Blake Weiman
Chicago Cubs Organization
Early on in his pro career, Blake Weiman would lift in his high school weight room and throw against a fence during his offseasons.
Once he had been around the block a few times and made his way up to AAA, he started to notice more and more teammates with similar routines that didn’t really look like his. A lot of them involved PlyoCare Balls.
For a guy who could benefit from some additional MPHs on his fastball, he was intrigued.
Weiman experienced a velo dip this past season with the Tacoma Rainiers, sitting around 89 mph from the left side with the fastball, and at the end of the season was a free agent.
He figured it was the perfect time to see what an offseason at Driveline could do for his career.
“If there’s any time to go, it was right now to go see what it could do for me,” Weiman remembers thinking. “It was sparked out of curiosity, but also deep down inside of me I knew I wasn’t getting the most out of myself. I knew I had more to offer.”
His intuition was correct. His strength numbers in his initial motion capture were extremely strong, and confirmed to him that he had the necessary base to throw harder than he currently was. It was his mechanics that left a lot to be desired.
He had a bad arm path, which led to poor external rotation. He had bad hip-shoulder separation, and his sequencing was way off.
But the tools he brought with him to Driveline – the strike-throwing ability and the desire to put in the necessary work – allowed him to attack those issues quickly.
And he progressed quickly. Pivot pick drills helped him load his scap and fix an issue with casting his arm out and coming around the ball. Drop steps helped him to feel power move through his body and helped with his timing down the mound.
Then, about a month out from Driveline’s Pro Day with Weiman feeling better on the mound than he ever had in his career, he felt something in his hamstring.
“Those thoughts go through your head on whether it’s going to heal in time, how am I ever going to get back to feeling this good again? I would just take it a day at a time, and we made some crucial adjustments…It ended up working out. I just kept the faith and trusted everything would work out.”
With diligence on a completely reworked schedule from both he and the Driveline staff during that time, Weiman did get back to feeling as good as he did pre-injury by the time Pro Day came around.
And the result? Weiman was awesome, with a fastball that sat 90-92, a changeup with 14 inches of vertical separation from his fastball, and a really good sweeper.
A few days after that, Weiman was officially a member of the Chicago Cubs organization, headed to Spring Training soon with another chance to make his Big League debut this season.
He doesn’t know if that would be the case if he hadn’t followed his curiosity to Driveline.
“Driveline was exactly what I needed,” Weiman said. “Anybody who is considering it, I think they should do it. A baseball career is too short. Buy into it and it will pay off. You meet the staff [at Driveline] and they know what they’re talking about. If you invest your time, it’s going to be worth it. I owe it to them. I’m glad I went.”