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General  | General | 7/2/2021

Wolforth Thrower Mentorship: Article 12

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 12th 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'?
Article 10: 5 Common Mistakes Baseball Players Make In Their Training
Article 11: The Truth About Curveballs, Sliders, and Cutters

 Have you ever wondered just exactly what the similarities are between the best pitchers on a championship team and the worst pitchers on a cellar dweller?
 
I realize for many of you that may be a strange question. Why would we even ask such a question?
 
This basic question is so rarely asked by the typical baseball person…but we at the Texas Baseball Ranch® believe unequivocally that this is one question that should be asked often. Such a question is often highly enlightening and incredibly instructive.
 
NCAA Hall of Fame Coach Gary Ward, a long-time dear friend of ours, is fond of saying, “Want a better answer? Then improve upon the questions you ask!”
 
Stating the obvious and eliminating items the best pitchers and worst pitchers share in common can lead us to important clues on the critical areas in which they are very different. That difference often is the secret sauce to achievement and productivity.
 
All too often we look only for the differences and eventually, because of a lack of intellectual curiosity, we return to safe and time-honored conclusions suggesting that the only differences between the two polar opposite groups are talent and/or experience.
 
Talent and experience are real and are no small influences, but they absolutely do not accurately express the totality of influence upon success and achievement.
 
Many more talented and experienced individuals have been beaten by those with far less talent and less experience. This scenario has been repeated thousands of times throughout history.
 
So then, what is one thing the best and the worst have in common?
 
They both practice. They both throw bullpens.
 
I have maintained for nearly 30 years now that the simple act of practice itself is rarely remarkable. Everyone ‘practices’. Everyone ‘throws bull pens, sides or boxes’. So then, if the simple act of practice is so valuable, why aren’t all the pitchers who practice ‘great performers’?
 
Let’s investigate this question.
 
The science of motor skill development is very clear in this regard. 
 
•   How much time you dedicate to practice is a much more significant indicator of successful performance than is the fact you simply practiced your skill. So, there is that variable…time investment.
 
•   But it is ‘how’ one practices that is really the influencer of growth, skill development and eventually success at game time.
 
The question we should be asking ourselves is not just:
 
Is our pitcher practicing?
 
Or even how much does our pitcher practice?
 
But instead, we must ask how deep and deliberate is our pitcher’s current practice?
 
To help us with that question I’m going to turn to one of my most influential mentors, K. Anders Ericsson.
 
The late K. Anders Ericsson was a Swedish psychologist and Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University who is internationally recognized as a researcher in the psychological nature of expertise and human performance.
 
His incredible books:
 
•   ‘Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise’.
 
•   ‘The Road To Excellence; The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games’.

•   ‘Development of Professional Expertise: Toward Measurement of Expert Performance and Design of Optimal Learning Environments’.
 
These 3 are seemingly always on my desk and are constantly referenced in our work at the Texas Baseball Ranch.
 
Ericsson believed the 7 gold standards of deliberate practice are as follows:
 
1. Have Specific Goals in EACH of Your Practices. 
 
Create step-by-step objectives focused on improving specific aspects of the pitcher’s target performance. For example: Arm health, recovery, velocity, command, spin/shape/deception. Step-by-step means setting particular targets for each day, week, month and year, over many years.
 
2. Support Your Work With Expert Coaching/Mentoring
 
To achieve elite level performance, athletes almost always need expert coaches, mentors and/or advisors at critical junctures in their career to provide a winning combination of implicit and explicit knowledge.
 
3. Consistent Enlightenment From Feedback - Preferably Immediate Feedback.
 
A primary tenet of growth, skill development and/or simply learning to perform better is to get direct, immediate, relevant feedback. Specifically, in this case, getting the information you need to adjust your behavior, adjust your movement, correct mistakes, and move on to the next stage of growth.
 
Learning from feedback is absolutely invaluable. It’s the best way of managing your performance during or after the event and continuing to grow. We say at the Texas Baseball Ranch that the breakfast of champions is not Wheaties but instead direct, immediate and relevant feedback.
 
4. Dedicate At Least A Portion of Each Practice To Working Slightly Outside Of Your Comfort Zone. 
 
Making continued improvements requires systematically challenging yourself to go one step further than your current capabilities. As soon as you are approaching a semblance of mastery of a specific skill, it’s time to demand more of yourself and challenge yourself further. This is often more challenging than some might think.
 
Practicing outside of your comfort zone almost always, by definition, creates some anxiety and frustration. The good news is that married with persistence and perseverance, deep deliberate practice also regularly results with great satisfaction as you do reach the next levels of performance. You can then move on to new and even more uncomfortable challenges.

5. Building an Exceptionally Sound Foundation in Which Mastery Can Be Expanded.

It’s far easier to acquire new skills if you’ve first created a sound substructure for learning and development. From this foundation you can develop superb skills step-by-step. Never forget, ‘Extraordinary’ is simply doing the ordinary, exceptionally well. Dedicate yourself to being uncommonly good at the foundational stuff.
 
6. Being Focused and Present.
 
Achieving elite level performance demands involvement and ownership, not simply listening passively to other’s advice. Deliberate practice requires high levels of intention, awareness and a willingness to put in hours of effort. No one achieves deliberate practice my accident. The secret is in the name. Deep, deliberate practice is only created on purpose.
 
7. Develop Well Defined Mental Representations.
 
One important characteristic of top performers is their ability to visualize and connect images in their minds with their ideal performance. This is what Ericsson referred to as 'Mental Representations’. When athletes have a clear mental picture of the specifics of their skills, they can far better monitor their performance in real time, make decisions under duress, and adjust and adapt as the situation unfolds.
 
Don Mattingly once was quoted as saying, “The only difference between me and hundreds of other players is that I have a very clear picture in my mind of what I want and spend most of my day coloring it!”
 
As you read down through Ericsson’s 7 gold standards of deliberate practice, I’m fairly certain that your reaction is similar to mine in thinking that the traditional practice in America is far from deep, deliberate practice.
 
As I tell my clients all the time, “Awareness itself is curative. Awareness of the problem is the start. Now is the time to start making changes toward a more effective use of our time, effort, energy and resources.” 
 
I look forward to continuing our discussion.
 
Ron Wolforth
CEO- The Texas Baseball Ranch
 
PS. Next time my topic will be “The Truth About Long Toss”.

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 467 have broken the 90 mph 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, TX 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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Wolforth Throwing Mentorship: Article 66
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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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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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Mine Wood Bat World Series Notes

Jordan Gates
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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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14u & 17u West Scout Notes: Days 3-5

Perfect Game Staff
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14u & 17u WWBA West Scout Notes: Days 1-2 Adryan Zaragoza (‘30 | CA) turns on this one, sending it down RF line for a 2B. Finished 2-for-3 w/ 2RBI, 2R, BB. PS approach, bat speed, raw strength #WWBAWest @California_PG pic.twitter.com/V6Ctus4CX1 — Perfect Game Four Corners (@PG_FourCorners) July 13, 2026 Adryan Zaragoza (2030, Lake Elsinore, CA) The 5-foot-9, 150-pound left-handed hitter and infielder had a great weekend for ZT Select Prospects, finishing with five hits, eight runs scored, one double, one triple, six RBI, one stolen base, and two walks during the 14U WWBA West National Championships. Zaragoza consistently ignited the offense from the top of the lineup, with a disciplined approach and the ability to create scoring opportunities. He can drive the baseball into the gaps while producing in big situations, combining quality contact with aggressive baserunning....
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Perfect Game Staff
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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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Coppy's Corner: July 14 Summer Edition

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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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