Sam Bachman, a flame-throwing right-hander whom the Angels selected Sunday with the No. 9 pick in the Major League Baseball draft, remembers the first time he threw 100 mph.
It was in February when Bachman and Miami University (Ohio) were playing on the road against Florida International University. Bachman, whose MLB Draft hype was building because of his velocity and three-pitch mix, allowed two singles in the bottom of the first inning. He then hit a batter, loading the bases with no outs.
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Miami coach Danny Hayden stood in the dugout and thought about the situation. In the two years prior, he or pitching coach Matthew Passaeur would have visited the mound; Bachman benefitted from those conversations and, typically, the pitcher was able to slow his delivery down. But Hayden held off on the mound visit this time. Alright, he thought, let’s see if this young man is growing up.
What Hayden noticed as Bachman returned to the rubber was a look the coach can only describe as “badass.” Bachman, who stands 6-foot-1 and weighs 235 pounds, proceeded to fire 12 pitches total against the next three batters and struck them all out. Every pitch was a slider.
“I battled,” Bachman recalled last week, laughing.
Escaping the inning gave him a certain amount of juice. And that brings us to the 100 mph pitch.
Later in the game, he was facing a left-handed hitter, and the count was 0-2. Sweat dampened Bachman’s body, but he used the heat to his advantage, and in his words: “Just ripped it so hard, a fastball up and away. He swung through. I knew it was pretty firm.” Data confirmed that feeling afterward when a coach relayed he’d touched triple digits. He was excited about it, not for what people would say about the feat, but because it validated the training he’d put in for nearly five years.
“Getting to 90 was a lot harder than 100,” Bachman said.
The process began when Bachman was a sophom*ore at Hamilton Southeastern High School in Fishers, Ind. He would drive 15 minutes to Finch Creek Fieldhouse, the home of PRP Baseball in Noblesville, Ind., a state-of-the-art player development program.
Greg Vogt, who founded PRP, remembers the bigger right-hander who could throw the ball 82-85 mph. Bachman’s arm speed impressed, and his size certainly meant projectability. But at the time, Vogt said recently, Bachman had little knowledge about what it took to really succeed.
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“I don’t think he understood all that goes into it because he’d never done it,” Vogt said.
Mechanics dominate conversations about pitching, but a foundation of strength has never been more essential. To increase velocity and improve arm health, pitchers in 2021 tend to rely on what’s considered “Olympic lifting,” such as front squats, back squats, lunges, deadlifts and bench presses. All of these allow pitchers to work on their big muscle groups.
Another important element in a pitcher’s progression is the mental side. Vogt and PRP Baseball noted how Bachman threw in bullpens and also spoke to him about the importance of being aggressive and attacking hitters. Mechanically, most of Bachman’s adjustments were made in his lower half. The more in sync the bottom of the body is with the top through the throwing motion, the more efficient a pitch tends to be.
Bachman’s pitches became more efficient, and his velocity crept up between his sophom*ore and senior years. Still, reaching 90 mph consistently was a challenge. What did it take?
“You have to be strong and mobile at the same time,” Bachman said. “It’s hard for guys to find the (happy) medium. Some guys are strong, but don’t move right, so they can’t use that strength to (their) advantage. When you have an excellent range of motion and perfect timing, and you combine that with strength, everything sort of clicks.”
Yoga enhanced his mobility. Inside Finch Creek Fieldhouse, Bachman was throwing pulldowns — a velocity-development training model in which the athlete runs full speed and throws with maximum velocity — in the upper 90s. Yet the velocity wasn’t totally translating to the mound. Nor was his control consistent. He was the third starter on his high school team, so colleges weren’t inquiring. Then Shane Stout, the president of the Indiana Prospects, a travel ball club in the state, mentioned Bachman’s name to Miami coach Danny Hayden.
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“Hey, man,” Stout said to Hayden, “I feel like this guy is slipping through the cracks. He’s a pretty good one.”
Hayden, acknowledging recently how fortunate he was to have that type of relationship with Stout, asked pitching coach Matthew Passaeur to go check the kid out. What Passaeur saw was a pitcher who threw from a three-quarter arm slot and looked like a capable bullpen arm. By that point, though, Bachman had added a slider, and Hayden knew he’d be able to compete immediately at Miami, so they invited him on a visit. Conversations sold the coaches on the type of player they’d be getting, an opinion confirmed as soon as Bachman showed up to campus as a freshman.
Bachman’s first side session on campus took place in the visitor’s bullpen. Hayden stood behind him and viewed every pitch. His antenna had been up; they knew they’d need capable freshmen pitchers the next spring. And here was a guy, more toned than he’d been when he visited, dotting fastballs on the corners, throwing breaking balls for strikes and swings and misses, and landing his changeup.
“It was ridiculous,” Hayden said. “It was like Ray Allen shooting free throws. It was silly.”
Bachman would call out a pitch, “Fastball in.” And the baseball would pop against the catcher’s mitt in that exact spot. Bachman continued, putting on a clinic, and the day stands as a window into what Bachman would prove to be about.
“What you started to see that day was how much he had inside him from the work-ethic standpoint,” Hayden said. “That was not the kid we recruited. He was not that good when we recruited him. He was a really talented baseball player, but not as good as what he came in and showed in that bullpen for the rest of the year. And guys don’t luck into that development. He had worked his butt off. Nobody on the coaching staff was like, ‘Hey, Sam, if you’re going to come in and play, you need to do these five things better.’ This was just something he identified as weaknesses, and was going to work his butt off to address the things he needed to to get better. That is the story of Sam’s career.”
Watching Bachman now is different than it was in that first bullpen.
Most notably, his arm slot has dropped, almost to the point where he looks like Cincinnati Reds starter Luis Castillo. Vogt first noticed this when Bachman showed up to PRP Baseball in the winter of his freshman year.
“That doesn’t look right,” Vogt said.
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“Oh, yeah,” Bachman said, “we were actually messing with it and actually it feels a lot better, and I’m getting a lot of run on my pitches.”
Vogt said OK, but wanted to see Bachman really pitch — and when he did Vogt not only noticed that run but also was impressed by improved velocity and command. Bachman also explained his arm was less sore afterward.
“It was like, ‘Oh, well, we should probably do that then,’” Vogt said.
The velocity on his fastball continued to climb toward 100 mph, and that amplified his slider. The changeup was the next task, and, as with Castillo’s, the pitch started to move naturally thanks to the arm slot. The spin direction on the pitch led to metrics similar to what Castillo displays.
“If I told 95 percent of our trainees to do what Sam does,” Vogt said, “it probably wouldn’t work. But it was comfortable for him.”
Bachman didn’t throw many changeups in 2021 because he didn’t need to. In 12 starts across 59 2/3 innings, he posted a 1.81 ERA with 93 strikeouts and 17 walks. He also touched 100 mph. Hence, why the Angels selected him.
Questions will surround Bachman’s ability to stay healthy and about the changeup’s true potential — both are essential to separating starters versus relievers. Hayden, when asked about what he thinks is possible, laughs.
“It’s easy to paint this picture that he’s this freak talent who throws 100 mph,” he said. “It’s not the narrative at all. Sam’s jealous of guys like that because where he separates himself isn’t the god-given ability, but the work ethic and what he’s willing to sacrifice. His discipline is where he separates himself from other people. He’s never felt like he’s arrived. … That’s what he does. He uses things as his biggest separator to catch up to guys ahead of him, and create major gaps for guys who are behind him.”
(Photo of Bachman: Doug Murray / Associated Press)
Alec Lewis is a staff writer covering the Minnesota Vikings for The Athletic. He grew up in Birmingham, Ala., and has written for Yahoo, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Kansas City Star, among many other places. Follow Alec on Twitter @alec_lewis
