The Baseball Development Hub Podcast · Backside Groundballs Media

Ben Peterson, RHP University of North Carolina

·24 min·1 clip

Peterson says a cutter at 88-89 with negative movement may replace his four-seam.

1. The Baseball Development Hub Podcast sits down with Ben Peterson, an Apex native and senior pitcher at the University of North Carolina, at the Performance Academy in Apex, North Carolina. 2. Peterson matters because he has moved from Apex High School to Appalachian State, Florida Southwestern Junior College, and UNC, and he is now describing how that path shaped his pitching. 3. The episode asks how Peterson became a more effective pitcher by understanding his own body, pitch design, and role out of the bullpen. 4. Peterson says he was a “pretty typical lanky right-handed pitcher” in high school, sitting in the “mid to upper 80s” before his velocity climbed at Appalachian State. 5. He says Appalachian State “wasn’t the right fit,” so he emailed junior colleges in Florida, visited Florida Southwestern, and decided that FSW was the right fit. 6. Peterson says his time at FSW helped him learn that “the best pitching coach is yourself,” a phrase he attributes to UNC pitching coach Coach Gaines. 7. He explains that understanding what he feels on the mound makes it easier to use a pitching coach as a sounding board rather than depending on outside guesses. 8. Peterson points to Adam Wainwright’s quote that he “only need[s] six pitches” and uses it to argue that pitchers rarely feel 100%. 9. He says the real task is finding a way to be effective at 100%, 90%, 80%, or 70% readiness instead of waiting to feel perfect. 10. Peterson says high school ball taught him to throw a lot, even as a pitcher who also played shortstop and long-tossed every day. 11. He says he used to pull down too often, which may have helped velocity but would not have helped his elbow if he kept doing it. 12. Peterson says his college structure let him throw often, and he now expects to keep his arm moving so he can be ready if he needs high-intent work. 13. He says he takes only “two to three weeks off a year maybe,” and he links that habit to boredom, routine, and examples like Liam Hendriks and Trevor Bauer. 14. Peterson describes Hendriks as a pitcher who kept throwing through the Australian season and then reported to spring training with his arm feeling the best it had felt. 15. He says his approach at UNC includes Rapsodo, Trackman, force plates, and edutronics, but he treats technology as a tool rather than something to obsess over. 16. Peterson says he used Trackman midway through a season when his four-seam fastball had “dead zone carry,” then experimented with two-seam and cut fastballs to solve it. 17. He says his best cutter came in at 88-89 mph with negative movement and 7-9 inches of carry, and he describes adjusting the back of the chain instead of forcing release-point changes. 18. The interview style is conversational and technical, with the host pressing on bullpen routines, strikeout approach, and game-day mentality while Peterson answers in concrete details. 19. Listeners who coach pitchers, track pitch design, or study bullpen roles will get the most out of it. 20. Listeners who want a narrative story with less mechanical detail may skip it.

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