During his freshman season at Whittier College, Parker Eastwood Lilles felt like he wasn't getting the development some of his friends back home in Vancouver were enjoying. To be fair to Whittier, it's a Division III program with limited resources.
What did his friends have? To improve their skills, they were traveling to an outside facility a couple hours south of their native British Columbia.
"I kind of felt like I wasn't getting the hands-on training that I needed, especially being a younger freshman coming from Canada," Eastwood Lilles said. "I started seeing what some friends were doing with Driveline in the summer, and I thought, 'This looks like a program that could really level up my game.'"
Eastwood Lilles reached out to Driveline, explored the training options and pricing, and decided to sign up for a one-year program last summer.
"I talked to my dad, and we both agreed that spending the summer last year down in Seattle, as much as possible, and training with those guys would be the best fit," Eastwood Lilles said. "And I ultimately loved it."
So last June, he began driving down each Friday morning, traveling through the Peace Arch border crossing, navigating I-5, and covering about 150 miles to Driveline. He'd train with us during the weekend and then travel back to Canada.
"I would always say to my parents leaving, like, this environment really suits me — I almost feel more accomplished when I'm hitting with these guys, even if I have a bad day, because there's always something to build on with Driveline," Eastwood Lilles said. "It's just something you don't get every day at a Division III level."
It was a one-year journey that led to Eastwood Lilles gaining a remarkable 10 mph increase in average bat speed.
"An extra 10 mph of bat speed is no joke," said his primary Driveline trainer, Carson Evans. "That is a massive change in the ceiling, and floor, of the type of hitter you can be."
Evans said Eastwood Lilles' average bat speed was around 63 mph when he began training last summer, and now sits at 73 mph. His max exit velocity jumped by 14 mph.
It is remarkable progress.
The massive change could allow him to raise his prospect status enough to play at the Division I level. He is in the transfer portal now.
Eastwood Lilles' growth, and the jump in his prospect status, is exactly the kind of outcome we want to see with our Driveline athletes.
But it wasn't an overnight success story for Eastwood Lilles. It wasn't a one-tweak-away discovery in our Kent, Wash. Launchpad. And the growth didn't start in the swing lab — it started in the gym.
The first flaw Driveline identified: Eastwood Lilles needed to add weight and strength.
"The biggest thing for me was eating more," Eastwood Lilles said. "I mean, I got into creatine, finally, which was huge."
Eastwood Lilles ate and ate and ate, and he committed to the plan developed by Driveline's strength and conditioning staff, including high-performance trainer Zach Settles.
"(Settles) is just one of those guys that if I text and ask about a program, he knows what he's talking about, and that's what I look for in a strength coach," Eastwood Lilles said.
The high-performance staff placed him on a regimen designed to strengthen his body in ways relevant to baseball movements. Driveline's high-performance efforts are focused on data-driven biomechanics, overload/underload training, and athletic development.
"I think the uniqueness of the Driveline workouts is what makes them so beneficial," Eastwood Lilles said. "What I mean is, they won't tell you to do typical squats and bench press — I mean, they do sometimes — but it will be like single-leg iso safety-bar squats, whatever it is, and it really targets the movements that contribute to baseball. And it's never boring. My workouts take just over an hour, but I am dead by the end of them. Every movement targets something new, and I can barely walk the next day sometimes, but it's exactly what I need."
He started at 170 pounds when he first walked through the gym doors last summer, and today he weighs nearly 200 pounds. That played a massive role in his bat-speed gains.
"He got much, much stronger," Evans said. "Just being able to literally put more force into the ground and then eventually translate it into bat speed."
On top of that added strength, Evans began helping him with underload/overload programs. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were all bat-speed training days, when swinging faster was the top focus of training.
"Just focus on moving as fast as you can," Evans said.
The progress Eastwood Lilles witnessed was undeniable.
"I've seen some pretty cool exit velo numbers above 100 mph, which is always the goal," Eastwood Lilles said, "and my average bat speed is creeping toward the mid-to-high 70s in the cage."
But there was also a focus on training to improve his bat path, to give those speed gains full utility. There were plenty of Kershaw drills, designed to improve balance, stability, and timing during the stride by isolating a hitter's forward move.
Evans also had Eastwood Lilles regularly go through Hook 'Em drills, which promote an even coil of the torso and pelvis at the loaded position, then rotate the hips open into foot plant. The idea is to feel aggressive but under control.
"With the hook and its variations, the constraint was designed to help him control his forward move," Evans said. "We wanted him to get in the rhythm of doing it a little bit easier."
"There were other drills and constraints, including using a short-bat implement to address a particular swing flaw," Evans said. "... We try to use the objective data as much as we can. Attack angle is a big one for him."
They had noticed early on that Eastwood Lilles' best exit velocities were coming on balls with low launch angles — almost always singles in a best-case scenario. That wasn't going to let him optimize his ability.
"We used the short bat to promote better posture and help him backspin the ball consistently, especially to the pull side," Evans said. "A lot of it was just pointing to ball flight, and how that changes based on how he moves, and using that as feedback, because that's really what we were after."
The results followed. Last season, Eastwood Lilles increased his OPS by 258 points — a massive gain.
"That was some of the best baseball I've ever played," Eastwood Lilles said. "I had the confidence of every trainer behind me in Seattle. I would talk to Carson every week. Having Driveline is like having another home, and I could really rely on them for all the support that I needed, which I wouldn't get with a Division III program."
How improved is Eastwood Lilles?
"I think he could be an impactful player at that level," Evans said of Division I.
And if that comes to fruition, all those commutes down I-5, to and from the facility — all that work will have been well worth the price. Dreams do come true at Driveline.
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