Brick by Brick-Laying the foundation

One of our biggest velocity gainers from this offseason was Teddy Bancroft, a Junior pitcher at Brunswick School. In his first offseason with us Teddy made the jump from 80 to 85 and projected as an athlete that was poised to make another leap forward this offseason. Our primary focus with Teddy was to add on some body weight without sacrificing any of his power. Teddy started the offseason weighing 175 lbs, through diligent work with both his nutrition and efforts in the weight room, Teddy was able to put on over 25 lbs while raising his peak power on a countermovement jump by over 1500 Watts. Teddy already had top line power for his age with an average jump height of over 20 inches on the CMJ but adding over 25 lbs while maintaining that jump height truly moves him off the chart.

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From a throwing perspective, Teddy had a tendency to fall down the mound without engaging his lower half which caused his center of mass to get too far forward which limited his ability to block that momentum on his front side. Through a focus on engaging the lower half with step behinds and step backs coupled with newly acquired strength and power in the weight room Teddy showed great improvement with his ability to control, accelerate and ultimately decelerate his center of mass down the mound. This took his top fastball velocity from 85 to 91 mph and has him consistently throwing bullpens over 90 mph.

The progress didn’t stop there as Teddy improved his pitch shapes tremendously this offseason gaining 3 inches of IVB on his 4-seam by improving his direction and extension down the mound. He also sured up the shapes on his slider in curveball, throwing a harder shorter gyro slider paired with a bigger breaking curveball that layers well off his fastball. All things considered it’s hard to have a better off-season than Ted had, and he is primed to make a name for himself this spring.          ‍

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