Great article on the WF pitching staff. What caught my eye was this:

"Lowder has spent hours studying film from Wake's famed pitching lab -- a set-up equipped with more than 20 high speed motion capture cameras to examine biomechanics and a 3D Doppler radar system for measuring speed and location -- to perfect his craft. As a freshman, he needed to work on his slider. A few weeks in the lab, and he emerged with one of the best pitches in college baseball."

Several mentions of the pitching lab. Do we have anything like this?


https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/37800618/inside-wake-forest-baseball-pitching-staff-dominance-2023

They had the pitching lab director give an interview during the game today before the lightning delay. Very interesting stuff.

A&M Baseball doesn't have something like that. They DO use VR to see "live" pitching". While TrackMan has been installed since about 2018, Childress didn't do much with the data at all. Schloss uses it a bit but from what I hear, he's far more into the Synergy platform which does a lot with video.

Aggies2009 said:

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A&M Baseball doesn't have something like that. They DO use VR to see "live" pitching". While TrackMan has been installed since about 2018, Childress didn't do much with the data at all. Schloss uses it a bit but from what I hear, he's far more into the Synergy platform which does a lot with video.

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At the professional level, a majority of the clubs have pitching labs. They use them during spring training to monitor the pitchers and the shape and spin they're getting on their pitches to determine the pitchers progress in their ramp up to games and to see if they need to adjust how they're throwing a particular pitch. During the season, it's not uncommon, for them to pull a pitcher off a minor league roster, place them on the developmental list, send them to their spring training facility, pitching lab, to have them improve or develope a new pitch they think will make them more effective at getting outs at the MLB level. But it doesn't stop there, they use this data during the season to monitor a pitcher during a game fo determine when to pull him if they notice a drastic drop in his data, using Tracman and Rapsodo.

The Synergy system It's not pitching biomechanical specific… it's much more baseball scouting data info.

I can promise you need our pitching coach would like to have a driveline like lab on campus

Ag in ATL said:

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Great article on the WF pitching staff. What caught my eye was this:

"Lowder has spent hours studying film from Wake's famed pitching lab -- a set-up equipped with more than 20 high speed motion capture cameras to examine biomechanics and a 3D Doppler radar system for measuring speed and location -- to perfect his craft. As a freshman, he needed to work on his slider. A few weeks in the lab, and he emerged with one of the best pitches in college baseball."

Several mentions of the pitching lab. Do we have anything like this?


https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/37800618/inside-wake-forest-baseball-pitching-staff-dominance-2023

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Great recruiting hype for WF.

Maybe it will be in the reno?

TAMU1990 said:

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Maybe it will be in the reno?

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Send more money…they can't do a rebuild so it's at best addition by subtraction and incremental spend. I'd benchmark against Tampa Bay and Atlanta to the extent they use technology to develop pitchers.

Isn't WF also working on a hitting lab next?

Think that could help Detmer?

If A&M baseball doesn't have this it's disturbing

For all the money this athletic program spends and the fact A&M prides itself as an engineering school we should have this tech

If I had a kid who was a pitcher, I would send him to Wake. That pitching lab stuff is a big deal. Much more important than a fancy locker room.

I don't know the specific name of the system but we do have something like this. They can track not just velo but spin-rate, ride on a fastball, sink & run on the sinker, and horizontal & lateral break on breaking balls. They also have a camera set-up to record everything and track it to fine tune things.

Plus it helps prevent injuries, so many kids are taught to throw a certain way now which increases their velocity but also leads to Tommy John. Speaking with a major league scout the other day someone getting the surgery was a career killer, now they say it is almost expected.

The rule forever was a college pitcher needed 2 pitches to succeed and the MLB would help them develop a third. Almost all of the Wake kids have great command of 3 and their sliders/curveballs are sick with close to 20" of movement.

Still hard for me to believe there are college kids throwing 100+mph sinkers, almost not fair. I faced Josh Beckett in high school and he was one of the hardest throwers in the state throwing just over 95mph. Beckett was drafted second overall. My friend's son is a 6'4" LHP throwing 95 and they are saying is a 1st-2nd rounder, how times have changed.

Same here. I faced Todd Van Poppel in HS. He threw mid-90's, but with moderate control. He would be a college bullpen spare today, but was the consensus #1 pick in 1990.

I think most of the money for WF's came from the hospital system that they partnered with.

P.U.T.U said:

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Plus it helps prevent injuries, so many kids are taught to throw a certain way now which increases their velocity but also leads to Tommy John. Speaking with a major league scout the other day someone getting the surgery was a career killer, now they say it is almost expected.

The rule forever was a college pitcher needed 2 pitches to succeed and the MLB would help them develop a third. Almost all of the Wake kids have great command of 3 and their sliders/curveballs are sick with close to 20" of movement.

Still hard for me to believe there are college kids throwing 100+mph sinkers, almost not fair. I faced Josh Beckett in high school and he was one of the hardest throwers in the state throwing just over 95mph. Beckett was drafted second overall. My friend's son is a 6'4" LHP throwing 95 and they are saying is a 1st-2nd rounder, how times have changed.

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It's not that they're really taught to throw a certain way mechanically but more that they're taught pretty early on how to maximize velo and so they're putting a lot of torque on their arms before they've developed the musculature to support the elbow & shoulder.

My older son is 12 (13 next month) and pitches and has a ton of potential. He plays up in age class to play with his graduating class and really hasn't hit puberty yet but is almost 5'10" and 155# and consistently sits 70-72 with his fastball and touching 75- I've talked about him and it's a crapshoot but he's supposed to end up 6'4"-6'5". We're hyper-focused on keeping him and his arm healthy by preventing overuse while really working his strength & conditioning. We've seen a bunch of kids we know his age have arm trouble and one thing I'm 100% certain is a factor in him staying healthy is that he's religious about strength training to strengthen and stabilize the muscles that support his elbow & shoulder. I've started to geek out on this stuff and follow Tom House who had Nolan Ryan lifting weights after his starts 45 years ago when nobody in baseball, especially not pitchers, was lifting weights.

Imo There are some people that are much better to follow than Tom house. Tom House's teaching have remained the same the past 15 years if not more, even with new Information regarding pitching biomechanics. Also his teaching can often encourage flat arm syndrome and has long-term timing issues which in turn can lead to injuries.

Tread athletics and driveline would be the top tier for incorporation of weights throwing program with Nutrition. Florida baseball armory would be another.
You should give them a look if you haven't.

94chem said:

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Same here. I faced Todd Van Poppel in HS. He threw mid-90's, but with moderate control. He would be a college bullpen spare today, but was the consensus #1 pick in 1990.

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I had a few Van Poppel baseball cards when I was a kid. I remember people saying he was going to be the next Nolin Ryan.

TxA&Mhunter said:

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Imo There are some people that are much better to follow than Tom house. Tom House's teaching have remained the same the past 15 years if not more, even with new Information regarding pitching biomechanics. Also his teaching can often encourage flat arm syndrome and has long-term timing issues which in turn can lead to injuries.

Tread athletics and driveline would be the top tier for incorporation of weights throwing program with Nutrition. Florida baseball armory would be another.
You should give them a look if you haven't.

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We're looking at sending him to Texas Baseball Ranch in the next couple summers.