In a World Where Everyone Throws Hard
Its not all about the number.
In a World Where Everyone Throws Hard
Throwing hard is not as valuable as it used to be
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."- Goodhart's law. The old measures of velocity were much more impressive when the entirety of baseball was not doing everything in its power to simply throw the ball harder.
In today's game, velocity is rewarded, plain and simple. Players know this and organize their training accordingly.
Every major tournament has a velocity leaderboard, every website posts the velocities of players and twitter is spammed with finding out how hard players are throwing.
Velocities are skyrocketing across the board, players are finding ways to increase their velocity in order to get attention from college coaches and scouts, sometimes at the detriment of their long term velocity potential.
When everyone throws hard, you have to do other things.
Not all velocity is created equal
What do you mean? 94 is 94 right?
Yes in some ways. But not in other ways.
94 is in fact 94, and is a great indicator of success at some levels and plays well assuming other things aren't getting in the way.
But what about the other things that can get in the way?
How easily does this pitcher throw 94? Can he get to it easily?
Does this person throw 94 one outing but the next he throws 88-91 because he has to be perfectly recovered to throw 94?
Player performance is way deeper than the number that shows up on the radar. The player who has really well synced mechanics and a low effort delivery is going to be a much better, more repeatable 94 than the high effort player who sold out on everything in order to peak their velocity.
Not only this, but the player that throws 94 more naturally is going to throw much harder 2-5 years down the line than the player that sold everything to peak 94. They have a cleaner path for development because they focus on scalable mechanics and a flow that will give them a higher performance ceiling.
When players compensate to create extra velocity, they can tend to get away from efficient mechanics that will allow them to reach even higher as they grow up.
This is why not every player who peaks at a high velocity gets the recruitment attention that they want. Highschool players who cruise 88-90 easy every time they grab a baseball can easily show much more promise than the muscled out jerky delivery that reaches 91 or 92 on occasion.
The more that these players chase velocity and sell out to light up the radar the more that the players who do it naturally are valued.
Scouting is hard, and seeing through these false flag numbers and being able to evaluate a player's delivery and future output are much more important than what they do today.
End of Part 1
John