Baseball Isn’t Boring
BIB on the Go: Mets Pitching Coach Justin Willard Is Talking Velocity
22 Nov 2025
Chapter 1: What is the significance of velocity in baseball pitching?
And I know that, you know, you guys give out t-shirts for a hundred miles. I'm sorry, your former organization. Are you going to do the t-shirt thing with the Mets or no?
I got to talk with, uh, with the other people with the Mets before I started.
All right. If you, but the, the, you, if you hit a hundred, you get a t-shirt. Um, and so, but that shows you like, okay, you, we want to increase velocity. I know that there's plenty of examples throughout. Your, the, the system, the Red Sox, the system of the twins, like we talked about the time we talked to you at velocity camp, right. But starting with the twins, right.
And so like, this has become a thing for you. When did that become a, Hey, listen, there are ways that we can improve that, that we're not tapping into. And by the way, this is really, really important.
Yeah, I think when you like, so it started really early on with the twins of understanding like, okay, we can do some pretty cool stuff with a baseball, but talking to hitters, right? Like if you can, cool, you can present them different profiles of pitches and different movement solutions and all these things.
But if you can also close down that decision window that they have by throwing things harder, it's just going to make their life a living hell. So that's kind of where it all started.
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Chapter 2: How does Justin Willard define success for pitchers?
And then I think it was an area of baseball and driveline and tread and all these other organizations that are external to professional baseball have done a great job of pushing that forward. But within baseball, it was definitely an area that teams can still continue to maximize. Are we focusing on velocity development in the right manner at the right time to push better pitchers?
And so the naysayers would say, well, you're pushing guys to a limit, and they're going to get hurt. So for you, obviously, you don't want anyone to get hurt, but you want them to throw harder. So what's the balance there? What's your take on that sort of narrative?
Yeah, I think it's reassessing kind of how we've always done things in baseball, right? Like even from something as simple as a buildup for a season, right? Are there better opportunities to build more robust throwers and more robust ligaments and more robust musculature around these small joints to maximize injury prevention, right?
So that's the way we approached it, starting with the Twins and approached it with the Red Sox. And then now we'll obviously have some discussions with the Mets on how we can do this better. But historically, it's been like, oh, you do this like big volume ramp up and then you get to spring training and you start doing live VPs. And it's like, no, no, no.
Like you're just getting a huge spike in that intensity by going right into those live VPs. Right. Can't we incrementally dose intensity to build more robustness and allow the body to adapt to those intensities over a longer period of time?
Is that something you did – for you, with the Twins and the Red Sox, how did you see that change? How did you see – listen, I'm there doing Path of Least Resistance radio for all these spring training games. I love spring training. I love overreacting to spring training.
Yeah.
I've also seen different evolutions of, okay, we've got to hit this number of innings for these pitchers. I've seen the evolutions of wheeling around the one track man from bullpen to bullpen. But in your time, how have you, all the way up into this last spring training you were in, how has things changed? Because people at the Mets are going to want to know. You still have to talk to people.
But for you, how do you view that as they get ready for the season?
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Chapter 3: What strategies are used to improve pitchers' velocity?
to maximize what we want at the end of this, right? Like that's the way I've kind of always looked at things of like, what's the goal? And then how do we actually think about this a better way to allow for the human body to adapt to the stresses that we're asking it to adapt to? Um, and again, like it also depends on the person.
Like there's a huge variability in, um, first of all, mechanics and the stress that is imparted on, on the shoulder and the elbow and, um, even the hands, um, between athletes. And then there's also like, how, how do they recover?
Um, and just understanding those, how all these little pieces kind of go into it and make it individual for each guy is kind of the way I, I generally look at it, but starting with that goal of like, what do we want them to, to be able to accomplish.
Okay. I mean, that's fair. Again, before, it was very cut and dry before. I mean, maybe it was like 10 years ago. I don't know. You know what I'm saying. You know, it was like, okay. And another thing is when teams make deep playoff runs, which obviously you hope to make, people still are trying to get their head around that, right, about how you manage that.
I've seen 50 different iterations of that. Along those lines, what did you learn – from last season like in in terms of the entirety of baseball like there's new technology coming out all the time there's new approaches coming out uh we go from this pitch to that pitch to high to low to whatever it is for for last for for you for 2025 what did you learn about pitching
Yeah, honestly, it probably started with guys like Crochet or Bayo. Again, you have these superpowers, and I think historically in baseball, we've really been able to... You saw it when I first got in in 2018 with the Twins. It was like, if you've got to carry a fastball that has 20 VB, you're just going to rip that as much as possible. We're going to bang the crappy sinker.
But now you're seeing, again, with the advent... the advances of technology from a trajectory and the advanced reporting materials like hitters are just getting better at adapting to that single problem. So it goes back to, okay, cool. What are we going to do to get you back to your superpower instead of just solely relying on that superpower?
Um, so that's something I think the game of baseball woke up to this past year of, again, you look at crochet, like that fastball is a hundred miles per hour, but then when he starts ripping off the sinker, like good luck or Chapman as well, two fastball guy has the, uh, the splitter and the slider, but like those two fastballs, you can be sitting a hundred. Now, which way is it going to go?
That's a really interesting way to look at it, too. Because it's not just, hey, you have to develop other pitches. I loved how you framed that. You have to develop other pitches to get back to... let's not ignore the pitch.
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Chapter 4: How do teams balance velocity development and injury prevention?
And this sort of lends itself to, okay, the value of starting pitchers, the value of innings, the value of bobbing and weaving your way with a bunch of pitchers maybe to get to – we saw it with the Dodgers. I mean, the Dodgers may be – We like to think we learned something from the Dodgers, but not everybody has Yamamoto, Tyler Glasso, Blake Snell, you know, these guys, right?
So, yes, you would like to say we're going to slow play it all the way to the end. But for you, like, how do you view a season when it comes to pitches? Because we talk about crochet. Alex Cora always mentioned the game against the Mets. Remember where he took him out a little bit earlier, so this is for the long haul. How do you view that?
How do you view about getting starting pitchers, the value starting pitchers who can pitch deep into games, but also managing so they can get to ultimately where you want to go?
Yeah, I think ultimately, like, you have a set amount of pitchers on your roster, and you want to set it up to where, again, you're playing basically every day to maximize as much winning potential as possible, right? Like, I think we saw last year was May, June-ish, where starters for the Red Sox weren't going past, like, the fifth inning.
They were kind of getting cut off third time through the order. And I think there were some, like, advantages there. Okay, cool, like... We can use our bullpen, but are we using our bullpen now too much that it's actually taking away from the effectiveness and our ability to actually win baseball games because we're using these guys over and over and they're getting fatigued and tired.
So it's like, it's all very much a juggling act of, we always want to maximize for winning and understanding kind of who we have currently available and who's starting this game and how do we maximize our ability to win this game and And whether to push that guy out there for another time through the order or take him out, it's just understanding how do we win each baseball game.
But you got to have the guys who are capable of doing, you know what I'm saying?
For sure. That's, yeah.
I mean, to have the value of having the guys, like you had guys like Crochet. The ace is such a like under, I don't want to say an underrated thing, but... It's, it's like the day before the day of the day after it protects you. Right. Yeah. So, um, how do you view bullpens? You know, like I, that's another thing that's sort of evolving, I think a little bit. Um,
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Chapter 5: What changes have occurred in pitching strategies over the years?
He just, again, does it a little bit differently than other guys. And really, I think the focus is on where are you and how are you being intentional to get ready for this game?
it's a great way to put it because i you're right i mean it's it's first of all body dimensions different i mean and uh athleticism is different it's it's just different um the last thing is is is way off the path here but we were doing a podcast the other day about it so it's sort of top of mind for me is wbc um go team canada correct right yes i don't know uh
now that you're a pitching coach, like this is, I don't, I don't even know. Like if anybody from the Mets is, or it's gonna, do you know, is anybody get, do you know of?
Not that I've been made aware of yet, but again, it's still early.
Well, I mean, Tong is Canadian. I mean, right. They need pitchers. So yeah, but for you, and this is sort of a bigger picture. WBC is that, how do you view that? Like, is it, How do you view the preparation for it, the effects of it, the impact of it? Because for years upon years, it was, man, these guys max effort at a really, really awkward time. We just talked about spring training.
This is not spring training, right? As a pitching coach, how do you view that?
Yeah, I've gone back and forth and probably still don't have a – a clear understanding of what I truly believe in here. Like, first of all, as a organization, you want to have your best players performing for the team throughout the entire year. Like, does this hurt that? Maybe. I don't like, I don't think there's any clear answers there.
Like when I was with the twins, we had Pablo Lopez who went and pitched in the world baseball, baseball classic and shoved for, was it seven or eight innings. And, And you're sitting there like, yeah, this is a really cool experience for him. But like, hey, is this going to affect what shows up in August or September? We don't know, right? We have no answers. But it's actually, it's funny.
I was actually talking about this with Bernie throughout the season. Like, this is just a really cool opportunity for any player or coach or staff member, because it's very rare that you get the opportunity to represent your country doing something you love and enjoy and have kind of,
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