THE WORLD'S LARGEST AND MOST COMPREHENSIVE SCOUTING ORGANIZATION

| 2,384 MLB PLAYERS | 15,801 MLB DRAFT SELECTIONS

2,384 MLB PLAYERS | 15,801 MLB DRAFT SELECTIONS

Create Account

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.

PERFECTGAME.TV

Give us your feedback

General | Blog | 12/10/2025

Youth Baseball Exec. DeDonatis III Joins PG

Jim Salisbury

Youth Baseball Executive Don DeDonatis III Joins PG By Jim Salisbury It’s free-agent season in baseball and Perfect Game has landed a big one. Don DeDonatis III joined PG as a consultant in November. The DeDonatis name is synonymous with youth baseball and softball. Along with his dad, Don Jr., DeDonatis helped build USSSA into a big hitter in the game. He brings decades of experience and knowledge to PG. “We all acknowledge that Donny has moved on from USSSA,” PG CEO Rob Ponger said. “This is a new chapter for him and we hope both sides take advantage of it to help youth sports in general. “The DeDonatis name has a legacy attached to it and we’re hoping that Donny is going to help us. PG is a growing brand and he’s on board to help.” DeDonatis was CEO at USSSA from 2018 until his exit from the company two years ago. “I’m...

Draft | Story | 12/22/2025

2025 Year in Review: Draft

Isaiah Burrows

2025 Year in Review: Draft We’ve reached the end of the 2025 calendar year, and while we’ve already jumped in on the 2026 cycle with some of the fall events and post-draft content we’ve had here at Perfect Game, there’s still one more piece on the docket, and that’s the 2025 Year-In-Review piece here from the PG Draft staff. The 2025 MLB Draft took place in July, when many highly talented players heard their names called and continued their journey through the game to the next level. There’s already been some of those names making noise in the minors and guys who are moving up prospect lists and becoming names to know for MLB fans digging deep into the future of their organizations. While we are going to “close the book” on 2025 with this article, these players still have many years ahead of them, and many blank pages to continue...

College | Recruiting | 12/22/2025

Recruiting Notebook: December 22

Jheremy Brown

Lucien Saint Cyr, INF, Class of 2026 Commitment: Bucknell Saint Cyr announced his pledge to Bucknell, giving the Bison an interesting blend of present tools and projection. Saint Cyr stands 6-foot-1 and offers room to fill in his medium frame, profiling in the middle infield defensively. The New York product starts wide at the base in the right-handed box, keeping his hands high behind the ear. He works into a subtle outward step load, firing through a compact barrel that showcases bat speed and gap-to-gap impact. For head coach Scott Heather and Bucknell, they land a high-quality Northeast infielder in the ’26 cycle, adding to a class that takes the quality over quantity approach. Patrick Diaz ('26, NY) 102 EV off the bat. Impact to the pull side. #PGNational @PGMidAtlantic @PG_Uncommitted pic.twitter.com/NN0L3FRdO9 — PG Showcases (@PGShowcases) July 9, 2025 Patrick Diaz,...

High School | General | 12/19/2025

Huntington Beach HS World Series Recap

Steve Fiorindo

MVPitcher: Duncan McLeod The uncommitted junior toed the slab in three of the four games for Team Mick, tossing 3 2/3 innings. Zero walks, zero hits and 6 punchouts for the lefty who was used both as a starter in the series clinching game 4 and he closed out game 3 on Friday in quick fashion. McLeod was very efficient as well, needing just 42 pitches over all his outings. In the game 4 start, over two innings he punched out 3, with one strikeout with all of his offerings. The mid 80’s fastball regularly played up, set up with efficient use of the secondaries, with the breaking ball 73/74 and fading change-up 72-74. Owen Bone (2026) at it again... Solo shot in the 5th to tie things up. Back to back days with a home run for Bone. #PGHS pic.twitter.com/2JC9qETI5h — Perfect Game California (@California_PG) December 13, 2025 MV Hitter: ...

Tournaments | Story | 12/19/2025

13u Tourney All-American Team

Jheremy Brown

What a year it was in 2025 on the national landscape at the 13u level as Perfect Game continues to expand its reach around the country, providing an even bigger schedule of events coast-to-coast which has allowed players all over show out and gain their deserved recognition. Whether in Texas for the Houston 1000 or the 13u WWBA in West Palm Beach, we saw huge, eye opening performances from the players placed below, knowing that we could EASILY build a third team and likely a fourth without much effort. As we do every year with this exercise, it's worth pointing out the trickiness of this age group and putting the teams together with the 13u group. While the players are all members of the Class of 2030, some are younger for the grade, which allowed them to play at the 12u level where's it's a smaller field, shorter mound distance and different bats, so we'll separate them out and...

Tournaments | Story | 12/18/2025

14u Tourney All-American Team

Tyler Russo

Player of the Year: Asher Williams It was an incredible year for Williams that was rewarded with a trip to the 14U Select Fest, before some more impressive play in the fall. He came to the plate almost 250 times in PG tournaments throughout 2025 and reached base in well over half of them, hitting to a .500 AVG while slugging a 14U circuit best 12 bombs and driving in 113 runs. The numbers on the surface are ridiculous, but when you look at the high-level events he put them up in, it makes it even more impressive. Pitcher of the Year: Tristan Blalock Blalock earns this honor after a dominant 2025 where he struck out 85 batters in just 48.2 innings of work with a minuscule 1.58 ERA. This included several strong performances at many national level tournaments and showcases where he was able to bully some of the best hitters in the country. It’s hard not to fall in love with...

Draft | Story | 12/18/2025

PG Draft: Gut Feel Guys

Tyler Henninger

While we are nearing the turn of the calendar to the 2026 year, that means we are just inching closer to the beginning of the season for many high school players and college baseball is on the horizon. We are prepping for a reshuffle of the 2026 MLB Draft Board as well here amongst the PG Draft staff. But before we get to that, we sat down and have each picked a couple of players who are in the mix to get selected in a couple of different buckets. We have prospects who could go into the Top 30 picks or so, prospects who could be selected in the Top 5 rounds, and prospects who could go inside of the Top 10 rounds. With the draft quite far down the road and a lot of re-shuffling to be done as these players play themselves into certain spots on the draft board, our scouts picked some players who fit into these “buckets” who are gut-feel guys. These are the guys that our PG...

Tournaments | Story | 12/17/2025

15u Tourney All-American Team

Jason Phillips

Hitter of the Year: Landon Bonner The 2028 class saw many players from across the country take the next step in their development as they entered the High School ranks. There were huge performances from highly ranked players on the PG circuit as well as some under-the-radar guys who burst onto the scene. Landon Bonner came into Sophomore National as a Top 500 ranked player and after an impressive showing, left with all eyes on him as a rankings riser in the class. The left-handed hitting shortstop from The Colony, Texas, had a summer to remember with All-Tournament Team selections in three of his next four events culminating with a historic performance at the 2025 PG 15U WWBA National Championship. The Hebron High School prep went 20-for-24 in nine games for 5 Star Mafia 15U Black with four homeruns and 12 runs batted in. He also scored 17 runs and finished with a mind-boggling 2.500...

Tournaments | Story | 12/16/2025

16u Tourney All-American Team

AJ Denny

Hitter of the Year: Koa Romero is the Hitter of the Year for the 16u group, as he would come to every premier event of the summer and earn All-Tournament honors (Beast of the East, 16/17u WWBA, Jupiter) in every single one. Over 82 plate appearances, Romero would pump ten homeruns with forty two RBI and sixteen walks, good for a .378 average and 1.339 OPS. The performance on volume at the best events of the year pushed Romero over the edge here, as he’d hit a pair of homeruns in Jupiter (one of them at 112 EV) as an underclassmen and collect double digit hits in BOTH WWBA events with a combined six jacks over the two tournaments. It was a summer that combined performance and winning on the biggest stages for Romero. It’s a quiet left-handed swing that packs a punch. He would reap the benefits of his performances, earning a commitment to LSU and jumping to the #74 prospect in...

College | Recruiting | 12/15/2025

Recruiting Notebook: December 15

John McAdams

Tucker Rice (27 MS) bumping up to 91; living hi-80s from real fast arm. Good SL @ 77-79 w/ depth & sold w/ intent. Loads of traits & strikes. #WWBA @PG_Uncommitted @PG_DeepSouth pic.twitter.com/DEjFqRcsIY — Perfect Game Scout (@PG_Scouting) July 6, 2025 Tucker Rice, RHP, Class of 2027 Commitment: Alabama Alabama has continued to stay red hot in the recruiting trail ever since August 1st rolled around on the calendar and have continued to stack major pieces in their ’27 class. They dip into Mississippi to land one of the premier arms and one that’s stood out on the circuit for quite some time. It’s a fast arm and the athleticism certainly shines working down the slope. The velocity has continued to tick up over the last calendar year and reached into the low-90s towards the end of the summer. He’s confident in his changeup and the breaking ball is...

Tournaments | Story | 12/15/2025

17u Tourney All-American Team

Vincent Cervino

There’s a lot of talent throughout this 2026 class, filled with the big-name stars, to talent that spreads across the nation. It’s been a lot of fun seeing these prospects grow and develop over the years, from the days of watching some of these guys at the 13/14u days at events on the circuit, to now where they are all graduating seniors in 2026. There’s been new faces who have popped along the way over the years, even in 2026, where some players who were relatively undiscovered, have come out and made a name for themselves with a statement performance. Between the familiar and the new, there’s a lot of names on this list that are going to be quite regularly talked about on the circuit, and for good reason. Whether it’s PG All-Americans or not, there’s a lot of names with superstar potential at the next level. We’ve got 14 PG All-Americans...

Loading more articles...

PERFECTGAME.TV

SPEND MORE. SAVE MORE.

Event Types

Special Events

Featured

Baseball Showcases

Player Rankings

DRAFT BOARD

Team Rankings

Travel Team Rankings

College Rankings

Softball Player Rankings

Top Ranked Players

PG Rawlings Preseason All American

Top Ranked Teams

Recruiting Menu

Event Results

PG EVENT CONTENT

HIGH SCHOOL CONTENT

MLB DRAFT CONTENT

COLLEGE CONTENT

RECENT ARTICLES

PG Alumni

NOTABLE MLB PLAYERS

About Perfect Game