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Joe Laffman ✞

@laffman_pitching

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Director of Analytics / Performance Coach @feole_21
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Your program shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all packet.

Every arm starts with a personal assessment, and your plan is built from there.
Your whole week is in your pocket, with every drill on video, filmed in-house.

No templates. No more guessing.

Apply through the link in bio! by @laffman_pitching

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4 days ago

EConn Freshman Bryce Leonard @bryceleonard6
From 84-86(T87) to 89-90(T91)

Bryce is a great example of how momentum impacts the delivery and how the presence of upwards momentum is beneficial to narrow ISA’s.

Bryce started up with us topping out at 87 and doing it essentially all arm due to his size, levers, and ability to semi-access a great spinal engine.

The initial adjustment for Bryce was to get him out of the crunchy quad dominant load pattern that caused him to become very stuck and be forced to push out of it resulting in very early extension and COM dumping forwards, causing the arm to do all the work. We put him in hover swings to get him to use the unweight phase to gain momentum forwards and move into drop phase rather than the static leg lift and dropping immediately over right side without gaining any linear momentum.

The other part of this was to get Bryce to delay early extension to allow him to actually rotate and be able to access his spinal extension at the correct time, so it was actually beneficial to him and he wasn’t rotating through extension. We worked a ton on presetting tension against right side (use Miz example) and having a more closed upper half rather than being neutral and attempting to rotate with essentially no real/usable counter rotation to transfer upper center of mass properly.

Bryce is an incredibly hard worker and has been able to adjust and implement these changes, resulting in real momentum and improved positioning at front footstrike, creating the ability to properly access spinal extension and rotate behind and through the lead leg.

Bryce has a very high ceiling and it is just the beginning for him. Excited to see what he is able to accomplish this season and in years to come! by @laffman_pitching

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7 days ago

Pitchers train different here.

No templates. No guessing. Every arm gets a plan built based off of a personal assessment and data.

-106 arms throwing 91+
-Pro arms across MLB organizations
-In person in Rhode Island and/or remote

Apply through the link in bio! by @laffman_pitching

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7 days ago

Gyros are becoming more common in arsenal building and in pitch design conversations today. But what are they really? A slider? A cutter? The answer is really neither, it’s its own pitch.

Think of how a bullet spins: tight and over the top, preventing side-to-side deviation before it eventually falls due to gravity.

The same applies to a gyro. The goal is to get to the side of the ball to create true bullet spin, eliminate horizontal deviation, and allow gravity to act on top of the ball, pulling it down.

The Magnus effect is minimized on a gyro, preventing it from straying off its expected path and making the shape harder to identify out of the hand.

The movement is so unique that even MLB broadcasts struggle to tag what the gyro is, mistaken most commonly for a SL, CUT and CB.

A gyro succeeds because it reduces early visible movement, looks like a fastball longer than most secondaries, and creates late, sharp depth.

Gyros excel when paired with high-IVB heaters because they resemble a true 4-seam before falling off the table. They’re most effective with a high release height and steep VAA, where added gravitational influence enhances perceived drop.

The best ones are called “death balls” because the spin is so tight they create negative IVB and are nearly impossible to pick up out of the hand.

Many power arms favor the gyro over a big sweeper because it’s thrown harder and pairs better with a high-velocity fastball.

This can be added to any arsenal as a true zone option, like a cutter, and something to induce weak contact and generate whiffs below the barrel, as both Ben brown and Hunter Greene showed 40%+ whiff rates on their respective gyros. by @laffman_pitching

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8 months ago

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8 months ago

Attack planning is one of the most important aspects of pitching. While game strategy should be built around the pitcher’s strengths, the greatest advantage comes from pairing those strengths with hitter weaknesses.

Attack plans are rarely the same for RHH and LHH due to the impact swing angles and pitch shapes have on bat-to-ball interactions.

Jack Ohman emerged last year as one of the top arms in the country as a true freshman. A major factor in his success was how differently he attacked LHH compared to RHH, highlighted by a change in his primary secondary pitch.

Against RHH, Ohman threw 33% sliders and 8% changeups. Against LHH, he threw 20% changeups and only 13% sliders. This created advantages on both sides by emphasizing secondaries that start at the hitter and move away. Fastball usage increased from 51% to RHH to 64% to LHH. Vertical 4-seam fastballs are more effective against opposite-handed hitters due to IVB and their ability to work over the barrel.

As a result, Ohman leans heavily on the fastball versus LHH and uses the changeup to tunnel off it for chase. The changeup is only 29% in-zone but produces a 28% chase rate, supported by an elite fastball that generates strikes at a 62% rate.

His RHH approach is also fastball-driven. The slider is used both in-zone and for chase, producing a 45% in-zone whiff rate. Even if the fastball is not the best-performing pitch against RHH, it is thrown at a high rate because it profiles as an elite pitch at the college level. (Important aspect of leaning on P strengths)

Pitchers should never enter a game without a plan. Prioritizing strengths, pairing them with hitter weaknesses, and understanding the natural differences between attacking LHH and RHH can immediately elevate performance. by @laffman_pitching

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8 months ago

The Cutter. A pitch that finds most of its success by not doing a whole lot of anything. What makes a cutter so good? It looks like a fastball all the way until it’s too late for the hitter to notice, and then they’re walking to the dugout for a new bat.

When all you see is movement, no movement at all becomes deception. Being the best by doing nothing.
Cutters are primarily a weapon against opposite-handed hitters and thrive on late break. They usually carry between 25–40% spin efficiency, which means the ball breaks much closer to the plate than the rest of the arsenal.

In the modern era of baseball, everything moves a ton. Every pitcher has something moving 20 inches up, down, left, or right. Cutters are small and appear to just move straight, hence how they perform best when the metrics are closer to 0 IVB and 0 HZ when going for the gyro shape, and a traditional cutter holds some vert between 8-12 and HZ staying around 0.

They are especially lethal when a pitcher already possesses large movement in multiple directions and the hitter grows used to it. Introducing something that stays straight or has only “perceived cut” disrupts timing and expectations.

Hitters are accustomed to seeing big breaking pitches every time they step into the box, so their goal is often to hunt a fastball.

They see something coming in hard, the eyes light up, and then it suddenly falls off a cliff with a gyro shape or cuts just a few inches left or right.

This induces tons of weak contact and gives a pitcher a reliable weapon in any count to attack the zone with low damage potential.

Cutters can also serve as a get-right pitch for pitchers who struggle with zoning. Locating large-movement pitches can be difficult, and having something with minimal movement is critical for getting ahead in even counts and regaining control after falling behind.

Throw cutters. by @laffman_pitching

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9 months ago

Do True Deadzone fastballs really exist?

Maybe, but not really. If the pitcher lacks any arsenal to support the FB, no effects of spin mirroring or unique release qualities and holds stock metrics across the board. But only then.

The idea of a deadzone heater is entirely overblown and unfair to assess without analyzing an entire arsenal and attack.

This goes for any pitch in an arsenal. An attack is meant to create deception and that is done by creating weapons to play off of the rest of the arsenal.

One shape that may perform poorly for one arm will play completely differently for another. An 18 IVB and 12 HZ 4S could play with the same perceived lift as one with 10/10 depending on what the offspeed looks like.

Hoby Milner is a great example of this. Hoby carries his fastball at 6 IVB with -9 HZ and it is consistently his best performing pitch due to an extreme outlier release and dominantly depth driven arsenal to uplift its effectiveness. He brings an east/west attack with a SNK/SWP/CH that all have +depth and HZ numbers that push 15+. This 6/-9 4S shape then appears to have elite carry and resulted in an arsenal best 21.1% whiff rate and an ELITE 36.4% K rate in 2025.

The shape of a pitch is never the end all be all and the arsenal is what determines if it will play well or not. When building a complete arsenal and attack strategy for a pitcher, it is very important to reference what they are already able to do with the rest of their weapons and care more about differences in shape to create deception for the hitter instead of looking at one pitch individually. by @laffman_pitching

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9 months ago

Pitchers are often considered either supinators or pronators, but no player truly fits in one category.

Release qualities and tendencies to lean towards more supination or pronation do indeed have genetic biases but are highly dependent on the throw. One player is not necessarily a true supinator or pronator, and every thrower enters both supination and pronation within the throw. However, one player can naturally be much more supination biased than another with the exact same throw, just because no two throwers are exactly the same.

Every pitcher enters supination at the beginning of the throw, but the duration of time in supination before transferring to pronation is what makes someone appear to fall in one of the two categories. Someone who stays in supination for longer will appear more supination biased, and vice versa. A pitcher who loses center of mass early and flies open with their glove side will be forced into early supination and then develops a very east/west arsenal and is considered a supinator. These shapes are a byproduct of a poor throw that lacks direction and the ability to gain velo. This player either on his own or with a coach will then try to develop his pitches in a certain way because he thinks he is a true supinator, when in reality his throw is just bad and is building his entire repertoire on a false feel. If this same pitcher is able to control center of mass and keep it over his backside through rotation, while utilizing his front side to control direction in more of a north/south pattern and move through a narrower window, he will be able to get out of supination and enter pronation earlier in the throw. This earlier entrance into pronation will allow him to stay more behind the ball at release and actually have the arm caught in the turn. His arsenal then turns more vertical than horizontal and would then be considered a “pronator” by those same people. Read more👇🏼 by @laffman_pitching

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9 months ago

A common misconception with pitch shapes and advanced data is that there are any absolutes and that a singular data point can make a pitch “good” or “bad.” You may hear a coach or player raving about having 20 inches of induced vertical break (IVB) and automatically deeming him as having an outlier fastball with exceptional vert that is going to find success. This can be very wrong or very right. It is actually very common for a 15” IVB fastball to heavily outperform a 20”+ IVB fastball. Let’s dive in:

IVB is primarily dependent on two variables; Vertical approach angle (VAA) and Release height:

VAA is a measure of the angle at which the ball leaves the hand and travels towards the plate. It primarily ranges from -9.0 to -2.0 and is unlikely to ever leave these parameters unless a pitch is spiked at the ground or sailed way above the zone. The concept of VAA is that the lower the number, the steeper the angle is and the more work that IVB is going to have to do to achieve true ride effects in the throw. The closer the VAA is to 0, the more a player will be able to play with true vert and get above barrels, even though it requires less IVB to Perform.
Release height is very simple as it is exactly what it sounds like, the height of the ball above the ground when it leaves the pitcher’s hand. It has a strong positive correlation to VAA in which they move together up and down with outliers occurring due to lack of zoning. The lower a release height, the more IVB will impact ball flight due to less gravitational effects and inevitably a flatter VAA because the ball is being released closer to the height of the strike zone. Continued down below:👇 by @laffman_pitching

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9 months ago