Brent Strom – Pitching Coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks

Graeme,
Appreciate you sending this e-book to me. I think you do great work and have utilized much of what you have generously shared over the years.

Thanks again,
Brent Strom AZ D’backs

Marty Smith – Head Coach of the College of Central Florida

Hi Graeme! Hope all is well. I’ll be giving you some publicity in Nashville at ABCA for helping get the Patriots moving in the right direction a few years back as I will be on a panel talking about developing coaches which you were a big part of. Thanks again!! We will always have a special place in our hearts for hooking up with you and for your advice for us.

Christ Holt – Pitching Coach and Pitching Coordinator for the Baltimore Orioles

Below is a foreword that Chris Holt was nice enough to write for my e-book.

Since my first year as a coach, I’ve been on a continuous search to find the best information on developing pitching.  Like many of you, I have spent thousands of hours reading and watching material in the man cave to learn how to coach pitchers effectively and as quickly as possible.  Like many of you, I look through the lenses of those whose work I’ve learned from.  Most of them are experienced coaches, some of them are ‘gurus’ and others are data analysts.  Few, however, are bona fide researchers.

The first time I heard of Graeme Lehman he was giving a presentation on a Sunday morning at the 2014 Pitch-A-Palooza seminar in Nashville, TN.  I was a minor league coach with the Astros at the time and attended pitching seminars every off-season.  Anyone who has ever attended a weekend baseball seminar knows that the Sunday morning program has an audience of people leaving in mid-sentence for flights, people recovering from previous nights out, and in general, can be a group with a waning attention span.  I wasn’t flying out early, nor had I partied at all.  I will admit that my main interest that Sunday was getting to hear Derek Johnson speak.  To say the least, it was a bonus and a great benefit to hear Graeme Lehman present that morning.  Here was this relatively unknown Canadian guy, presenting excellent information as a researcher, not as a salesman or a coach.  It became clear early in his presentation that his research was thorough and his passion for the game was strong.  His interest was in doing things better, more accurately, and using evidence-based research.  It was also clear that his interest was in maximizing the capabilities of the individual, rather than applying one system across all athletes.  After returning home from Nashville, I began to read some of his works and dug further into his research.  This began to help me further understand the importance of approaching development individually and how to look through those lenses more clearly. 

Fast forward to 2019 when he presented again at Palooza. This time, introducing information based on individuals’ limb length, sources of force production and illustrating the nuances between similar ‘looking’ athletes.  His breakdown of why he trained two similar-looking pitchers in entirely different ways was eye-opening and was made very simple to understand.  His ability to take research findings and make them relatable for baseball and strength coaches is some of the most interesting and useful content available anywhere. 

Every year since meeting Graeme in 2014 I’ve made it a point to reach out to him each off-season and have conversations about pitching and athletic performance.  His most recent presentation in 2019, which covers a lot of the material in this book, is perhaps his finest work yet and is a must-read for anyone who trains pitchers.

We currently live in a time period that has been referred to as the ‘renaissance of pitching information’.  While there is an abundance of quality work available at this time, it’s exciting that Graeme has now put all these articles in one place for easy reference to his material.  You will surely enjoy his work as much as this coach has. 

Best to you all,

Chris Holt

MLB Pitching Coach /

Director of Pitching

Baltimore Orioles