You Asked Us to Bring It Back.
So This December, We’re Opening the Ranch to High School Coaches for Two Days — Hands-On, In-House, and About One Thing: Helping You Develop Better Pitchers.
Friday, December 4 & Saturday, December 5 Texas Baseball Ranch® | Montgomery, Texas
For fifteen straight years we held coaches events here at the Ranch. Then we stopped.
For a long while I wasn’t sure we’d do another one. But coaches kept asking. Are you guys ever bringing that event back?
Well, this December, we are. Though I want to be honest with you up front about what we’re bringing back, because it isn’t the old clinic.
First, let me say something about the job you’re actually doing
I’ve spent a lot of years around high school coaches, and I’ve noticed that most of the marketing aimed at you seems to imagine a man who has nothing to do but study pitching.
That usually isn’t who’s reading this.
You’re probably the head coach. You may also be the one who drags the tarp, fights for the budget, answers to the AD, handles the parent emails, drives the bus, and lines the field. Somewhere in there you’re also expected to develop a pitching staff and there’s a fair chance nobody ever actually taught you how. You played, or you coached position guys, and pitching became yours because it had to belong to somebody.
If that’s you, I want you to know two things. First, you’re the majority. Second, that’s exactly who these two days are built for.
I’m not going to stand up there and talk over your head to impress the three guys in the room who already know all of it. That isn’t teaching. That’s performing.
The problem was never a shortage of information
You already have access to more pitching content than any human being could consume. Drills. Throwing programs. Mechanical opinions. Velocity theories. Arm-care routines. Pitch design videos. Gadgets. Technology. A social media feed full of confident people disagreeing with each other. The problem isn’t finding more information.
The problem is deciding what’s actually useful for the pitcher standing in front of you… the specific kid, with his specific body, on your specific roster, in February.
That’s what these two days are about.
We’re going to show you the practical, field-tested difference makers we use here at the Ranch. But more importantly, we’re going to help you understand where they fit, why they matter, and how to apply them inside your program , which is the part almost nobody bothers with, and the part that determines whether anything you learn survives the drive home.
What you’ll leave with
Not a binder you’ll rarely open again. Real tools, and hands-on experience with them.
A practical arm-health game plan. The difference makers we use to help pitchers prepare, move well, recover, and build durability and why workload is only one piece of the arm-health puzzle rather than the whole thing. That one idea alone changes how you run a February practice.
Better ways to develop command. Practical work through catch play, long toss, variable distance, horizontal and vertical command training, and adjustment-based drills. The goal is pitchers who throw more strikes on purpose…not command you ‘hope’ shows up on game day.
A clearer approach to velocity. What we believe genuinely moves the needle, what quietly wastes your time, and how to think about building velocity and then keeping it across a long season.
A better way to develop secondary pitches. Rather than handing every arm the same grip chart, how we think about shape, spin, feel, movement pattern, posture orientation, axis, tempo, and ball speed…so a pitcher builds a weapon that fits who he actually is.
A recovery system you can use. Routines and tools meant to keep your best arm the same competitor in May that he was in February.
And a better filter for the noise. This may matter most of all. I want you to leave better equipped to look at any new drill, gadget, program, or hot take and ask three questions. Does this make sense for my pitcher? Is this where my attention belongs right now? And what problem am I actually trying to solve?
DAY ONE — Building the Weapon
Each session opens with me laying the foundation. Then you rotate through every hands-on breakout station with our staff… you don’t choose between them, you see all of them.
Session I — Building & Maintaining Arm Health and Durability
Arm health is built. It is not hoped for.
Foundation session, then rotations through:
- Full-body functional wake-up and warm-up
- Arm care, arm prep, connection tools and their usage
- Mobility, flexibility, and corrective routines
- The SAP protocol (Protocol on dealing with pitchers with current arm issues)
Closing roundtable and Q&A, so you can connect what you just saw to the realities of your own staff.
Session II — Developing Command
Command is built on purpose. It is not something you cross your fingers about.
Foundation session, then rotations through:
- Building command inside catch play and drill work
- Command long toss
- V/Flex, the Wheel Drill, and variable-distance work
- Testing horizontal and vertical command capability
- Khaos training — practicing adjustments
Roundtable and Q&A to close.
Session III — Adding & Maintaining Velocity
Because “throw harder” is not a development plan.
Foundation session, then rotations through:
- Common mistakes made in the weight room-tools and their usage
- Utilizing long toss
- Utilizing overweighted and underweighted implements
- Agility, coordination, and motor control
- Minimizing micro trauma while maximizing arm action, loading and unloading
The goal here isn’t chasing radar gun numbers. It’s understanding the pieces that influence velocity well enough to make smarter decisions for an individual pitcher.
DAY TWO — Winning the War
Session IV — Developing Swing-and-Miss Secondary Stuff
Weapons, not a collection of grips.
Foundation session, then rotations through:
- Using long toss and catch play to develop feel for spin and shape
- Tools and low-intensity drills that enhance feel & awareness
- Thinking in shapes, grips, axis of rotation, tempo, and ball speed
Session V — Enhancing Recovery & Consistency
Your best arm has to be able to compete again. And again.
Foundation session, then rotations through:
- Utilizing the football (A powerful and often underutilized tool)
- Recovery routines and systems
- Muscle stimulation and other modalities
Session VI — Building Strategic & Tactical Advantage
Development matters. So does knowing how to use what you’ve built.
Foundation session, then rotations through:
- Utilizing Rapsodo and TrackMan effectively
- Building and mastering sequences
Because developing better pitches is only half the job. Helping a pitcher understand how to use them against a hitter is where development finally turns into performance.
Why December
Because obviously by mid-January, your players are standing in front of you.
Once they report, everything starts moving fast…. practices, bullpens, roles, workloads, arm health, schedules, games, and the hundred small decisions a day that come with running a staff. There’s no room left to think.
December gives you the one thing January will not.
Time. Time to step back. Time to think through how you actually want to develop your pitchers this year. Time to look honestly at what you’re currently doing. And time to take what you learn here, adapt it to your program and your people, and put it in place before the season is on top of you.
I’ve said this for years and I believe it more each season: December is often when your season is really established. That’s precisely why we chose these dates.
Why here
Because these ideas weren’t developed on a whiteboard. They were developed, tested, argued over, and refined through years of work with real pitchers who had real problems.
Over the years that work has included 700+ arms over 90 mph, 149+ draft picks, and four Cy Young Award winners.
I’m not putting those numbers in front of you because I expect you to be impressed by a list. Honestly, a list of accomplishments is one of the least useful things one coach can hand another. I’m sharing them because working with that many arms, at that many levels, with that many different needs, forced us to keep questioning what we do and it’s the questioning, not the résumé, that produced what you’ll see over these two days.
This is hands-on, and it’s in-house
You will not spend two days sitting in a chair watching a parade of lectures.
Every major session starts with the foundational presentation, and then you’re up and rotating through practical stations with our staff. You’ll see the tools. You’ll see the drills. You’ll see how we actually teach them, and you’ll have time to ask why.
That’s also why we’re deliberately keeping this in-house rather than importing six speakers. You’re not coming to hear six unrelated presentations from six people who’ve never spoken to one another. You’re coming inside the Ranch to see how the pieces fit together.. which is the only way any of it makes sense.
One honest word before you decide
If you’re looking for the single drill that fixes everything, I’d rather you save your money. It doesn’t exist, and anyone selling it to you knows better.
And if you’re coming hoping we’ll confirm what you already do, you may leave uncomfortable. We’re going to show you what we’ve found, and some of it will disagree with things you’ve been told by people you respect.
If you’d like two days with people who will talk to you straight and hand you things you can use at practice on Monday then I’d truly enjoy having you here.
