The Velocity Program I'd Give Every 8-Year-Old Pitcher

Now, the first timeline, let's just call it Um, velocity addition programs.

Now, as someone who created kind of the first velocity program all the way back in 2000, the 90 mile per hour club.

In fact, somebody introduced me the other day as the grandfather of velocity programs, which I think he was trying to say godfather.

But any compliment that starts with grandfather, I'm not quite ready for yet.

So, nevertheless, as someone who started this, I have seen this go through the ebbs and flows, the ups and downs.

And something changed.

Around 2013, 14, 15...

Somewhere in there, something really changed.

So, when we started the 90 Mile Power Club, if I was having discussions with my peers about velocity, we would talk about velocity in terms of how hard a pitcher could throw, but also how long could they do it for.

How long could they do it for in a game, in a season, in a career.

Then, how long could they do it healthy? Right? So how long you do it in a game, a season, or career, your health is mixed in there, right? So when we were looking at models of velocity, we were looking at models of...

I used to joke, here's my pitching study.

My pitching study would be three questions.

How hard did you throw? How long did you do that for? At what level? Now, if they say...

I threw really hard.

I threw in the high 90s.

How long did you do that for? 18 years.

At what level? Major league level.

Okay.

That's a model that I want to research.

So the early models of velocity were Carlton, Seaver, Ryan, who threw hard.

Lots of innings.

Healthy for a long time.

The next generation was very similar.

with Clemens and Martinez and Johnson those were guys who threw really hard for a long time and healthy now even when I started there were models of pitchers who threw really hard but we wouldn't necessarily call them we wouldn't use them as models right so let's take I don't know if you remember Rob Dibble.