Los Medanos College Pitching Staff Review: Summer 2021

Summary

We had the pleasure of working with almost the entire Los Medanos Junior College pitching staff last summer (15 pitchers) , and decided to take a dive into the ins-and-outs of what their program looked like. The program lasted 10 weeks, and included full-assessments, individualized throwing & lifting programs, velocity training, & live competition.  The staff performed our Baseball Development Program with 2.5 hour sessions at a rate of 2 times per week for the entire 10-weeks.  Each 2.5 hour Development Program session includes…

• Individualized warmup based on physical screen and assessment
• Arm Care with personalized amendments and stress levels monitored on force plates
• Throwing program with under/overload implements
• Mechanical drill work based on individual analysis
• Bullpens 
• Individualized strength routine

During their first week at KPI, we had each of them throw 30 pitch assessment bullpens, as well as go through our physical screen and force plate analysis. From those assessments we focused on ultimately two things; mechanical deficiencies or physical limitations, and their pitch movement metrics. The structure of what this looked like is displayed below.

Program Structure

Week 1 & 2 : Assessment Bullpens (30 pitches)
From the assessments we gathered;

• Physical Limitations
• Force Output Limitations (Using Hawkin Dynamics Force Plates)
• Mechanical Deficiencies (Using ProPlayAi)
• Pitch Metrics (Velocity, Vertical & Horizontal Break, & Strike % using Rapsodo)

Weeks 3 – 7: Velocity Training Phase

• 2 x week of low or moderate intent short box bullpens
• 1 x week of high intent shuffle throws (no more than 10 total throws)
• We tracked Fastball Mound Velocity, & the Max Throwing Velocities of their pulldowns
  with the 4, 5, & 6 oz baseballs (some athletes were constrained to just 5 oz only)
• During Short Boxes we focused on pitch design goals, introducing visual constraints to
  help blend new pitches

Weeks 8-10: Live At Bats Competition

• Week 8 – started with 1 set of 20 pitches (~1 inning)
• Week 9 & 10 – transitioned to 2 sets of 15 pitches with a break in-between

Results

Week 1 : Assessment Bullpens

• Group Average = 83.5 MPH
  • 13 Pitchers (2 thrown out due to low attendance)

Week 3-7: Pulldown Phase

• 77% Increased Pulldown Velocity from Week 1 to Week 5
• Average Increase of 2 MPH on Pulldown Velocity
• 5 oz Pulldown Velocity has a .97 Correlation to Mound Velocity
• 13 total pitchers

Week 8 : Live Competition

• • Average FB Velo Increase of 1.59 MPH
  • Group Average went from 83.5 to 85.09 MPH
  • 85% of the group increased Mound Velocity in 8 weeks
  • 11 out of 13 athletes increased Mound Velocity

Summary and Follow-Up

According to our 10-week Review of the Los Medanos College pitching staff from the Summer of 2021, we were able to display the positive aspects of a collegiate pitching staff training full-time over the course of a Summer off-season.  In the following Spring of 2022, Los Medanos College won their conference and displayed the following pitching stats during the 2022 season…

• ERA: 4.01 (2.5 runs lower than the competition they faced)
• 430 Strikeouts in 355 Innings Pitched
• K/9 innings – 10.90 Strikeouts per 9 Innings Pitched
• K/BB – 3.54 Strikeouts per Walk