Former pitcher Mike Marshall is claiming he can train pitchers to avoid injury. This Murray Chass piece is fascinating.

At his training center, where the students live for 40 or 48 weeks, he teaches his method of pitching, which employs Newton's three laws of motion.

"There's a better way of producing force without using the traditional pitching motion, which has flaws," he said. "This is an epidemic that needs to be researched. We have to teach them how to pitch so they don't have flaws."

To eliminate flaws, Marshall teaches a different pitching motion from the one pitchers traditionally use.

"I want the ball to go back toward second base, then toward home plate in as straight a line as possible," he said. "The traditional motion has anywhere from 5 to 9 feet of side-to-side movement in ways that put unnecessary stress on the arm and do no good for the quality of pitches and cause injuries."

Marshall's pitching motion also requires a pitcher to use his legs differently and not "reverse rotate" his hips as much as pitchers traditionally have.

It calls for a lot more reporting -- if the benefits of Marshall's training are so obvious, why is he being ignored? -- but if Marshall is on to something, this should get a lot more attention.