Ryan Tatusko, Texas Rangers text me last week and said he is hitting new highs 91-95 mph on radar gun up from 88-93 and having a great spring training with the Texas Rangers. He said the Pitchers Power Drive has really helped him.
During the winter months while back home….Ryan reviewed video and talked with his Texas coach Danny Clark and local pitching coach Jay Lehr at the Roundtriper Baseball Academy in Indianapolis. Jay Lehr trains pitchers on the Pitchers Power Drive and recommends it to his pitchers. Jay made it part of Ryan’s training regimen in helping him to feel and learn backside initiation to help stay back in delivery. Ryan was so happy with the Pitchers Power Drive he wanted to own one. We shipped him a metal one and he now has a turf model at spring training in Arizona. When we communicated via email during the winter….I pulled up a video from the internet of Ryan pitching last year and saw from reviewing the video that his back foot was off the ground before he was throwing the baseball. I sent him an email letting him know what I saw and he said that was exactly what they had seen. He said that Jay and he were working on lengthening his stride to fix it. I mentioned that continued training on the Pitchers Power Drive with Jay would teach a hip lead which will allow staying on the back side and pitching with his weight behind the baseball thus getting the stride he needed.
Here is part of a recent interview that Ryan had with Jason Cole of LoneStarDugout.com on March 23rd, 2010:
SURPRISE, Ariz. - Looking to gain more consistency and get more out of his 6-foot-5 frame, right-hander Ryan Tatusko went to the video for answers in the offseason. Lone Star Dugout spoke with the pitcher about the changes he made and his first two outings of Spring Training.
Cole: What exactly were those mechanical adjustments that you implemented over the offseason?
Tatusko: Staying back. I came to find out that, through video and talking with DC and my pitching coach at home, that my back foot was completely off the ground before I was even releasing the baseball. That was completely taking all of the power out of my legs. I was just throwing strictly arm and shoulder.
Once I found that out, I talked to DC a little bit and talked with the pitching guy back at home. I really worked on just riding out my back side. I never really understood what that meant. Former pitching coordinator Rick Adair would always tell me that, too, and it never really clicked with me until I saw myself on video for the first time. All I really tried implementing was staying on my back side as long as I can and then exploding and not being too quick to the plate.
Cole: How long did it take you–when throwing bullpens or whatever–before it clicked and you were able to do that consistently?
Tatusko: It probably took me a couple of months to do it. Starting out, I’d get really frustrated. I would do it a couple times and then I’d go back to the same habit. I started to kind of feel myself rushing a little bit. I noticed a little bit of zip being taken off on my fastball.
Probably about the end of December or January, I started really getting behind the ball. The ball had a different feeling coming out of my hand starting in late December or early January. Every once in awhile, I’d catch myself rushing a little bit. And even still now, I’ll do it every once in awhile, but now I can feel it. That feels wrong now, and staying back and behind the ball feels right. It probably took me a couple months to figure it out.
Cole: At first, when you did it right, did it feel a little weird?
Tatusko: It felt really weird because I’ve never thrown like that before. It felt that I was leaving all of my power on my back foot and I wasn’t transferring through the ball. It felt effortless, and I’m not used to throwing that way. I was always maximum effort while trying to get the ball to the plate. That is kind of how I thought everybody felt throwing. Now everything felt effortless and I felt like I was leaving all my weight behind. Through throwing more and more, I started to feel that this is how you’re supposed to throw the ball–this is how you get behind it.
Cole: Going back to studying the video for a second, when you started looking at it, did you know that you were going to find something? Were you looking for anything in particular?
Tatusko: It was more that I just wanted to see if something was wrong. It just didn’t feel like I was getting enough out of my body. I talked to DC and some pitching coaches, and everybody said that there was more in there. I felt like, even myself, there was more in there. When I was younger–probably my sophomore year in college–I was 91-94. And then all the sudden I dipped. And I couldn’t figure out why.
I knew there was something in there, so I had to go to the video just to see if there was something there. And one day I was sitting down with a pitching coach back at home named Jay Lehr, and he found it. He called me up one night and said, ‘Hey, tomorrow morning, I want to show you something.’ He was the one that originally showed me. We went back to previous videos of me and I found the same thing happening in every single video. He really, truly found it for me. It clicked.
