Don’t Guess at Your Offseason: Why Pitchers Should Start With an Assessment

The offseason gives baseball pitchers an opportunity to get stronger, improve their throwing, work on velocity, and prepare for the next season.

But there is an important question that should come before deciding what exercises to do, how much to throw, or what mechanical changes to make:

What does this pitcher actually need?

It is easy to enter the offseason with a list of things to add—more strength, more velocity, more mobility, more throwing, more arm care. More is not always the answer.

At Ignite Performance Physical Therapy, we believe a better offseason starts by establishing a baseline. Understand the athlete. Understand the pitching delivery. Identify the areas that deserve attention. Then build the training plan around those findings.

Start by Understanding the Pitching Delivery

Pitching is a highly coordinated movement that requires the entire body to create, transfer, and ultimately manage force.

That means evaluating a pitcher should involve more than looking at where the ball goes or how hard it is thrown.

One tool we use at Ignite is the DVS Baseball Pitching Assessment.

The Delivery Value System, or DVS, breaks the pitching delivery into six components:

• Mass & Momentum

• Arm Swing

• Posture

• Position at Foot Strike

• Path of Arm Acceleration

• Finish

These components are combined into a DVS Score from 0–24, creating an objective way to evaluate specific parts of the pitching sequence and establish a baseline that can be reassessed over time.

Using DVS X-Ray technology, we can capture a pitcher from multiple views with high-speed video and use markerless motion-capture technology to analyze the delivery.

But the number itself is not the end goal.

The value of the assessment is understanding what the number represents and what we should do with that information.

There Is No One “Perfect” Pitching Delivery

One of the mistakes we want to avoid is assuming that every pitcher should look exactly the same.

They should not.

Pitchers have different body types, movement strategies, mobility, strength, injury histories, throwing histories, and skill levels. What works well for one athlete may not be the appropriate solution for another.

The purpose of an assessment is not to force every athlete into the same model. It is to identify how that athlete currently moves through the pitching sequence and determine whether there are areas that deserve further attention.

There is also research supporting the importance of looking at pitching mechanics objectively.

A study published in Orthopedics evaluated video of 449 professional pitchers and examined six components of the pitching delivery used within the Delivery Value System. Higher overall delivery scores were associated with a lower risk of major throwing-related injury in that professional-pitcher population. Importantly, this does not mean a DVS Score can predict with certainty whether an individual athlete will become injured, particularly in younger pitchers. It does support the value of examining pitching mechanics as one part of a larger assessment. (Sutter et al., 2018)

The Pitch Is Only Part of the Assessment

This is where the process becomes especially important.

We don't just want to understand the pitch. We want to understand the pitcher.

Suppose we identify something in an athlete's delivery that we would like to improve. Before immediately giving that pitcher a mechanical cue, we should ask another question:

Does the athlete currently have the physical capacity to make that change?

For example, we may need to consider:

• Shoulder mobility and strength

• Scapular function

• Thoracic mobility

• Hip mobility

• Lower-extremity strength

• Trunk control

• Rotational strength and power

• Previous injuries

• Current throwing workload

A mechanical finding may sometimes be a skill problem. In other situations, the athlete may be using that movement strategy because of a physical limitation somewhere else in the kinetic chain.

That distinction matters.

Simply telling a pitcher to move differently does not necessarily give their body the ability to do it.

That is why combining a pitching assessment with a sports physical therapy and performance evaluation can provide a much more complete picture of the athlete.

Turn the Assessment Into an Offseason Plan

This is ultimately where testing becomes useful.

We do not test athletes just to collect more numbers.

Assessment should help determine what happens next.

One pitcher may need to improve lower-body strength and force production. Another may need more rotational power. Another may demonstrate a shoulder mobility or strength deficit that should be addressed before significantly increasing throwing volume. Another may primarily need skill development within a particular portion of the pitching sequence.

Those athletes should not all receive the exact same offseason program.

Instead, the process should look more like:

Assess → Identify Priorities → Train → Reassess

DVS Baseball uses a similar assess-develop-measure model: establish where the pitcher currently is, use those findings to guide development, and then measure whether the changes translate to performance.

That is also how we approach athlete development at Ignite.

The technology gives us information. Our job is to interpret that information in the context of the entire athlete and turn it into an actionable plan.

Make This Offseason Intentional

If you are a pitcher, or the parent of a pitcher, the offseason is valuable time.

Don't spend it guessing.

Before automatically adding another velocity program, changing your mechanics based on something you saw online, or simply doing more of everything, establish where you are first.

Understand your pitching delivery.

Understand your body.

Identify what deserves attention.

Then build.

Ignite Performance Physical Therapy is currently offering DVS Baseball Pitching Assessments for pitchers preparing for their fall and winter offseason.

If you want to learn more about what the assessment includes and whether it is appropriate for your athlete, send us a message with the word “PITCHING.”

Ignite Your Recovery. Elevate Your Performance.