THE WORLD'S LARGEST AND MOST COMPREHENSIVE SCOUTING ORGANIZATION
| 2,384 MLB PLAYERS | 15,805 MLB DRAFT SELECTIONS
2,384 MLB PLAYERS | 15,805 MLB DRAFT SELECTIONS
Sign in Create Account
Sign in Create Account
General  | General | 4/29/2021

Wolforth Throwing Mentorship: Article 5

Jerry Ford
Ron Wolforth
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 fifth 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.
Article 4: The Secret to Accelerated Skill Development: Hyper-Personalization

Around 2014, I saw a trend coming very rapidly to baseball training… Weighted ball throwing programs were quickly becoming a “thing” in American baseball culture. Velocity programs using overload and underload implements were becoming a fad of sorts.

Now, those of you who have previously heard of the Texas Baseball Ranch®, may be a bit confused.

You may be asking, “Hasn’t Coach Wolforth and the Ranch been long-time advocates of utilizing weighted balls in their development of pitchers? I heard they’ve been using them for years. Why would he now write a piece critical on weighted balls? Has Coach Wolforth changed his mind? Is he really now against the use of weighted balls?”

The truth.

I remain a big proponent of weighted balls as a tool for developing elite throwing athletes… when used intelligently and appropriately!

Here is my dilemma, and the reason I wrote the white paper titled, “The Case Against Weighted Balls?”.

As I point out in the paper, we have been utilizing weighted balls since 2002/2003. We were utilizing weighted balls long before they were popular. We actually took a bit of heat in the first five years or so for their use from the baseball orthodoxy, and we were seen as needlessly edgy and provocative.

The problems we began to notice started to surface over the last 5-7 years. As they say, “nothing succeeds like success and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. Watching our success on velocity enhancement from afar, multiple people/groups began copying what they thought were our processes, slightly changed the verbiage/labeling, and applied their own individual touches.

Things like that are very common in the business world; think no further than best-in-class Yeti vs. RTIC. Why would baseball be any different?


Here was the primary problem from our perspective: If you don’t know the entire 20-year history of our weighted ball journey and how specifically we evolved in our use of weighted balls, you will almost certainly make some crucial mistakes and inferential leaps with regards to their ramp-up, dosage, frequency, and, most importantly in our view, when and where the implementation of overload and underload implements would be contraindicated and maybe even dangerous.

In short, weighted balls themselves are neither good nor bad. They are simply tools and tools can, of course, be mismanaged and/or misapplied.

And boy were they ever.

"Purchase the balls online and we will send you a weighted ball throwing program,” one well-known company encouraged.

“Come to our facility and we’ll put you on a 6-week weighted ball velocity enhancement program and you can start gaining velocity tomorrow!”

Dozens of academies across the USA and Canada were in a hurry to join the “weighted ball/velocity revolution”.

At the Texas Baseball Ranch®, when we saw these tools being implemented universally to all their athletes with no assessments, no preconditions considered, and a very steep ramp up process, we felt a little like that scene in Ghostbusters where they knew that the city shutting down the power grid was a horrible idea and things were about to go from bad to worse.


We knew many young men were not yet ready for the new levels of stress.

We knew injuries were going to go up exponentially.

They had to in our estimation.

  • Almost no one checked these young men first for structural soundness and asymmetries

  • Almost no one checked these young men first for strength and stability

  • Almost no one checked these young men first for mobility and flexibility

  • Almost no one checked these young men first for mechanical inefficiencies

  • Almost no one checked these young men first for having a solid throwing foundation before ramping up full effort intensity

  • Almost no one checked these young men first for their history with injury, soreness, or general level of fitness

  • Almost no one checked these young men first for their developmental age, their previous experience with high intensity throwing, or where they are in their competitive season (off-season, pre-season, in-season, post-season)

It wasn’t just “Ready, Aim, Fire!” … It was actually more like “Fire, Aim, Ready.”

Dr. James Andrews, frequently touted as one of the preeminent orthopedic surgeons in the United States, asked me to join a discussion group this past January at the prestigious “Injuries in Baseball Course” hosted by the American Sports Medicine Institute (ASMI).

The topic of discussion… “Are weighted balls safe?”

It appears that arm injuries, subsequent ulnar collateral reconstruction surgeries (“Tommy John”), and labrum surgeries are happening at an alarming rate.

Again... This didn't surprise us.

That is the reason I wrote the white paper, “The Case Against Weighted Balls?”. So that I, and the Texas Baseball Ranch®, would not be thrown into this monolithic group of supposed weighted ball advocates.

I believed weighted balls were going to be getting some really bad press.

However, weighted balls weren’t the problem… how they were being used was the problem.

If you or a young man you know is involved in a weighted ball/velocity enhancement program, I’d urge you to get this free report. After reading it, I believe you will be able to see when, where, and how weighted balls can be included into your program, not only to enhance your development, but most importantly, create a healthy and durable arm.

I look forward to continuing our discussion.

Ron Wolforth
CEO - The Texas Baseball Ranch®

P.S. If you’d like to get your free copy of "The Case Against Weighted Balls?” simply CLICK HERE.

P.P.S. Next time: “The Truth About Pitch Counts, Workloads & Overuse”

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.
Give us your feedback
General | General | 2/23/2026

PG Salutes Chet Brewer, a Youth Baseball Pillar
Jim Salisbury
Article Image
PG Salutes Chet Brewer, a Youth Baseball Pillar A few weeks ago, Perfect Game and its Believe in Baseball foundation held a fundraising event in Los Angeles. The “In the Spirit of the Game” dinner and auction brought in thousands of dollars, all of which will go toward providing deserving youngsters an opportunity to play and grow in the game. Chet Brewer was not at the event – the former Negro Leagues star died at age 83 in 1990 – but his spirit was. Big time. “That night was all about Chet,” PG commissioner Dennis Gilbert said. “He was all about giving kids chances to play the game, especially kids from underprivileged backgrounds. “When you’re 15, 16, 17 years old – those years are the basis of your life. Chet helped put a lot of kids on the right path through the game of baseball.” Brewer’s impactful life has...
Read More
College | Rankings | 3/16/2026

College Top 25: March 16

Vincent Cervino
Article Image
Collegiate Player Report Database As each week of the college baseball season passes, we continue to be entertained at an incredible level with high level drama at every turn.  Conference play is under way and the national landscape is starting to make a bit more sense.  The development and strength of individual players is on full-display and there continue to be upsets on occasion that sends the message no team can relax for one moment.  For the most part, the Top 10 remains unchanged with some reshuffling as No. 1 UCLA (17-2) holds on to the top spot with yet another perfect (4-0) week after sweeping Michigan.  The No. 2 Texas Longhorns (18-1) did drop their first game of the season in Game 1 of SEC play but won the series against Ole Miss and finished the week with a (3-1) record.  The Georgia Tech Yellowjackets (17-3) passed their first real road test of the...
Read More
Draft | Story | 3/13/2026

PG Draft: Under the Radar Preps

Tyler Henninger
Article Image
PG Draft: Under the Radar Preps As the spring season gets underway, the showcase circuit and early high-level tournaments have already provided our scouts with some intriguing first looks at this year’s crop of prospects. At the same time, we’ve been tracking the buzz among team evaluators, listening closely to the names that keep coming up in conversations and the players clubs are making sure they get eyes on this spring. Every year, a handful of prospects quietly slip beneath the radar during the fall and winter months, only to reemerge once the games start counting again. Sometimes it’s the result of a productive offseason in the weight room, a noticeable jump in velocity, or a step forward in skill development. Other times, it’s simply a player finally getting the opportunity and the stage to show what’s been building behind the scenes. The spring has a...
Read More
College | Rankings | 3/11/2026

DII/DIII/NAIA Rankings Update: March 11

Nick Herfordt
Article Image
Allendale Doesn't Rhyme With Knoxville or Danville. The Baseball Does. Meet the Three Coaches Turning Small College Programs Into National Contenders. There's something happening in small college baseball right now that doesn't get nearly enough attention. Three programs — separated by hundreds of miles and spread across three different governing bodies — are in the middle of the kind of rebuilds that make you wonder why anyone ever counted them out in the first place. One is in a Michigan lakeside college town. Two are in places that end in 'ville. All three have coaches who looked at a program and saw something nobody else did. The Perfect Game small school rankings noticed. You should too. See where Grand Valley State, Johnson U, Centre and the rest of the schools are positioned in the latest Perfect Game Top 25 Small School Rankings. NCAA DII For a generation of DII...
Read More
High School | General | 3/12/2026

High School Notebook: March 12

Steve Fiorindo
Article Image
Trey Rangel (‘26 TX) with some early morning fuzz. Goes 3.2 IP on 7ks. Fastball 92-96 T97 (2508 RPM) late life ASR. Curve 79-83 (2900 RPM) sharp 10-4 shape; power curve. Cutter low-90s. Change flashed at 89 (1405 RPM); kick change. Elite arm talent. #PGHS @PG_Draft #HookEm… pic.twitter.com/Xn3WaTJoVH — Perfect Game Texas (@Texas_PG) February 19, 2026 Trey Rangel (2026, The Colony, Texas) worked through 3.2 quality innings while striking out 7 batters for his opening season look here. Fastball opened up 93-96 with heavy arm side run out the gate. He would proceed to settle into the mid-90s range beyond his first inning of work while topping out at 97 once in the second and then closed out his final inning of work with a strikeout swinging on 96. Velo range varied throughout his outing and command came and went but was still dominant for the most part. He forced a ton of...
Read More
College | Story | 3/10/2026

College Players of the Week: March 10

Vincent Cervino
Article Image
March 10 Perfect Game/Player of the Week:  Lorenzo Carrier, OF, Pitt  The Pitt Panthers (12-2) are off to one of the best starts in recent program history and their offense has performed as one of the best in the country.  For the season, they are averaging almost 12-runs per game and on their recent trip to the West Coast, Lorenzo Carrier went on the kind of hot streak that is hard to comprehend.  The 6-5/215 senior from Bear, DE was a one-man wrecking crew in their 4-wins last week, starting with the fact that he reached base safely in 17 of his 19 trips to the plate.  He collected 13 hits in 14 official at-bats, scoring 10 runs, with 4 walks, 2 triples, 4 home runs and he drove in an insane 19-runs.  Carrier has refined his approach, simplified his bat path and is creating massive power that has him putting up career numbers.  For the season, he is...
Read More
College | Rankings | 3/9/2026

College Top 25: March 9

Vincent Cervino
Article Image
Collegiate Player Report Database While there will not be any new faces in this weeks Top 25, there is quite a bit of shakeup as the season, somehow, becomes even more unpredictable.  There were several teams in the poll that dropped weekend series and, in some cases, registered losing records in the last seven days.  There is sure to be more chaos this week as virtually every conference starts league play and the race for regular season titles begins.  The UCLA Bruins (13-2) remain No. 1 as their sizzling hot bats led the way to a perfect (4-0) week and they swept their first Big Ten series of the year.  As one of only two remaining undefeated teams in the nation, the Texas Longhorns (15-0) jump to No. 2 before they open SEC play this weekend in Austin.  No. 3 Georgia Tech and No. 4 Mississippi State both (14-2) hold their spots in the poll after both dropped a...
Read More
Press Release | Press Release | 3/7/2026

Debut: Contreras YouTube Feature

Perfect Game Staff
Article Image
    667 Progress Way | Sanford, FL 32771 | 319-298-2923 www.perfectgame.org | facebook.com/perfectgameusa | @PerfectGameUSA     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   PERFECT GAME DEBUTS NEW YOUTUBE FEATURE FOLLOWING JOSEPH CONTRERAS ON HISTORIC DAY BEFORE WBC   Behind-the-scenes access captures the youngest player in the World Baseball Classic preparing for the global stage   Sanford, Florida (Friday, March 6, 2026) - Perfect Game, the world’s largest youth baseball and softball platform and scouting service, today announced the debut of a new original YouTube feature spotlighting right-handed pitcher Joseph Contreras, as PG cameras followed him throughout the day of his final high school start before departing to join Team Brazil in the World Baseball Classic.   The feature provides exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to one...
Read More
Softball | Softball Tournament | 3/4/2026

Perfect Game Softball March Madness

Ashley Mears
Article Image
2026 Perfect Game March Madness February 27-March 1st Ashley Mears What a weekend at the Fun City Dome in Burlington, Iowa! The energy was electric from first pitch to final out towering home runs, edge-of-your-seat battles, dramatic comebacks, and extra-inning thrillers with some unpredictable endings, it was a great weekend all around. The Top Performers list welcomed some exciting new names, while seasoned seniors continued to cement their legacies, delivering standout performances week after week. For some, this may have been their final appearance on a Perfect Game stage, and they made sure it was unforgettable. In the 18u division a tough Nebraska Gold 319 Berning team outlasted the Southeast Iowa All Stars in the championship. In 16u the Top Gun 2028- Strange completed their weekend by beating the Iowa Aries 16U CE Fire Black. 18U The weekend’s Most Valuable Player award...
Read More
High School | General | 3/5/2026

High School Notebook: March 5

Steve Fiorindo
Article Image
Full BP & pregame I/O from ‘26 SS Keon Johnson. Whippy hands and lifted to the middle of the field throughout the rounds, athletic mover on the dirt & enough arm strength to stick on the left side. #4 in @PG_Georgia & #50 on the @PG_Draft Board. #PGHS @FPDVikingSports https://t.co/vYvReQKTVh pic.twitter.com/BksHJtA09X — Cam McElwaney (@CamMcElwaneyPG) February 20, 2026 Keon Johnson, SS, First Presbyterian Day Johnson has long been near the top of the 2026 rankings and it all culminated in being a PG All-American last August. He heads into the spring as one of the names to know in the upcoming MLB Draft and is drawing crowds to his high school in Macon. It’s a well-built 6-foot-2, 200-pound frame with good actions up the middle. The defensive acumen has continued to improve over the last few years and now looks comfortable at shortstop and even projects there...
Read More
College | Rankings | 3/4/2026

DII/DIII/NAIA Rankings Update: March 4

Nick Herfordt
Article Image
The 2026 college baseball season is starting to reveal its early storylines, and across the Division II and Division III landscape a few programs have already forced their way into the spotlight. From the blistering start by the Pittsburg State Gorillas baseball that rocketed them to the top of the rankings, to the steadily rising championship ambitions of the Taylor Trojans baseball, the national picture is beginning to take shape. In Division III, heavyweight programs like the Trinity Tigers baseball and the Wisconsin–Whitewater Warhawks baseball have already traded blows in one of the season’s first statement series, while emerging challengers such as the Keene State Owls baseball are looking to turn early momentum into a breakout year. With many teams still just getting their seasons underway, the rankings remain fluid, but the early results are already giving us clues...
Read More
Loading more articles...
About Perfect Game :: Contact us :: Terms of Use :: Privacy Policy :: Testimonials :: Job Opportunities
Copyright 1994-2026 by Perfect Game. All rights reserved. No portion of this information may be reprinted or reproduced without the written consent of Perfect Game.