Cobb adds Driveline Baseball to his offseason workout

[Roll Tide]

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He’s in the Seattle area again to receive more input from instructors at Driveline Baseball, the data-driven performance center, and check on his progress after an earlier meeting that marked the first of his professional career.

After the season I came out here to get evaluated, see if there’s any flaws in my delivery and had them write up a program specific to me to kind of fix any of the flaws that were showing,” Cobb said.

“I really didn’t take much of a breaking, throwing-wise. I’ve kind of continued from the season, although it’s been tamed and tampered down a little bit to progress slowly through the offseason. I’m just back here now getting re-evaluated and seeing if the drills that we’re doing are having us on the right path. Hopefully by spring training it will be kind of cleaned up and ready to go.”

What motivated an older dog to try a newer approach?

“I think that a couple things,” he said. “Just feeling more comfortable on the mound, trying to get back to feeling the way I have previously in my career. And you can only hear so many testimonies of people going and trying it and having great results before you yourself realize that you have to at least go and experiment with it and see if it’s something that you feel like can help you in your career. Those two things, I felt like I needed to give it a shot.”

So if he has a great year you’d have to wonder why he didn’t do it sooner.

 

https://www.masnsports.com/school-of-roch/2020/12/cobb-on-pending-free-agency-and-a-new-offseason-plan.html

[CarrRun49]

12 minutes ago, Roll Tide said:

So if he has a great year you’d have to wonder why he didn’t do it sooner.

 

https://www.masnsports.com/school-of-roch/2020/12/cobb-on-pending-free-agency-and-a-new-offseason-plan.html

What makes you believe over the course of 162 games, he can actually stay healthy to see if there are positive results? That's my question.  Second, Means went to Driveline last year around this time and saw his ERA, FIP, and HR/9 (doubled 2019) all rise.  Although there was a slight positive trend in H/9, BB/9 and SO/9 for whatever that is worth.

[VaBird1]

22 minutes ago, CarrRun49 said:

What makes you believe over the course of 162 games, he can actually stay healthy to see if there are positive results? That's my question.  Second, Means went to Driveline last year around this time and saw his ERA, FIP, and HR/9 (doubled 2019) all rise.  Although there was a slight positive trend in H/9, BB/9 and SO/9 for whatever that is worth.

Means went to P3 in Kansas City btw.   This style of pitching training tends to lead to healthier pitchers based on what I’ve read.

[Moose Milligan]

That's nice.

I wonder if Driveline specializes in preventing nagging injuries, too.

[Roll Tide]

13 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

That's nice.

I wonder if Driveline specializes in preventing nagging injuries, too.

Injury related

 

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Arm InjuriesAny athlete that has recently undergone a significant throwing arm injury needs to first finish any prescribed physical therapy and complete a physical thera-pist’s throwing program all before start-ing this program.You must be medically cleared to pitch.We have a free 31 day Return to Throw-ing Program  that is a more gradual on-ramp to address any underlying arm fit-ness issues post-PT which you can bring to your PT or consulting physician for guidance and clearance

 

[Roll Tide]

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The Role of StressFor the properly prepared athlete, stress is a benefit. It creates positive tissue ad-aptations through the mechanism of su-percompensation—stressed tissue (giv-en sufficient but not too much recovery time) will add capacity, increasing its overall fitness.

For an untrained, over-tired or unrecov-ered athlete, stress is a negative, leading the athlete on a downward spiral to poor performance and risk of injury

Pretty cool ...Check out the link

 

 

https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/8WeekOn-Ramp.pdf

[MCO'sFan]

Driveline is a great resource as are On Base U, the Texas and Florida Baseball Ranches and others. But they are not guarantee of health or performance. There are young players that I have coached that are using higher leverage and stress movement patterns to maximize velocity in hopes that they make their money before the body fails. There is a widespread belief that TJ surgery is no big deal and can even increase velocity. I think those are reasons for the increase in TJ procedures and no one is talking about them. 

Any pro or elite amature player/pitcher not going to one of these performance facilities is absolutely at a disadvantage. I can understand a guy like Cobb being resistant to it. He came up way before these facilities were mainstreamed and he was successful without it. IIRC Means did go to Driveline last year and he had a pretty significant increase in Velo. But, like I tell my pitchers all the time velo is nice but you still have to command it. It is very common (should be expected) for guys who experience a jump in velo to also experience a drop in command. There is usually a curve in making those micro-adjustments but, it does come back.

[MCO'sFan]

1 hour ago, Roll Tide said:

Pretty cool ...Check out the link

 

 

https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/8WeekOn-Ramp.pdf

There is more and more research that suggests that players are at a greater risk for arm injuries after long lay-offs and poor ramp up. It is interesting to see how the old school and new school thoughts parallel fairly often. A lot of the research is providing the explanation as to why elements of old school PD and scouting worked. For example, Mazonne's "throw everyday" philosophies has been given some support based on research. 

[LookinUp]

Cobb wants another pay day. Good for him, and hopefully good for the O's trade deadline.

[OrioleDog]

Just as a thought exercise I honestly don't have a real guess either way whether Driveline's cutting edge is now gone with Boddy off to the Reds, or if that gig will be interesting to him anymore with the club deeming Bauer too expensive.   

If anyone who writes an article too good on Fangraphs community vanishes to a club, I can only imagine what happens if clubs get any specific insight from John Means or anyone else about a talented analyst on one of the ranches or at the Driveline type places.

[MCO'sFan]

2 hours ago, OrioleDog said:

Just as a thought exercise I honestly don't have a real guess either way whether Driveline's cutting edge is now gone with Boddy off to the Reds, or if that gig will be interesting to him anymore with the club deeming Bauer too expensive.   

If anyone who writes an article too good on Fangraphs community vanishes to a club, I can only imagine what happens if clubs get any specific insight from John Means or anyone else about a talented analyst on one of the ranches or at the Driveline type places.

Several of these guys are already on MLB orgs staff/payrolls. I'd say a1/3 to 1/2 have someone from Driveline or the Ranches. Several MLB pitching coaches are Ranch guys. 

[VaBird1]

11 hours ago, MCO'sFan said:

Several of these guys are already on MLB orgs staff/payrolls. I'd say a1/3 to 1/2 have someone from Driveline or the Ranches. Several MLB pitching coaches are Ranch guys. 

It’s another area where the Birds were way behind the curve.