How analytics helped Herrmann turn adversity to advantage

The analytical side of baseball operations that's reshaping how players are evaluated and instructed, with teams now embracing what they used to resist, didn't find former college pitcher Forrest Herrmann. He hunted for it, absorbed every bit of information available to him, and turned a desperate attempt to draw out the last ounces of his talent into a post-playing career that's taking off.

The Orioles hired Herrmann, 29, as their pitching coach at Single-A Aberdeen, contacting the Reds after the season and seeking permission to interview him. He held the same job last summer with Single-A Daytona.

Herrmann needed to fail before he could flourish.

A map is needed to accurately track his college journey and how he eventually came to the Orioles.

Herrmann logged three seasons as a left-handed reliever at the University of Evansville, but they weren't laid out in normal fashion. He started out at Southwestern Illinois College in 2012, transferred to Evansville as a sophomore, was cut from the team the following year, transferred to Florida Gulf Coast University but didn't play, and returned to Evansville in 2015 as a redshirt junior.

The total sum was 27 collegiate games and six more in the Northwoods League in 2013, a 6.17 ERA and 1.535 WHIP in 42 1/3 innings, and the same amount of walks (24) as strikeouts.

"The numbers don't lie," he said. "I was not the most talented baseball player."

But he was one of the most stubborn and industrious, capable of surfing the internet as if qualifying in an Olympic sport.

The semester in Florida was "pretty insignificant," he said, except for what he did outside the classroom.

"Spent a lot of time developing myself," he said. "At that time, I tried some programming on my own time, really started to get exposed to a lot of these things, a lot of me-time to work on my own development.

"I just had a great community of people at Evansville. It was really tough to leave it. I contemplated staying and working with the baseball program still, but I really wanted to play at that point and I got better, to the point where I was able to be on the team again in 2015. I was approved since I was never on the roster in Florida. I was able to come back and play right away at Evansville, another year of, man, just banging my head against the wall trying new things.

"That was a pretty pivotal time for me, just starting to get exposed, whether it was weighted balls, biomechanics, aggressive velocity training. That's when I first got exposed to it and didn't know how to apply it to myself, but I tried my best there.

This was independent work rather than a class assignment.

"That was me finding things on Twitter, me finding things on Google, and trying my best to apply it," he said. "I knew I wasn't performing, I wasn't the best version of myself, and that drove me crazy. I knew it was in there and I was just looking for information, trying to use as many resources as possible to ultimately help my own career at that point."

Herrmann was an early follower of Driveline Baseball, now a popular data-driven baseball player development organization near Seattle. The quest to satisfy his appetite for this type of information led him to Premier Pitching Performance near his home in St. Louis, where he could more easily devour data, and where he spent three years and rose to director of pitching development in 2018.

P3 also allowed Herrmann to work again with Cody Fick, his pitching coach at Evansville, who joined the facility in 2018 and later became director of pitching.

"Through adversity," Fick said, "he always responded in a big way."

"Whether I had unrealistic expectations or whatever in my career, I wanted to push myself and test myself at, really, the highest levels possible. Obviously, it didn't go so well," Herrmann said.

"I remember sitting in the office with Cody Fick, it's my end-of-year review, I think I had pitched two innings, and I was like, 'Man, I need to try something new. I need to go all-in on an approach.' At that point, weighted balls and some of this velocity training was pretty controversial, but I had made the decision that I was willing to try it, I was willing to trust it and go all-in on it."

This is an integral part of Herrmann's life story, when he's exposed to Brian DeLunas, the co-founder and program director of P3 who passed away last month from kidney disease at age 46. DeLunas served as the Mariners' bullpen coach and director of pitching development and strategies from 2018-20 and was a special projects coordinator for the Mets in 2021. He was in his second stint as pitching coach at the University of Missouri when he passed away.

"He's a guy who's been the catalyst in my career, really my mentor," Herrmann said.

"He was easily the most influential person in getting me started. That's when I had gone down that road and banged my head against the wall all those years, that was the last stop, that was the last pitching instructor to find in the St. Louis area, and he did it completely different and we ended up forming a really great relationship. Man, that's where we learned to be innovative, early movers on technology. That was really the start of it for me."

In Herrmann's final year at Evansville, he gained in average about eight mph in velocity and posted his lowest ERA (4.91) and WHIP (1.208) in 25 2/3 innings.

"I think I contributed more on the field in one season than the rest of my career combined," he said. "While everything is relative and it was by no means impressive, I realized my playing potential. It motivated me to help others."

Herrmann always wanted to coach, but he first accepted a job with the Mariners in 2019 as pitching strategist. He worked across departments at multiple levels in a hybrid role, getting initiatives off the ground with the pitching leadership group, assisting the scouting department in the amateur draft.

"It was creating a collaboration in areas that maybe had opportunities to improve," he said. "Whether that was collaboration with strength and conditioning, analytics, mental skills, things that are becoming more widely accepted now. Really, the industry standard."

Herrmann had a business degree and was on the verge of putting down a deposit to law school when he decided to stay in baseball. His interest kept growing. And so did the opportunities, which carried him from the Mariners to the Reds organization in 2020 as pitching coach at Rookie-level Billings before COVID-19 shut down the minor league season.

"I don't know how you ever get into coaching, necessarily," Herrmann said, "so it takes the right people at the right time who are willing to bring you into that community and the industry."

Herrmann had a connection with the Orioles in Adam Schuck, a Rookie-level Florida Complex League development coach in 2021 who's now the player development analyst on the pitching side. Schuck was the Mariners' minor league quality control coach/video coordinator in 2019.

"He's an elite member of our pitching group in our organization," Herrmann said.

"He comes out of the University of Iowa manager program, which we were heavily connected with while I was at P3. They brought down a handful of pitchers, and I think all five ended up playing professional baseball, and Adam Schuck was a part of that analytics department, a part of that baseball operations department at Iowa, which is a really, really neat program. Doing amazing things and forward-thinking things.

"We've had a great personal and working relationship for quite some time now when we were both very young in our careers and both of us had people around us who were heavily invested in developing us as future coaches, as future people in this industry."

Schuck first met Herrmann while visiting P3, and a few weeks later they were co-workers in Seattle.

"Forrest possesses a top-of-the-scale work ethic paired with a lot of passion for his players," Schuck said. "I've always been impressed by his ability to build strong relationships and get the most out of a wide variety of personalities. Forrest brings a very forward-thinking, innovative perspective to our staff and we're certainly better because of it."

Just as the Orioles' commitment to analytics drew them to Herrmann, he appreciates their deep dive and the results.

"Whether I was with the Orioles or not, I'm following what's going on with this approach," he said.

"It was a pretty cool couple years (at P3), looking back at that. What is now widely accepted was not at that point, and we were willing to look at information objectively and logically and start to apply it and connect the dots between different disciplines, whether that was exercise times, analytics, biomechanics. The nuance of player development, we were able to start, really, on the front edge, finding those things and figuring them out. Whether that was modus, whether that was the biomechanics lab, weighted balls, some shifted weight work. We had a great opportunity with our athletes, but also just having the right guy leading myself. And that's really where I was able to go from athlete all the way up to director at that facility. Kind of complete that full cycle."

The innovations at P3 and similar performance centers are infiltrating organizations throughout baseball. The Reds hired Driveline founder Kyle Boddy as their minor league director of pitching initiatives/pitching coordinator in October 2019, a relationship that lasted two years. The Orioles seek out individuals with the same backgrounds to coach and instruct.

"I think they've been some of the most well-documented and forward-thinking people in the game and using this information, and we're leveraging this information in player development now and building systems around the technology to manage guys," Herrmann said.

"I think it's really cool because it ultimately benefits the player, and that's why I do this, that's why I think most coaches and people are in this field. It's trying to create more of an equal opportunity for development. Realistically, not everybody is going to make it, but they're going to have the same opportunities, the same analytical investment in them.

"You never know where big leaguers come from sometimes. Giving everybody the tools to put together their career was something that, at P3 it was what they paid us to do. To see it becoming widely accepted and a lot of people working on how to apply it is awesome, it's great to see."

You also never know when a struggling college reliever is going to find his niche. No longer banging his head against a wall. The impression left a favorable one.

"Without question it's satisfying to know I've been able to impact athletes in a positive way," he said, "regardless of the level."

Fick knew it was going to happen for Herrmann based on the intangibles. The benefits of their relationship work both ways.

"I've known Forrest for almost a decade now and I can say confidently that he's earned everything in his career in baseball," Fick said.

"When I coached him as a player, he demonstrated the character traits that make him an excellent coach today. He's ultra-competitive, he's a self-starter, and he has a hunger to improve himself so that he can continue to be a strong resource to players and coaches alike.

"Forrest not only has a desire to help players, but he's mentored many coaches in our circle as well, myself included. He has a very high understanding of advanced analytics, with a good ability to apply and communicate with players. He will continue to rise in this game because of all these things."