November 17, 2025

Sandy Koufax Retired at 31 and We're Still Letting 14-Year-Olds Go 121 Pitches in Fall Ball - Academy Youth Baseball Podcast EP 104 | Driveline Baseball

1 hour 3 minutes

Sandy Koufax Retired at 31 and We're Still Letting 14-Year-Olds Go 121 Pitches in Fall Ball

Deven opens with Pitching Ninja's video on Yada Sensei—Yamamoto's trainer—and his tree analogy: focus on the trunk (core, proximal segments), not the branches (arm positions, extremities). He applies this to youth coaching, calling out PE teachers demanding point-at-target finishes instead of teaching proper sequencing. The episode pivots to "This Week in Pitch Counts": 14U kids throwing 121 during October fall ball. Deven systematically dismantles every fall ball justification ("chemistry is built," "toughness is earned") while contrasting Yamamoto's built-up workload capacity with kids spiking acute/chronic load in meaningless games. He invokes Sandy Koufax's retirement at 31 from chronic arthritis as proof we're ignoring history. The core is his fired-up plea ahead of the ABCA Youth Summit: four years of talk, now it's time to build Pitch Smart 2.0 with universal pitch counts, universal reporting, and red-light/green-light systems like Baseball Ontario's app. He frames the crisis through "two boxes"—baseball's dependence on pitcher health and accelerating public perception that travel baseball is injurious and family-hostile—arguing the game will die from the bottom up if parents stop enrolling kids after watching burnout and injury cycles repeat.

00:00 – Intro, AxeBat code & new training packages
02:13 – Yada Sensei & Yamamoto: trunk vs. branches philosophy
08:38 – PE teachers, pointing finishes & proximal-to-distal reality
14:31 – 115 pitches October 11th: This Week in Pitch Counts
16:15 – 14U kid: 115 Saturday, 121 Sunday, 97 Monday in fall ball
22:18 – Debunking "It's never just fall ball" myths
27:15 – What fall ball should be vs. October tournaments
31:04 – Sandy Koufax at 31 & normalizing ibuprofen for 9-year-olds
32:42 – ABCA Summit: four years of talk, time for action
34:08 – Pitch Smart 2.0: universal counts & reporting blueprint
42:19 – Two boxes: pitcher dependency + public perception crisis
47:25 – "Why sign my 7-year-old up after what killed my 11-year-old's love?"
50:25 – Baseball Ontario's red-light/green-light app solution
56:04 – Universal reporting unlocks coach certification visibility
01:02:30 – Outro: Austin summit report next week

Links

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⬇️ Host ⬇️

Deven Morgan

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