Driveline Baseball -

Consider the case of two pitchers who own the same walk rate, and roughly the same average miss distance.

Many would be tempted to evaluate them as each possessing the same level of command.

But consider how the two arms are arriving at similar walk percentages: one is spraying around his intended locations, whereas the other enjoys a tighter miss pattern but is hunting corners, giving himself less margin for error.

Same outcome. Different skills. Different problems.

"It starts with what command is," said Connor White, Driveline's director of pitching. "If you pulled someone out of the stands and asked for a good measure of command, they'd probably say strike percentage or walk rate. ...

"There's a disconnect, though, between the skill or the miss-system component, and the actual location results."

At Driveline, we separate the concept of command into two components.

The first is the physical ability to execute - how tightly a pitcher can cluster his pitches around his intended target.

The second is location strategy, which is often overlooked: Is the pitcher choosing the right target in the first place?

These distinctions matter. They are different things.

Walk rate measures the outcome. It doesn't necessarily explain the process at arriving there.

"Two guys with the same high walk rate could have totally different reasons why," White said.

That matters because common advice for a pitcher with good stuff, but too many walks, is often some version of "aim down the middle."

That might work for one pitcher. It might do very little for another.

We've come a long way in helping pitchers add velocity, pitches - improving their stuff. But there is far less understanding of what command is and how to sharpen it. It's not just a skill issue but also one tied to strategy.

We're not aiming laser pointers here

Former Driveline trainer Toby Nagel, now a coach in the Miami Marlins organization, has compared the problem to golf.

Good golfers don't simply aim at the flag when attacking a green.

They understand their dispersion pattern - where their shots tend to miss - and choose targets that maximize the expected outcome.

Pitchers ought to operate similarly.

Pitchers miss their spot all the time. Even MLB aces. Trying to be perfect is a trap - it's about smart misses. Context matters. 0-2 count? You can miss off the plate. 3-1 count? You better know your highest % execution spot & pitch.

— Toby Nagel (@toby_nagel01) July 15, 2025

Misses are inevitable. The average location miss at the MLB level is about a foot. The key is having smarter misses.

"You're thinking of aiming like a laser pointer," White said of many pitchers. "You're playing 'The Show' and selecting where you want this pitch to end up. But what actually comes out of your hand is a cloud. It's a shotgun, not a sniper rifle."

Thinking in terms of expected value changes the question.

Instead of asking only, Can I hit the corner?, a pitcher ought to ask: Given how I tend to miss, where should I aim?

"For a lot of pitchers, one of the first steps is realizing that in most counts, to most hitters, you shouldn't be aiming for the corner," White said. "One of the biggest pieces is getting guys to stop aiming for corners and, rather, aim for thirds."

White notes if a pitcher aims for the edge, half of their offerings will be out of the zone even if they're nailing their intended target with an elite miss pattern.

"If you aim for the outer third, you pull those misses back into more competitive misses," White said. "That's where understanding which pitches, which counts, and to which hitters - connecting that to the strategy of where to aim - is really valuable."

Where to aim is a subtle change in philosophy. And it produced a dramatic result for one pitcher.

How a major leaguer found his range

Janson Junk had spent his career setting his sights on the catcher's left shoulder when throwing his breaking ball.

He thought he was doing the right thing.

He wasn't.

Junk, a longtime Driveline athlete, became one of the first professional pitchers to use Driveline's Intended Zones Tracker technology throughout an entire offseason during the winter of 2024-25. The training tech tracks the actual location of a pitch against the pitcher's intended target in a bullpen-like setting.

The feedback showed Junk something he hadn't recognized. He was consistently missing in a particular way.

"I always thought that was the right thing to do but more often than not I would leave that pitch arm side," Junk told me. "I was like, 'Ugh, I swear I am doing everything right.' ... But in reality, I was missing more arm side with that location."

So, Junk changed where he started the pitch.

The results after a change in process were striking.

After walking 8.3% of batters in the minors in 2024 - the same rate he posted in a brief major-league stint - Junk cut his walk rate to 2.9% in 2025, tied for the best mark in the majors.

His breaking ball run value totaled -2 runs above average entering the 2025 season, compared to a +6 run value in 2025.

He hadn't suddenly revamped his mechanics.

He hadn't discovered a new breaking ball.

He had changed the strategy around his existing miss pattern.

"One of the biggest advantages of training on the Intended Zone is pitchers getting a better understanding of where they need to start their pitches," White said.

That distinction is important.

Consider how far-reaching the ramifications can be: how many high arms could cut their walks by a batter per inning or more if they learned where to start their breaking balls?

"Your average high schooler has a terrible idea of where they need to start their stuff," White said. "'Yeah, your curveball is nasty, but you just bounce it off the plate every time and your catcher hates you.' ... Where do you normally miss? Down. Where do you need to start it? A little higher."

Command isn't simply accuracy; it's also about where a pitcher misses - knowing that - and building a plan around it.

Shrinking the cloud

We want to improve the physical skill component of command, too.

While location strategy determines where a pitcher ought to aim, training protocols can reduce the size of the cloud, of their average miss distance.

Our training philosophy at Driveline draws from modern motor-learning research, concepts like Bernstein's hammer: elite blacksmiths always hit the center of the blade, despite never having the exact same hammer-swing mechanics.

The concept tied to the hammer principle is "repetition without repetition." Meaning the body learns to master a task without reproducing the exact same movement every time.

"You never throw the same pitch twice," White said. "If your mechanics are built around memorization, it's going to fail ... in the same way that if you memorize a speech and then you get interrupted or stumble over your words, you don't have anything to fall back on.

"If you land a little too closed or a little too open, something else in the delivery has to account for that for the baseball to still come out going toward the plate."

How do we train this concept?

Consider that a traditional bullpen might look something like this: warm up, throw several fastballs, several sliders, several changeups, then finish with hitters. That doesn't challenge the pitcher to improve skills or ready him for a game environment.

In games, the target changes, the pitch selection is more random, and the counts and leverage change along with the hitters.

At Driveline we challenge pitchers with environments more representative of the problem.

Our skill-building principles range from randomized bullpens, to employing a variety of constraints, data-based feedback loops, and more difficult training environments.

The goal isn't to memorize a delivery. It is to develop a movement solution that can adapt when the delivery inevitably varies.

That is where the distinction between command and location becomes useful.

One pitcher may need to shrink his dispersion pattern.

Another may need to learn how to aim his miss pattern more effectively.

Some may need both.

If we can measure it, we can improve it

Pitching development has become increasingly sophisticated at measuring velocity, pitch movement, and pitch shape.

Command progression has been harder to quantify.

Tools such as Intended Zones provide a feedback loop: Where did you intend to throw the pitch? Where did it actually go? How large is the miss? Is the miss random or systematic? Is the miss pattern getting better or worse?

Junk's fastball location improved in 2025, too. His four-seamer missed by an average of 12 inches (2021-24) to 9.6 inches in 2025.

And minor league pitcher Stefan Raeth offers another early example of the benefits of training with Intended Zones.

Raeth's walk rates in his first three seasons of affiliated baseball were 14.3%, 13%, and 10%.

After an offseason of throwing to Intended Zones? His walk rate fell to 5.4% in 2025.

In exploring the underlying measures, Raeth said his average miss distance with his sweeper was 17 inches. By his final bullpen of last offseason, it was just shy of 10 inches.

"You're seeing better real-time live results and it's just quicker," Raeth told me last year. "You are able to identify that you are missing, and you are able to target this better."

For decades, pitchers have been told to throw to their target, to throw strikes.

A more sophisticated approach begins with different questions:

• What does your miss pattern look like?
• Where should you aim given that pattern?
• And can you train your body to make that pattern tighter?

We can improve the process. We can then improve the results. But it begins with understanding what command is and is not.