Improvements in training the final frontier in MLB performance

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Fans have been enthralled by the home run spike in MLB since the second half of 2015. While many things are being debated, one area seems overlooked – improved training in MLB athletes.

The home run spike in MLB has accompanied a significant increase in the average velocity in pitches thrown. Over the last 15 years, the average velocity of pitches has climbed 3 MPH. The number of pitchers throwing 100+ in a season used to be one or two, and now every team seemingly has one or two pitchers on the MLB roster that can reach back for triple-digit velocity.

While many have theorized that perhaps a change in the ball or the bat has been responsible for the increase in home runs, many MLB players have begun to seek out the assistance of private hitting instructors and specific baseball trainers who are focusing more on smart training to improve baseball play, not just have a player look good in his uniform as many personal trainers that a player could hire at his local gym may provide.

A number of private instructors have really become quite well known through their work with hitter swing path and hitter approach at the plate, but a few places are working on the whole player, from training the body to training the mind to learning the mechanics of the game in such a way to both maximize performance of the game and minimize injury and/or damage from the game. One of the industry leaders in that realm is Driveline Baseball. Driveline’s research associate Michael O’Connell was gracious enough to field a number of questions and provide some excellent insight into exactly what Driveline is doing in their part of training a better baseball player. Because much of the question on training starts at a young age, many of the questions focus on training of high school and younger athletes in this interview.

We will be breaking these down in the following way:

Monday: Training specifically for baseball
Tuesday: Working with pitchers
Wednesday: Weight room work
Thursday: Tailoring a proper swing
Friday: What’s next?

With that, we’ll start with today’s focus on sport-specific training on baseball.

Baseball-specific training

Benjamin Chase, Call to the Pen: One concern I have heard from scouts is how early young athletes focus solely on baseball and hurt the natural growth of their body. Is that something addressed in Driveline’s training at that age?

Michael O’Connell, Driveline Baseball: There is definitely some concern to youth athletes specializing in baseball too early. We encourage youth athletes to take 3-4 months off from baseball/throwing a year, which means the few that we work with we only see in the winter. We also don’t see that much year round playing of baseball in the Northwest just because of the weather. (Writer’s note: Driveline Baseball’s headquarters is in Washington state.)

Beyond the physical stress of throwing year round, there is the mental burden that often isn’t talked about. A lot of Soviet research saw that really early specialization (10-12) cause mental burnout at ages 18-20.

There is a lot of nuance involved in where an athlete wants to or should specialize in a sport like baseball that is often missed especially once you start discussing high school athletes. Overall youth athletes (younger than high school) should try to play multiple organized sports and if they truly only want to play baseball, then some time off from throwing, like I mentioned above. Once athletes get to high school it gets a bit more complicated.

For high school athletes you want to know how big and developed they are compared to their peers, what sports do they currently play, do they want to play in college (and what level), how good are they right now etc. So it’s a bit more complex than everyone should do X. Unfortunately most of the ‘play multiple sports’ talk confuses correlation with causation. A bigger stronger 15 year old is going to have all sorts of coaches wanting him to play different sports for them, not so much for the 5’2” 15 year old. In reality playing multiple sports doesn’t make a better athlete, the better athletes are getting more opportunities to play multiple sports.

Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images /

Baseball-specific training

Benjamin Chase, Call to the Pen: Within the game, the increase in training and its effect on player strength is obvious. However, many athletes are not training specific to baseball. What specific gains do you see physically from athletes shifting to baseball-focused training?

Michael O’Connell, Driveline Baseball: For baseball specific work in the weight room it depends on age. In the weight room the basic lifts will work for athletes of any age, especially youth athletes.Youth athletes should be able to cover basic strength exercises (squat, deadlift, bench or push-ups). Most high school and college athletes also usually just need to focus on getting stronger in the main lifts as well.

A lot of specialization doesn’t come until later in the process such as an older, more-developed college athlete or a professional athlete. Most of the specialization will come on the throwing side. You can consider throwing plyo balls, wrist weights and bands as specialization but they are more about getting proper warm-up and cool down routines & building workloads. Further specialization usually only comes later in pro athletes, throwing weighted balls off a mound, doing specific command work or pitch design work.

What we do throwing wise is going to depend on what an athlete’s strengths are. Pitchers who don’t throw hard will obviously be more focused on velocity development. Athletes who do throw hard will be more focused on command and pitch design work.

In the weight room it is doesn’t have to do with baseball specific training per se. It’s really about having a good screening process and then coming up with smart programming from there. We can take an athlete who does really well in the weight room (squat, deadlift, etc.) but test poorly in rotational strength and write him a program to better develop his rotational strength. Or if they test well in the weight room then we can give them more of a focus on high-intent throwing.

It really comes down to having a good screening process and retesting athletes to see how they are developing and then making changes from that new information. If you can do this then you should be able to see your athletes throw harder.

Baseball-specific training

Benjamin Chase, Call to the Pen: For an average high school athlete, what would be different for that athlete than a general cross-sport training program that would be implemented at their school, for instance?

More from Call to the Pen

Michael O’Connell, Driveline Baseball: We are going to be able to give athletes a bit more attention than they would otherwise receive. We’re going to make sure that their weight room and throwing workloads are balanced and most importantly we have a tight feedback loop with manual & physical therapy.

Many of our trainers have taken classes in manual therapy so we are able to help our athletes with soft tissue work while they are with us. We also have a full time physical therapist, athletes are screened when they get to the gym and will be able to check in with him when necessary.

We’ve made a big effort to incorporate manual therapy with our training. This is something that we took from ALTIS in Arizona, which is probably the best Track & Field training facility in the U.S.

Next: Darren Daulton passes away

Thoughts:

This is just a taste of what is to come. Michael was tremendously generous with his time and sharing information, but those who follow what Driveline has done online through social media will note that their website is often publishing new content, their Facebook page frequently links excellent articles both through their own work and work that they have found from other sources, and following their founder, Kyle Boddy (@drivelinebases) on Twitter will get you both some entertainment in Kyle’s strong positions, but also some interesting discussion on bad science that he will link and discuss on his Twitter profile.

We’ll be back with more this week!

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