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2,631 MLB PLAYERS | 16,402 MLB DRAFT SELECTIONS
General  | General | 4/22/2021

Wolforth Thrower Mentorship: Article 4

Photo: Johnny Tergo/Truth Baseball
Ron Wolforth probably knows more about the throwing arm and arm care than anyone we know. Many of you may have heard about the famous Texas Baseball Ranch that Ron has been running for many years. We have built a great relationship with Ron and his wife Jill over the years.

It all started a few years back when Ron sent his son Garrett to a Perfect Game event. His son was a catcher/infielder and set some all-time PG records for pop times (1.75) and velocity (89 mph) at the time. He also threw mid-90s across the infield. He is now playing professionally. Being an average-sized kid, this really drew our interest. Once we realized who his father was, it became clear.



Since then we have followed the Texas Baseball Ranch closely. Ron is a very humble man, which is a reason so many speak highly of him. We have never run across a single person that shows any disrespect for him or the Ranch. So we decided to ask him to help our millions of followers.

Over the years he has helped thousands of pitchers, including many that became Major League All-Stars. Yes, he teaches velocity gains, better control and command, and everything a pitchers needs to be successful. However, unlike many others, he is an absolute stickler when it comes to doing it safely. His interest doesn't just involve velocity gains and other improvements, all of which are very important. He wants his students to understand arm care and how to throw and stay healthy. He does this without a cookie cutter program. He understands that all players are different individuals.

Perfect Game's interest in prospects, arm care and keeping young kids healthy is the major reason we have decided to work with Ron Wolforth.

Below is the fourth of an ongoing column he will be doing on our Perfect Game website. This information will be gold for any player interested in improving their throwing ability and staying healthy. Make sure you read every column he contributes and feel free to comment on them.

If you want to attend one of his camps and improve your throwing ability, here is the link to the website:
https://www.texasbaseballranch.com/


Jerry Ford
President
Perfect Game

. . .

Article 1: Where the Sidewalk Terminates
Article 2: The Exact Location of Your Arm Pain is Incredibly Valuable Information
Article 3: No Pain, No Problem...Right? Not Quite So Fast.


In my opinion, one reason many of us dislike being treated like a number is that we intuitively understand that we cannot ever separate ourselves from the herd by behaving in lockstep with the herd.

Achievement, by definition, is, "the process of separating ourselves from the mass collection of the average and the mediocre.” That is very difficult to do when doing exactly what every one of our peers is doing.

We all know instinctively that one size will not only not fit everyone, it will not fit even one forever.

We are often drawn to “the recipe” as if our career was the equivalent of making a great Caesar salad. Yet, we innately understand that our career is decidedly much more complex than a Caesar salad.

We occasionally seek “the magic bullet” as if our training success or failure is some sort of magic trick. Yet deep down inside, we realize that long-term success is not about finding a “trick” or a “hack”, but instead, it is attained only by following a specific process. That sustained success requires work ethic, commitment, and dedication.

We are too frequently lured to “choreography” and “cookie cutting” as if our lives can be explained by a mathematical equation. Yet, we hate when we are viewed or treated like “a number” or a “replaceable cog” in a machine. Each and every one of us are unique to the universe, with our own special gifts and shortcomings. We desperately want to be treated as such.

However, these One-Size-Fits-All programs are seemingly everywhere, aren’t they? And in almost every facet of our lives! They are like stars in the sky.

  • Diets to amazing weight loss in 14 days!
  • Financial tips to unimaginable wealth!
  • Relationship maxims which will make your marriage the envy of the neighborhood!
  • The latest putter that is guaranteed to shave three stokes off your round!
  • Etc...Etc.

Simply find a niche and you will find a mystical methodology or tool which will magically solve your problems in that area.

In the quiet of our own hearts and minds, we all know that these efforts at “oversimplification”, “cloning”, or “cookie cutting” run the gamut from woefully insufficient and a waste of time, money, and effort, to patently false and fraudulent.

I have found the following analogy to really resonate with young parents and their athletes when it comes to the danger of One-Size-Fits-All programing.

What Sir Alexander Fleming's Discovery Can Teach Us About Hyper-Personalization...



One of the most common questions I have been asked by medical professionals over the last 50 years of my life is:

“Mr. Wolforth, are you allergic to any medicines? Are you allergic to penicillin?”

I’m confident that all of you reading this have been asked this question multiple times yourself, or at the very least, had a parent or a guardian answer it for you.

So why the question?

Approximately 10% of all U.S. patients report having an allergic reaction to a penicillin class antibiotic in their past. Furthermore, about .8% (slightly less than 1%) report having a serious hypersensitivity, sometimes resulting in nausea, vomiting, pruritus, urticaria, wheezing, laryngeal oedema, and ultimately, possible cardiovascular collapse.

  • So for 90% of people, penicillin class antibiotics are a perfectly appropriate tool for physicians and health professionals to use on their patients should they have an infection
  • For 9% of people, it is probable that another class of antibiotic would be a more appropriate choice
  • For <1% of the population, getting this choice wrong could be deadly


Thus, the frequent question.

As with many things in life, often we need to ask a better/deeper question.

What if we stop our investigation at, "Is penicillin a good thing, yes or no?"

The obvious answer is...Yes! Penicillin has saved millions of people's lives and saved multiple millions from further pain and discomfort.

But even with something as amazingly effective as penicillin, not everyone will benefit from it. For a small percentage of people, penicillin could prove fatal.

One size does not fit all...One size will NEVER fit all!

So, What is the Alternative?

In my 25+ years of experience in developing pitchers and elite throwing athletes, the answer to that question has become abundantly clear to me. The best, most effective, and most accelerated training process is, and always will be, Hyper-Personalization.





What exactly is Hyper-Personalization?

I first heard the term used by Dr. Marcus Elliot, Founder of P3 Applied Sports Science, during a private conversation he and I had about skill development around 2014.

I thought it was brilliant and described our assessment goals exceptionally well, and we've been using the term ever since.

‘Hyper-Personalization’ is the process of utilizing very specific assessment modalities to generate a more precise and current understanding of the skills, abilities, constraints, and limitations of the individual athlete.

By viewing the athlete through a multiple set of prisms, an intentionally wide and far more thorough understanding of the athlete’s current status can be created from that information.

This process allows the athlete's trainer to customize the training of the athlete based upon that current status, and thereby maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of his training.

Next, let me attempt a bit of humor and a subsequent analogy to demonstrate the efficacy and common sense of the process of Hyper-Personalization.

The story goes that when a player brought in a mid-season academic progress report to Coach Shelby Metcalf, the basketball coach at Texas A&M University, that had four F's and one D on it, Coach Metcalf looked it over for the longest time, took a deep breath, and replied:

"Son, looks to me like you're spending too much time on one subject."

I vividly remember reading that quote from a newspaper article while I was traveling on a plane when I was coaching at the University of Nebraska in 1987. I remember that I laughed so hard that my stomach ached for days afterward.

That humorous story (at least it is in my estimation) brings me to the analogy of why hyper-personalization is so effective.

Imagine if your 17-year-old son had the following grades on a mid-semester academic progress report:

Math: 94
Chemistry: 97
English: 79
History: 95
Biology: 91

Would you:

A. Get tutors in every subject, just to make sure.

B. Get a tutor in chemistry because you heard that this tutor is amazing.

C. Get a tutor in math because everyone who got accepted into Rice University from your school had this tutor.

D. Get a tutor in English because this subject currently is his greatest need and with specific help, he may be able to bring his English grade up to be on par with the rest of his grades.

Most people, I believe, would choose D.

We only have so much time available to us in a 24-hour period.

In our opinion, to maximize our return on training time (ROTT), we must focus on the elements that we believe have the greatest impact upon our overall performance.

Going from a 97 to a 99 in chemistry will almost certainly not be nearly as impactful as would significantly improving our English grade.

This is what the Hyper-Personalization process looks like to us at the Texas Baseball Ranch®:



1. Evaluate the athlete on multiple fronts. (Assess)

2. Determine where the athlete is currently and identify the key constraints and limitations he is currently facing. (Categorize)

3. Individualize their personal plan. (Customize)

4. Determine which elements are the most pressing. (Prioritize)

In our 15 years of training elite throwing athletes, we have found the most common 15 needs/constraints/limitations of throwing athletes ages 14-22 are these:

  • Arm Health and Durability
  • Consistency and ability to recover/bounce back
  • Velocity
  • Command
  • Inability to create swing-and-miss stuff
  • Mindset/Confidence/Mental-Emotional
  • Sleep/Nutrition/Hydration
  • Strength/Stability
  • Mobility/Flexibility
  • Physical Structure and Alignment
  • Mechanical Efficiency
  • Poor/Inefficient Ramp Up
  • Workload/Volume
  • Strategy/Pitch Design
  • Skill Specific Conditioning/Stamina

In my opinion, there couldn't possibly be a One-Size-Fits-All plan that will adequately address these 15 common constraints.

This is exactly why Hyper-Personalization is, and will ALWAYS remain, in my opinion, the best process in creating and nurturing high-level performers.

I look forward to continuing our discussion.

Ron Wolforth
CEO - The Texas Baseball Ranch®

P.S. My next topic will be "The Case Against Weighted Balls?"

Coach Wolforth has written six books on pitching including the Amazon Best Seller, Pitching with Confidence.  Since 2003, 122 of the players Wolforth has trained have been drafted and 458 have broken the 90mph barrier.  He has consulted with 13 MLB teams, dozens of NCAA programs and has been referred to as “America’s Go-to-Guy on Pitching” and “The Pitching Coaches Pitching Coach”.  Coach Wolforth lives in Montgomery, Texas with his wife, Jill.  They are intimately familiar with youth select, travel baseball and PG events as their son Garrett (now a catcher in the Cincinnati Reds organization) went through the process.  Garrett still holds the PG Underclass All-American Games record for catcher velocity at 89mph which he set in 2014 at the age of 16.

If you would like a free copy of Pitching with Confidence, go to freepitchingbook.com.

General | General | 11/3/2026

Class of 2027 Rankings Update

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High School | Rankings | 11/4/2026

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Kyler Peterson
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Complete Class of 2027 Rankings With the end of the summer and fall seasons behind us, it was time for a quick refresh of the 2027 class rankings. Below you'll be able to read about some of the biggest risers up the board, led by North Carolina outfielder John Hucko who jumped more than 110 spots to now sit at No. 20 overall.  John Hucko, OF, Charlotte, N.C. Previous Rank: 132 | Current Rank: 20 Hucko makes a huge leap into the top-20 players in the class after a dominating showing in Jupiter. It’s as good of a left-handed swing as you’ll come across with pretty easy impact to all parts. He’s a supreme athlete with all the tools to play center long term and is a present plus runner. Hucko is a name that cemented his prospect status in Jupiter and will be a name to follow for next year’s MLB Draft. Elyjah Mason, SS, Lake Forest, Calif. Previous Rank: 71 |...
Press Release | Press Release | 11/2/2026

PG Partners Up with Minority Prospects

Perfect Game Staff
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Draft | Story | 10/30/2026

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Ryan Miller
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2027 MLB Draft Profile Preview: Collegiate Right-Handed Pitchers | Collegiate Left-Handed Pitchers The premium profile in each class often are prep middle infielders, a sought-after group with the athletic ability to stick on the dirt or land throughout the diamond long term. This demographic has produced the superstars of today’s game and therefore are selected in prime spots while demanding high-end signing bonuses. This group features a mix of loud tools, high level projection, and impact defenders. Below we break down at the top prep middle infielder in the 2027 cycle.  ‘27 SS Dylan Seward (CA)- liftoff from the No. 1 player in the class. A solo blast to RCF to extend the lead for @TheCanesBB #WWBA @California_PG @Vol_Baseball commit https://t.co/lJjNg6T7PS — Perfect Game Scout (@PG_Scouting) June 27, 2026 SS Dylan Seward, Norco (CA)  The Southern...
Tournaments | Story | 11/2/2026

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2028 Post-Circuit Dive: Under-the-Radar Names to Know One of my favorite parts of the calendar comes after the summer and fall circuits have wrapped, when I can finally sit down, dig through our tournament performance data and uncover some names that may have slipped through the cracks. With hundreds of events on the schedule and thousands of players coming through them, there's inevitably going to be talent that I or even our collective staff haven't given enough attention to. For this exercise, I wanted to isolate a particular offensive profile. I looked for 2028 bats who produced at a high level while keeping their swing-and-miss numbers in check across a sample of at least 50 plate appearances. On the pitching side, the approach was equally straightforward in terms of identifying arms who consistently filled the strike zone while missing bats at a strong clip. Of course, not all...
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Kyler Peterson
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WWBA Underclass Scout Notes: Days 1-2 | Day 3 | Day 4 Stars Being Stars These are some of the more well-known names on the national landscape, playing across several big events in which they performed at the highest of levels. Their showings in Fort Myers were simply a continuation of what we've almost come to expect at this point from them!  Kasen Langerhans (2028, Round Rock, Texas) batted leadoff and stuck at the hot corner for Texas Twelve Red Sox 2028 in Fort Myers. The Texas native has the looks a young left-handed power bat and the swing is built for it. Langerhans produces easy bat speed, delivering a fast and leveraged barrel through the zone. He creates backspin and uses the ground well, really getting into the legs. The infielder has excellent power projection and took comfortable, intentful cuts in the box. Langerhans got the job done at the top of the order...
Tournaments | Story | 10/28/2026

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WWBA Sophomore Scout Notes: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 Stars Being Stars These are some of the more well-known names on the national landscape, playing across several big events in which they performed at the highest of levels. Their showings in Fort Myers were simply a continuation of what we've almost come to expect at this point from them!  2029 MIF Easton Housewright (Knoxville, Tenn.) currently stands at 6-foot,175 pounds with strength in the lower half, present above-average athleticism. Continued to shine at the top of the lineup as the left-handed hitter is your prototypical leadoff hitter, consistently finding a way on and scoring. Takes quality at-bats with an above average awareness of the strike zone. Loose hands with easy bat speed that find the barrel often for hard line drives into the gaps that frequently turn into XBHs. Confident and balanced approach. Also...
Tournaments | Story | 10/27/2026

Beyond the Board: SS Malachi Butler

Tyler Henninger
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As the 2027 draft cycle moves through the fall and into the offseason, we kick off a new series called Beyond The Board. With each installment, we will provide an in-depth scouting report for some of the top players in the class, breaking down their tools, strengths, question marks, and overall projection. This week we take a look at Georgia prep shortstop Malachi Butler. The Georgia Tech put together an outstanding showing on the circuit this summer and has been a significant riser early in the 2027 cycle.  Player: Malachi Butler Position: SS B/T: L/R Height: 6-foot-3 Weight: 190-pounds School: McEachern HS Hometown: Powder Springs, Ga.  Physical Description: 6-2/190. Strong, athletic build. Well-proportioned body. Has strength with room to continue to add more.    High speed BP swing from '27 SS Malachi Butler (GA)... #PGNational @PG_Georgia https://t.co/M9OWUX9rPw...
Tournaments | Story | 10/27/2026

South Fall World Series Scout Notes

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Kason Mead (2029, Spring, Texas) had a great weekend for Premier Baseball Donato 2029. Went 5-9 with a pair of doubles and a home run, driving in five without striking out. Physical frame with a lot more strength on the way. Impressive bat speed that attacks the top of the zone well. Works to all fields consistently and the profile indicates that he’ll be able to build off that with more impact. Lot to like, should be a riser as he goes into his sophomore season. Sterling McCormack (2029, Magnolia, Texas) performed well for Premier Baseball Donato 2029. Reached four times, including a double. Gains ground well on the stride, using his physicality to his advantage as he stays on an uphill plane, geared for slug. Plenty of strength at the point of impact. Landon Hardy (2029, Spring, Texas) had a strong showing for Scorpions Team Easton 2029. Went 4-11 with a double and homer, driving...
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Stars Being Stars These are some of the more well-known names on the national landscape, playing across several big events in which they performed at the highest of levels. Their showings in West Palm were simply a continuation of what we've almost come to expect at this point from them!  Kolt Hampton (2030, Chandler, AZ) is a left-handed hitting infielder with present barrel speed and twitch in the turn. Turned around an upper 80s heater that plated two runs in the first inning of the quarterfinals and never looked back. Also got it done on the rubber punching out three and topping out at 86. The number one player in Arizona produced all week and took care of business defensively.  Landen Davis (2030, Beaufort, SC) showed up at the dish this event hitting .500 with four doubles and five RBIs. Stays tight in the turn with present strength and the approach plays to all fields....
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