Books: "Unhittable" By Rob Friedman

 

Unhittable: How Technology, Mavericks, and Innovators Engineered Baseball's New Era of Pitching Dominance

By Rob Friedman

Harper; hardcover, 288 pages; $32.00

Rob Friedman is the creator of PitchingNinja, as he identifies himself on social media. He is a pitching analyst for ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, ESPN College Baseball and Major League Baseball. He also has written for Fox Sports and given pregame analysis on Apple TV. 

Unhittable is Friedman's new book, and it's perfect to read as we're amidst the baseball postseason, as it examines why pitchers have an unprecedented advantage in this era. Even more so than what is viewed as the peak of pitching performance, 1968.

With pitch design and biomechcanics adding to a pitcher's arsenal, batting averages are closer to the Deadball era than ever before, and team records for strikeouts are continuously broken.

Friedman had an interesting path to becoming a self-taught coach who became a top pitching analyst. He graduated top of his class from Emory Law School, practiced law for several years, and became general counsel of a cable modem and telephony company called Arris.

Then, he co-founded the startup Digital Envoy, which created one of the first geolocation technologies. They built it into a global data powerhouse over the following two decades, as they reshaped how online businesses understood their users. 

Friedman never got too far from baseball, especially as his son, Jack, started to play and built himself into a top prospect that earned a scholarship to Georgia Tech. That was before he left a high school game, and as he glanced towards the dugout, it was obvious the pain he was in.

Jack suffered a labrum injury, which was the beginning of the end of his career, and it focused Rob on helping pitchers succeed and remain durable. At the same time, he realized how lucky that they were able to afford a high level of coaching and information that helped Jack become the type of pitcher that was coveted by colleges.

Friedman created PitchingNinja to make high-quality pitching education and exposure free and accessible to everyone. In 2014, it started with posting videos on Twitter. What he envisioned as helping dozens of people, including players, coaches, and parents.

"To my surprise, the account took off," Friedman writes. "MLB pitchers loved the breakdowns. Coaches appreciated the details. Fans loved the nasty pitch clips. It turned into a hub - not just for entertainment, but for education and exposure. And through FlatGround,it became a way for unsigned players to get noticed by scouts and schools. That part matters to me more than anything. If even one kid gets a shot they wouldn't have otherwise had, it's worth it."

Friedman is sought out by Cy Young Award winners like Tarik Skubal, now on the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Paul Skenes, and All-Star pitchers including Yu Darvish. There are three people who he focuses on as the influential figures in this revolution.

Tom House is a former Major League pitcher primarily for the Atlanta Braves turned coaching visionary, was an early user of cutting-edge technology to refine the techniques of legendary flamethrowers including Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. His methods ushered in a new era marked by the collision of technology and tradition.

Brent Strom, most known for his long tenure as the Houston Astros pitching coach from 2014-21, used data to revive pitchers' careers. He also helped stars including Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, and Charlie Morton use technology to enhance performance.

Kyle Boddy, who founded Driveline Baseball, has trained such elite pitchers like Shohei Ohtani, Clayton Kershaw, and Trevor Bauer, and he focuses on advanced analytics and technology. He took his technical expertise, with an inspiration from Moneyball, and put it towards helping both injury prevention and player performance. Like Friedman, he's self-taught and took his background in economics and computer science to confront traditional coaching norms.

In this excerpt, Friedman writes of the unique place of pitching in baseball, and how it has evolved to this moment: There's a moment of quiet before a pitch.

The pitcher stands alone, sixty feet, six inches away, gripping the ball like a magician holding his trick. The crowd buzzes, but the air feels still, as if everyone senses that something devastating is about to happen. The batter digs in, helmet tilted forward, but twitching like a coiled spring. 

And then it comes. 

A slider breaks two feet in the blink of an eye and drops off the table. The batter swings. The crowd gasps. The ball slaps the catcher's mitt with a pop, and all the hitter can do is shake his head.

It's the kind of pitch that makes people lean back in their seats and say, 'No chance.' But this isn't luck. This pitch wasn't born in a backyard or shaped only by feel. It was built. Designed. Engineered to be unhittable.

Baseball hasn't always been this way. For most of its 175-year history, pitching was simpler and rougher around the edges. There were legends, of course - Walter Johnson throwing bullets before radar guns existed. Bob Feller racing a motorcycle, Nolan Ryan lighting up the gun into his forties. But for all their dominance, they were mostly guessing. They were feeling their way through the game.

Pitchers used to be artists, relying on instinct, toughness, and maybe a little sweat or spitball magic. Coaching was vague. If you had a fastball, great. A curveball? Even better. Want to get better? Figure it out. Spin rate, vertical break, and release height weren't part of the conversation. It was more grit and trial and error than science.

That has changed. 

Today's pitchers are biomechanical engineers in cleats. Their deliveries are studied frame by frame. Their grips are optimized. Their arsenals are built to tunnel, spin, fade, rise, and vanish.

The mound is no longer a battlefield - it is a laboratory.

Kids now train to throw like scientists. They may dream about being the next Nolan Ryan. But they're studying Rapsodo charts, analyzing iPhone video, tweaking finger pressure to vary spin efficiency. They are searching for any edge they can find.

The tools are everywhere. Edgertronic cameras capture video at over one thousand frames per second. Motion capture rigs track the body down to the millimeter. Pitching machines replicate the exact release point and movement of big-league arms. A pitcher today has access to more information about one throw than an old school Hall of Famer had in a lifetime.

It's hard to say exactly when the revolution started. Maybe it was Tom House mapping mechanics with biomechanics before anyone else cared. Maybe it was Trevor Bauer, a pitcher as known for challenging convention as hitters, deciding he didn't want to just play the game - he wanted to decode it. Maybe it was Kyle Boddy testing training ideas in a Washington warehouse. However it began, it's now everywhere.

Fastballs are faster. Sliders are sharper. New pitches are no longer stumbled upon; they're engineered with intent. Pitchers throw harder, longer, and with more deception than at any point in the game's history. Pull up a highlight reel. Every night, a new pitch goes viral. A curveball that defies physics. A sweeper that disappears behind a left-handed batter. A splitter that vanishes under the barrel.

This is the era of pitch design, biomechanics, and constant innovation.