By Dick Mills


My name is Dick Mills. I am a former pitcher with the Boston Red Sox organization. I was once a #2 draft pick. I was on the big league roster three times. If you can still find one, my Topps Rookie Card came out in 1971. I have been a pitching instructor my entire adult life.
I am about to explain to you why this letter could be the most important information on pitching you will ever read.
In 2004, after being a pitching instructor nearly my entire adult life, I broke away from the pitching establishment because I learned some new information that I had never heard before that is all backed up by the latest sports science research and that not 1 coach in 100 fully understands. This new information, which I have been teaching now for the past four years is almost the exact opposite of what most pitching coaches and instructors are teaching. But it is all backed up with real sports science research rather than the beliefs of most pitching instructors. And our students and clients are discovering is the missing link to better velocity and control with not as much as a sore arm let alone an injury.
My web site has been online since August of 1996. As of September 1, 2007 we have helped 19,227 clients…pitchers from Little League to pro baseball and have helped hundreds get college scholarships. And if you take the time to read this letter you will learn many of the reasons why pitchers today are not successful. They simply are getting poor advice from their coaches and even from professional instructors. And in this letter I will prove it to you.

Before I tell you how I can help you help your son become a much better pitcher, I want you to listen to a true story about one of our customers and how bad coaching advice can actually ruin a boy's chances of reaching his peak potential. This may have cost this boy millions of dollars.
How would you feel if your son was ranked as one of the top 35 college players in the country going into his junior year of college pretty much assured he'd get drafted at least by the second or third round and have that dream die because an instructor gave him some very bad advice and it reduced his velocity 7 mph? That actually happened to one of my customers, a 6'3" 195 lb lefty, who had been on our program since his sophomore year of high school. Out of high school he was throwing 86-88 mph and as a college sophomore he was consistently throwing 89-91 mph. He got a scholarship to one of the premium Division 1 colleges in the nation.
Here's what happened. He wanted to see if he could add another 2-3 mph on his fastball so he set up some lessons with a well known instructor who didn't understand an important element of how the pitcher's body produces velocity. The instructor had this pitcher work on trying to produce more velocity "out in front" using a "towel drill" so he would be closer to the plate at ball release. This sounds good in theory but it misses one very important element of pitching mechanics—the trunk must turn first before it flexes forward. This instructor didn't understand that.
When a pitcher focuses only on arm extension his weight transfer is very poor so his trunk flexes forward before it rotates and that kills arm speed and adds stress. This cost him 7 mph on his fastball and instead of getting drafted in the second or third round…he went in the 23 rd. Those lessons with that misinformed instructor cost this boy in the neighborhood of $750,000 to a million in bonus money and a lot of heartache for he and his family.
Or have you heard of another hyped up drill that is being called "scapula loading." This too is supposed to boost velocity quickly by changing a pitcher's arm action…something you had better be very careful messing with. However, in my opinion this too will prove to be another disaster for pitchers who are looking for magic bullets rather than sensible instruction that focuses on "how to use the elastic energy of the body" to help create more arm speed. So the body does the work to speed up the arm while actually reducing stress and arm injury.

Here is the one secret to pitching velocity that you must learn if you ever hope to see him reach his full potential.

Pitching velocity is the result of how explosively the lower body moves from the back leg to the front leg while stretching out like a huge rubber band into a long stride while getting the upper body and arm in the right position to throw.

The single biggest reason that more high school and college pitchers never reach their full potential is because they waste their time doing activities that will never produce the promised results of better velocity or control. They are taught to believe that more arm strength will produce more velocity. This is wrong!
If you are interested in the truth about how to help your son reach the next level as a pitcher…without any hyped up magic bullets such as weighted baseballs, doing endless long toss or some special velocity drill, then I can show you how to smooth out and make a couple of changes in his mechanics and his overall practice routine that will end your frustration about what he should do to improve…and improve a lot quicker than you thought possible. But you must read every word of this letter.
If you think magic bullets are the answer for producing more velocity then you should ask yourself why there are no magic bullets in other sports. It's simple. Because magic bullets are a myth. They are pure hype. And if you buy into them you will regret it because you son can never get back wasted time.
The only thing that is going to help your son improve his velocity is to help him build an explosive delivery by using his lower body to build a long stride.