Chase Dollander knew the pitch felt good — no, great — when it left his right hand last fall. His mechanics were all synced up. It was warm in Knoxville, Tenn., where he was throwing in a fall scrimmage ahead of his junior season with Tennessee. So when someone told him he had touched 100 mph, he wasn’t exactly surprised. Dollander was just so excited that, once he finished pitching, he ran to the iPad to see the numbers for himself.
“I can still picture them clearly: one, zero, zero with some decimals after that, too,” Dollander, a top MLB draft prospect, said in March. “I know I have it in there; now it’s a matter of being able to maintain it. I’m on this trajectory to keep gaining, keep gaining, keep gaining.”
With that, Dollander provided a fitting tagline for college pitchers in 2023. Velocity continues to rise and rise. After Ben Joyce threw a 105.5-mph fastball for Tennessee last year, high-end velocity is testing imaginations again (not to mention the limits of the human body). At LSU, Paul Skenes, another projected top-five pick, can pump 102 and sit 98 to 99 late in starts. The mid- to high 90s feel like what the low 90s were five, 10 years ago, before a velocity obsession trickled down from the major leagues — and before teenage prospects had personal coaches and their sessions focused on spin rates, induced vertical break and biomechanics.
Those who don’t have velocity in college need it. Those who have plus velocity want more. A week into April, the average fastball in Division I was 89.2 mph, up from right around 88 last season. But at premier programs, average velocity — 94.4 for LSU, 93.4 for Tennessee — mirrored what’s being clocked in the majors.
One common question is what has caused this trend. Another is what effects it may have on the incoming wave of pitchers and hitters. And another, and perhaps the most critical to answer, is what an unending pursuit of velocity could do to young arms.
“If you want to play high-level baseball, you have to throw hard. It’s a prerequisite now,” said Mike McFerran, who has shepherded staff-wide velocity gains as coordinator of the Wake Forest Pitching Lab. “I think the value on it is through the roof, and it’s become something that there’s more of a science to for a lot more people around the country. So they are investing their time and money to throw harder so they can accomplish what they want to, be on the team that they want, go to college or even get to pro ball.”
Following a series against LSU this month, Tony Vitello, Tennessee’s coach, thought back to his playing days. There was a closer at Baylor, a righty named Kyle Edens, who threw 97, maybe 98. Vitello recalled that being treated like a phenomenon. He remembered chatter spreading across the Big 12, even the country, about Eden’s blink-and-you-will-miss-it fastball.
Vitello sort of made 2002 sound like baseball’s stone ages.
“That was something that stood out extraordinarily,” Vitello said. “But here, among these two teams, I think you have eight or nine guys who can do that. So that puts it into a little perspective. I’m getting older; the athletes are getting better.”
Given their resources, Tennessee, LSU, Wake Forest and their peers are run more like major league teams than typical college clubs. For example, when Skenes was asked about his spike in velocity this season, he pointed to coaching and the nutritionists and sleep specialists who help him recover between starts. College starters pitch once a week instead of every five days, another reason they are able to reach numbers they may not hit at the next level. But Skenes’s point is important: Seeing a really big number is cool. Seeing a lot of big numbers, though, takes constant effort from players and staff.
Before he transferred to LSU, Skenes was a two-way player at Air Force. And before he arrived at Air Force, he worked with Eugene Bleecker, the founder of 108 Performance, to hone the sequencing of his mechanics at a young age. Dollander, similarly, trained at a multisport facility while he was a high-schooler in Georgia. After transferring from Georgia Southern to Tennessee two falls ago, he dropped almost 40 pounds by overhauling his diet (and running a whole lot).
“A lot of it, I think, is that strength and conditioning has just gotten so much better,” said Skenes, who barely threw his low-90s change-up in nonconference play because hitters could look for the fastball and time it better than his actual heater. Their familiarity with high velocity has forced Skenes, Dollander and other high-major pitchers to fine-tune their secondary pitches and be even more deliberate with pitch sequencing. It may eventually help with the transition to pro ball.
“Sleeping well the night before a start isn’t going to make your top-end velo go crazy,” Skenes continued. “If that was the case, everyone would be throwing in the high 90s. But knowing how much sleep you need, what you need to eat, what to do in the weight room between outings can go a long way to throwing harder for a longer period of time. I want to hold 99 as long as I can. Next month, next year, whatever — I want to hold 100 as long as I can. Then 101 after that, if it’s possible. We’ll see.”
Instant access to data adds another layer to the velocity chase. There’s a reason Dollander rushed to see his 1-0-0 on an iPad screen in the fall. Baseball with technology and advanced metrics is the only version of the game his generation has played. Offseason training at Driveline, Tread or Wake’s pitching lab, among other popular facilities, is also a norm.
Skenes promised that he looks at the scoreboard only when a pitch feels really, really good. LSU’s stadium radar gun is connected to its Trackman technology, meaning players, coaches and fans see the mph for each pitch with two decimals. When Skenes threw 101.5 against Tennessee on March 30, he didn’t know it until he looked through the metrics report left on the chair at his locker. A gasp from the crowd didn’t tip him off.
But such specific knowledge of the numbers does worry some coaches. If a pitcher knows he is oh-so-close to 95, 98 or 100, he might reach back for a bit extra, altering his mechanics in the slightest way, and strain his elbow or shoulder. Arms are fragile. Sixteen- to 22-year-old arms are especially so.
“It feels like there is nothing we can do to stop it,” said Wes Johnson, who was the Minnesota Twins’ pitching coach until he left to take the same job with LSU last June. “If a kid believes he can touch a certain velo and we’ll give him a scholarship, his whole goal will be to do that, even if he’s 100 percent not ready to. But then what if he has arm problems here or as a senior in high school and winds up having surgery? What if he’s not totally right again?
“It’s crazy how hard some of these young players are throwing. But it’s also very scary.”