Justin Hornschemeier: Transfer Portal Arm Throwing 96

In 2020, Justin Hornschemeier graduated from Moeller High School. In the midst of the COVID pandemic, Justin missed his entire senior spring season. He was then a freshman at Wright State University where I was fortunate to watch him begin his collegiate career and become good friends with him in the process. In this blog post I will be diving into the exceptional abilities that set Justin apart from the rest of his peers. He throws 96 from a ridiculously low arm slot.

Chop Wood, Carry Water

Justin displays an incredible work ethic and is continuously trying to learn as much as he can so that he can become the best pitcher he can possibly be. After years getting to know and be around him it is clear to see he truly enjoys doing the work necessary to achieve his goals. This includes all the small details, whether it be sleep or dietary habits, soft-tissue and mobility work, or throwing and lifting.

The Beginning of College Ball

Justin came into the fall of 2020 at Wright State throwing 91 to 93 mph and immediately the entire pitching staff was impressed. After the fall he looked like the best pitcher on our entire staff. When coming back from winter break it was clear he had continued to put in work, as he was throwing 91 to 94 touching 95 mph. But as with the game of baseball, there are always setbacks. Going into one of the first weekends of the year he had started to experience some discomfort throwing that limited him throughout most of the spring season, limiting him to just 7.2 innings.

Entering the Transfer Portal

Following the 2022 spring season Justin decided to enter the transfer portal in hopes of finding a new home that would help him accomplish his goals in his baseball career. He decided to take the summer off of baseball and focus on training. In doing so, jumping right back into high-intent throwing following limited reps in season, he had another injury setback. Unable to find a good fit before the start of the school year and dealing with the setback, he decided to take a year off from school and fully invest in his training to get back to where he could compete at an extremely high level.

Elite Athleticism

What makes Justin such an elite athlete? For starters, he is 6'5 240 pounds with a 34+ inch vertical and a sub 4.8 forty-yard dash. This would be on par for most high-level tight ends. He makes squatting 405 lbs look as easy as getting up from a chair. It is easy to see why he is able to throw so hard given the physical makeup and through his ability to generate total force as well as how fast he can generate that force.

This leads to one of the first things we focused on in his training: upper body strength and power. Justin had an already elite level of strength and rate of force development in his lower body but lacked in his upper body. Over the course of over a year he increased his bench press from struggling with 225 to being able to bench 285 for two reps. The key was never to just increase his max bench, but to increase the total force his upper body could produce and then work on producing a high amount of force as quickly as possible.

Other strength adjustments included focusing on increasing overhead stability as well as continuing to work in the strength-speed and speed-strength ranges. Beyond those we have continued to gain strength in the frontal plane as well as doing specific hamstring and adductor work.

Mechanical Adjustments

Obviously throwing 92 to 95 touching 96 you have to move somewhat efficiently. One of the things I noticed straight away was that the upper half was working way too quickly and the arm was bouncing out of max horizontal abduction too soon. The goal was not to worry too much about external rotation at foot plant and instead to hold horizontal abduction until front foot strike, enabling the upper and lower half to separate and better transfer energy through the chain.

One of the other big mechanical adjustments we were working on was lead knee extension velocity. When looking at old video, the lead leg was landing and spinning off and there was no blocking. Initially I felt this was because the hips and front foot at landing were too open and his cue was too focused on getting the hips open and creating separation that way. The thought behind that is good, though for the lead leg to block effectively, some internal rotation of the foot is required. Otherwise being too open results in valgus torque being created before the rotation phase is over. The goal is not necessarily to see the lead leg fully extend but to see the difference in knee flexion and extension between foot plant and ball release.

There are more minor mechanical adjustments we are currently working toward but it is best that we keep most of our focus on the two major components that correlate to velocity for now.

How Is His Stuff?

Right now Justin is planning on going off the mound twice a week, with one of those mound sessions being more high-intent and game-like, as well as getting Trackman and Edgertronic feedback to continue to refine his pitch types. In his first bullpen back throwing to a catcher he topped at 96 and averaged 94.1. Obviously the velocity is there and back to where it needs to be. But taking a deeper dive into the actual pitch metrics is an important aspect we needed to address.

The fastball movement profile is just plain and simple not good, which we had an idea of going into it. That is why we began to work on a newly added sinker. The potential for this pitch from his arm slot is extremely high. He is already able to kill a good amount of break (under 5 inches of induced vertical break) and generate an average amount of horizontal movement. Looking strictly at the averages is deceiving because some pitches had 18 inches of horizontal break and some only had 10. The goal moving forward is to go exclusively to the sinker and work on getting a consistent movement profile on it.

The cutter is also somewhat new and since this bullpen has already been improved on. Justin had gotten into a mindset that every offspeed pitch needs to be thrown as hard as possible to be good. That mindset is valuable to a degree, but it was hurting the actual movement profile. A cue that has helped is thinking more slider on it. He was still able to keep relatively high velocity on it (87 to 90 mph).

Lastly, the slider was getting similar results to the cutter. At that movement profile it is playable but is closer to what the cutter should be with a tiny bit more horizontal break. This has already been drastically improved on. He threw one most recently with -20 inches of horizontal break at 83 mph. The goal moving forward for all of these pitches, now that we have seen and felt the movements we are trying to accomplish, is to translate that to consistent movement in and around the zone.

Concluding Thoughts

Justin is a tireless worker and has an extremely gifted makeup. He has put himself in a really good position to find success in this game as long as he can stay healthy and get the valuable innings in. With three plus pitches, it will be fun watching him dominate hitters. As this summer continues to roll on and he begins to throw live to hitters, he is only going to get better. I am super excited to see him back in action. Whichever school or pro organization that gets him is getting an absolute steal of a pitcher and person.

By Brock Nartker, Baseball Performance Coach