https://985thesportshub.com/listicle/milliken-kyle-boddy-joins-red-sox-pitching-development-makeover/
If there’s been one clear message sent by the Red Sox in the last few months, it’s been that the organization’s pitching pipeline needed a makeover that would erase almost two decades of shortcomings. That started with the hiring of new CBO Craig Breslow, who was the face of the Cubs overhaul in pitching development over the last few seasons. Since being brought aboard, he has wasted no time beefing up the pitching infrastructure, with the likes of Andrew Bailey, Justin Willard, and now the founder of Driveline, Kyle Boddy, joining the mix.
Boddy, who will be serving as a Special Advisor to Breslow for the upcoming season, will be assisting in Research & Development on the pitching side of things. He’s become a titan in that space since Driveline was founded in 2007, bringing a data-driven approach to every aspect of training pitchers and hitters.
It’s clearly been a major success, as Boddy has left his mark on the sport in a big way while doing consultant work for a number of clubs and other professional sports leagues. He even took a full-time role with the Reds in October of 2019 as the director of pitching initiatives and pitching coordinator, with the goal of overhauling their minor league pitching development. There were other teams chasing him at the time, and while Boddy ended up leaving the organization after 2021 when his contract expired, it takes a quick look at the Reds rotation of promising young starters to see his impact.
During Boddy’s time with Reds, their minor-league arms went from the 6th-worst xERA to the 6th-best out of 30 organizations in just two years time. That played a big part in their farm system skyrocketing from 28 to 8 in Baseball America’s rankings.
There’s no denying that Boddy cracked the code for pitchers adding velocity, which was shown in a 2018 study by the American Sports Medicine Institute. It was led by former Red Sox athletic trainer and physical therapist Mike Reinold (fired after 2012), who cited that a weighted ball program could lead to a significant increase in how hard a pitcher throws (3.3% increase in this study of HS arms), but also resulted in a higher injury rate of 24%. What many get confused though is that Reinold wasn’t saying that the training itself was a problem, but how it was implemented.
Boddy didn’t deny those findings, but emphasized his training was not only about velocity but efficiency, which was why he believed his system was able to keep guys healthy through biomechanical analysis and proper rest. Reinold also included in his study that he used weighted ball programs himself in his own work with athletes. As pitching injuries continue to spike in baseball though, trying to throw hard has become a polarizing topic in the sport.
In recent years, Driveline employees have infiltrated baseball in a number of ways, even inside the Red Sox organization. Director of Hitting Development and Program Design, Jason Ochart, Roving Complex Hitting Coach, John Soteropulos, and Coordinator for Player Development, David Besky, were all hired by Chaim Bloom. In the last week, Breslow hired JP Fasone as the new hitting coach for the Greenville Drive.