SEATTLE – It was a drill that Kody Funderburk heard about in his First minor league spring training with the Twins, and has continued to do so every offseason since.
He stands on the mound with three baseballs of different sizes: a regular baseball, a ball 5% larger than normal, and a ball 5% smaller than normal. Someone hands Funderburk a randomly selected ball, calls out a pitch, and he must throw it for a strike.
The drill is designed to help the command of Funderburk, a two-way player at Dallas Baptist University who was selected in the 15th round of the 2018 draft.
“I know what adjustments I need to make to pitch each one in the zone,” said Funderburk, a left-handed reliever. “I feel like it’s helped me. When I throw a regular baseball, I know what it feels like and what I need to do to get it back in the zone.”
One of the Twins’ strengths is that they can turn pitchers who were selected in the late rounds of the draft into major league players. Three of the seven starting pitchers the Twins have used this season (Bailey Ober, Louie Varland and David Festa) were selected in the 12th round or later in their respective amateur drafts.
There are two general ends of the spectrum when it comes to selecting pitchers. Teams may choose a pitcher based solely on his qualities, hoping he can help pitchers take advantage of them with better control in the minor leagues. The other side is to prioritize strike pitches while working to extract more velocity and movement.
Every team maintains a mix of both, but the Twins have had success with the latter approach.
“That comes down to really good scouting,” said Twins pitching coach Pete Maki, a former minor league pitching coordinator. “You can’t overlook that. And we’ve been able to give these guys a little help here and there with some things.”
The Twins are holding three velocity-based training camps for select groups of minor league pitchers beginning in January. Some pitchers will focus strictly on increasing velocity. There is a command camp, which Funderburk participated in, and a pitch design camp.
Ober attended a pitch design camp after a couple of years in the Twins’ system to work on improving his slider. He threw hundreds of sliders, varying his grip and using different-sized baseballs.
“They were like, ‘OK, we want a slider that’s more of a sweeper, and has more horizontal movement,'” Ober said. “So, I had to find it. They weren’t like, ‘Throw this grip, it’s going to work.’ It was more like, ‘Here are some options, find the one that works for you.'”
Many teams employ speed camps, but it’s clear the Twins have drawn attention from other clubs. The Boston Red Sox signed Twins minor league pitching coordinator Justin Willard last offseason. Zach Bove and JP Martinez were assistant pitching coordinators who were selected for major league jobs with the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants over the past four seasons.
What makes the Twins’ speed camps successful?
“They do a great job of meeting with players, going over a simple plan, getting the pitchers to buy into it and then figuring out what are some of the simplest adjustments that might work,” Twins farm director Drew MacPhail said. “You see that on the backfield in the spring. The way a player looks when he was drafted last year and the way he looks when he finishes camp and starts in April is usually drastically different.”
Zebby Matthews is the top-performing pitcher in the Twins’ minor league system this year, and has blossomed into a top-100 prospect. In 12 starts, mostly at Class AA, the 6-foot-5 right-hander has posted a 1.70 ERA with 81 strikeouts and four walks in 69 innings.
Matthews, an eighth-round draft pick out of Western Carolina in 2022, was always an elite strikeout pitcher but has increased his velocity by 2 to 3 mph.
“A guy who really shined after velocity camp,” MacPhail said. “He was going 96 mph and commanding the ball unbelievably. Last year, he did a really good job during January camps working on developing a breaking ball. He developed two, a sweeping slider and a cutter that’s like 87 mph with kind of a slider-type motion.”
One criticism is that the Twins have not developed a homegrown frontline starting pitcher under Derek Falvey, the team’s president of baseball operations. The Twins acquired Pablo Lopez, Sonny Gray, Joe Ryan and Kenta Maeda.
Where the Twins have excelled is in developing pitchers overlooked in the draft, and a pitching lineup is partly a numbers game because of the number of arm injuries.
Another drill that helped Funderburk was a metal plate attached to a bungee cord. It was placed over the middle of the plate and provided auditory feedback when he was working on landing pitches for strikes.
“There’s actually some science to throwing the ball, hitting it and listening to the bell ring,” Funderburk said. “They’re very meticulous. They’re always looking for new ways, new data and new analysis of what helps guys. They’re always thinking ahead that way.”