Driveline Literally Fixed Janson Junk's Driveline, and Other Janson Junk Stuff

There's one surprising commonality among just about every pitcher in the Brewers clubhouse this spring: they're all pitching nerds. Ok, that's a tad strong. They're a pretty representative sample of big-league ballplayers, in many respects. They give each other guff about the way they do simple things. They gossip about the rest of the league. They talk golf. They're jocks, after all.

Still, they all also share a fluency with advanced mechanical and quantitative jargon around pitching that would have been a foreign tongue within an actual clubhouse a decade ago. Chris Hook, it's clear, is not just telling them what to do and to trust him that it will work. They all have a fairly firm grasp of their own stuff, and of how they can improve. They've learned the underpinnings of their own performances, and they talk about them freely.

Janson Junk stands out even in that crowd, though. He's not just willing to talk about how he's evolved over the last two seasons, or about why he believes he'll be good in 2024. He's downright eager to.

"After the season, I train up in Seattle--that’s where I’m from--and I went to Driveline, and the biggest thing was I got my biomechanic report, and noticed that I was getting too quad-dominant last year," Junk said Saturday in Maryvale. "Meaning that I’m not utilizing my back half the way I should be to generate power.

Junk in April 2023

"I was losing that power when I would leg lift and sink into that quad. I would start to work over my body, I would drift toward the third-base line and then work back toward home, and then I’m just fighting against myself. So the biggest thing that I worked on was hinge at my back hip, trying to get into my glute, and just think about sitting back in my mechanics, rather than falling forward a little bit."

That's a funny coincidence, because the name Driveline--so much a buzzword it barely has any definition beyond the academy itself, anymore, to the modern baseball fan--actually comes from the principle that an efficient delivery means staying on an imaginary line from mound to plate. With greater engagement of the big muscles in his lower half, Junk gained both power and consistency. You can see a bit of what it "should" look like even in his final appearance of the season, Oct. 1 against the Cubs.

Junk in Oct. 2023

Junk rotates his trunk later and is a little less meandering down the mound here, but there remained more cleanup to do. He now believes he's done it.

"It’s about getting the most out of my body," he said. "I think this time last year, in spring, I was sitting 91-93, 94. My first live [BP] and my first game, I was 94-96. It’s very similar, but it’s just coming out better, feeling more efficient in my mechanics. I’ve always had the command where I can throw around the zone and put the ball where I want, but it’s more about getting the power out of my body that reflects on my strike numbers."

Through plyo drills and a change in the set of his hips when he comes set, Junk said he now feels more precision and benefits that flow out to his arm path and to his use of his front side, as well. Whereas Bryan Hudson felt that a cleanup of his front side brought other aspects of his delivery into alignment, Junk has seen the improvements flow in the opposite direction.

Beyond those mechanical cues and the increased velocity that comes with them, though, Junk also takes some optimism from what he thinks is a better pitch mix. He believes he chased a red herring last year, and will be better able to do what he does best in 2024.

"Last year, coming into spring training, I really worked on my splitter, and lost focus on what I was really strong at, which is my curveball and my slider," Junk said. "Throughout last year, I was trying to force the splitter too much, and wasn’t having the results I wanted. So I went, 'Why am I doing this? I need to lean on my strengths.'

"Midseason, I started doing that. So this offseason, I emphasized my slider: getting it where I wanted to, because last year I was going through a few grip changes, a few shape changes, and that’s really hard during the season—to nail that down when you’re only throwing one side a week, and you have to prepare for a game, and competing, and getting guys out. So this offseason, I really focused on the slider development, and how comfortable I was."

Junk is far from the first pitcher to name the vicious difficulty of trying to make big changes to a pitch's shape or its usage within a season. It can be done, but it comes with an array of challenges. He found some things that worked during the campaign, but didn't feel able to lock them in.

"Last year, my slider grip, I couldn’t execute it the way I wanted. The numbers would be good, but the execution of it wasn’t how I would like it," Junk said. "I have smaller hands, so I was trying to go with this two-seam, seam-shifted-wake slider, and then I banged that halfway through the season, because I wanted to throw a shorter, harder slider. During the offseason, I went to my trainers back home, and they were like, 'You can still sweep it good, let’s just play around with some grips, see what’s comfortable with you.'"

You can see the changes he attempted to make throughout the season by isolating the sweepers and sliders from his pitch movement chart, and breaking it out by month.

The consistency and manipulability he sought was elusive, though, even as he evolved. After his winter work, he feels like it's much more of a sure thing.

"The big thing was keeping sweep while throwing it hard. I went to more of a spike slider, similar to what Colin Rea has. It’s still a seam-shifted slider, so I’m able to get on the side of the ball the way I want to and create the sidespin, while mimicking the hand position of my curveball, Junk said. "So it’s two very different movements, but similar hand positions.

"That comfortability, where I’m like, ‘Ok, this is my fastball, and then I’m going neutral wrist with my breaking stuff, but one is more 12-to-6 and one’s sweepy. That simplified it, and allowed me to be comfortable with that grip and execute it the way I wanted."

In the spring complex clubhouse, there's a line of lockers along one wall that includes: Wade Miley, Brandon Woodruff, Colin Rea, Jacob Misiorowski, Devin Williams, Bryse Wilson, Robert Gasser, Aaron Ashby, DL Hall, Jakob Junis, Hoby Milner, Junk, and Trevor Megill. It's hard not to hear what Junk says about his stuff and think about how it relates to things I heard recently from Milner (on having the same hand positions on both of his fastballs, making it easier to throw each in equal mixture) or Rea (on the feel for shaping the sweeper differently based on how he wants to use it, without losing the feel for either version of the pitch). Junk, who lockers right next to Milner, does seem to share that philosophy about setting a hand position, albeit for a breaking ball instead of heat. Just as he's all the way down the lane from Rea physically, though, he differs from his veteran teammate in the mental cue he wants when throwing the sweeper.

"I don’t like the thought process of getting around the ball, because when I do that, I usually drop my wrist position and create lift to it. It’ll still have sweep, but it will have lift," Junk said. "If I have too much lift, I’ve seen it before, where I can’t get the swing and miss with it. I can still get the sweep, but it’s more about changing planes with that pitch. If I’m on top of it more, I can get more downward tilt to it and have that change of planes and get that swing and miss. And then if I want to get more depth, I can get over it like my curveball and have a little bit more depth. So it’s more about having a stiff wrist through release with my slider, and then my curveball, it’s about stiff wrist, and then coming through."

One more similarity between him and those inline teammates, though: Junk, like Ashby and Wilson, believes fervently in using the slider against opposite-handed batters.

"I love throwing sliders to lefties," he said. "Last year and the year before, I really started to lock that in. Going backdoor, I’ve seen that backdoor slider be amazing for anybody who throws that sweeping slider. You get a lot of takes from lefties seeing it as a ball out of the hand. And then utilizing the backfoot slider, as well, helps a lot."

This level of thoughtful, exuberant openness pairs well with the concrete changes Junk has made, and manager Pat Murphy is suitably impressed.

"Credit to the kid. The kid’s a worker," Murphy said in one media session. "You never have to wonder if he’s prepared."

On another occasion, Murphy said he thinks Junk could help both in relief and in the rotation, which is in keeping with the very flexible approach he's taking to his pitching staff this year.

"He looks fantastic. He really does," Murphy said. "The heater’s better. He’s confident."

That, obviously, is not all that's different. It's plenty to get excited about, though, and Junk has the right outlook on the season. He understands that he won't be first in line for the team, but now that he has (physically and mentally) put himself on the right line, it's just a matter of time before success finds him.