With big-league technology at his fingertips, Max Goldberg pulled a dominant new pitch out of thin air.
This winter Goldberg, a Cherry Creek senior left-hander, was working with the Bruins’ new tech, Trackman and Ravik balls.
, used widely in college and the pros, is a radar-based tracking system that analyzes pitch movement and can also be used for hitting data. The is a weighted baseball used for pitch development. Two-time defending champion Cherry Creek is using both in tandem this season.
So when Goldberg employed the dual technology over the course of a couple weeks in February, the result was a rapidly engineered curveball that played better off his low-90s fastball than his existing slider. Trackman told the southpaw that his heater was more like a cutter than he previously realized, so developing a 12-to-6 curveball to play off the cut fastball made sense.
“The Ravik ball is all about defining a pitch grip and defining how something moves, then we use the Trackman to see the difference between an eye-test pitch and to see if the pitch actually works like you think it does,” said Goldberg, a Boston College commit. “With those technologies, I was able to develop the pitch in like a week, whereas before it would take me at least a few weeks to find a grip, find a feel, and usually longer to gain the confidence in a new pitch.
“During that span in the winter, I was throwing the curveball in live at-bats, and I quickly realized, ‘This is a damn effective pitch.’ When I was landing it, kids were not hitting it at all and looking a little silly swinging at it because it was tunneled off my fastball. That was kind of my eureka with this, where I was like, ‘OK, maybe this (technology) is the real deal.'”
Helping players accelerate development
While various club teams around the state are using Trackman and (a cheaper version of the former), Cherry Creek is believed to be the first Colorado high school program to adopt Trackman. Bruins pitching coordinator Zach Sundine calls it “a new era in Colorado high school baseball that’s changing how guys pitch in our program in a crazy way.”
Of course, there are few programs that can afford the technology. The Bruins used fundraising money to purchase the portable version of Trackman, which cost about $25,000. Sundine, who took over following the retirement of longtime Bruins pitching coach and ex-big leaguer Dave Veres, is hoping to develop pitchers with arsenals capable of “triangles” and “trapezoids.”
“If you have three pitches, you should be able to make a really good triangle out of those pitches (on the Trackman), and if you have four, you should make a really good trapezoid,” Sundine said. “The goal is that we are designing pitches based off individual strengths program-wide. This is not just for the varsity level, it’s for all the way down to our freshmen, too, that I’m working with.”
Cherry Creek second-year head coach Joe Smith says the Bruins elected to spend a fat stack of cash on Trackman (the Ravik balls, by comparison, are ) because the consensus among program stakeholders was that fundraised money should go to something tangible to help the players immediately succeed.
“We’re , and we’re not completely sure what the future holds (for the field’s current location),” Smith said. “So we didn’t want to do necessarily anything with the field. We wanted to focus on something that was transportable, and that could stay with us no matter what happens.”
The technology is even more important for hurlers who don’t throw gas, like Gavin Crino. The senior right-hander, who like Goldberg used Rapsodo through their club program Slammers, says that using advanced pitching tech helped him get committed to Chandler-Gilbert Community College.
Crino has a mid-80s fastball along with a slider and a changeup that he developed this winter using the Trackman and Ravik balls.
“Max can blow guys away with his fastball, but I rely a lot more on run and making the ball move and dive a little bit more,” Crino said. “So having those metrics (like spin rate and horizontal/vertical movement) for my recruiting and showing college coaches what my pitches really do in-game and what they really do out of my hand was huge.”
While Cherry Creek’s new technology is already paying dividends for Goldberg and Crino, the Bruins are hoping it also helps accelerate their overall pitching staff’s development in a season where they lack experience.
Cherry Creek returns just three starters in the field in outfielders Tyce Smith and Ari Rothman, plus second baseman Walker Rudden. On the mound, only Goldberg pitched on varsity last season.
The Bruins were ranked No. 3 in the , but Smith acknowledged the Bruins have a curve to climb to get on the same level as No. 1 Arvada West (which features Texas commit Cooper Vais) and No. 2 Regis Jesuit (which has been state runner-up to Cherry Creek the last two seasons).
“It’s hard to bet against A-West and Regis. They both have a lot of returning experience coming back, and A-West put it to us good (in a 12-2 mercy-rule game on Feb. 9),” Smith said. “We’re clearly not at that level just yet. But hopefully come May, we’re at that level and we’re competing against those teams.”
