A year ago I updated you with everything that happened at Tread in 2019. Last year we grew from one part-time coach to three full time coaches, added over 200 athletes to our online programming, had 11 athletes drafted, and opened up our first facility, Tread HQ 1.0, in Charlotte, North Carolina.
At the end of that post, I stated that our mission was to continue building out our online coaching service to reach as many athletes and teams as possible while making the service as absolutely awesome as it could be. This would mean continuing to assemble a bright young team of coaches.
I also promised that we would ramp up the production of our free content to continue to provide value to all of the parents, coaches and athletes who follow us for baseball training and development information.
So what happened in 2020? And what are we up to in 2021? Here’s a recap of what happened this past year at Tread.
1. We added 11 new positions to the Tread team
In addition to adding hundreds of new online coaching athletes to the Tread family, there was quite a bit of work going on behind the scenes to make it possible.
This meant identifying some of the best and brightest young coaches in the country to continue building out our team.
Performance Coaches
We added four new full-time coaches to our team, including Gabe Noyalis, Justin Liserio, Devin Hayes and Jack Barry.
Each of these guys brings a fresh perspective to our team and have already pushed the boundaries of what we can offer to our athletes with tons of feedback and suggestions for how Tread can continue to improve even more.
We also add two new part-time coaches: Graeme Lehman and Paul Schwendel. Both guys bring a wealth of experience to the arena.
You can read more about Graeme and his research here, while Paul made an impressive comeback into professional baseball alongside his role with Tread (he was up to 99 mph this year at 31 years old).
Directors
We added two director-level positions this year, allowing us to become much more streamlined and productive as Tread’s growth begins to take on a life of its own.
With the additions of Tanner Reklaitis (LA Angels ’19-20) as our Director of Operations and Tyler Zombro as our Director of Performance (Rays ’17-Current), we are fortunate to have a ton of talent in the room helping drive decisions, contribute to ongoing education and shape the future of Tread.
Miscellaneous Additions
Much of what happens to allow Tread to function at a high level comes back to the people behind the scenes.
Bobby Hearn joined us an has served in a sales, marketing and support role, Declan Cronin (White Sox, ’19-Current) became our Athlete Support Coordinator, and Camden Kay (Data Analytics) is working on some exciting projects that we're excited to unveil when the time is right.
2. We were forced to adapt to the Pandemic
It wasn’t long into the year before everyone was thrown a massive curveball with the pandemic.
Not only were seasons canceled, but facilities were completely shut down with little notice, leaving athletes everywhere scratching their heads as to how they could continue to get better in such a bleak situation.
Shortly after the shutdown, we came out with a free at home training guide to help all of our followers contend with the new reality, and give coaches something they could prescribe to their athletes in the interim.
As most summer seasons went on to be canceled as well, we saw a lot of uncertainty within the baseball world, and were fortunate to be in a position to help these athletes get their training back on track.
Many of the athletes who first discovered us during the pandemic have gone on to make massive strides this year, coming out the other end as totally new versions of themselves.
3. Our athletes made huge strides
While there are hundreds and hundreds of stories to tell (many of which we have shared on our Twitter and Instagram accounts this year), here are some of the highlights from our higher level college / pro arms.
- Hawaii RHP Carter Loewen signed as a free agent with the San Diego Padres after going from 87-88, touching 90 to 91-94 touching 95 mph.
- Detroit Tigers AA RHP Will Vest was selected in the big league portion of the Rule 5 Draft to the Seattle Mariners after throwing 96-98 in Fall Instructional League. He’ll have a chance to make the big league team this Spring.
- Free agent and former big leaguer Brock Stewart signed with the Dodgers. After several years with his velocity down to 89-92 in game, he got up to 95 mph in pens and was signed shortly after.
- Daniel Blair, Winthrop RHP, went from 86-89 mph in his final start of the spring before shutdown to hitting 97.7 mph in his fall scout day. 😲
- Rohan Handa, Yale LHP, went from 84-86 to touching 94.9 mph in his first velo bullpen of the offseason. 😱
- Troy University RHP DJ Wilkinson went from topping 93 indoors to topping 97 mph.
- Yankees MLB pitcher Ben Heller began to regain form, going from 92-94 last year to showing signs his old self, chucking 96-98 here.
4. 9 MLB Players Joined the Tread Fam
As Tread’s reputation has spread, higher-level athletes have begun to take notice. 9 new current and former MLB pitchers joined our online-coaching family, some of them also opting to train in-house as well.
Here’s a look at some of them:
5. We more than doubled our content production
While much of the year was based around improving our systems to handle more athletes and building our team, I was able to shift my attention to full-time content production in October.
Our goal with content isn’t to inundate our followers with meaningless noise, but to answer pertinent questions that aren’t being talked about.
Since October, we cranked out 39 Youtube videos (most of them upwards of 20 minutes long).
While we could be spending these hundreds of hours a month building out paid content or using these videos as the building blocks of a certification/course, we feel that the industry has a need for this stuff to get out there.
As one pro coach told me, most of the free thinkers in the baseball world are working for a pro team, which stifles their ability to share anything they discover as teams look for a competitive advantage.
This isn’t to say that we won’t ever come out with courses or certifications (we will), but it is to say that I remember being that 16 year old kid with limited knowledge and resources at my disposal.
Here are some of the most viewed posts and videos from 2020:
- Pitching Drills To Throw Harder | The Lasso Drill
- Fixing Early Torso Rotation in Pitchers
- How to Feel the “Hinge” | Pitching Drills
- Can Anyone Throw 90 MPH?
- Long Toss into a Net Isn't Long Toss | Here's Why
- How to Fix a Tense or “Stiff” Arm Action | Pitching Q&A
- Struggling to Feel Your Lower Half When Pitching? Try This!
- How to Throw Harder | Improving Layback
- The Tennis Racket Drill | A Simple Arm Action Fix?
- Throwing Drills to Throw Harder | Arm Action Freestyle
- How I went from 89 to 95 MPH | MLB Draft Story
- How Does Dustin May Throw 100 MPH? A Breakdown
- How does Walker Buehler throw 100 MPH? | Mechanics Breakdown
- Brusdar Graterol Pitching Mechanics | 100 MPH Sinker
- Tyler Glasnow Mechanics | How He Went From 94 to 100+ mph
- Diego Castillo Mechanics | How Does He Throw 100 mph?
6. We Reviewed and Partnered with a number of tools and products
We reviewed and ultimately partnered with several products / companies, most notably the Arm Care App by Crossover Symmetry and the Whoop Strap 3.0.
While the Arm Care App is a possible game changer for coaches to automate and individualize their players’ post throwing arm care, the Whoop is still our favorite recovery wearable on the market.
We are also still big believers in both the Marc Pro / Marc Pro+ and the Pocket Radar, with a large number of our athletes using them. We use the Marc Pro in our in-house post throwing recovery protocols and find the Pocket Radar to be a great buy for the value, especially with the ability to now use an iPad or iPhone as an LED display.
7. We began a bi-weekly newsletter
This past quarter we began to send out a biweekly email newsletter to our followers so that you can always keep up with our best content, news and updates.
If you’d like to be added to this newsletter so that you don’t miss any future content, sign up below:
Where are we headed for 2021?
So where are we headed in 2021? While I can’t spill the beans quite yet, I will say that we have some BIG news headed your way in the next couple months.
- Our goal is to expand Tread’s offering from primarily online coaching into a full-blown hybrid model where we have the ability to handle hundreds of athletes in-house on a weekly basis.
- We have also partnered with a handful of Division I programs to help assist in their pitchers’ development during both the summers and winters. We’ve seen a huge desire from college coaches for their athletes to prioritize development during these months away from school, and we are working to continue filling this need.
- From a content standpoint, expect more of the last 3 months. What began as a one-month experiment that we referred to as “Contentober” has turned into a massively improved system for producing regular, high quality content.
- We will also be continuing to hire aggressively as we grow. We’re currently on the hunt for 2-3 more full-time coaches by June 2021. Click here to learn more or apply.
- We are also taking applications for our first summer internship, which you can learn more about here.
I also wanted to take the time to thank our team – and especially my partner Coan for believing in the vision and kicking ass in 2020. Now it's time to up the ante in 2021.
Closing Thoughts
Are there any products, content or offerings you would like to see us add in 2021? Let us know by shooting an email to contact@treadathletics.com. We take your feedback seriously and incorporate as much of it as possible into our planning.
Here's to reaching your potential,
Ben Brewster
Athletes or coaches interested in remote one-on-one or team programming? Reach out via this application form.
