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A big one here! We were lucky enough to check out @HogsPlayerDev Pitching Lab, and talk to @Hobbs_38 about how they utilize their resources to build their pitching staff. This is a great look at what it takes to build one of the best pitching staffs in the country!
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Early in a coaching career, everything is about the dogpile in Omaha and the next big job.
The last ten or fifteen years, @CoachDaveLawn started taking joy in the joy of his players.
The real reward lives in the wins that aren't yours.
New BDH · one of the truest lessons from 40 years in the game.
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Backside Groundballs Media retweeted
The pitchers who make the biggest velo jumps in the shortest time are the ones with a strong back leg and a broken block.
This is exactly that profile. Z Back 1.48. Y Front 0.90. The fix lives downstream of the block, not the back.
#BuiltInTheLab
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The mistake most pitchers make when they're trying to command it is throttling the effort down.
A pitcher with a real arm throws worse at 80% than at 100% because the delivery is built around the conviction of full effort. Once the intent gets soft, the sequence unravels.
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The people who have worked with Skenes will tell you the same thing.
Same spot at release, every single pitch. It's a timing thing. Command is downstream of a synced delivery.
When a day feels off and the timing gets thrown off, the pitcher doesn't know where the ball is going. And when a mechanical adjustment changes the arm slot, the whole chain resets.
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Paul Skenes will be good for eternity as long as he has command.
The velocity dip isn't the story. The command dip is. And the second he trusts the mound again, the Skenes we know is back — even if the fastball sits 97, or 92, for the rest of his career.
New BDH Podcast
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Backside Groundballs Media retweeted
This philosophy is the reason why the @RavikSports Spin Command Baseballs were created. Pitch design for too long relied on solely on cueing from coaches followed by trial and error, in other words, it was inefficient. The Spin Command Balls help clean up the inefficiency.
Why Internal Cueing Is Making Your Pitchers Worse: The Science of Self-Gathering
samuelmidgette.substack.com/…
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Backside Groundballs Media retweeted
The sport is in the best place it’s ever been, with the most money it’s ever had, and the places that are applying technology, research-backed science, biomechanical interventions, etc. are continuing to set the standard for what modern athletic development is.
College baseball is the best injury prevention environment in the sport right now.
Programs with integrated biomechanics on the mound, water bags, med balls, plyo routines, bullpen sessions flag the warning sign before the pitcher feels it. Hip's off, pull him back, training room, fix it.
The minor league pitcher on a road trip doesn't have that. The college guy does.
Tech > workload conversation.
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Backside Groundballs Media retweeted
A college pitcher came into the NewtForce lab looking for the velo he lost. The ground force said he was fine.
The block was upstairs. Shoulder abduction 69.9°, hip-shoulder separation below average.
Two drills, two weeks, +1.5 mph. Built in the lab.
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College baseball is the best injury prevention environment in the sport right now.
Programs with integrated biomechanics on the mound, water bags, med balls, plyo routines, bullpen sessions flag the warning sign before the pitcher feels it. Hip's off, pull him back, training room, fix it.
The minor league pitcher on a road trip doesn't have that. The college guy does.
Tech > workload conversation.
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Player development doesn't trickle down from the big leagues.
It trickles up.
Spin. High-ride fastballs. Every "cutting-edge" idea a big-league announcer treats like a breakthrough, college was running it two years before MLB caught on.
The narrative is upside down. The PD innovation lives in the college game. The big leagues are the late adopter.
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"College coaches don't care about pitcher development, just winning baseball games."
The data doesn't agree. The labs don't agree.
The pushback on the MLB Draft proposal misses what college development has actually become.
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One offseason. Twenty points off the ground-ball rate.
Byron Buxton 2018: 49.2 ground-ball rate, elite sprint speed, no slug to speak of.
Byron Buxton 2019: 29.6 ground-ball rate, same 44 pull rate, completely different output.
The pull tendency didn't change. That's the swing that built the slugger we see now.
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Don't dance with the pitcher 60 feet six inches away.
Buxton's 2026 setup is a preset. Hands stay high. Toe tap. The only decision is swing or don't swing.
Moving parts feel like rhythm. At modern velo, they leave you vulnerable to every offspeed and every elevated fastball.
Strong and simple wins. The bombs followed.
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"What happens the other 50 times you're not perfectly on time?"
Hitting on plane *on time* produces one bomb. Hitting on plane *early* produces a year of bombs.
Buxton 2026 stays in posture behind the ball, backside gap or pull side, both lanes are open. The 2016 swing was reliant on perfect timing to even compete. The 2026 swing isn't.
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The phone-booth concept, in one swing.
Dive with the front shoulder, the only place the bat can go is out. You have to pull off to find the ball.
Stay upright and posture-d, every direction is open. You can ride it backside, you can pull it, you can decide late.
2016 Buxton dove. 2026 Buxton stays upright. The 96 mph fastball is what made the difference matter.
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Pitching development has gotten really good at building velo and a nasty sweeper. So good that every Power 4 hitter sees 94 every day, and every staff has the same sweeper.
The edge has moved. Command. Pitch usage. Tunneling. Learning to pitch off your own stuff.
The arms that own all of it are the ones that separate.
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Backside Groundballs Media retweeted
No new drill on the mound. No new cue. The fix lived in the weight room.
A college pitcher's lead-leg block was capped, Z-Front Score 1.93, decel impulse score too high.
The ground force, the biomechanics, and the functional movement screen all pointed the same direction: hip abductor weakness.
Layered data, precise programming ‼️📈
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Pre-velocity hitting was built on rhythm. Modern hitting is built on a preset powerful position and a snap decision.
Byron Buxton rebuilt his swing inside his big-league career. Five-tool prospect to one of the most consistent sluggers in the sport over the last 6 seasons.
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Brewers pitching development isn't a couple of wins. It's a system.
Miz is the proof. A high-walk minor leaguer who keeps getting better, year after year, layer after layer of command refinement, until the floor is a regression-proof big league arm.
The reputation does its own work now. Arms get traded in and the confidence blows up before the work even starts.
Banner organization. No questions.
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This is so good ‼️
The best in the industry are making matchup decisions for both hitters and pitchers, and pitch calls inside those matchups, based on how bat path and pitch profile interact.
The CWS is a prime example of how the best pitchers exploit different bat paths.
Here’s what the data shows 🧵
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