Great article but I feel that Trevor has taken a shotgun approach to pitching just like how you labeled Reddick's program when reviewing his 90mph club, Coach Robo. Trevor has tried everything out there that is considered cutting edge or different. I did the same thing in my career and I found that weight training was my key because once I started weight training correctly, everything changed. This is not the weight training that Trevor Bauer, Ron Wolforth, Alan Jaeger or Dick Mills have condemned. This is weight training that has built elite athletes for over a hundred years. When these guys talk about weight training they are talking about machines, bicep curls and calf raises. I am talking about Olympic lifting. You are using the exact same movements when you are flipping tires or pushing tractors, like they do at Ron Wolforth's camp, when you are performing the Olympic Lifts. The only difference is a barbell and rubber weights which are used to perform the Olympic lifts and uses a specific technique to prevent injury will cost you about $200 but a tire and tractor is going to run you about $1000.

Trevor and Wolforth are definitely moving baseball forward but I firmly believe Jaeger is trying to move it backwards. Why is Jaeger claiming that the reason we have so many arm injuries today is because we are not throwing our pitchers enough but ASMI is showing case study after case study that the cause of most arm injuries is overuse. Who is correct? I believe ASMI is correct and therefore the reason arm injuries have increased is because young pitchers are playing all year long with very little rest as compared to how kids grew up 30 years ago. This means they are throwing too much and too often.

I love to see guys like Trevor Bauer push themselves into the game because I want to see the game change but I would bet that Trevor Bauer is going to find himself in a big group of pitchers just like him in the next 5 years. I have only been coaching this game for 4 years and I have a 17 year old who came to me at 16 throwing 82mph with a 60 yard dash around 8.5 and a vertical jump of around 28 inches. In a year he is throwing 92mph, his 60 yard dash time is a 6.5 and his vertical leap is 36 inches. He is already above the Major League average. His improvements did not occur until he finally gave in and started working out with me 3 months ago. He was scared to touch the weight because of conventional wisdom and now he can't get enough of it. Now my job is to keep him focused and healthy and I could have a beast coming out of my program before next summer.

This is a new era. More schools of thought are looking outside of the game and learning how far behind baseball is compared to all the other sports. I just think Trevor and Ron Wolforth or trying to reinvent the wheel here. We are training athletes not just pitchers and you don't need to push tractors and carry tires to do it like they did back during Bob Feller and Whitey Ford's age. Today strength and conditioning coaches have certifications to use equipment designed specifically to train the athlete in a more effiecent and effective way using techniques that are proven to keep the athlete safe.