103 MPH At 5'11? | Yordano Ventura Mechanics Breakdown

What's going on guys, I wanted to break down Giordano Ventura. This is a highly requested breakdown. He was one of my most favorite pitchers to watch at the time. I think he was one of the most electric young arms in the game. And, you know, it's really honestly a tragedy what happened. But, you know, that being said, he moved extremely efficiently for his size. And I think it's worth taking a little bit deeper look into how he was able to produce, you know, such extreme velocities with a relatively undersized frame. So, one of the things that is a really good indicator of mechanical efficiency is the velocity to size ratio. Which, again, we don't have an exact formula per se, but really looking at the undersized guys who throw the hardest. Typically, those are going to be the guys that move the best, move the most efficiently, and are able to generate some of those higher velocities as a result of that versus just being a really big body, you know, exceptional strength levers athlete guy. And that's how they create their velocity. So, he definitely falls in that category. Exceptional arm speed, great patterns. And, you know, one thing to mention regarding kind of the velocity height, velocity size ratio. You know, height is kind of a proxy for lever length. And people typically, you know, will assume that someone who's 6'3 is going to have longer levers than someone who is 6 feet or 5'11. But that's actually not always the case. When you look at lever length, for pitching, one of the most important ones is going to be your wingspan. And so I've played with guys, upper 90s guys, who were 5'10, 5'11, and just out of curiosity, you know, measuring their wingspan and realizing a lot of these guys have 6'3, 6'4 wingspans. You know, I've also played with guys who were 6'5, 6'6 with 6'4 wingspans. And so, again, it's not an exact, you know, science, but height is not necessarily indicative of the exact levers that you're working with. And so, you know, some pitchers that, you know, unfairly boost them in the eyes of scouts and some pitchers that unfairly, you know, hurts them in the eyes of scouts. So long story short, I wouldn't be shocked if, you know, Ventura's wingspan was significantly longer than his listed height of 6 feet. I also wouldn't be shocked if he's actually more like 5'10, 5'11, but pitching with 6'2, 6'3, maybe 6'4 wingspan. So, that out of the way, again, he's still moving very efficiently. One of the first things that, you know, stands out to me in watching his patterns is the arm speed. And we've talked a lot about how arm speed doesn't necessarily come from the arm itself. That's just one of the variables that contributes to arm speed. But actually, the main variable that contributes to arm speed is how well do you use your lower half, how well do you use your body? Because you can't get your arm to move this lightning fast just from accelerating from the scapula to the fingertips. So, arm speed isn't just coming from the pec contracting out and around into ball release. Right, that acceleration phase is certainly augmented and aided by this active pulling into release from the pec fibers, from the lat, from the subscap, from all the internal rotators of the shoulder. But you're not going to get this type of lightning quick arm speed if you're not getting that contribution from the lower half. And so, that's the biggest distinction. Whenever I see someone with lightning quick arm speed, that's a telltale sign they're using the lower half effectively. And when you see someone with a very slow arm, like you watch them from a side view and you can almost see their arm at each step. You can almost watch their arm through space versus it just being this complete blur. That's an indication that the arm is taking over the throw. So, just off the bat, you can tell that he's getting a lot of that energy up the chain from the ground as a result of that arm speed. So, arm speed doesn't come from the arm. Arm speed comes from the proper sequencing and transfer of energy through the entire kinetic chain. Another thing that's interesting, if you've followed our stuff for a while, you'll know we're big on how a lot of hard throwers have a fairly aggressive forward move, fairly aggressive drift. You can compare and contrast Gerdano Ventura's first move with Jacob de Grom. And Ventura really comes to that traditional kind of balance point position here. He's not shifting his weight forward 4, 6, 8 inches like a Jacob de Grom during leg lift. So, he's actually way less frontside driven, way less drift, weight shift in that forward move. And he's way more what I would consider backside driven. And so, again, it's just an example of how there's no one-size-fits-all formula. The more of a forward move you have, the faster the tempo will typically be. But, again, there's a sweet spot for every pitcher. So, too aggressive of a forward move will lead to disconnecting the backside, losing backside tension, and falling down the mountain. Too little forward move, so you can imagine if his first move, instead of being here, if he was just head was way back here, hip was up here, really leaning backwards and getting stuck over the rubber, that's also an issue. And so, there's a sweet spot in there in regards to how much drift to have. But for him, we're maybe talking like an inch or two of a forward move. It's a very subtle drift. And I wouldn't even really consider this much of a drift. So, he's very backside driven. He's staying anchored through this entire backside from the foot, stable through his back foot, stable through this entire stack position where the head is over that back heel. So, that's just one thing to note. We certainly have trained players where adding a drift is a huge unlock for them. We've also had guys where they overdo it and they sell out for the drift concept and they lose that backside tension and they actually throw slower. And so, just recognizing that the drift is not an end-all, be-all and there are pitchers who throw very efficiently, throw very hard, who are able to still do it being more of a backside driven pitcher. So, that's the first thing. The other thing is this concept of the seesaw, which I didn't know what else to term this kind of concept, but you can kind of see in him especially. A lot of pitchers, it's fairly obvious, and he certainly falls into that category. So, if we look at, we can imagine a seesaw, you know, goes up on one side, one side comes up, the other side comes down and then vice versa and you have this seesaw-like effect. And what I'm really looking at is the angle of the shoulders. So, usually what you'll see with the seesaw concept is during the leg lift, that's one side of the seesaw down and then as they shift into their backside and they get into their linear move, that's when the angle shifts and that's when the seesaw goes from down here to up here. So, we can watch, it's almost like a 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2. So, that's the seesaw effect in action right there. And I really didn't know what else to call it, you know, several years ago when I was just observing that repeatedly, but it really, you know, creates that distinct segmentation in phases of the delivery between that leg lift, that drift, that forward move, that, you know, just getting the train going down the mound to, hey, now we're in stay back mode. As soon as you get here, we're in stay back mode, we're in keep the head back over the hip, we're in hold tension, hold tension, hold close, hold close, hold tension, hold tension, hold tension, hold tension. But that initial part right here of the seesaw, that's what gets everything going and that's what allows you to then shift into stay back mode. So, there's move forward mode, that's the first part of the seesaw, and then there's stay back mode, which you hold all the way up as long as you possibly can just before landing, right up until here, until you can't hold it any longer. And that's when you allow everything to spiral up the chain and unleash that tornado of energy and all that torque and rotation from the ground to the pelvis. So, again, if you're not familiar with the seesaw concept, it's just very, very clear with how Ventura moved specifically. Now we go into, you know, he gets into that back side. So, we just released a video last week on back side tension, and I think he's a great example of this and of how every pitcher is going to have a little bit different position and angles that they get into to be able to find that tension. And so, he's more of kind of an upright torso posture to find that tension. So, he still has some degree of hip flexion, some degree of knee bend, you know, some degree of, you know, ankle-torso flexion, but he's a much more upright trunk posture to create that tension versus, you know, a lot of other pitchers, they'll be in much more of like a forward torso position, really finding the glute. You know, you could consider this a little bit more even between the glute and between the quad as far as this position. It's more of like a front squat hinge position versus a, you know, a box squat torso position. So, that's just an interesting piece. But the point of this holding tension concept is that you have this stable fixed point on the ground. That's, you know, that's the foot position. The cleat's dug into the dirt. That's fixed. And what you're doing is you're basically turning the pelvis over top of that back hip, and you're creating this three-dimensional loading of the tissues through this entire back chain, the hip rotators, the deep fascia of this hip. And so, you're basically winding the spring along this entire back leg by this being fixed and turning the pelvis towards second base. And how far you're able to turn the pelvis towards second base will completely be dependent on your hip anatomy and how much available range of motion you have. But you're taking out the slack. Also, you can think of that as creating tension or winding the spring. There's a lot of different ways to think about it. But you're winding up this entire back leg in that exact specific angle. You know, some pitchers will have a little bit more sit like a Trevor Bauer. Some pitchers will have more counter rotation like an Errol Chapman. The idea is to remove the slack and wind up that entire back leg like a spring. If you don't wind up that back leg like a spring, you can't unload that back leg like a spring, unload the hips with any sort of real power. And, again, the arm is going to be the thing accelerating the ball versus being able to wind that spring, uncoil that spring, and get this late popping through of the hips. So his ability to pop through the hips so aggressively right here comes from his ability to remove slack, create tension in the back hip, and ride it for an eternity down the mound. So here's one cue that would have really helped me in high school. I threw low 70s as a freshman in high school. I had no idea how to create tension. I was throwing all arm. I was just kind of falling down the mound. And if someone had just told me, stay sideways and explain what that meant, I would have thrown 8 to 10 miles an hour harder within a year instead of working for the next 6 years or throwing 95 miles an hour. I would have done it in a couple years. But he's a great example of this cue of staying sideways. So, again, we can see where is the belt buckle facing. Belt buckle is facing third base or even a little bit beyond third base. He's pretty counter rotated. He's showing his butt to the catcher. And we're in this position. So the question is, okay, how long can you hold that closed position for? Some coaches, some players will suggest, hey, the idea should be to open the hips as early as possible. Get the hips open into landing as early as possible. And while we do want the hips to ultimately get open into landing, not necessarily 90 degrees open, but 45, 35, 45, 50 degrees, somewhere in there. He's getting the hips open into landing. To some extent, the belt buckle is facing halfway down, if not more, the third base line. It's how you get there that matters. You can just lift the leg, fall open, reach open the hips, and you can get in this position. But it's how you get there that matters. Do you just open up and fall into this position? Or do you create tension, hold tension, hold tension, hold tension, and uncoil that spring at the last possible second to get in that position? The ladder is what actually allows the energy to flow all the way up through this entire abdominal fascia, pelvis abdominal fascia, pectoral fascia, out and around into the arm, arm then pulling into release, actively augmenting that energy. So you have this energy from the lower half working its way through the trunk. And then you add, at the very last second, the active pull from the arm itself. And those two combined is what gives you this elite arm speed, along with this lead leg effectively blocking so that you have something to pull into and decelerate with. But again, if we look at how long he's able to stay closed, Garrett Cole is another great example of this stay sideways cue. But he's sideways, sideways, sideways, sideways, sideways, sideways, sideways, sideways. I mean, he's not rotating open with the pelvis at all. Belt buckle's still here, sideways, sideways, sideways. Belt buckle's still here, sideways, sideways. Right now, boom, he starts to pop open. And you can really see this. Another indicator is looking at what the front cleat is doing. So if he's showing the bottom of the front cleat to the target, that's an indication he's holding that rotational tension close. So he's holding it, holding it, holding it, holding it. And essentially, the entire stride phase down the mound, it's really just effectively building tension, building tension, building tension, winding the spring further and further and further and further. Until now, you know, he's fully wound up all the tension in the adductor as well. He's run out of room in the hip joint. He's even run out of room in this rear ankle, which we'll talk about that in a second. And now there's nothing left to do besides uncoil that spring. So even right up until landing, he's completely sideways, completely closed. And if someone had just told me stay sideways, that would have massively, massively helped me. Instead of having to figure that out, like, junior, senior year of college, I would have figured that out sophomore, junior year of high school. So really, really helpful cue that I wish someone had told me back in the day. But again, look how long he's able to hold that sideways position before unloading it. And so I will actually refer to this unload as a releasing the hips into landing or releasing of that backside tension. Because really what happens when you load a spring, how do you unload the spring? Well, you just release it. You're not actively powering the spring open. If you've already wound up or compressed the spring, which is what he's done, he's wound up this tension. Really the feeling from there is you unleash the spring. You stop holding the spring. You let the hips pop open at the last second. But it's not actively just brute forcing your hips open into landing and just trying to spin the hips off towards first base as hard or as aggressively as you can. At least that's not the feeling that I've ever had, and that's not the feeling that I've communicated or heard communicated from any of our upper 90s, 100-mile-an-hour guys. It's way more of a hold, hold, hold, hold, hold, pop, and release it through at the last second. So again, feel free to try both. Both cues, but that is the one that has worked for the vast majority of our guys. And then from there, the throw has effectively already happened by this point. So there's really not much active, there's no active thought at this point that can effectively be happening. As soon as the hips pop open, the rest of this throw is reactive. You get this huge stretch through that abdominal fascia, through that anterior oblique sling. He's created a ton of separation here. He's got a really good T-spine. Good T-spine extension, good T-spine rotation, deep flip-up, deep scap load. So he's basically effectively stretched this entire fascial chain from the ball through that throwing arm through this entire sling. And as soon as that lead foot hits, that sends the impulse up through this leg, up through that glove-side pelvis. And you can see that completes the pelvic rotation over the next two frames. This pelvis fully decelerates, and it slingshots the arm through. And then another important piece to note is this recoil. Is this recoil purely stylistic? A lot of people would say that the recoil is just the Latin players kind of showing off. It's just flair, there's no point to it. But actually there's evidence now that this is really a sign of deceleration. This is a sign of effectively sequencing and then slamming on the brakes and decelerating earlier segments properly. So it's a hard thing to communicate if you haven't felt it in your own throwing. But really what that's a sign of is if you can think about what's actually going on, there's the pelvis rotating. Ideally the pelvis hits that peak rotational velocity before the trunk. So you have the pelvis rotating, unwinding. And then you have the trunk rotating, unwinding. And then you have the elbow extending. So the arm effectively, you can see better from the back view, the arm extends out and around into elbow extension. So that's another kind of key piece of the kinematic sequence. And then you have the shoulder internally rotating. And that's going from peak layback to internal rotation into ball rest. So you have kind of those four, really the big four pieces that they should have in order and in sequence. If the hips and the shoulders rotate together, and they don't go hips then shoulders, then you're not actually able to create this segmentation and this stretch reflex through the entire chain. So what you want is pelvis to peak first, then trunk to peak, then elbow extension to peak, then shoulder internal rotation velocity to peak. You don't want them to all happen together. And so for the trunk to begin to accelerate, you actually need the pelvis to decelerate. And then for the arm to begin to accelerate, you need the trunk to decelerate. And so that's why you get this kind of bullwhip effect, where as soon as the lead leg hits, he doesn't just continue, like this doesn't all collapse and then he continues to rotate way over here. No, the pelvis goes from here to there, and then it sticks. Pelvis sticks. It doesn't continue rotating from here. The pelvis hits its end range of motion from here to there, and it sticks. Because it sticks and decelerates, that now allows the trunk to accelerate. Now the trunk can go from here to here because the pelvis has gone from here to here. Now the trunk goes, and now the arm can go. And it's happening very fast. You can't really see it as well on, you know, 30 frames per second video. But the recoil is really the sign of appropriately decelerating the pelvis and the torso. And so you get this kind of abrupt, like, kickback feeling or motion versus just continuing to kind of like fold forward over your front side. So what some coaches have done, and what we have, you know, experimented with as well, is really exaggerating this idea of the recoil. Like telling a player to pimp the finish, telling a player to have this, you know, recoil may actually be helpful in some cases. So that's something that could be worth split testing your next bullpen. You know, throw your 15, 20 pitches, but then take five, take eight pitches at the end and specifically try to have a little fun with it, have a little flair. And, you know, maybe don't even look at the radar gun, but see after the fact, you know, were those similar command, were you throwing one or two harder? And what you'll commonly find actually is that guys will throw one or two harder when you, you know, encourage them to have a little flair, encourage them to pimp the finish. But it's not a stylistic thing per se. It's actually a sign of deceleration of the pelvis, trunk, and allowing the arm to be that final thing that whips through on its own versus the arm, the pelvis, and the trunk all rotating as one unit. You want the pelvis to go first, slam on the brakes. Then the torso goes, slams on the brakes. Then the arm goes, and the arm is that final piece of the whip that finishes the throw. And he's an amazing example of just that. And the final thing I wanted to highlight is this back ankle because there's multiple ways to kind of unload that energy from the ground. We've talked about how you want that stable fixed points at the ground. Footwear is extremely important. That's why a lot of guys will throw harder in cleats than on turf mounds because they are wearing, you know, poor footwear on indoor mounds. Their foot's slipping a little bit, and that represents an energy leak. They can't hold the same degree of tension through that backside. They can't unload nearly aggressively. You can imagine, like, if you were throwing, in an extreme example, in socks on a wood floor, would you throw as hard? Obviously not. Why? Because you don't have that fixed point to the ground. Your foot's going to be slipping all over. So how can you shoot a cannon out of a canoe? How can you throw effectively? How can you load and unload tension from the pelvis if the only point of contact in this entire delivery right now to the ground is this back foot? So if this isn't stable, then none of this will work properly because you're going to be just floating in space. If you've ever tried to make a Derek Jeter leaping throw in midair, you can't get anything on the ball. You may be able to throw 60 or 65 or 70 miles an hour, but you can't get any real velocity on the ball because you don't have that fixed point to the ground. So the question is, we all agree you need a fixed point to the ground, but how does that back foot ultimately unload when the hips go? And this is where there's, as far as I can tell, two distinct categories. And some pitchers will really fit into one category, and no matter how hard you try, it's going to be hard to fit them into another category. But he is an example of the eversion category and really an incredible example of that. And what I mean by that is you can essentially see how this back foot folds over laterally. So he's going into this ankle eversion position right here. And so that's one category. The other category is that guys pivot up and around on that big toe. And so in a perfect world, if a pitcher does have this range of motion, this eversion range of motion, which is not common, by the way, to have this degree, and you have to be wearing typically lower top cleats, high top cleats will inhibit this range of motion. Wearing an ankle brace will inhibit this range of motion, so I wouldn't normally recommend that for most pitchers if they want to wear high top cleats or wear an ankle brace. Usually that's going to inhibit the ankle being able to move laterally, which is actually a part of loading the back leg and unloading the back leg. So him having the ability to just stay on this backside an extra couple frames because of his incredible range of motion through the ankle, my thought on this is that this actually allows him to stay into his backside a hair longer, stay sideways a hair longer, build up a hair more kinetic energy before he actually unloads. So he's not necessarily using crazy, crazy hip IR to hold, like Chase Petty or Diego Castillo. These are guys that are able to stay into their backside forever because of all that range of the hip. Well, he's got a good range of the hip, but I think he's getting that additional range, that additional little bit more than you would expect from this range of motion right here. I think that's giving him that extra one to two frames that he's able to stay in his backside before unloading the pelvis. I think that is kind of a subtle difference maker in terms of, maybe he's a 99 mile an hour guy if that back angle doesn't work great, but he's a 102 mile an hour guy with that kind of insane range of motion. So again, I don't have any way to specifically prove that one or two or three miles an hour is coming from that, but just an important note, you typically won't see that crazy range of motion, but you will see one of those two categories. You'll see the everters and you'll see the guys who kind of pivot up through the big toe. And if a guy pivots up through the big toe, we will want to assess in a movement screen, how well does that ankle actually move? Do they have a history of ankle sprains? Are they limited in eversion? And we'll try to open up some range and some stability as needed. Despite that, even if you open up that range, it's not going to be a guarantee they get in any position like this. There are 100 mile an hour guys who do pivot up through the big toe, but it will at least be a clue to us that, hey, maybe we need to look closer. Maybe there's a restriction through that ankle joint as well. Obviously the arm itself works really well. We talked about how arm speed really doesn't come from the arm. It comes from the body, but arm path wise, you really can't get much better than this. Glove arm throwing arm work in opposition. He's very well timed with that intensity. It's a very late addition of the arm to the throw. Arm flips up in a deep range of motion, deep flip up, ton of space between the head and the arm. He's in a vertical on-time position at landing. He's in that scapulated position. He's creating a stretch through that throwing arm pec. He's right around 90 degrees of elbow flexion at this point, plus or minus 10 degrees. He's creating full layback, 170, 180 degrees of layback. He's pulling into ball release. He's hitting that peak layback behind the ear, not out in front of the nose, which would be an indicator of pushing the ball. He's finishing with electricity, finishing with intensity, and rotating in plane as far as the torso rotation and getting that arm in plane with the rotation of the trunk, finishing with electricity. Awesome recoil. Just really a fun pitch to watch. Just in conclusion, definitely a shame what happened. While he wasn't ever an all-star, he was certainly on his way to becoming an all-star. I think he was on the cusp of really doing something special. He had the base for what could have developed into a really elite arsenal. Again, having effective movement patterns is really that first piece of the foundation. Having a great fastball, good profile on his fastball, good movement profile on his fastball was a great foundation. He had a curveball with a ton of promise, and from there he really could have branched out, adding one or two other pitches to that arsenal to really round it out and have a complete offering with a ton of depth to his arsenal. He was on the cusp. Really a shame. Hopefully you guys enjoyed that breakdown. These are the best clips I could find of him. Let me know what you think in the comments down below, and let me know who you'd like to see me breakdown next. Until next time, take care.