No one knows the difficulty and importance of upgrading athletic skills more than collegiate athletes. There is a lot riding on turning raw talent into near-pro level skills, with pro scouts watching from the bleachers. You may have been the fastest pitcher in your high school team, throwing 80 miles an hour, but in college, you’ll come up against stronger pitchers throwing 90 miles an hour.
With the average fastball racing up to 93.3 miles an hour from 89 mph in 2002, how do you keep up with the pace? More importantly, how do you get noticed well enough to have a future in pro ball?
Use data to improve your technique.
What Pro Scouts Need to See
Are you a rocket like Roger Clemens? Or a five-trick pony like Jake Arrieta? Pro scouts not only look for the next big thing in MLB with pro players in mind. Scouts also evaluate pitches-per-bat and groundball-ratio, among others, in analyzing your skills as a collegiate player.
It’s not just about how fast you can throw the ball and the number of times a hitter misses. Your skills also have to demonstrate capacity to pitch under any given situation: throwing a fastball in a 2-0 count, working both sides of the plate, and the like. Scouts determine your capabilities with analytics gleaned, primarily, from radar guns.
Data-based Training
Data is valuable to your training sessions. Stalker Pro 2 baseball radar gun is an industry standard by which every professional potential major league baseball player is judged for it’s accuracy. Stalker radar measures speed with accuracy to 1/10th of mph; a 0.8 improvement may seem minor to a spectator, but to a pitcher, it’s a meager
difference that can reveal a big improvement in your speed. That’s enough motivation to keep throwing harder—faster.
Featuring three window displays, this guns radar provides information on your progress as a pitcher, giving you immediate feedback. The Pro II model simultaneously gives you the peak (release) speed and plate (roll down) speed of your pitch. It also measures the speed of a batted ball as it’s airborne. It’s the device that pros use, so it makes sense to adopt it for your training.
If you can improve your strength, stability, and speed, these can be your foundation to an arsenal of devastating pitches. This will mean applying other techniques.
There are players who use weighted balls to determine pitch development. This study by ASMI showed that at every level they tested, over and underweighted balls improved pitching speed. Biomechanical data can provide critical information that not only helps you increase speed, but also maintain that power for a longer period without risking arm health.
Your training as a pitcher is better with technology and science. And we’ve got the equipment to help you “make your pitch” for the big league. For industry-standard training devices, explore radargunsales.com today, or contact us for more information.