Baseball won Cedric Attias over in an unusual way, through physics.

Growing up, Attias says he found the sport boring. That changed during his master’s degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Waterloo, when he led a study on how pitchers might reduce the risk of elbow injury without giving up velocity.

Attias, now based in Toronto and working remotely as a biomechanist for the Seattle Mariners, used an advanced computer model to show how pitching mechanics affect the ulnar collateral ligament, or UCL, a band of tissue on the inside of the elbow. UCL injuries are common in baseball, from the major leagues to youth levels, because repeated overhead throwing can wear the ligament down.

Toronto Blue Jays fans saw that recently when starter José Berrios was sidelined for the 2026 season after undergoing UCL reconstruction, also known as Tommy John surgery.

With the Mariners, Attias examines movement data to draw conclusions about performance or injury. If a pitcher’s velocity drops, he can look at stride length, joint angle and arm acceleration to help find the cause. His day-to-day work involves coding, analyzing numbers and applying engineering, math and physics.

“[Engineers] can explain how things move, and we understand the principles of physics,” he says. “Because, ultimately, the way the human body works is purely physics. [How] people get injured is physics. It’s forces and torques over time or forces and torques in an instant.”

His interest in biomechanics started during his undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering at Waterloo. When he was considering graduate studies, professor John McPhee asked if he wanted to take on a project after the Mariners approached the university about research into how to maintain elite pitching performance without raising injury risk.

“It was my goal to create this novel research area using different theories and practices in biomechanics to balance both injury and performance,” he says.

To study twisting forces on the UCL during the throwing motion, Attias built a predictive digital musculoskeletal model based on a major league pitcher and ran it through simulations. He pushed the model to throw a ball at 110 miles per hour, beyond what is generally believed to be humanly possible. The fastest recorded pitch in Major League Baseball is 105.8 miles per hour.

The model produced a pitcher that “looked like a cricket bowler,” Attias says, with extreme torso tilt away from the throwing arm and an over-the-head arm slot. He later found a college pitcher on social media with similar mechanics, which gave him confidence the model reflected something physically possible.

“It wasn’t something a human couldn’t feasibly do,” he says.

When he instead told the model to minimize torque on the elbow and ignore velocity, it produced a motion with the torso tilting toward the throwing arm and a very low arm slot. Attias says it resembled a submarine delivery, nearly identical to Toronto Blue Jays relief pitcher Tyler Rogers, whose fastball averages 83.2 miles per hour and who has never had a serious UCL injury.

Pitching mechanics shape velocity, Attias says, but changes to arm slot and torso tilt could also help protect the UCL without fully giving up speed.

“If you want to throw faster, lean further away from the throwing arm and increase the arm slot to go more overhead,” Attias says, though he notes that motion puts the elbow most at risk. “If you want to protect the UCL, lean toward the throwing arm and tuck it in and go a little bit more of a sidearm delivery.”

Attias says UCL injuries cannot be completely prevented, because some strain on the ligament is unavoidable and factors such as diet, sleep and strength training also matter. He says he hopes his public research can help teach young players safer mechanics over time.

“If you have the foundation of those mechanics in the long term, I think that will help you, especially given the nature of the injury being such a long-term accumulation injury,” he says.

The work also changed how he feels about the game itself.

“My job is going through data. But I watch baseball for fun now, because I do love the sport.”

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