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The World Series is fast approaching, and the last thing any team or fan wants is to see a player scratched from the lineup because of an injury.

That's something Los Angeles Dodgers fans are all too familiar with this year, as pitcher Edwin Díaz was sidelined for over a month with a neck injury. Díaz is just one of many players who have been hampered this season by neck problems.

This is a familiar story to Laurie Devaney, head of the Department of Kinesiology in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources (CAHNR) and co-director of the UConn Institute for Sports Medicine. During the early 2000s, Boston Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez, one of Devaney's favorite players, was removed from the lineup with a stiff neck. This got Devaney thinking.

"I said to myself, 'Huh, that has to affect his pitching mechanics. I wonder how he's going to do when he comes back,'" Devaney says. "That got me thinking, because the neck is my area of expertise and it had not been explored in baseball."

A new study led by Devaney sheds light on the connection between neck mobility and the risk of shoulder and elbow injury in baseball pitchers.

The study included 126 pitchers from seven collegiate baseball teams across the country. At the start of the season, the researchers conducted neck mobility tests and then followed the players throughout the season.

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