Texas Rangers send select group of prospects to Driveline

A select group of Texas Rangers pitching prospects were sent to the Driveline facility this offseason. What could they have been working on?

The Texas Rangers have sent a group of pitchers to CIA black site renowned research facility, Driveline Baseball. The group features both minor league prospects and pitchers like C.D. Pelham, Brett Martin, and Brady Feigl, who could contribute to the bullpen as soon as this year.

Driveline is known for its weighted ball programs, high speed cameras, and data driven approach to pitching. Its most famous client is perhaps Trevor Bauer, who works out there in the off-season and has credited the facility for the improvements he made. The Rangers group is going for a “secret secondary-pitch intensive camp” that will involve breaking down pitch spin rates, more efficient pitch design, mechanical optimization, among other advanced areas of pitching.

Now, the Rangers are obviously keeping the specific details under lock and key, but we can use Statcast to figure out why the Rangers sent the players they did. Unfortunately, minor league Statcast numbers aren’t available to the public so we cant investigate a majority of the pitchers who went. One pitcher from this group, C.D. Pelham, did pitch in the majors last year, so we can use his Statcast profile to glean what the Rangers would want him to improve. Although Pelham only pitched 7.2 innings last year, but that gives us a good enough pitch sample to start with.

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To start, Pelham, who is left handed, averages a sizzling 96.3 MPH on his fastball, topping out at 101. That gives him one of the best fastballs by pure velocity in all of baseball. Looking at his spin rate, the same pitch averages 2130 RPMs which is below average (league average FB is 2228 RPMs).

Moving onto his slider, that pitch averages 84.1 MPH and has a spin rate of 2246 RPMs (average slider is 2350 RPMs). So, Pelham’s raw stuff is above average, but a low spin arsenal could cause his pitches to play down. Having a lower spin rate fastball/slider isn’t inherently bad, it just means the optimal pitching plan is locating down in the zone.

From Driveline’s own research, lower spin pitches are more likely to generate ground balls as opposed to higher spin rate pitches that miss bats. Looking at video, Pelham stands at 6’ 6” and has a fluid arm action but could get more out of his lower half.

So, the other Rangers and Pelham’s assignment to Driveline is about optimizing their secondary pitches. Based on Statcast, we can see why Pelham would be a candidate to head out to Driveline. Despite premium stuff, the instructors at Driveline could show him how to best optimize his pitch mix and maybe even design a more effective breaking ball.

Pelham could be designing a slider with more velocity or trying to more closely map his fastball and slider spin rates together. He could also be working to optimize his body control and sync that with his pitching motion. This would allow Pelham to have higher quality pitches and an optimal delivery to stay healthy over a course of the season in the bullpen.

While we don’t get to see what the Texas Rangers pitchers worked on at Driveline, it will be an interesting group of pitchers to watch. With spring training here and the regular season around the corner, we should be able to see all their improvements rapidly.