Velocity Development is Pitching Development

Описание: Some coaches and athletes think of velocity as "nice to have" or a vanity project, rather than a pretty definitive way to make a pitcher more successful. While there are absolutely other factors, like command and pitchability, that impact success, all other things being equal velocity tends to improve results across the board.

The goal is to get hitters out and higher velocity does that better than lower velocity. Per Baseball Savant as velocity increases the success of hitters decreases with batting average going from .290 on 89-90 mph fastballs with a 15.3% whiff rate to .241 with a 23.8% whiff rate on 95-96 and dropping all the way to .143 with a 36.6% whiff rate on 101-102 mph. A similar trend also exists with sliders.

Injury concerns are also often cited as an issue, and while we do tend to see joint torques increase as velocity increases, mechanical efficiency can help ease this factor to some degree. And while some coaches may have visions of velocity development just being endless pulldowns, throwing pattern adjustments play an equally important role in the process.

Additionally, if training is well planned in terms of workload, recovery, general strength and connective tissue health, etc these risks can also be mitigated to some degree. But, if you want to play at the highest level of anything, unfortunately injury risk is always a part of it.

The final issue seems to be the argument that command gets worse. This just isn't the case. From our in house trainees we've seen command improve by ~10% when we've retested at the end of a development phase. The issue often comes from a velocity focused phase lasting too long without enough specific exposure to pitching or facing hitters-more in this in a future post.

Anyway, velocity is the only factor that matters, but it does matter and developing velocity is developing as a pitcher if it's trained properly.

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