.

And not just Carlos Quentin but they have Carlos Gonzalez coming up the system as well, plus Chris Young is still a prospect with some potential, and they just brought up Justin Upton.

The thing is, as I've noted before, as lauded as Arizona is about their position players, if you look at their OPS+, they are all performing at or much below average for their position. It is still better than having few position prospects to speak of, but it reminds me of the hype over the Baby-backs a few years ago, when players like Sergio Santos was hyped up but ultimately the only ones to come out of that crop and be good was Brandon Webb (who wasn't even considered part of their prospects crop) and Chad Tracey, and he's not that great.

Not totally true. The D'backs had some prospects that panned out.....not necessarily for them. I think players like John Patterson & Brad Penny started in the D'back system and have done pretty well. B.K. Kim had some success early in his career before blowing up. Did Matt Mantei start there or was he traded to the D'backs?

Wow, good memory, but Penny was not part of the Baby-back crew of 2003, he was traded to Florida for... you guessed it, Matt Mantei. About B.K. Kim, Ainsworth, Jensen, and Williams had some success early in their career before blowing up too.

Patterson was part of that crew, so yeah, I guess he would count, but still given all the hype over that group of prospects, to only have Patterson and Tracey be of any significance 4 years later, and to have a non-prospect like Webb be the biggest success, speaks to what my point was, which is that it is one thing to have a great bunch of prospects, another to actually produce good players from the farm system. The Giants system has been rated below the D-backs for years but we have just as many players on our roster as they do and as many players performing similarly in terms of OPS+/ERA+.

Good follow-up points ELM! But like you, have no answers...

One important point about Silva's quote: he said Bonds had experienced no significant change in arm size. What's significant to an orthotics maker? Does bicep size matter? Or is he saying, "Barry Bonds' arms have not lengthened in 15 years"?

Maybe he's just saying, "I didn't have to change much in the design of the brace."