Brent, if you and Paul go out for a beer – let me know.  That would be an interesting conversation.  I'll buy.  Paul strikes me as quite a businessman – I'm sure he'd tell you to quit giving away such valuable analysis.  In fact, I bet he already did…

I'm a member of the 90 mph Club – which means I bought his program.  It's a good program with a lot of valuable information in it.  I would characterize Paul's program as a shotgun approach and Brent's a rifled approach.  Brent's program is more concise and his handbooks make it easier to get to the essence of his program.  Paul's program reminds me of a late night informercial – "And that's not all…".  I mean that in a good way.  There are some massive egos in the world of Pitching Guru-dom.  Paul's not one of them.  He's an aggressive marketer, but I think he tries to give his customers all the information he can – and it's good information.  He's an important voice in the world of pitching instruction.  I can't think of anything mechanically that Paul and Brent would disagree on.  They just explain it in different ways and package their programs differently.  I'd recommend both to someone who's trying to learn all they can. 

As a coach and the father of pitchers, I've been buying everything I can on pitching for a long, long time.  I was probably one of Dick Mills' earliest customers and have most of his most recent programs, both my sons and some of my pitchers used Ron Wolforth's Combat Pitcher program, I have almost all of Tom House's stuff, I order DVD's from Brent Strom, I bought e-books from Paul Nyman, I ordered Chris O'Leary's DVD not long ago (it's worth purchasing just for acces to his flipbooks – which are cool), I love Perry Husband's work on Effective Velocity, and many others.  Plus, you'd probably have a hard time naming a book on pitching that I don't own.  I have Bill Thurston's original pitching handbook – which I believe launched Dick Mill's into the business - I have an original copy of Bob Shaw's "Pitching" from 1972, and I even have a copy of Christy Mathewson's "Pitching in a Pinch".  So, my high praise on this site about Brent's work didn't come from just falling off the turnip truck.  There's a lot of good information out there and I try to learn all I can.  Everything I just named is worth owning.  I've also bought a lot of bad stuff – but I learn from those, too.  Brent's particular contribution is an excellent explanation of lower body mechanics.  It fits right in with the best information available.   

I knew he would.  I'd probably tell you the same thing.  When 3P first went on-line, they posted an example of the 14 measurements they take during a pitcher's delivery.  I printed a list of them.  They don't put that on their web site anymore.  I think they thought even that was too much to give away.   

I've watched the world of pitching instruction do a full 360.  When I was a kid, there was no such thing as pitching instruction and we all pitched like Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson.  (Needless to say I wasn't in high school in 1993.  That kind of stung…)  By the time I started studying pitching as a young coach – which was in the early '90's – everyone was teaching up-down-out, balance point, high cock postion mechanics.  I'm not sure where that came from – I have some theories – but I taught it too.  I even changed the way I threw.  A few years ago, a few progressive thinkers decided there was something to the way Koufax and Gibson pitched.  (No kidding!)  What's amazing is how the balance point stuff stuck.  I bet there aren't any high school coaches in your area who teach what you teach.  And most college and professionals coaches don't teach anything – they just sign guys who already light up the radar gun. 

A couple of years ago I did some research on pitching tempo and momentum.  I used Paul Nyman's method of counting frames of a pitcher's delivery from max knee lift to release.  (I still use that measurement when analyzing pitchers.)  I compared the release time of MLB pitchers from all star games in the 70's to present day pitchers.  The guys in the 70's moved an average of 30% faster than present-day pitchers! And yet, even modern pitchers who are successful don't pitch from a balance point – especially from the stretch.  If they did, major league runners would run them out of the league.  You'd have a hard time finding a major league pitcher who doesn't start moving forward at least from the top of his leg lift, usually sooner.  My theory is that while coaches all over the country were teaching kids slow, mechanical, up-down-out deliveries, the only guys who made it to the top were the guys who didn't do that! 

What amazes me is that even though there are plenty of people now teaching what you call speed mechanics – everybody I named in my posting above, for instance – almost none of them are high school or college coaches.  I live in a city with a metropolitan population of over 500,000 and I don't know anyone besides me who teaches pitchers to move out as soon as they lift their lead leg.  And coaching's not my day job.  I talk to coaches who never heard of most of the people I mentioned above and reject what they teach when they hear about it.  I actually don't mind being the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind – but, they're holding back a lot of kids in their baseball career.  I've recently worked with a 6'7" pitcher who is getting some looks from the pros.  He's been working with some professional guys.  I did a video analysis of his delivery and showed him that he wasn't bracing his front leg at all – which was costing him several miles per hour.  The pro guys never mentioned that or anything else I showed him on video.  They were working with him on shortening his arm circle.  They didn't tell him why.  Earlier this year, my son and I (He does most of the lessons now.  I'm an advisor.  Giving pitching lessons requires brutal hours.  Can you relate?) helped a kid add 10 miles per hour in one lesson.  (We gunned him during our initial analysis and then 15 minutes after we showed him how to use his lower body.)  Obviously, that's extreme.  My point is that it wasn't because we're so good – but because the guy working with him before was so bad.  And because up-down-out mechanics kill velocity.

That's enough of my rambling.  I used your web site a lot to vent this weekend.  I'll leave it alone for awhile.  Enjoyed it.  Let me know if you set up that beer summit.