IronMan Performance

This weekend, Blaze Jordan made his MLB debut with the St. Louis Cardinals. In his second game, he homered, hitting the ball 417 feet at an exit velocity of 110 mph. Hitting the long ball out of major league stadiums is nothing new for Blaze. He’s been doing it since he was a sixth grader, age 11.

JC Eisenmann. The Physical Growth & Maturation of a Professional Baseball Pitcher from 11-20 Years of Age: A Case Study. Archives of IronMan Performance. Vol 1, 2026. [joeeisenmann.substack.com] In the recent post on the MLB pitcher Jacob Misiorowski, we shed light onto the changes that occurred in his physical growth, estimated maturity status (% adult height) and fastball velocity from the age of 14 to his recent historical flame throwing feats.

The Athletic’s headline says it all - Brewers’ Jacob Misiorowski breaks own velocity record for starting pitchers — again. The fastest pitch thrown by a starting pitcher. 103.7 mph. And it’s not just once in awhile. With an average fastball of 100 mph this season, Misiorowski is responsible for 28 of the 30 pitches thrown 103-plus mph by starting pitchers. In his last game versus the Colorado Rockies, he threw 52 of his 98 pitches at 100-plus mph, and 45 pitches at 101-mph plus.

Many of us realize the crisis in youth sports in America - access, affordability, purpose, parent and coach behaviours, undue pressures on the young athlete, professionalization of youth sports, etc. It is hard to believe that for the past several years, we keep saying “it’s just getting worse”, “it’s a run-away freight train” etc. I’m not hear to solve problems today. I’m just bringing a few trends to your attention.

Measure|Manage|Modify|Mitigate In the framework presented here, Rob Anderson outlines an approach to better support young athletes as they grow and develop built based upon four key principles - measure, manage, modify, and mitigate. I came across it via a LinkedIn post by Nikolay Georgiev, who was exposed to it as a participant in the Collaborate Sports LTAD Mentorship. Here is his summary of it (with permission).

For those who have been following along this Spring, I currently find myself swept up with the art and science of pitcher development including participating in my own throwing program. This all started this past Fall when the pitching coach at the university approached me with some concerns about the strength and conditioning program, but it ramped up in February as the 2026 college baseball season began and we implemented our pitcher-specific monitoring program.

This Audio Overview examines the alarming rise of injuries in the NBA and traces the problem back to the lack of or poor training habits during an athlete’s youth. Dr. Joe Eisenmann, expert in pediatric exercise science and youth athletic development, argues that young basketball players are often “damaged goods” before reaching adulthood due to year-round specialization and a lack of proper strength and conditioning.

This post is another attempt at knowledge management - the strategic process of creating, sharing, and managing a collective knowledge and information to improve efficiency, innovation, and decision-making. This process also ensures that the right people get the right insights at the right time.

Almost immediately in the preface of Unhittable is the name Paul Nyman. Who? Exactly. Certainly not a household name in pitching performance, like Tom House, or biomechanics, like Glenn Fleisig. Paul Nyman also plays into why the Preface is titled How Outsiders Hacked Pitching’s Code/ And also why the subtitle of the book is How Technology, Mavericks, and Innovators Engineered Baseball's New Era of Pitching Dominance.

After 25+ years in academia and 200+ peer-reviewed scientific publications, my views on scholarship have changed dramatically. Especially, in the last few years as a result of the current academic publication landscape. As a researcher and professor, I’ve seen the “sausage being made” from every angle—as a researcher/author and as a reviewer, and also as an end-user - a knowledge consumer - being a teacher and practitioner.