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Most Valuable Agent with Matt Hannaford
The Arm Injury Crisis: How to Counter Rising Arm Injuries with Proven Mechanics
00:51:24
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Transcript138 lines
- [00:13]
A
All right, so we're joined today by Justin Orenduff. I feel like there are so many various things I could say about you as we get started here, but for the audience. So, Justin, you were a first round pick right before that, you played baseball at. It sounds like two places, but which one do you claim? VCU or George Mason? George Washington or George Washington? I'm sorry?
- [00:32]
B
Vcu. You?
- [00:32]
A
Vcu. Okay. Okay. Got it. Makes sense. Yeah, makes sense. I want to get into your journey, your. Your path. I feel like one of the things that you're doing, the reason why it spoke to me and the reason why I wanted to have this conversation is there's obviously so much information out there into the world, right? But there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation that's being shared and so help everybody understand as we kind of jump into this conversation. As a pitcher coming through, you obviously experienced an injury yourself. Did you ever think that this would be the thing that you're doing post baseball? Like, was this ever on the radar? Like, did you have a passion about this prior to even getting injured, or is that how it came to be?
- [01:14]
B
That's a great question. I think that starting way back when, I think I always consider myself more of an academic minded student that just happened to realize a talent to throw the ball hard. And I think coming up, I worked hard at it, you know, and that's why I think out of high school, I originally chose George Washington University simply because I could get right into the business school. It was a good fit. It was definitely different from outside of Chesapeake, Virginia, where I grew up. But, you know, out of high school, it was between uva, William, Mary and George Washington for me. And I had a great time at gw, learned a lot. But I think how it worked out, going to VCU and playing there and having a lot of success in my amateur career, I never really thought that, like, becoming a first round pick was on the table, but I think that the expectation that I had was just work hard, continue to put my head down, do right by the classroom and see what shakes out. And I think, you know, when I got selected to Team USA after my sophomore year, things started to shift a little bit. It's like, oh, well, I may have an opportunity at that next level, but I continued the same journey. You know, got drafted in the first round, kept that same mentality, was in double A my first, you know, full professional season, had a lot of success. And, you know, I was in 2006 cruising in double A. And Ned Coletti, the GM of the Dodgers, at the same time, sure came in to watch me pitch. The Rays had three or four big leaguers on assignment, did well. But at the end of the game, I had felt something pretty deep in my shoulder, and I had started to feel it. And I think for all those pitchers out there, there's always warning signs of, like, there's something going on. Now, I call it the check elbow light. Just like you drive your car, there's a check engine light. But I knew something was going on. The next morning I woke up and I literally could not lift my arm.
- [03:12]
A
Oh, man.
- [03:13]
B
And then, you know, it's like you can always get through some soreness and figure it out, but this was different. I said, okay. And so six weeks later, I still couldn't lift my arm up. And I'd gone out to LA with the console, the job clinic, and you know, you hear slap tear, labrum. It's like a career ender at that point. And this is back in 2006. And so I said, well, let's opt for surgery. Rehab's not doing anything for me. And so I think when I woke up from surgery and the surgeon said, you know, Justin, I don't know if you got 6,606 in his left, but I do know the way that you threw the baseball led to this type of injury and surgery. So I said, oh, okay, well, what is it about it? The way I threw. But that single phrase that was expressed to me really changed my mindset, and I was in constant search for answers. I call it the second half of my playing career. Then I quickly realized that no matter what I did, I was always going to be fighting an uphill battle. I wasn't as good as anymore as I used to be. And it's not for lack of trying or my mindset, all those things. Just my arm didn't function any the same. And then my results showed. And so after being very frustrated, I retired and went back to school, got my business degree, vcu. And if you can imagine, like a one of those shows, like csi, right? Like a crime scene. I started just with this simple question of, well, why do some pitchers get hurt and others don't? And so this is where I think, to answer your question, I started to look at the history of the game. Not a lab, the history of the game, of how some pitchers could eclipse an inning threshold, stay healthy, not get hurt. And I just, I really, like, had a passion for it. And really at the time when I was retiring with the Dodgers. They said, you know, you'd be great for coaching. Claire Ryerson, scout that drafted me, said, you know, Duffy should get into scouting. And I started to actually shadow him a little bit, but I just said, you know, I don't want to be on the road. I feel like I got this calling, and I'm going to kind of figure this out. So that's how it started. And from there, I spent the better part of four, four and a half years putting together this kind of way where we could quantify how a pitcher moves and how it relates to injury risk. It was really that simple, but it took me a long time to do it. And I'm not a kinesiologist, I'm not a biomechanist by trade, but I did play, and I saw guys that play, and I was in it, and I could feel how joint forces and torques were on my body. And I felt like I was smart enough to interpret this stuff. So I said, well, I don't see anything else there like it, and so let me figure it out. And so, luckily, with Duke University and Grant Garagus and Grant Sutter, some orthopedic surgeons there at the time, they helped me kind of formalize this study that I was doing into the pitch and delivery, and eventually we got it published. So then I think I asked the question of, well, I got all this information. I put it together. I have a. A huge database of 500. It was 500, you know, active and former MLB pitchers. And I said, well, what next? And that's what led me up to the USPBL in Michigan. And, you know, I think where I sit unique is I played.
- [06:33]
A
Yeah.
- [06:34]
B
You know, I didn't get to the big leagues, but that's okay. I understand. Kind of like what you're.
- [06:38]
A
It's also part of the story, though. It's like, on some level, if you're not hurt. Right.
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B
I'm.
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A
I'm assuming Ned was there for a reason.
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B
Right, Right.
- [06:45]
A
If you're not hurt, I would make the. Make the assumption that you would have been in the big league. So on some level, this is part of the. Part of the story.
- [06:52]
B
It's part of the story. And it's also, you know, I'm not alone in this. There's a lot of guys that were talented, worked hard, you know, ate right, you know, went about their business the right way, but for some reason, it didn't work out. And we're finding that a lot of this didn't work out. Scenarios exist because, you know, increasingly in this culture, um, guys are at younger and younger ages kind of feel the desire or the demand to want to try to perform at a higher level earlier in their careers. And. But as I know that the foundation on which they're performing is just a little bit less structural or more at risk and you put more demands on it, it's going to break sooner than later.
- [07:34]
A
So the audience, obviously, these, these guys are parents of youth baseball and travel baseball players. I think we've all met and, and we can. I mean, the number of, of parents who will do anything and everything to put their kid in the right situation to have success is endless. Speak a little bit about this study that you did. What were the findings in that study?
- [08:00]
B
Well, it started obviously kind of with myself, right. I mean, I, I think I released a video and I said I would have been a part of the study if I dated it back to 2004. But a few years ago, what I did was I said, you know, let's look at the best arms that come through the draft each year. Eventually I'll do it internationally as well, but let's look at what happens to them, you know. And so I took the top three pitchers drafted and signed each year by every MLB organizations since 2013. And that data set is now 1100 pitchers. And so that's a pretty good data set to see what happens. Right. And so I started with that simple, let's look at these players. And what I did was I tracked how many minor league innings they accumulated and how many major league ins they accumulated with the team that drafted them. Right. Just try to keep it simple. Like if they were traded or Rule 5 to release, I just stopped tracking them. Yeah, right. But if you're making a big investment in a player and it's one of the top three pitcher sign that's probably, you know, has the weight of we value these guys better than others. Right. So I started there and I didn't really know what I was going to find. And it's just like I did my initial formal study. I don't know, you know, but as I pieced this together, this was 2013, and then you go into 2019 and obviously current, you start to see these patterns that exist. Right. And it's all about patterns and, you know, being able to quantify those things and what the biggest standout was is that 75% of pitchers don't make it to the big leagues. Right. Or at least current. I mean, there's still guys like actively in the Data set. Right. And only like 6% of them get to 200 MLB innings with their parent team and then total total before something happens. Yeah, right. And then only 2% actually become a everyday top three starter in the big leagues. So you're taking 1100 players so far, 2 and a half, 3% make it into a everyday starter for the big leagues or the top three of the rotation. That's not a lot. Right, Right. So you're looking at, well, why is that? And part of it is the structure of what it means to be a starting pitcher. How that's built now has changed. And, you know, it's not all like MLB organization's fault. You know, it's like guys are doing more at younger ages. They're doing more in college, you know, to try to ramp up the opportunity to get drafted. By the time that they land and get this opportunity in Major League Baseball, the pitchers that have had surgery, the college players, it's like 320 innings, 330 innings total, but that includes their college innings.
- [10:38]
A
Oh, wow.
- [10:39]
B
Okay. So the high school pitchers are right around 160. And it's like, well, that's probably about the same amount of time when they get into their professional careers. So it's like a year and a half. And, you know, it's 25% of the data set. Almost 50% of the data sets can be and had an arm injury. So my message to the young pitchers out there is don't be naive. Like, understand that this is a reality of the best pitchers in amateur draft every year, how their careers unfold, but the structure of when they get in, it's no longer do I make it there, but how can I sustain it? To obviously have a big league career, maybe earn more financial income. What are those things? And I think from the last 12, 15 years, the priorities of the training, the industry, it's not reflective back of the previous 50 years, what that entailed.
- [11:36]
A
Yeah. What's interesting is I feel like everybody's kind of been aware, all right, There's a problem. And we all can point to the problem and say it's. It's somewhere around here. Like guys are throwing too hard. I know is what a lot of people say, but it's as if nobody can ever not only just diagnose the problem, but then come up with a solution. And that's a little bit about what you're doing. So I want to talk a little bit about that right now. But before I do, part of the biggest challenge, I think for a lot of these players is there's two things, and I think I saw a tweet of yours and I completely agreed with it. And the two things that every player is so enamored with is the signing bonus and then getting to the big leagues, right? So these are the kind of the two driving factors of I just got to throw through it or whatever I can do to just throw as hard as possible to put myself in this position. You had surgery. You then came back from the surgery. And I think I saw that, like, were you throwing harder after the surgery than you were before?
- [12:33]
B
This was. I was throwing harder at 35 years old. Once I learned the aspects of the energy and understanding of how it all works and understanding of, you know, my body and how it works, right? And so that's part of it is, like, I think it's easy to gain strength, right? And we can gain strength. We can increase our ability to create power into a throw and we can convert it, right? And that's stuff that, that, that type of formula, so to speak, has kind of been tried and tested for the last 10 years. And that's why we have a lot of guys throwing harder. Problem is, is that there's really no, like, consistent language or congruence of like, well, yeah, we can do that, but is it going to be sustainable? Is it actually going to help the picture long term? Because everything is short sighted.
- [13:17]
A
Yeah, of course.
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B
Right. And a lot of these programs, it could fit the business model, the training program to validate results for that program, but not necessarily stack up to what the player needs for his journey, for his career, you know? And so what I did was, Yeah, I threw 91, 94 as a professional. Took me four years to figure this stuff out. I was a little bit of the guinea pig. At 35 years old, I could throw the ball harder than I did at any time in my professional career. And it was like. But I never threw a ball when I was doing this over, like 90ft, right? It's like everything was off a mouth. And so it's like, once you learn how to utilize that slope, which is a weapon, and you understand I'm trying to throw it in this little box, 60ft, 6 inches. I want to understand how physics work. Bone leverage works. Oof. You can be dangerous, but the building blocks of it are what we're trying to do, right? It's like, hey, do you want to go drive your car fast for a short period of time? Do you want to drive your car for a long period of time and have the ability to go fast. It's like a total different mindset, but it can be done right. And my whole point of everything I talked to is baseball has taught us, whether it's Nolan Ryan or Bob Gibson or Sandy Koufax, Roger Clemens, like, guys can sustain, sure. Verlander, Scherzer, like these guys can sustain. But it's a different mindset growing up. You know, it's like, well, I don't have to ramp it up for every pitch. I don't have somebody on the iPad looking over my shoulder telling me every time I throw a ball, what, what happened? I know what happened. I don't need someone to tell me. And that part of like a self awareness diagnostic is gone.
- [14:54]
A
Is there like a series of. Let's just. And this is going to be funny. I say this because I know my listener is saying, what are the five things that we need to be aware of? Right? But is there like a list of a few different things where it's like, look, just to start, here are the things that you at least need to understand, right? Do more research on it. And obviously I want them to be able to understand how they can find more of you and talk about DVs a little bit. But is there a list of a few things that you think these people need to at least be mindful of to start? You said like throwing off a mound is one of them.
- [15:27]
B
Yeah, you know, that's a great question. I, I'll, I'll, I'll answer your question. From this point of view, everything in our business is built around evaluation. And evaluation is nothing more than a conversation, right? So I have to understand what, you know, what you've been doing and we have to talk, right? And if I, if we don't know, then where are we going to start from? But it's funny because when I start showing them clips of Mariana Rivera not too long ago, who was that? This is like 12 year old Greg Maddox, right? It's like, oh, who was that? Cliff Lee, Mark Burley, These guys, like, they played like fairly recently. Not aware. So when you open that mind up, it's like, wait. And then you go even back further. You know, you put in bigger deliveries like a Goose Gossage or a Kofax or Warren Spawner, like, whoa, what do you mean? I can throw a ball like that? So yeah, you can. But they don't know. They never see it. And all of us are, you know, to some level persuaded by our environment, right? It's like if you go to Little League and your team and you have your teammates and your coaches and you never see higher level movement. Well, how would I know it exists if you don't, if you can't, if you don't have MLB Network, if you don't know to go look? So these kids are being, I won't say herded, but like, that's just what their environment is. They don't know. That's right. So I basically educate through understanding the game, you know, using examples which have been taught and passed down as an educational tool. Because I used to think that, oh, you know, human body at 10 years old can't do this. Well, I was definitely wrong. You know, I'll take my son, he's 6. He sat on my lap when he was 1, 2, 3. As I was doing analysis of pictures. He would start to mimic these, you know, deliveries in slow motion. And I was like, oh, I told my wife, I was like, hope he's not going to like how to throw the ball fast because it's like I'm constantly doing slow motion stuff, right. But then when he starts to throw a ball, he's mimicking the patterns that he sees. I didn't tell her to do anything. Oh, wow. You know, and so the, the body is amazing in how it can like basically immerse itself and coordinate itself and orient itself. Right. I think one thing that I would like everyone to understand is like, there's a reason why if you take like the current industry of like Japanese pitchers versus American pitchers, well, you know, baseball was brought over there, you know, 50s, 60s, and like the, the throwing, the windup style, and they've obviously taken it and branded it as their own. But that, that discipline, that conviction of repeating the delivery, the timing, the tempo, like those are big values over there. And when they come over here, they're having success. Right? We're losing some of those values at younger ages because we're just chasing the gun, right? So it's a, you can see it and you go look at the pictures of the Japanese Little League World Series. It's the same thing, right? It's like, well, why is that? That's culture.
- [18:29]
A
Yeah, right.
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B
And so for here, when we get back to why did the windup go away? Like, why do those old school pitchers have to kick their leg up and step back and rock back? Well, the mound was higher, right? It was like, 18 inches, a lot of places. Then it got lowered to 15. Now it's 10. It's like, well, that makes a difference in how I'm like standing up. On this big peak, and I got to throw a ball downhill. I can't fall over, so I have to naturally step back, wind myself up, get the energy. I don't have to rely upon all this strength because I didn't have weights back then. So literally wound themselves up, kick their foot up so they're, like, not falling forward to help keep their weight back, and they throw the ball downhill. The mound itself can actually be one of the best preventers, or whatever you want to call it, of arm injuries if you use the momentum right, because it's a natural buildup. You know, it's like a train when it builds momentum or a roller coaster as it builds its momentum down to the turn. It's like, we can use these tools, but they don't fit the business models, again, because it's like, well, that is a training tool. It's like the best free training tool you can get. Go to your little league park, throw off the mountain. But kids don't think about it like that, but it's there, and it's still there, you know, but we just have to, like, get it aware. We have to, like, work with little leagues to get more kids in their communities to do these things. They don't have to go to a private facility to get training to learn how to move properly, to help their career, you know, So I think a lot of the educational tools we could probably do better about. Well, just. Let's just narrate the history of the game a little bit.
- [20:09]
A
Yeah, well, what you're talking about, excuse the language here, but it's not sexy, right? It's. But throwing hard is right. And so naturally, the kids see somebody out there who's throwing hard, and they're like, well, yeah, I want to do that. It's like, you know, when they watched Kobe or Shaq or Michael Jordan or LeBron James dunk, they wanted to dunk.
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B
It's.
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A
It's no different. Bryson DeChambeau, golf. I want to hit the ball far so that I do see this being a challenge. What's interesting is talking about the big league, the. The major league organizations, the thing that I think everybody needs to just be mindful of is it's probably. It's more profitable. And this is going to sound funny because, you know, they're obviously investing a lot of money into these draft picks. It's easier, though. They recognize that there is a short window of time in which we can maximize somebody's abilities. And so if you're somebody listening to this and you're Just assuming that, well, why wouldn't these major league organizations care about this stuff? It's not that they don't care because I think on some level, sure, if, if, if we knew that this actually was going to work and this player would be just as good and they would last longer. Of course we want to do that because we're going to save money. But what that looks like in practice is something totally different. And a lot of these teams are more interested in like, yeah, I don't have time. Like look, we've got 70 guys. Just deal with it. Let's, let's get the most out of them and then when they're done, they're done and then we have another group coming in and they're going to take over. And so what has your experience been like I'm imagining you're having conversations or have talked to MLB organizations. How have those gone?
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B
Well, listen, you just described the exact value proposition of why my involvement in the USPBL has had success and then why my lack of involvement in mobile organizations has like been non existent. Okay. It's really that simple.
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A
Mind boggling.
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B
It's like we know that the problem exists. We would love to be able to do it and have pitchers sustain and get more value out of them longer careers, but we'd have to pay them. Yeah, eventually, but you're still going to get more out of them. It's because it's a lot to bite off because it's philosophical different and it's not different like I'm coming out of left field with something. But when you've been saturated with like an ecosystem of training and people who doing things a certain way, you just have to probably disrupt it and that's hard. And I think it's very simple, right? I do, I mean I think it's one of the simplest things we can do. But I'm not in a leadership position in mob organization to make that call. You know, someone would have to be say, you know what, let's take two or three years with and what I always propose and I can't get in the door and I'm okay with it.
- [22:51]
A
Right.
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B
But what I've always proposed is every year you've got guys coming back from an arm injury surgery, guys who are inconsistent, they're on their way out. Give me a group of 12 guys. Let me show you. Backfield field, 100, right? Let's get to work. Let me show you because we already have the trackman data, we already have the medical history. Give it a year Watch what happens. It's like a little bit of a small study, because I've done a lot of small studies over the years, but if I do it and become successful with it, then what does that mean for the rest of everybody in the organization? That's probably the question internally, but for me, it's like, okay, well, I can't do it there. I'll do it somewhere else. We've done it before at the uspbl. Right now I'm just. Just like I did with the biomechanics. I'm now gonna quantify the. What we call a traditional starter back into what we call a primary starter. Now I'm gonna show everybody how to do it, and I'm going to narrate it because it's like, we can still do it if the structure changes. And to me, you know, like, we talk about all the time, player first, and the biggest thing we can give our player time. Time. Like, hey, look, if you want to learn, you want to be able to under. Ask some questions, we'll give you the time to work it out, you know, and it's like, well, we can track that and we can see what happens. And we know where we're going. We know it can work. And it's just about, at this day, 20, 26, let's put it out there, you know, and we have more resources now than ever to put it out and narrate it. So we got to show the industry, you know. But I think overall, like, I have some things in the work I can. I kind of can't talk about, but at the end of the day, from, like, my individual meetings with MLB organizations over the year, you know, meetings go great. Nothing ever happens.
- [24:40]
A
Of course, I do believe, I mean, on some level this is gonna be, you know, you're gonna figure this out at some point with mlb. Like, that's just inevitable.
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B
Right.
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A
And I think maybe it requires the US pbl, which I do want to kind of get into right now, that continuing to flourish, and they're just being a larger sample size of guys coming through there.
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B
Sure.
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A
And all of a sudden it's like, well, we wrote this guy off, and now he's. He's coming back and he's better than ever, and he's healthy and.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So talk a little bit about the uspbl. What is it?
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B
Yep.
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A
And why you're involved and. Yeah. What's the plan for it?
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B
Sure. So USPBL four team league. This started back in 2016 with the mission of being kind of a Finishing school for players, primarily college seniors that were, you know, overlooked, not scouted. And we give them a home. And our goal is to help refine their skill sets, market them, hopefully give them an opportunity to sign with the MLB organization. So through the first 10 years, 52 players have signed MLB organization with an MLB organization, seven of which have made it up to the big leagues. So there's success there. There's definitely a niche of an environment to which can be conducive for players that otherwise they're on the last stop. And I say that all the time. I mean, we're literally like the last stop on the. On the. On the train.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So a lot of our guys that come there know that they have to make some adjustment to get better. But the structure, it goes back to. I always talk about that. It's three to four games per week all in the same stadium. So all teams play in the same stadium, UWM field. And the other days are purely reserved for skill. Okay. And as you know, as like, a player, it's like, if I show up to the ballpark and I don't have to be available that night and I'm not thinking about, like, all right, it's got to get prepared for the game, man. I can, like, open my mind up to, like, trying some things. The challenge early was, you know, especially with, like, the teams, if a guy's committing his time, we're showing progress, he's showing commitment. Even if he goes out in the game and fails, so what? Because we're not about, like, we have to win the ball game tonight. You know, most independent ball is still the same structure. The manager has to win. Yeah. The organization wants to put a winning product on the field. We don't care. We want it to be competitive.
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A
No, it's truly developmental.
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B
Truly. I mean, in every word of the sense. I mean, it's like, truly developmental. We all believe it. If you don't believe it as a staff member, you can't be on the staff. It's that simple. Right. So we're a culture that communicates the same values amongst all teams. Because what we say, we're one team. We just happen to wear four different uniforms. Right. But at the end of the day, it's learning environment. We still wanted to be highly competitive.
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A
Yeah, right.
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B
We want to put a great product on the field, but the way we communicate, the way that we, like, embrace the players is significantly different. And eventually they're like, wow, this is a. This is a different environment. So they feel at home Right. And then once we get that trust level, we can make our results. And that's the beauty of it. And I think that, like, that environment has been created. I think they did a great job with the concept. Initially, I was there in 2016 to build that throwing program. Coming off from the study I did, I did it for position players and pitchers. We had a lot of success. But I think the other thing, too, is it goes back to training. When I showed up there, I never talked about performance, pitch metrics, velocity, nothing. All I did was put in a structure of a throwing program, built a boundary, soreness, recovery, repeatability. And what we saw was when players who were at risk, Right. And Dave, let's just do a hypothetical. They would throw 60 pitches in the game. We would see as soon as the game's over, one day after, two days after, three days after, we would track what happens at the shoulder joint every day. And then we quantified that back to the delivery. Well, eventually, when we started to make adjustments in the delivery, we would still track the shoulder. And then we started to see these changes, right? Better range of motion, better recovery. Guess what? The guy feels better. I feel more confident. All of a sudden, the results change. But then as a byproduct of it all, velocity changes, spin changes, movement changes. But, you know, like you said, that approach is not sexy. I can't really, like, put that on a billboard, because I have to have a little bit of time to prove it out, to do it. But then the players, they feel it, they do it, and then it becomes like a herd man, and it goes. But that's kind of how it works, right? And so I got involved back in the league last July because we always wanted to help get players signed. And the ownership group said, you know, Justin, would you willing to take a look at the league and the players and help us sign some more players? And I just can't snap my fingers, right? So, yeah, it's a little bit different. It's different. And the industry has changed since I left in 2021. But I said, okay. And I went back in and I looked at it and evaluated it. And because it means a lot to me, I was there from the beginning. Ownership group is great. Fans are great, host families, chaplains, everybody. And it's like a great family. So I said, well, let me do my part to help again. And they've just gotten back to the basics. It goes back to structure, it goes back to time, and let's get back to work, you know, and so that's what it is. So right now we're acquiring players, we're setting the expectation of. Our motto is who's next? Right. Who's going to be the next player to step up, get signed, take the torch, give like this pathway for the next player. And that's kind of how we go about it. I love this.
- [30:21]
A
Um, the thing that's coming to mind as I'm hearing you talk about the USPBL and I'm thinking about it in the standpoint of like the Major League Baseball as well, is incentives.
- [30:31]
B
Right.
- [30:31]
A
What, what is, or what are Major League Baseball's incentives when they develop players? How do I maximize what this is?
- [30:41]
B
Right.
- [30:41]
A
This faceless human being who just happens to wear our uniform. How do I maximize his abilities as quickly as possible and on some level. Sure, as long as possible, but as quickly as possible.
- [30:55]
B
Yeah. Right.
- [30:56]
A
And let me completely, for lack of a better term, drain the value out of that while he's with us.
- [31:04]
B
Yeah.
- [31:05]
A
When I drain the value, then I'll move on to the next guy. And so if you think about it, it's like you're getting this value always because the minute this guy drops off, you're just going to replace them with somebody else and you're going to continue getting better and better and better. So the incentive for Major League Baseball is really, it's not aligned with what's best for the players.
- [31:25]
B
That's right.
- [31:25]
A
Right. The incentive for the uspbl, from what I'm hearing, actually is. And so the sexiness that is Major League Baseball in the long run. I do feel like there is something here with this, this, you know, being, being aligned. I mean, it's the name of my company, but like, being aligned with what is best for the players. I think it's a matter of continuing to build the. Just the, the examples, the use cases. Look at all of these guys and, you know, the fact that you guys have even had seven guys get to the big leagues in that short amount of time is pretty impressive because I know how it is when you get guys who maybe they got drafted and they go to independent ball. Like, that is not a. An exciting thing to do for any
- [32:09]
B
one of these guys. Right.
- [32:10]
A
And so you're getting guys who aren't even drafted. It sounds like they're just these college seniors who go into this league and are probably willing to do whatever it takes when you guys work with these individual players. That developmental plan I know you talked a little bit about earlier, like, it's, it's after a conversation, but are you, are you literally communicating and having a conversation with every individual player and then crafting this plan? Or is it. How, how does that work?
- [32:36]
B
That's, that's, it's all part of the onboarding. Right. So like we have essentially, as a business, when you want to communicate with a player, you have to communicate what the expectations of our league are, how it works, how it flows, how you would eventually get to the next step. Right. And if we don't communicate those things up front, then when a player arrives, well, it could be just like any other independent ball league. Right? So once he arrives, that's where then we, we do what I call like the garage sale, which is basically like, let's get everything out. Let's. Let's understand what you've been doing. And then for us, let's put what, what we need back in the garage is going to help you get to the next level. Let's get rid of that stuff. It's cluttering you up again. We can't. No one who's ever had success in our league, like, that part has to occur. It has to occur, you know, that conversation up front. We have to invest our time to make sure it happens before they put the uniform on to start playing. And once it does, it just kind of snowballs. Right. But we have to be able to do that from like our player standpoint or a modeling standpoint to have any shot of success, because we can't. We can't pay what other places are. No, of course we can't. And so what we say is this is not some like, let's get $3,000 and you're going to get, you know, you know, four bats a game and your innings and just hopefully that your stats stand out. This is not what it is. It's an opportunity to, to understand and look in the mirror and look at yourself and say, what, what's led me to this point and what do I really need to do? And we have to build trust. But it's just like I said yesterday in our, in our staff meeting, if we don't execute and we don't follow through for the player and show that, yeah, you actually are getting signed. This is a pathway, you know, we're just like anybody. Well, it's a great place to play, but yeah, they really can't get guys signed. We have to follow through.
- [34:29]
A
Yeah.
- [34:29]
B
You know, so now going in 2026 season, we have to do it, you know, and that's it. It's like any business, we have to, like, we have to succeed in what our mission is and what we used to do, and we got to get back to it.
- [34:39]
A
So are you actually responsible for getting guys signed to.
- [34:42]
B
Yes.
- [34:42]
A
So you're like an agent on some level.
- [34:44]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, basically my job is to. I say I need to tell your story. Right. Let me know what's. What's happening with you. Yeah. And how can I help you? The guy that was D2 player that had a 7 ERA, and he comes in, he has a 14 ERA, and all of a sudden he's like, doing great. Why? Let me tell the why. You don't have to, but let me tell you. And the other part of it is, too, is, like, when I speak to organizations or scouts, I don't just put somebody on a. On a list that they're ready to be signed because their track man data says so.
- [35:17]
A
Yeah.
- [35:17]
B
Or they hit in 350. That's not how it works. It's like, what kind of guy is he? He respectful? What kind of teammate is he? Is he had the aptitude to actually play in a ball tomorrow night? Could he be a big leaguer? These are the things we got to talk about, you know, and so that is a respect back to the scout and the organization. Like, we may have one or two guys a year that go on there. Sometimes we might have five, but it's not never like 10, 15, 20. Right. You know, then I'm just like, yeah,
- [35:46]
A
you're not just emailing a long list and saying, here's all the guys that are ready to play.
- [35:50]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [35:50]
A
Makes sense.
- [35:53]
B
Wow.
- [35:54]
A
So let's talk a little bit about DVs.
- [35:57]
B
Sure.
- [35:58]
A
What is it and what's, like, the mission of it.
- [36:02]
B
Yeah. So DVS started at the conclusion of that study. I coined it DVS because it stands for Delivery Value System. That was my, you know, acronym or terminology for how to put a name on this biomechanics model. And I really didn't know as a company standpoint what we're going to do with it, other than, like, let's form an llc. We have this thing that we think could really help baseball, and let's start it. And so this was 2015. And so when I went up to Michigan in 2016, I started to say, well, look, what we do is we assign a score to a delivery, goes 0 to 24. And what we're trying to do is quantify the delivery very simplistically. Right. I think biomechanics and any type of technology, like, if you want to get into how sophisticated it is and how many data points and where we measure from the reliability. That's cool, you know. But again, our model is not built off a lab. I wanted to know what Tom Glavin did. I wanted to know what these pitchers who couldn't get hooked up to a golf ball and at the time and figure out what was going on. I had to be able to quantify it differently. So that's where I started with the score. And the whole mission of it was let's provide this information to extend a pitcher's career. And if you do that, then you also simultaneously given value back to whether it's a high school team, the college team or the organization. It's kind of a win win. You know, you're getting the value out of this player for a longer period of time and you're just eliminating the potential roadblock. But as it's evolved, it's become just as much as an educational tool as it is a diagnostic tool, you know. But for us DVS is we've gotten to the point now where a lot of our focus has become on the youth market. Right? Because it's like, well, if they're chasing performance, let's at least have that first point of entry, which is we like to say what's your score? And what we've done now is we've been able to offer what it for us is like a two camera kit, right. It's two GoPros, tripods, a little remote high school coach, little league organization can use these things for very low investment to start having these conversations. Right. There's no, there's no reason why any 12, 13, 14 year old pitcher should be paying $500 for some biomechanical analysis. Just ludicrous, right? Right. But if we can have this like coherence of information that's passed down, right. Our job is to provide the information. Our job is to provide the solution. Right. So the solution piece is your score of 12. Here's the report. Right. And I should back up on them when I with the cameras like that gives us the ability to have quality video.
- [38:58]
A
Quality, right.
- [38:59]
B
From two angles to. Then that person can take that video, put it in our software and produce a result in three minutes of the score.
- [39:08]
A
Okay?
- [39:09]
B
They have the score, they have the results. Let's have the conversation. It goes back to. I was telling you before, if we don't have that conversation about the score the first time, that score means nothing for you, right? Why? Why does my score matter? Well, let's talk about how the score recreated, how has it built off now? 4,000 pitchers in the injury risk database. How does it compare to our youth scores? And one thing I'll tell you is crazy for, for like, you know, people who are really trying to understand this. Movements okay. Within the game don't necessarily deviate that much as you think. Everybody looks a little bit different, a little speed, a little bit longer. But when we start to quantify the Delivery, the average DVS score of an MLB pitcher is around 14. Now the higher the score, the better. 24.
- [39:54]
A
I was going to ask that.
- [39:55]
B
Yeah. So higher score, less risk, throw to throw on the joint. And obviously the lower the score, the more arm injury risk.
- [40:04]
A
Who's like the highest score?
- [40:05]
B
If you watch, the highest score we've ever given was to Warren Spawn.
- [40:11]
A
So was that 24?
- [40:12]
B
22.
- [40:13]
A
22.
- [40:13]
B
Never given 24.
- [40:14]
A
Okay. I didn't know if 24 was like this particular pitcher was the best. Got it.
- [40:19]
B
22. 22.
- [40:20]
A
22. That's impressive.
- [40:21]
B
22. So you know, he set the bar and then, I don't know. Well, listen, we've had, we've had a 12 year old kid come in and be at 20. They don't know why they're at 20, but it's possible.
- [40:33]
A
This is brilliant. Okay, so if you're a family out there and you're like, look, I'm terrified that my son is potentially doing the wrong things. We have no direction. They're just telling us to do this and they, they're saying it's for this reason. It doesn't make sense to me. I want more information. How do they reach out to you?
- [40:51]
B
Easiest way, just go to the website dbs baseball.com as soon as you go to the page, there's like a player button and then there's a facilities organization button. So if you want to administer and deliver scores to your players, there's a, there's like a little pathway to do it. If you're a player. Just want to like learn how to get my score and how to develop, there's a pathway to do it.
- [41:10]
A
Got it. And so they sign up, they purchase these cameras, the cameras come to them, they have directions on how to do it all.
- [41:19]
B
Yeah, this is great. Complete onboarding. I mean, and it's like we're, we're a company that's, you know, I could probably, you know, go and have like the sexy stuff on the billboards and advertise it and market that way, but I just try to stick what's right by the player and Increasingly, you know, it was important. Now we don't necessarily have major league baseball or an MV organization on there. Right. We were able to kind of get all the different levels of baseball in the business so far. So little leagues, travel organizations, high schools, facilities, colleges, and we obviously the uspbl. Right? Yeah. But what we know is instead of everybody trying to come to DVs to get their score, it's like no go in your community, like to be able to go into your little league that offers this is huge. Right? And it's like I was up in Newton, Massachusetts in November and they have the ability to do this, right? And it's like, well, yeah, why not?
- [42:15]
A
Is it at a facility in Newton that has the ability to do it or.
- [42:18]
B
Yeah, they can do it anywhere they want on their little league fields. So since they have the kit, they can film at practices, indoors, anytime they want. Right. And it's just like it takes five minutes to set up and you start to administer the information. And that's the goal. It's like we want a community of people who want to do right by the pictures. It's still them doing it, right. It's still their relationships. It's. We're not fostering those relationships. We're just providing the technology to have a conversation earlier than later now, you know, to just say, well, here's this information. This is what you should know about as you go on your journey. And this is a building block, you know, this is like a, you know, the pyramid. It always starts at the base. Right. So we see this as like a educational tool. You always go from first grade to second grade to third grade. You got to build upon your education. So we see this as like kind of a necessary first step if you're going to start advertising some high performance pitching program.
- [43:19]
A
I can tell that you're in this for the right reasons.
- [43:24]
B
Right?
- [43:24]
A
I can, I just, I sense it from you based on what you're telling me, based on the investment. Nobody gets into this at this level. If they really didn't want to make a difference. No one is spending time in a league for college seniors.
- [43:37]
B
Right.
- [43:38]
A
If they didn't really care about this. Have you found anybody in college, various college programs that are like minded and, and believe in a lot of the same stuff and are really trying to do it differently?
- [43:51]
B
I mean, not offhand. I think from my conversations that I think everyone faces some sort of fork in the road. Right. Like if you're in college increasingly, the time to develop players and get like the buy in to then by the time that there's juniors or, like, dudes. Right. And build that legitimacy, that does take time. But increasingly now with, like, a portal, like, I'm forced to recruit, navigate the portal, give me. Get the guy that got the best shot to win, because my job depends on it. And with guys going from, you know, mid majors to power fives, and then once I get to the power fives, I got to keep it. That business model of thinking doesn't perpetuate that I got to keep investing what's right by the player. It's. It's a. It's a tough cycle. So a guy who's, like, has all the good intentions eventually probably has to choose because, well, I've been grounded as a volunteer. I got a fiance. I got to start making some money. Like, I got to choose. And so for me, it's like, well, I choose this because I've seen it, I believe in it. That's, you know, much to my wife's chagrin. Sometimes it's like, you know, I'm passionate about it. I know it works. If it didn't work, I'd have been going a long time ago. Yeah.
- [45:08]
A
When I do again and I bring it back, you know, this is part of your story.
- [45:11]
B
If.
- [45:12]
A
If you're sitting here today trying to tell me this, and you never got injured, never had surgery, was a Cy Young winner, I'd be like. And you just know differently because you've studied it. It doesn't. It doesn't feel the same. Right. Like, this is. No. Your career, on some level, was derailed because of this exact thing.
- [45:33]
B
Yeah.
- [45:33]
A
And so.
- [45:34]
B
Well, I think that's why part two, like, it goes back to, like, why I did the case study. I relate to those guys. You know, I was in their shoes. I still see a ton of guys get hurt, career not fulfilled. You know that they're dealing with a lot of stuff underneath the hood.
- [45:49]
A
Right.
- [45:50]
B
Like, whether you're five year removed from your career or not, there's a lot of stuff there. A lot of guys struggle. You know, I. I don't struggle with any aspect of my playing career anymore because this. The information I put together, it made sense. Okay. It's logical for me because I could say that I did what I knew in my power at the time to put my best effort. My career just. I was. I was going to run up against that wall.
- [46:14]
A
Yeah.
- [46:15]
B
We all get hurt. Mm. But if I had the ability to, like, in the. In the. In the goalpost should never be, you know, 10 year hall of Fame, career. It's like the goalpost is, hey, look, you. You had the ability to get to the league. If you had two years in the league, awesome. If you had one year, if you had 10 years, awesome. But that injury, that's a really a manifestation now of kind of the culture. Yeah, well, at 25, you kind of now know, but at 19, 20, when you're getting close to that draft, you don't want to know. It's like, I think that's hard, too. Like, I think back when I was 21, 22, it's like, would. Hey, you know, Duff, like, you're. Oh, by the way, I was a DVS score of seven.
- [46:58]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [46:59]
B
So I get back and look at my VCU footage before surgery or before
- [47:03]
A
surgery, what would you get to after?
- [47:05]
B
Oh, I'm like, well, I could go anywhere from, like, a 17 to 20.
- [47:08]
A
Okay.
- [47:08]
B
Yeah. So. And the whole thing of it is, I think where I differ is, you know, a lot of guys can talk about, like, force and, you know, all these different metrics, and I'm like, well, I know how that feels on the body. Sure. I can do it. Right. And I can communicate it, and I can do it differently. If you want me to throw, you know, submarine, I'll do it. You want me throw over the top, I can contort my body to do it and show it, and all the metrics change, you know, and it's like, the technology. Now you want to talk to me about arm speed and work on my elbow, well, that's cool. But it doesn't come from just the arm accelerating. It comes back from the ground first and how that eventually manifests. And it's like, well, I can demo it so many different ways, and I feel it different ways, but I have the ability to do it because I played and, you know, athletic guy, like, I can. I can do those things, and then I can communicate it back to a player. Right. I think that part is hard for a lot of, like, newer coaches because they've been so caught up in the data. Oh, yeah. It's like, if you can't play catch at a high level. Oh, you don't know what a high level playing catch is. Let me show you. Yep. And, you know, I'm still young enough where I can do that, and I want to keep doing it, so I got to kind of get my arm back and my body going again so I can do those things. Because if I don't go out on the field and play catch with guys, I don't care that, like, I'm the head of the uspl, like I make decisions, I'm going to be out there, you know, in my turfs and throwing
- [48:35]
A
thought experiment for us real fast. You have a player and on the right you have a pitching coach who's saying, I can make you throw a hundred. Look at this guy who I just did it to. And a guy on the left saying, I could keep you healthy. Look at the guy that I just did it to. That player is probably saying, I'm going to go to the guy that's going to help me throw 100, right? And that's part of the problem.
- [48:55]
B
It's part of the problem. And they don't have to be mutually exclusive. True. And I think, you know, it goes back to. You were saying something earlier about the industry, right? And I've been asked multiple times, like, what's the fastest way to fix this thing, right? It's like, how do we fix this injury thing? And I said, well, I, I hope and pray that like Paul Skeens can stay healthy for like 10 years. It's great for baseball, right? But what I do know is if we had 1, 2, 3, 4 guys, that delivery wise, I'll use obviously the DVS scale, right? 16 to 20. Because I could be a Kershaw, I could be a Mariano Rivera, I could be a Cliff Lee, I could be a Justin Verlander. All guys had DVS scores over 16. Go look at their careers, right? They all look a little different too. But a guy that embraces some of these qualities and just starts to do it, he's throwing 95, right. He's putting up results year after year. Those are guys that are going to move the needle, but they have to talk about it. It can't be the same regurgitation of what's going on, right? So if a guy gets up on the mound, he looks different. Maybe he even looks old school with a big wind up and he's just dealing and then he's healthy for two or three years, he'll change the game, right?
- [50:10]
A
I agree.
- [50:10]
B
He'll be like, nope. Well, how does he do it? This is how I do it. Like, I don't, I don't pick up a weight of ball. I don't. Long talk. Yep. Like, I used the mount.
- [50:18]
A
You need a guy who shows everybody this is how it can be done. And, and yeah, that guy, to the younger generation, everybody says, well, if he did it, so can I.
- [50:26]
B
That is exactly right.
- [50:28]
A
Well, buddy, this is great. I feel like we have more of these coming. There's this. This conversation could go on for three hours. But I appreciate it. Again, tell everybody how they could find you.
- [50:38]
B
Yeah, just easiest way to find me. DVS baseball.com right. Everything that from our player development side from diagnostic with we call DVS X ray which is the software application the markless biomechanics to see the DVS scores is all there. But DVS baseball.com and whether you're little league, high school travel organization, you want to get involved. That's it.
- [51:00]
A
And you talked about the study. You posted it on Twitter. What's your handle for everybody at justin-orgas?
- [51:07]
B
Perfect.
- [51:08]
A
All right, buddy. I appreciate you.
- [51:09]
B
Thanks so much. Matt.
- [51:10]
A
Yeah.
- [51:10]
B
Sam.