Congrats Austin, super proud of you. West Virginia is getting a good one. One of the hardest workers and most coachable players I’ve ever worked with.
Austin’s development here has been fun to watch. As a freshman he average 85.6 on his fastball. My first fall with him we didn’t focus much on mechanics, we changed up his fastball from a deadzone 4 seam at 14&14 to a 2 seam that had 20 inches of arm side run and 12 inches of IVB. It paired much better off of his changeup at 5&20. Our main focus was adding arm strength. Gave him and all of the pitchers an arm strength program and he saw fast results, got up to 94 2 weeks later for the first time, a 3mph PR. Fast forward to the spring his average fastball velo was 87.6 for the season. An improvement but not where he or us wanted him to be. Over the summer we asked Austin to shed a few pounds, his velo was a little inconsistent in the spring and I think some days he would just move better than others so the weight loss improved how he moved and made it more consistent day to day. The other thing we wanted to work on was his arm action. It was a little too long and almost a little pushy at times, especially on his offspeed pitches. We did a lot of preset arm drills to create the feeling of a shorter & tighter arm action. In the fall he saw a little velo jump up to 88.5 in average. Going into the spring our main focuses were his lower half. Specifically I felt his back foot was disconnecting from the runner a little too soon and causing him to lose some ground force. We went heavy with medball drills trying to reinforce the feeling of him staying grounded and connected with his back foot and it worked fast. His medball throws climbed every week. From 42 week 1. To 47 the week before our first game. He was moving better and not losing the energy he created with his back leg. This spring he averaged 90.6 on the fastball and probably more impressive he did all of that while cutting his walk rate down from 3.69 per 9 as a freshman to 2.71 as a sophomore and finally 1.67 as a junior.
Cue Country Roads!
I am extremely excited to announce that I will be continuing my baseball career at West Virginia University!
#HailWV