Summer Training, Spring News, and Crazy Coaches' Corner

The summer season is nearly upon us, where high school seasons will be falling by the wayside and school will be out, allowing for more time to train. This summer will be a fun one, as we’ll have a bunch of our college guys back:

• University of Washington commit Jack Scheideman (6’1″ 240 lb., KingCo 4A best shot put 57′ 8″, best discus 152′ 10.65″,  #3 shot put and #19 discus in WA state)
• UC Davis commit/transfer Joe Marsh (6’3″ 195 lb. RHP; FB 84-85, plus-plus sinker, good slider, graduate of Top 25 program Campolindo HS [California])
• Whitman College freshman Eli Mathieu (6’1′ 190 lb. RHP/3b; FB 83-84, plus curveball, plus sinker)
• Yakima Valley (JC) freshman Reid Martinez (6’0″ 180 lb. CF, batting .320+ in the NWAACC)
• University of San Francisco freshman Tim Moore (5’9″ 160 lb. Rugby wing, or whatever it’s called)

We’ll also have our great group of high school guys, led by long-time clients Alex Mason (P/RF, 13 years old, Shorecrest ’16), Ted Weber (SS/2b, 17 years old, Shorecrest ’13), and Travis Thompson (C, 15 years old, Highline ’15).

Spring News

As mentioned in the last entry about training to meet your goals, Jack Scheideman (University of Washington ’16) accepted the scholarship offer from UW and signed his letter of intent last week at Driveline Baseball / Driveline Athletics (never mind the goofy smile from yours truly):

To see the improvement he made from 2011 to 2012, all you need to do is go to his athletic.net profile. His season records are on the right, where his personal record (PR) in the shot went from 43′ 1.25″ to 57′ 8.00″ and went from 116′ 1.00 to 152′ 10.65 in the discus. I think this is a good time to mention that he never touched a discus in his off-season throwing program; he only threw the shot six times per week and lifted heavy. Proof that focusing on rotational power and mechanics easily transfers into similar movements! (I bet he could touch 85 MPH with his best fastball right now.)

Our comprehensive fastball velocity training book is scheduled to be released in 2012 – much of it has been written, but there’s a ton of work ahead of us. We need to have it edited for content, edited for grammar/spelling, edited for layout, cover design, tons of pictures shot, illustrations put to paper, 50+ videos shot for the complementary online content, forums set-up for customer support and community building, and so on, so forth. While you’ll be able to buy this book on Amazon.com or through our website (signed copies!), that doesn’t mean that’s all you get. Nope, when you buy the Fastball Training (working title) book, you get access to online content, a community to help you with programming/lifting advice (staffed by Driveline Baseball interns and yours truly), and new techniques and concepts that get added via the website. We won’t charge $200+ for this product; all the videos will be freely available. The book will very likely run under $50 with free shipping and will contain a complete training program that includes throwing mechanics drills, weight lifting programming, mobility/stability movements, prehab/rehab planning, and so much more. No product/service out there can compete with this offering, and we’re very excited to bring it to you in late 2012 (if all goes right).

If you want to be notified when the book comes out, you can either request a free copy of our weighted baseball training book (automatically adds you to our list), or you can sign up for our mailing list on the right side of the website – just put your email in and click subscribe. No spam, we never sell your address or anything like that. I haven’t even sent an email out on the list yet, to be honest!

Oh yeah, and if you didn’t see my article on Mark Appel (Stanford RHP) who’s projected to go in the top five of the 2012 MLB draft, go check it out at The Hardball Times: Scouting Mark Appel.

Almost forgot: I did a podcast with Pro Ball NW about how training is the new market inefficiency in Major League Baseball. I thought it went well, even if I rambled a bit. Thanks to Jon Shields for having us on!

Crazy Coaches’ Corner

Now that our guys are in college and HS programs, I’ve been treated to a myriad of ridiculous stories from clueless coaches. Here’s a smattering of them:

• After four games in three days where one of our client’s teams was swept, the coaches decided to run suicides in the gym to death. After 9 of these, many of the kids went down with groin strains and were sidelined for at least a week. Smart decision, coach!
• After a kid quit on a client’s HS team, the coaches forced the whole team to run for 45 minutes. That’ll show ’em!
• After a kid was having trouble throwing his three-finger change-up with decent run, the coach demanded that he throw a circle change-up or he would never pitch again, instead of working with his existing grip. He threw a bullpen this week with me and we spent four minutes working on a two-seam sinker that immediately produced ridiculous arm-side run. It’s not that hard, coach – just have an open mind!

Fun stuff – that’s why I got out of coaching teams. Too many coaches want to leave their impact on a player and take some credit for it. We’re very hands-off here at Driveline Baseball – we want to work with your personal style to get the best possible results. I was offered the head coaching position of the very best select team for a given age group (we’ll keep that anonymous) without an interview, because the coach loved my website and the results we get. I turned him down on the spot and didn’t even give him a chance to make me an offer, which I’m sure would have been considerable. Coaching teams isn’t what I do anymore – just players who want to get the absolute most out of their body and who want to bust their tails to make it happen.

Join us and our fun (but hard-working) client group for summer training – whether you’re a high school baseball athlete, college baseball athlete, or youth baseball athlete, we’ve got room for you. If you’re interested in personal one-on-one baseball lessons, let us know ASAP – now is the busy time, and when summer hits, we do mostly semi-private training without much room for private lessons. Just a fair warning!