Building a Better Pitcher: Jace’s Six-Week Development at Driveline
Jace is a 15-year-old high school player who completed an assessment at Driveline on 9/18. During his assessment, his fastball averaged 80.6 mph, topping out at 82.7 mph. He already displayed pretty good mechanics overall, earning a 59 OVR, shown down below. His mechanics were allowing him to throw nearly 3 mph harder than his expected velocity based on his strength assessment. Take a look below at his mechanical composite score sheet, which grades solely his pitching mechanics, followed by his strength assessment.
With cases like this, the main message during the athlete meeting tends to focus on letting the player know that he needs to gain strength. When it came to Jace’s pitching mechanics, there wasn’t necessarily one clear phase of the throwing delivery where he struggled. As mentioned earlier, he was throwing 3 mph harder than what his strength assessment projected. However, there were a couple of things that stood out to me on his pitching report that I believed could help increase his fastball velocity. Here were our focuses during his first six-week block.
1. CoG Vertical Displacement (PKH)
During the leg lift phase, this was Jace’s lowest-hanging fruit. Take a look.
It had a -0.10 mph impact on his overall velocity. However, I believe it was actually taking more away than that, as it wasn’t allowing him to generate as much power to use throughout his delivery. For a lot of pitchers, it’s important to stay as tall as possible into peak knee height (PKH). This allows them to put more force into the ground during their drop phase. I like attacking things early in the delivery because I feel like improvements made early on will carry over into the rest of the delivery and potentially help clean things up in later phases. This was one area of focus for us. I prescribed him the Kikuchi Drill, which forces the pitcher to stay tall on their back leg before creating a distinct drop phase after PKH.2. Lead Leg Block.
One of the most important things a pitcher can do to properly transfer energy up through the kinetic chain is establish a good lead leg block. Jace already had a decent one, as you can see below. His Lead Knee Extension in the Lower Rotation phase had a score of 45, having a positive impact on his overall velocity. During his Launch phase, his Lead Knee Extension Velocity (BR) was having a solid impact as well. His Peak Lead Knee Velocity was scored at 32, having a slight negative impact.
However, as I mentioned, having a good lead leg block is crucial for properly transferring energy up the kinetic chain, so this became a major focus for us. I added Roll-Ins along with the Rocker Drill, both with the intention of helping him establish a more effective lead leg block.
These were our two main focuses during his initial six-week block. Outside of mechanics, we also focused on adding a few more pitches to his repertoire, as Jace gets a lot of movement on multiple different pitches. He’s capable of developing a diverse pitch profile, which I’ll dive into later in this article.
Regardless, when it came time for his retest six weeks later, Jace’s velocity jumped. He went from averaging 80.6 mph to averaging 83.7 mph. His max velocity went from 82.7 mph to 84.2 mph. (During a mound blend day in his fourth week, he actually hit 85.4 mph.) His pitching mechanics improved as well, along with his strength numbers (shoutout to the great weight room staff at Driveline).
Take a look.
Nearly everything improved in his pitching mechanics. His Leg Lift, Buildup, and Launch phases all saw significant jumps, while both rotational scores experienced minor decreases. Regardless, his overall mechanics OVR went from 59 to 71.
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He also got much stronger in the weight room, pushing his expected velocity to 79.4 mph, up from 77.1 mph during his initial strength assessment. The two areas we focused on throughout his six-week block saw considerable improvement.
Take a look at how much his CoG Vertical Displacement improved, along with his lead leg block.
Everything we focused on got considerably better. His OVR now stands at 71, which is extremely good for a 15-year-old high school player. He’s now sitting 4.3 mph higher than what his strength assessment predicts he’s capable of throwing. I’m really impressed with these jumps.
His CoG Vertical Displacement saw the largest improvement. Below is an image of his updated skeleton. As you can see, there’s still a slight bend in his back leg, but it’s a significant improvement from where he was before. This allows him to put even more power into the ground during his drop phase. His CoG Vertical Displacement is now having a positive impact on his overall velocity.
Outside of pitching mechanics, Jace and I also did some work in the Pitch Design Lab. During his initial assessment, he threw three pitches: a fastball, changeup, and curveball. Take a look at his pitch shapes from that assessment on 9/18.
Jace initially had good shape on his fastball (red dots), averaging 5.4 inches of horizontal break (HB) and 20.6 inches of induced vertical break (IVB). His changeup (green dots) had good shape but lacked consistency, while the three curveballs (blue dots) he threw all behaved like different pitches.
After multiple sessions in the Pitch Design Lab, we added two new pitches to his repertoire: a slider (yellow) and a two-seam fastball (orange).
Below is a look at how his pitch shapes performed during his last three mound blends, including his retest.
As his velocity has increased, so has the IVB on his fastball (5.0 HB / 23.6 IVB on average). His curveball has developed into a much more consistent shape (-12.3 HB / -5.3 IVB), and his changeup continues to get even better (16.9 HB / 8.1 IVB).
The slider and two-seam have become solid pitch offerings as well, although both still have room to grow. Specifically, he’s throwing his slider at nearly the same velocity as his curveball (68.8 mph average velo on the SL, 68.6 mph average velo on the CU). Ideally, I’d like to see him start throwing the slider harder, but the shape is solid.
He generates a really good amount of IVB on his fastball, which should help his other pitch offerings play off of it nicely. It’s been really enjoyable working with Jace so far, and I’m excited to see where his progress stands during his next retest.
