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The Minnick Experiment

How we used a throwing program, started tracking KPI's, and using tech to learn and improve Jeanine Minnick's pitching and prepare to tryout for the USA Women's National Baseball Team

When I tell people that USA Baseball has a Women's National Baseball Team, I get responses like “do you mean softball?”, or “wait... did you say baseball?".


Hearing that sucks. In reality, those women are some of the most engaged and fun groups of athletes to work with. And I only got to work with them once so far (thanks 'rona) - I think that says a lot.


This working blog is dedicated to not sucking.

WHAT IS "THE MINNICK EXPERIMENT"?

Enter: Jeanine Minnick


Jeanine is the former president of the club softball team at NC State and started out as a Data & Analytics intern with us in 2019. She then came on as a coordinator, and then helped us out on the operations side. She really just did it all.


With sports at a halt due to the pandemic, we decided to start tracking things on Rapsodo as a side project. It started out with BP sessions, then progressed to throwing bullpens. Not only did she revamp many of our processes in the job with hard skills like SQL and RStudio, she had a naturally disgusting changeup from the bump.


Here's proof:


Once we witnessed that changeup multiple times from someone who's never pitched 60ft 6in before, let alone pitch over the top, it sparked an idea: could JM pitch on the Women's National Team?


From that moment, "The Minnick Experiment" was off-and-running.

THROWING PROGRAM

Since I have no experience as a pitching coach, I reached out to the friends I've made during my baseball journey to get some advice. The first step in this experiment was to begin the Jaegar off-season throwing program (shoutout Malcolm Purdy for the recommendation).


The next six weeks were spent on this program, no bullpens. A few weeks stretching out the arm, and a few weeks pulling down with some flatground work mixed in. Then we broke out the Rapsodo again to see how everything changed.

Rapsodo: Week 0 vs Week 7

Prior to starting the Jaegar Off-Season Throwing Program, JM threw a bullpen for a total of 46 pitches. This was merely an exploratory bullpen to see what she could do on the mound. Since there is no date to have JM ready by due to the pandemic, we began the throwing program on July 20th, 2020, one week after the experimental bullpen. Here is what JM’s pitches looked like.


Bullpen 1 (Week 0)


Keep in mind, JM has had no formal pitching training. All this was was her standing on the mound and giving it a go. Now that we have a starting point, let's take a look at her bullpen from after the throwing program.


Bullpen 2 (Week 7)



HOW THE METRICS CHANGED

So, did the throwing program work? I think the clear answer is yes, BUT we still have room for a few tweaks and improvements. Let's breakdown each pitch JM has in her arsenal.


Changeup

  • On average, CH up 3.17mph to 64mph

  • Max speed up 3.08mph

  • average spin down 182rpm

  • average gyro degree up 7.2 degrees to 9.8

  • Average VB up 1.61in to 11in

  • average HB down 2.32in to 14in


The jump in speed shows that the arm responded well to the throwing program. The spin is down & the gyro is up, which may explain losing the HB and increasing VB. Losing HB isn't great, but she threw more changeups in this bullpen so this may be the CH leveling out for the day. We are looking to clean up delivery and the most important takeaway is that this is still a deceptive pitch. When she finds it can hit 17-18in HB.


Curveball

  • Average speed up 0.54mph but

  • max speed down 0.35mph

  • Average spin up 247rpm

  • Gyro degree up 16.5 degrees

  • Gained 3in of VB to -8.35in

  • Gained 6in of HB to -6.15


The average increase in speed to 54mph is nice, the minimum speed is also up 2.31mph meaning that the pitch is more consistent after the throwing program. The spin & gyro is up, but there's still not great movement on the CB. The reason for this is that she has a tough time gripping the ball. In a hand grip study (1, 2) I did last year, JM was a participant and had the smallest hands out of the group (sorry JM, it had to be revealed!). All this comes down to is figuring out how to grip the baseball and how to release it (along with the delivery itself).


I will post another bullpen update on figuring out the curveball later because we made huge strides on this pitch. We checked out Pitching Ninja's dropbox and watched videos on how to grip & release the CB to get us on the right track (thanks Trevor Bauer).


Fastball

  • Average speed up 2.42mph

  • Max speed up 3.08mph, min speed up 2.5mph

  • Spin is down 21rpm

  • Gyro up 8.2 degrees

  • VB up 1in to 14in

  • HB stayed roughly the same at 7in


Again, the increase in speed shows throwing program works. JM even said "my arm feels way better and more effortless in the bullpen now". She explained her elbow also doesn't hurt after the bullpen, just "feels worked". These are all very promising signs. The spin is down and her gryo is up, which means she is getting more around the ball, affecting not only the spin rate, but the movement as well. The goal here is to get more behind the ball and use more of the spin created.


Slider

  • On average up 2mph

  • Min is up 3.12mph

  • Spin down 12rpm

  • Gyro up 30.4 degrees

  • VB down 2.30in

  • HB up .53in


The average speed being up and min speed being 3mph higher shows the pitch is more consistent than last time. The spin is down and gyro is up 30 degrees! This is now turning into a true gyro slider and subjectively looks deceptive as hell. If we can increase the speed on this pitch, it will be a great slider. Again, this is a delivery/grip issue. Might be worth another trip to Pitching Ninjas DropBox for some tips.


Pitching Takeaways

  • All min speeds up at least 2.5 mph. Better consistency with pitches!

  • The arm feels better - "My arm feels way better and more effortless in the bullpen now". She explained her elbow also doesn't hurt after the bullpen, just "feels worked".

  • Need to work on delivery and grips, losing speed and/or movement because of this. Need to get more behind the FB, work on gripping the breaking balls.

  • We have access to pitch AI and can see plenty of room for improvement in the delivery (example: lead leg is getting "around" rather than moving "down" the mound).

VIDEO FEEDBACK

Video really helped us break down JM's movement even further. With the help of a pitching coach, it was even more helpful to throw in a few tweaks to the delivery here and there. We'll look at video from bullpen 1 and 2, then I'll show some of the PitchAI videos for fun.


Bullpen 1


FB


FB


CH


CB


SL


Not bad for someone who's never done this before, right? So far, we see that her lead leg is coming "around" rather than "down" the mound and her lead arm is moving in a similar fashion. If we can reach and pull down that lead arm instead of coming around, and work on working down the mound we may unlock a few more MPH. You'll see much of the same body movement in the next bullpen, we didn't bring in our pitching guy until the 3rd or 4th bullpen (thanks Brett Curll!).


Bullpen 2


FB


CH


CB


SL


Incoming side angle! We did this so we could watch how the lead leg comes around and to see the difference in where the body is just before forward movement. Again, we took these videos before we even realized what that lead leg was doing. Now that we can see she's losing a lot of energy by coming "around", we can make the adjustments.


Here's a couple screen shots to show what she looked like at forward movement from bullpen 1 to flatground work in week 5.


Bullpen 1 - Point of Forward Movement (just after Peak Leg Kick (PK))


Flatground - Week 5 - Point of Forward Momentum (just after PK)

Although we see that lead leg still wanting to come "around", we can clearly tell that she is sitting back in her load leg way better in the second bullpen. This is a really cool takeway from the throwing program. The body learns and adjusts as it gets used to the throwing motion. It seems like this adjustment happened in flatground work. You can see JM getting back into the load better in the videos of bullpen 2 as well.


Now, as promised, here's the same video with PitchAI overlay:


FB


CH


CB


SL


Additionally, PitchAI provides raw data of all kinematic information, a skeleton video breakdown of different motion capture angles, and a PDF explaining what to look for in each segment of the pitch with provided graphs for arm angle, arm angular velocity, trunk, and knee kinematics. What's also great is that the program is not obstructed by the fence in our video. Pretty versatile tool, and all you need is a camera (iPhone or iPad will do) to take video. I may do a more in-depth write up on PitchAI down the road, but I hope I can keep using it in the future!


OVERALL TAKEAWAYS

I have a few overall takeaways from the last 7 weeks.

  • Tracking progress with Rapsodo & weekly notes

  • Listening to the arm

  • Not babying the arm, pushing it when you need to

  • Finding out what days your athlete feels the best on

  • KPI's

One of the main reasons for success was that we tracked everything. Not only did we have Rapsodo with us, but we took weekly (sometimes daily) notes. We made sure to take into account how the arm felt after every throwing session and to really listen to the arm. Some days we made the decision to push the limit of the arm to see how it would react. Below is a link to the google doc where we kept notes, there are some funny pictures in there from when we decided to push the limits of the arm.

Pushing the limits of the arm - week 5. As you can see, JM is BEAT.


I would say asking countless questions about how your athlete feels every day in regard to arm, elbow, mentality, what they did in the gym, etc. - keeping a mental note, and writing it down later was huge. Getting in the habit of taking these notes really set up the opportunity for success in the next throwing session and the next weeks.


Under each pitch, in the section above, we identified a few key performance indicators (KPI's) to track as we start to develop her pitching arsenal. Tracking these KPI's over time is going to be the best measurement of progress for us.


Click here for Weekly Notes to take a look at how we tracked progress every week.


WOMENS NATIONAL TEAM TRYOUTS

So, what about our initial question? could JM pitch on the Women's National Team?


It looks like all signs point to no Women's National Team this year (thanks 'rona). All that means is that we have another year of training after this trial run! This is going to give us ample time to work on each pitch, add a hitter in the box, throw with runners on, work on PFP's, etc..


Oh, I forgot to mention that JM is two-way, so we're also training for all of that too. In the meantime, JM has been invited to a few tournaments and games, but those have also been cancelled (THANKS AGAIN 'rona). Nonetheless, as these opportunities pop up, JM will get some real game experience against other women baseball players soon.


Notes for Moving Forward

All in all, this has been an awesome exercise and we have both learned a lot. We can't wait to see what comes next. I'll continue to post updates of our bullpens in future blogs, for now this is our plan moving forward...

  • Bringing in Brett Curll to work with Jeanine on delivery and to coach her up on weighted balls.

  • We have not yet used weighted balls which should be a great addition to training

  • Tracking new training & how it will affect the arm

  • keep tracking bullpens with Rapsodo

  • keep taking weekly notes

  • identify KPI's to track over time

  • bullpens 1-2 times a week

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