Ron Wolforth's Texas Baseball Ranch

On a 20-acre ranch deep in the sticks of Montgomery, Texas, pitching coach Ron Wolforth gathers his pupils under the arched ceiling of a 3,600-square-foot corrugated-steel hut. They arrive from all over the country during the off-season, mostly teenagers and minor leaguers, lured by Wolforth's guarantee that he can get virtually anyone throwing 90-plus miles per hour, injury-free. How? Unlike most coaches – die-hard traditionalists who regurgitate decades-old maxims – Wolforth has devised a science-based approach that fuses pitching mechanics with the expertise of orthopedists, surgeons, and strength and conditioning coaches.

Wolforth's unorthodox methods, combined with the fact that he never played ball beyond a mediocre college career, make him an outlier in baseball's good ol' boy culture.

Wolforth has good reason to feel confident. The pitching coach has spawned one of Major League Baseball's best prospects in 22-year-old Trevor Bauer – the third pick in the 2011 draft, acquired by the Cleveland Indians last December, who's been training with Wolforth since he was 14. Last winter, several Indians coaches and front-office guys traveled to Texas to meet with Wolforth, including manager Terry Francona; then the organization flew him to spring training to give a presentation, a show of respect Wolforth called "major."

The Texas Baseball Ranch is the place an athlete can dream as big as his work ethic will allow! It is a place of great hope, high expectations and even greater passion, energy and encouragement. The Texas Baseball Ranch is a sanctuary from all the negativity, pessimism and bad coaching the real world dishes out. The Ranch believes similarly to George Bernard Shaw…"Some look at things that are, and ask why. We dream of things that never were and ask why not?"

Since opening the Texas Baseball Ranch in 2006, Wolforth says he's had 118 pitchers break 90 mph for the first time in their lives. At his three-day "elite boot camps", he trains players as young as nine the same way he trains his pros, hopefully breeding a generation of hurlers who'll throw hard for decades. He predicts that five to 10 of his players will make the bigs in the next five years; Bauer has already debuted, and Cody Buckel, the Texas Rangers' top pitching prospect, who's worked with Wolforth for six years, is likely next in line.

"The number one thing I want," Wolforth says, "is for these guys to know their movement so thoroughly that they feel comfortable listening to all the voices in pro ball, pulling out advice that might be helpful and then disregarding the rest."

Read more: http://www.texasbaseballranch.com/