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General  | General | 6/8/2021

Wolforth Thrower Mentorship: Article 10

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 tenth 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
Article 5: The Case Against Weighted Balls?
Article 6: The Truth About Pitch Counts, Workloads, and Overuse
Article 7: Velocity Appraisal: How 'Hard' Is 'Hard Enough'?
Article 8: Command Appraisal: How 'Accurate' Is 'Accurate Enough'?
Article 9: Swing & Miss Appraisal: How 'Nasty' Is 'Nasty Enough'?

5 Common Mistakes Baseball Players Make In Their Training Which Restrict Their Growth And Development

Read through these five very quickly. Chances are astronomical that one of these is limiting or constraining your development.

1. They Have No Plan!
 
Winston Churchill is credited with saying, "He who fails to plan is planning to fail."
  
Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
The Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
Alice: “I don't much care where—"
The Cheshire Cat: “Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”
Alice: “—so long as I get SOMEWHERE."
The Cheshire Cat: “Oh, you're sure to do that, if you only walk long enough."

–Lewis Carroll's classic children's tale, Alice in Wonderland
 
Too many players simply “hope” everything will turn out in their favor.  Hope is a wonderful and powerful thing, but hope is not a plan.
 
I have had the honor of working with three Cy Young Award winners over the past six years. While, as you can imagine, they are talented athletes, it wasn’t primarily their skill that separated them from their contemporaries.
 
Each one of them was process driven and they had developed a very specific plan. They worked that plan, and furthermore, they constantly modified their plan to fit the changes and challenges in front of them.
 
I often ask young pitchers visiting the Ranch to share with me their plan for the future. Without exception, they all have hopes, dreams, ambitions, and aspirations. However, less than 10% have a clear plan. Those 10% who have a plan almost always vastly out-achieve the other 90% who do not, and many of those 90% have superior skills, talents, and abilities compared to the 10%.
 
But just as the Cheshire Cat counseled Alice, if one is headed nowhere in particular, it really doesn’t matter which way you go.
 
Wolforth Recommendation: Create a plan — commit to it, write it down, review it often. Constantly polish and modify it to fit the changes and challenges in front of you.

2. They Have The Wrong Plan!
 
“No matter how committed you are to a specific process, no one can sprint East fast enough to see the setting of the sun.  It’s important that you have a plan. It’s far more important that it’s the right plan.” –Tony Robbins

“Successful men are influenced by the desire for pleasing results. Failures are influenced by the desire for pleasing methods and are inclined to be satisfied with such results as can be obtained by doing things they like to do. The common denominator of success — the secret of every man who has ever been successful — lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do.” –Albert L. Gray
 
So, you have a plan? Good for you!
 
Too many players that actually have a plan have one which primarily offers them comfort and simple structure. The problem is that exceptional performance and growth necessitates the athlete to become comfortable being uncomfortable.
 
Wolforth Recommendation: Personal development is often complex, nuanced, and multifaceted. High level planning will require assessment, categorization, customization, and prioritization. It will also require the constant shaping and reshaping of the plan as the athlete grows.

3. They Don't Have the Correct Equipment or Resources to Make the Changes That Are Needed!

So, you have a great plan? Good for you!
 
Unfortunately, too many players are, in essence, trying to fix a watch with a pipe wrench.
 
Improving a human movement pattern is very challenging work indeed. Corruption and degradation from well intending drills are always a real and present danger, that is why most young top professional baseball prospects are rarely taught anything.
 
The fear of injuring or interfering with their “magic” is profound, that is why many coaches at the higher levels of baseball are far more interested in keeping their job than in doing their job. The risk/reward for interceding into a young man’s skill development is no small concern.
 
For example, the introduction of the connection ball was a profound help for Justin Verlander in 2015 when returning from core surgery. While the tool may not have been the only catalyst to his recovery and bounce back performance, it was indeed a significant influence.



Wolforth Recommendation: Finding the right tools and the right resources are very important. Having the right tools can accelerate the change, and time is almost always a huge factor in skill development. We are all up against a clock of some kind and that clock is ticking.  Having the right tools can also reduce the risk of corruption or skill degradation and can optimize the transfer from the drill to gametime performance.

4. They Do What Everybody Else Is Doing!
 
“We cannot solve our current problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” –Albert Einstein

I shall be telling this with a sigh.
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
– “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
 
It has always struck me as odd that most coaches, parents, and players state that they want to separate themselves from the herd and distinguish their preeminence from their competitive peer group, yet they are somehow inexplicably drawn to the habits and behaviors of the mediocre and to the status quo.
 
Exceptional players are, by their very definition, not ordinary. Therefore, it would seem to me that the goal would be to reject and avoid the habits and behaviors of the herd and the status quo, and to seek out and adopt new pathways, methods, philosophies, tools, processes, and procedures.
 
The late Earl Nightingale, in his famous treatise, “The Strangest Secret,” brilliantly articulated that the secret of high performers was in their ability to reject and prevail over established patterns of behavior which directly led to ordinariness and inferiority. 
 
Wolforth Recommendation: If you do what everybody else is doing, you are going to get what everybody else is getting — which isn’t much. If you do what you’ve always done, you are going to get what you’ve always gotten.

Don’t be afraid to be different. In fact, seek out the extraordinary. Success leaves clues. Don’t study or comply with the average. Taking poetic license from Forrest Gump, “Mediocre is what mediocre does.” If everyone is doing it, I suggest it is high time to find a better way.

#5 They Dabble… They Pretend… They Major in Minor Things!

"One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular." – Tony Robbins
 
“Mastery does not come from dabbling. We have to be prepared to pay the price. We need to have the sustained enthusiasm that motivates us to give our best.” –Eknath Easwaran
 
Regardless of the profession — from teacher, to waiter, to plumber, to doctor, to lawyer, to baseball athlete — the Pareto principle (the 80/20 Rule) plays out. 20% of the population of a specific skill or vocation will always outproduce or outperform the remaining 80% combined.
 
How is that possible you might ask?
 
I think you may already suspect the answer.
 
Roughly 80% of any specific skill or vocation will simply follow the path of least resistance, they will only do the minimum required. Whenever they can cut corners, they will do so. They will simply try to blend in. They very well may enjoy the trappings of their skill or vocation but becoming exceptional at their craft is not a driving factor in their life or in their job performance. They just want to be “good enough” to retain their current status.
 
At the Texas Baseball Ranch®, I refer to these individuals as “dabblers”.
 
In case you doubt me, I want you to recall the last time you ate at a restaurant and your waiter or waitress was exceptional. I promise that most of you can clearly remember the experience primarily because the behavior simply stood out. The waiter/waitress was not ordinary. They did not dabble. They didn’t just clock in and clock out and go home, the quality of your dining experience really mattered to them.
 
So it is with every other skill or vocation, one can’t be great without the focus on being excellent. Exceptional performance does not happen by accident. Dabblers or pretenders will never achieve the higher standards of performance and execution, that will only happen on purpose.    
 
Wolforth Recommendation: If you ever find yourself dabbling or pretending, stop! Catch yourself. Ask yourself the question, “Is what I am doing really important to me?” If the answer is no, choose something else as quickly as you can.  If the answer is yes, then follow the late Martin Luther King Jr.’s advice:
 
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” –Martin Luther King Jr.
 
Until next time,

Stay curious and keep reaching for the stars.

Coach Wolforth
CEO - The Texas Baseball Ranch®

P.S. Our next topic will cover “The Truth About Curveballs”.

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.
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General | Blog | 6/16/2026

Wolforth Throwing Mentorship: Article 66
Ron Wolforth
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WWBA Arrives in Arizona

Emily Hicks
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After another week of summer baseball, Perfect Game action returns to Surprise Stadium as teams prepare for another exciting week of competition at the WWBA Championship. From July 14-18, some of the top programs in travel baseball will take the field looking to compete for a championship and showcase their talent against high-level competition.  The tournament will feature both the 15U and 16U divisions, bringing together talented teams and rising prospects from across the West and beyond. With several days of pool play and championship bracket action, teams will have the opportunity to test themselves against strong opponents while competing on one of the biggest stages of the summer.  Surprise Stadium will provide the setting for a week filled with competitive matchups, standout performances, and prospects looking to make an impact. From dominant pitching performances to...
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Alyssa Golden
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East Cobb Goes Undefeated, Takes 14U BCS Twenty years after winning the inaugural 14U BCS National Championship in 2006, the East Cobb Astros once again stood atop the tournament, defeating the Original Florida Pokers 7-4 at JetBlue Park. A hot, sunny afternoon set the stage for a tightly contested match between the Original Florida Pokers 2030 and East Cobb Astros 14U Orange. Although the Pokers had a two-run lead with just three innings to go, East Cobb showed their team had no quit as they pulled away with a 7-4 victory. The teams battled through a highly contested tournament field of over sixty teams from across the country, with the Pokers coming in 8-1 and East Cobb entering 8-0 in tournament play. Cohen Carter started on the mound for East Cobb, allowing seven hits and no walks while striking out three batters over four innings. His fastball sat 71-75 mph. Silas Anstett opened the...
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Tournaments | Story | 7/15/2026

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Kinley Kitchens
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Expectations naturally follow one of the nation’s top ranked teams. For Stars Marucci 2027, those expectations have only grown as the summer season has progressed.  Ranked No. 16 nationally and featuring a roster loaded with Division I commits and nationally ranked prospects, Stars Marucci 2027 entered the 2026 Perfect Game 17U National Elite Championship as one of the top teams to watch.  Through the opening two days of the tournament, they have shown why they are a team to watch, opening the week with back-to-back victories over SBA Tucci 2027 (6-1) and FC Twins Scout (5-2) to build early momentum heading into the later rounds.  The talent on the roster is undeniable.  Virginia Tech commits Chase Colangelo, Yogi Colangelo, and Teagan Leach, Maryland commit Jerome Fortier, and Youngstown State commit Sam Capuano headline a group filled with college bound...
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Tournaments | Story | 7/15/2026

Mine Wood Bat World Series Notes

Jordan Gates
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Tournaments | Championship | 7/14/2026

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Will Dembo
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After an action-packed week at the 16u WWBA Championships, the tournament came down to two of the nation’s top teams battling for one of travel baseball’s most prestigious titles. No. 5 ranked SBA Bolts National faced No. 60 Alpha Prime 2028 after both teams reached the championship undefeated, but the SBA Bolts were the sole team to exit without a loss, defeating Alpha Prime 10-2 in mercy rule fashion and capture the national title behind dominant pitching and explosive offensive performances. The SBA Bolts were perfect throughout their week, running the table and going 11-0 while outscoring their opponents by an impressive margin of 108-25. “It was awesome,” SBA Head Coach Travis Thompson said on the mercy rule victory. “It just kind of culminated our week. It's been a long week. I can't even remember our first game, which felt like three weeks ago. The...
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Coastal Region Scout Notes

Perfect Game Staff
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Ridge Whitfield (2029, Charlotte, NC) stands at 6-foot, 158 pounds with an athletic build that should allow him to maintain his mobility and quick-twitch actions as he continues to develop. He bats and throws left-handed. Whitfield locates his fastball to both sides of the plate, mixes his pitches effectively, and keeps hitters off balance. He competes on every pitch and doesn’t back down in big situations. Whitfield threw 5.1 innings, allowing three hits, one earned run, and no walks while striking out three on 75 pitches (58% strikes). He attacked the zone with a fastball that sat 73 mph and topped out at 78 mph, mixing in a 67 mph breaking ball and a 68-70 mph changeup to keep hitters off balance. Sam Jobe (2029, Charlotte, NC) stands at 6-foot-1, 175 pounds, with a lean, athletic frame and plenty of projection. He bats and throws right-handed. Jobe shows good feel for the...
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Tournaments | Story | 7/14/2026

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Perfect Game Staff
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14u BCS Scout Note Recap

Perfect Game Staff
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Jake Karpell (2030, Holmdel, NJ) got on the barrel a couple times in game five and totaled three rbis. Started his production with a single then later on hammered a heater down the right field and flew around the bases for a three run inside the park home run. Keeps the hands inside at contact really well and got the head around on the homer. Runs well and can hit it around the yard in the approach.  Luke Sauer (2030 C, FL)  put his hit tool on display with a well-struck double, continuing to show why he is regarded as one of the top catchers in the class. Owns a big frame with present physicality and does a good job keeping the hands connected throughout the swing. The barrel works efficiently through the zone and there is a solid offensive foundation present. Currently ranked as the No. 66 catcher nationally.  Gavin Politz (2030 OF, FL) continued a strong tournament...
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Tournaments | Story | 7/14/2026

15u World Series Scout Notes: Days 1-3

Perfect Game Staff
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Connor Ashley (‘29, FL) has struck out six over six no hit innings thus far. Got the FB up to 87 w/ feel for a sharp two-plane slider. #PGWS @Florida_PG pic.twitter.com/M7mEmTH8pk — Perfect Game Scout (@PG_Scouting) July 12, 2026 Connor Ashley (’29, Minneola, FL) was stellar on Sunday, striking out seven in a seven inning no hitter. He operates from a medium-to-large right-handed frame with length, room to fill, and lower half strength. Ashley works exclusively from the stretch, starting at the belt before working into a higher compact leg lift, firing down the mound via a long arm action. He releases from a high three-quarters slot, with the fastball jumping from the hand up to 87. Ashley mixed in a sharp 11-5 breaking ball with depth and late bite, a true swing-and-miss offering.  Matthew Hernandez (’29, Miami Lakes, FL) has posted strong numbers on both...
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College | Story | 7/14/2026

Coppy's Corner: July 14 Summer Edition

John Coppolella
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The amateur players in the Cape Cod Baseball League are the future stars of the 2027 MLB Draft. The league runs from June 13th through August 2nd. Games are played at historic stadiums in Old New England towns. It’s beautiful and charming. Hollywood even made a movie about the Cape Cod League ~25 years ago called Summer Catch. It scored an 8% (!) on Rotten Tomatoes, but, on the plus side, it featured 2001 Jessica Biel in a starring role.  It was so much fun writing Coppy’s Column this spring. My hope is to highlight a pitcher and position player each week from the Cape. And, who knows, maybe somewhere out there Jessica Biel is reading it.    Player of the Week: Carter White – Falmouth Commodores  Talk about making a great first impression! White introduced himself in a very loud and boisterous way this past week by going 9-17 (.529 AVG) with 6 RBI...
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