The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players

by Ben Lindbergh

In his freshman season at Hart High, Bauer hit 76 mph. After visiting the Houston facility several times after his freshman year and during and after his sophomore year, he hit 94 mph in a tournament in the December before his junior season began. Coaches from UCLA and Stanford were there to see the radar readings. “Sixteen months of being down there completely changed me,” Bauer says. The ranch is where Bauer learned how to acquire velocity. It’s where he and his father were exposed to the power of high-speed video. He learned to exchange endurance training, like running the warning track, for explosive drill work that mimicked the act of throwing. He also learned concepts like pitch tunneling, a theory that the longer different types of pitches could share the same release point and path to home plate, disguising their true nature, the more effective they would be.