Unhittable: How Technology, Mavericks, and Innovators Engineered Baseball's New Era of Pitching Dominance

by Rob Friedman

The baseball expert famously known as PitchingNinja explores the revolution that has given pitchers an unprecedented advantage in today’s game.

Pitching dominates baseball as never before. Spin rate, sweepers, 105 mph fastballs—all have become standard when evaluating pitching arms and techniques and are familiar lingo in discussion and analysis of the game. Gone is the era of the swaggering power hitters. Batting averages are close to the deadball era; team records for strikeouts are broken and then broken again. The game has fundamentally changed, and hitters may never catch up.

Rob Friedman has closely observed this revolution that has transformed baseball for both players and fans. A self-taught coach who has evolved into a sought-after pitching analyst by players, teams, and sports networks, he breaks it all down in this fascinating chronicle.

Friedman spotlights the influential figures behind this transformation. Tom House, a former MLB pitcher turned coaching visionary, utilized cutting-edge technology to refine the techniques of legends like Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. His unconventional methods paved the way for a new era shaped by the collision of technology and tradition. Brent Strom, another MLB pitching insider, has used data to revive flagging careers—helping stars like Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, and Charlie Morton to use technology to enhance their performance. Friedman also celebrates the rise of external innovators like Kyle Boddy of Driveline Baseball, who has trained elite pitchers such as Trevor Bauer, Shohei Ohtani, and Clayton Kershaw, using advanced analytics and technology, as well as others.

Peppered with insights drawn from interviews with top pitchers, Unhittable is an insider's look at how these advancements have been used by players themselves, and how they have fundamentally changed America’s pastime.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

Published March 24, 2026

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This cannot earn 5 stars because of how he handled Bauer. I hope Friedman reads this and thinks about it.
Bauer's 194 game SA suspension is mentioned once. Never again.
Bauer comes off as an iconoclast and that his pitching career fizzled because of his obstinancy.
Allegations of violence against women are well-document.
His harassment of female journalists on Twitter had real consequences.
His misogyny in interviews is odious.
The reactions to the Dodgers signing him earns nary a mention.

There are almost no women in this book. That isn't a critique per se, but the way that baseball is gendered would have been discussed in a better version of this book.

The name "Pitching Ninja" [I feel uncomfortable even typing it] has never sat right with me. Friedman explains early that it is an homage to his Japanese wife and was used to describe his half-Japanese son. But branding it draws upon orientalist tropes, even benevolent one. A white guy calling his brand pitching ninja is an orientalist cooption. The sword metaphor foments a certain kind of exotic, orientalist masculinity.

Is the book informative? Yes. Is it well-written? Yes. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about the story he was telling and believe he told it well, despite not getting into the labor issues.

[Willem Bouma]

Just reiterated things so many times. Book could’ve been 50 pages shorter.

[Jason McCracken · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a daily watcher of his YouTube channel but I'm not quite into pitching enough to get the most out of this. The 2 full chapters lionizing Trevor Bauer were a real put off as well. Fuck that guy. I dropped a star for that reason alone.

[Evan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have tons of respect for Rob, I have been following the PitchingNinja account for years and will continue to do so. He has done so much for the game of baseball. Unfortunately, the book read awkwardly and felt lost at time, I did not enjoy it. There were some cool anecdotes scattered throughout but overall, it felt disjointed and clunky.

[Elysha Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unhittable is an interesting and exhaustive exploration of the development of modern day pitching in baseball and how technology and outsiders have shaped it.

I enjoyed the detailed aspects of this, going into some of the different pitchers and how they have shaped the changes in the pitching and how they’ve embraced the technology and stats to different degrees. The part of Skenes was particularly interesting.

It’s very detailed oriented book and I can see how that would not appeal to everyone. However if you’re interested in the technology and development of pitching and have a statistics lean this is a good book.

I will say though, talking about Bauer in depth with minimal mention of his SA suspension and overall misogyny with just saying it’s controversy is very disappointing and he shouldn’t have been brought up. It was difficult to listen to those chapters to say the least.

The narration of the book was good and engaging.

[Mack the Turtle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting pieces, but this was all over the place. Chapters at times seemed randomly ordered, concepts explained multiple chapters after they’re first introduced, and times where I think he wrote 3 versions of a paragraph and instead of picking one kept all three.

[Zach Koenig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any baseball fan plugged into the National Pastime in the current age gets a sense that the pitchers are way ahead of the hitters. Batting average is down, contact is down, and strikeouts are up. In Unhittable, author Rob Friedman (of PitchingNinja fame) provides some great context for why/how this came to be and what exactly pitchers are doing to refine their movements and arsenals so perfectly.

There are basically two trains of thought that run through Unhittable:

First is Friedman's in-depth explanation of the various technological and analytical tools that pitchers currently use to maximize velocity, perfect their delivery, sequence their pitches, and all the while try to keep their golden appendages healthy. Friedman cites programs like Driveline and technology like Edgertronic cameras, Rhapsodo, Trackman, & Trajekt (among many others) that are being used to dig into the fine details of why the ball moves like it does and how to repeat that over and over again. Though perhaps slightly over the head of even a dedicated baseball fan like me from a technical perspective, all these concepts are fascinating. Friedman even goes so far as to delve into physics concepts like seam-shifted wake and pitch tunneling. He makes a compelling case that pitchers in the modern era are as much scientists as artists.

A second thread running through Unhittable is the historical context. Friedman essentially starts by explaining how pitching used to be coached/taught on "feel" and abstract concepts. Building the body or strengthening the arm via weight training was even discouraged. But then hurlers like Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan (using the then-unorthodox methods of pitching guru Tom House) broke the mold by showing how conditioning & deep analysis could extend both velocities and careers. The advent of full-capture stadium cameras in the 2010s spurred this on even further, with pitchers like Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes representing a new wave who are actively studying all aspects of their craft in ways previously unimaginable. The really strong writing here is a welcome break from the more technical aspects of the narrative.

Yes, there is a significant chapter devoted almost solely to Trevor Bauer. This will immediately turn some readers off, but I hope it doesn't. For all of Bauer's personality and off-field foibles, his story absolutely deserves (needs, really) to be recounted here. He truly was on the cutting edge of pitching analytics and in some senses paid a price for being first through the gate (a lot of criticism and scorn). Not that anyone is really feeling sorry for Bauer the individual at this point, but I'm glad he wasn't excluded entirely from this story.

Overall, I found Unhittable to be a fascinating explanation of why pitchers continue to dominate batters in Major League Baseball. In one of the only major sports where the defense controls the ball, pitchers have the ability to always be a step ahead of their offensive counterparts--and that is exactly what is happening at the moment.

[John Deardurff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at how technology, analytics, and outside-the-box thinking have reshaped modern pitching, and as someone who’s been watching Pitching Ninja videos for the past 2–3 years, it was really interesting to see that evolution come together in a complete story. Friedman connects the slow-motion overlays, and “nasty pitch” clips we see online to the bigger picture. Such as how tools like spin rate, movement analysis, and advanced training have turned pitching into a data-driven science and helped create this new era of dominance. The book occasionally feels a bit repetitive or deep in the weeds, but it’s still an engaging and insightful read, especially if you follow today’s game closely. Overall, I’d definitely recommend for baseball fans.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. Friedman does well in laying out how technology combined with the drive to do better have led to a baseball revolution of pitchers dominating the game. Throughout the book you can start to visualize how the individualized approach to improvement has taken over (thank goodness) and those that have come on board have thrived. It will be interesting to see how far down the ranks these ideas/practices will become prominent. Bottom line, it’s the hitters’ turn to advance in this back and forth.

[Robert Soto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Friedman provides readers with all the needed insights to appreciate how much pitching has evolved throughout the history of baseball. While some parts may seem redundant, there are important takeaways from each section of the book. The embracement of technological breakthroughs in pitching leaves readers with a desire to see how they can harness new insights into their day to day lives. The game of baseball is ever changing and this is just another chapter in the history of the sport.

[Schsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great breakdown of how pitching has changed over the last decades, which gives credit to many pioneers both on and off the field. Any baseball fan should read this, especially older fans who have trouble making sense of the direction the game has gone in recent years.

The quality of the writing does leave something to be desired, at times it feels more like I'm reading a collection of school essays rather than a book, but it's still worth reading for any avid baseball fan.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rob shares lot of interesting stories and history. He also has a tricky balance to play between accessible and catering to knowledgeable fans, while also not offering a repeat of Jeff Passan’s The Arm, so there will be some already familiar moments in this book to some. Despite his clear impact on the sport, there was also a little too much Trevor Bauer for me.

[michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

i don't typically rate books i've consumed as audiobooks but there is entirely too much trevor bauer apologia going on in this one. spending chapters trying to make him a martyr to pitching analytics/biomechanics when he was just a sour guy that didn't know how to treat coaches, women, or teammates and was exiled from organized baseball because of it.

[Chad Dickson Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

So interesting that he goes rounds and rounds about elite pitchers and their stuff, but doesn’t remotely dive into the dangers of pitching to the body. We are still seeing an epidemic of injuries to these kids’ arms, but he barely touches the topic. I also didn’t understand the placement of Trevor Bauer on a pedestal.

[David Go · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the most comprehensive book I’ve read on the evolution of pitching development.
At the same time- writing style is one-dimensional.

It reads more like a 250-page informational article than a story with a narrative.

[Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book on an evolving subject. Loved the discussion of the new technology. A bit repetitive at times.