Weinstein Baseball’s Greatest Scientific Coach

By LOU PAVLOVICH, JR.
Editor/Collegiate Baseball

HARTFORD, Conn. — Jerry Weinstein, who has coached baseball for 59 years, has been voted Baseball’s Greatest Scientific Coach by a select panel of coaches.

Currently the Head Coach of the Hartford Yard Goats, the AA Eastern League affiliate of the Colorado Rockies, he is in his 11th season with the Rockies’ organization.

Weinstein is an American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame skipper who previously coached at Sacramento City College (Calif.) with the second most wins in California Community College baseball history (831-208-12 record over 23 seasons).

He also was an assistant coach on the U.S. Olympic baseball teams in 1992 and 1996.

Collegiate Baseball asked over 50 coaches in the sports of baseball, football and basketball to recommend a coach who combines science and teaching better than anybody else.

The coach with the most votes was Loyola Marymount basketball Head Coach Mike Dunlap who has used numerous science-based techniques and devices in his amazing career, including heart monitors.

Dunlap, who was a third baseman years ago for the fabled Alaska Goldpanners, was featured in the Sept. 1, 2017 edition of Collegiate Baseball as he explained in detail how he has utilized the best of every sport to become an elite coach.

Weinstein is a 73-year-old dynamo who has coached for 59 years going back to his days as a Little League coach in his youth.

His passion every step of the way has been to learn everything he can about techniques, tools and philosophies that will allow his athletes to blossom to their potential and beyond.

Tapping science at every step along the way has been instrumental to this marvelous coach.

A small list of the interesting areas he has uncovered in his coaching quest include:

• The value of sensory deprivation in teaching pitchers.
• In 1976, he started using a RA-GUN made by Decatur Electronics. This radar gun, which typically was used by law enforcement officers to nab speeders, gave Weinstein a big edge in tracking arm strength with pitchers. While radar guns are common today, plenty of baseball people at the time thought Weinstein had lost his mind.
• Strobe Spex glasses. These strobe light glasses were initially used in football to refine the vision of quarterbacks and receivers. But Weinstein discovered this technology could improve the focus of his hitters, fielders and catchers and also force athletes to pick up the ball earlier. It became a fabulous vision training tool.
• Powerful stat tracking software such as Inside Edge that is used by Major League Baseball organizations.
• Early in his career, he began using video technology to find out what his players do biomechanically and how they can improve. His use of this technology has evolved much more over the years.
• He was on the cutting edge of mental training for baseball players at Sacramento City College in the 1980s as he utilized Psycho-Cybernetics written by Dr. Maxwell Maltz as well as The Inner Game Of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Since that time, he has utilized the works of Harvey Dorfman, Dr. Ken Ravizza and Tom Hanson.
• He started using weighted balls for his pitchers in the 1960s and refined his training techniques over the years with science-based work done by others.
• Research showed the danger of long distance running for pitchers and why sprints have proven to be better for hip mobility and power.
• Weinstein was on the ground floor of learning Effective Velocity from Perry Husband’s 10-year research project.

“I have been an information junkie my entire life,” said Weinstein.

“I read something every day. It might be Hardball Times, Baseball Prospectus or something on the internet like www.fangraphs.com or www.sporttechie.com

“I spend a lot of time on the internet looking for things that will allow me to grow. There is a lot of great information out there.

“I have one cylinder. I’m not a golfer or anything other than a husband/family guy who also is a baseball guy.

“I have looked at many different sports over the years to see what translates to baseball. In tennis,  I wonder why athletes don’t have shoulder problems. I look at cricket to see how they generate such high velocities. It is anything and everything if it might correlate to baseball.”

Weinstein has always felt the man with the most information wins if he uses it wisely and creates what he calls “simplexity” as you take the complex and try to make it simple for athletes.

To read more of this in-depth article, purchase the Oct. 6, 2017 edition of Collegiate Baseball or subscribe by CLICKING HERE.

The rest of the article includes all the amazing tools he has utilized in his career and progressive ideas. He explains what he learned studying John Wooden’s practices when he was coaching the freshmen baseball team at UCLA while working on his Master’s Degree.

Weinstein explains how he began using weighted balls in 1968, why practices must be better than they currently are, especially in the hitting area. He delves into why a stop watch or LED clock on the field must be utilized for infield practice.

He has utilized some amazing books to become a better coach, including Percentage Baseball, and used tools such as Strobe Spex glasses to increase player focus and force them to get earlier visual information.

He also explains what he learned with strength training, video analysis, the art of teaching, the science of catching, pitching and hitting, effective velocity, important statistics and the mental game.