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247 Sports: Texas A&M ends day with by adding TCU baseball signee

TopFrog

Lifelong Frog
Texas A&M ends day with by adding TCU baseball signee

ByJEFF TARPLEY

Texas A&M baseball added assistant coach Michael Earley and transfer Jack Moss from Arizona State today in the most eventful day for the program since former TCU head coach Jim Schlossnagle came on board earlier this month. Schlossnagle then added one of his former commits in Fort Worth to the mix as pitcher Landon Ellington (who signed with the Horned Frogs in the fall of 2020) to the Aggies.

Read more at https://247sports.com/college/texas-am/Article/Texas-AM-baseball-commit-Landon-Ellington--166928528/
 

Moose Stuff

Active Member
Did you not read the article? His 90 mph fastball is in the 99th percentile. 99th PERCENTILE!!!!

That made me laugh. You can tell the dude who wrote that article has no idea what he’s talking about. The average FB across all of college baseball last year was 88.8 mph. The 90th percentile was at 92.5 mph. So yeah this kid is capable of TOUCHING a velocity that makes him perhaps somewhat unique at the HS level but he’s as generic as generic can be the second he steps on a college campus.

And FWIW I’d ballpark the number of HS kids capable of touching 90 in the state of Texas at easily over 100.
 

Pharm Frog

Full Member
There are TEAMS in the DFW area that have 3 guys touching 90. Keller definitely did.

I've seen high school games as recently as 6 years ago where two teams combined for 6 or 7 "pitchers" who touched 90. And that was just in central Oklahoma and not even at the largest school division (although admittedly recruitment was pretty blatant). One of the kids involved wasn't allowed to pitch much in high school because his control was such that he was a danger to batters, umpires, mascots, and people working in the concession stand. You go to a decent summer event and you routinely see early 90's from many more. Go to an area code tryout or the Owasso scout day and you'll see 90's all day long. Been this way for a while now.

Quotationed "pitchers" become some of these kids had not yet learned to "pitch" but they could bring velo. And IMO that's why velo isn't as intimidating to a lot of good hitters as it once was. Throw them an ankle-high change up on 2-0 and watch them corkscrew into the ground though.
 
That made me laugh. You can tell the dude who wrote that article has no idea what he’s talking about. The average FB across all of college baseball last year was 88.8 mph. The 90th percentile was at 92.5 mph. So yeah this kid is capable of TOUCHING a velocity that makes him perhaps somewhat unique at the HS level but he’s as generic as generic can be the second he steps on a college campus.

And FWIW I’d ballpark the number of HS kids capable of touching 90 in the state of Texas at easily over 100.

Plus it's all about spin rate now that we have modern technology to track it
 

Moose Stuff

Active Member
Plus it's all about spin rate now that we have modern technology to track it

Not accurate at all. There are dozens of very good MLB pitchers with generic spin rates. The best college pitcher in this year’s draft (Jack Leiter) has extremely vanilla spin rate data. Ditto for 2018 1/1 pick Casey Mize. Spin rate when combined with velocity and things like vertical approach angle, vertical movement, spin axis, release height, extension, etc…. Can be a key separator between being good and being great but lack of it doesn’t prevent someone from being good. It’s FAR less important than velocity.
 
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