Bauer and Straily have both worked with Kyle Boddy at Driveline Baseball’s training center here, where Bauer expanded on the lessons he learned from Wolforth at the Texas Baseball Ranch in Montgomery, Tex. Neither Boddy nor Wolforth pitched professionally, but they have built thriving businesses by teaching each pupil to maximize — safely, they insist — his body’s capacity for throwing hard.

They symbolize, and have helped fuel, the speed game baseball has gradually become. According to FanGraphs, the average fastball in 2002 was 89 m.p.h. It has crept higher in each of the last seven seasons, to 92.8 m.p.h. Rising velocity is changing the sport, and all but shutting out pitchers who can’t keep up.

“One hundred miles per hour is the new benchmark,” said Tom House, a former major league pitcher and coach who founded the National Pitching Association, which runs camps and clinics nationwide. “I think in the next five to eight years, most pitchers, to sign a pro contract, are going to have to show 97, 98, and touch 101, 102. That’s where the research is going.”

That is why, under morning clouds in late June, dozens of young pitchers — mostly on break from college programs — strode purposefully around the parking lots of Driveline’s modest home at an industrial park near Sea-Tac Airport, holding kettlebell weights over their heads or wiggling long sticks (called shoulder tubes, for warm-up and recovery) in front of their chests. They were some of the many aspiring pros who work with House, Wolforth, Boddy and other coaches who can help them throw hard enough to be noticed.

And yet, if they do not know it already, they will soon learn that velocity alone is not enough to succeed at the highest level. The game is too intricate and filled with too many hitters who can adjust. But without that velocity, the rest may never come into play.

“There’s a floor, like: ‘You have to throw this hard, and if you don’t, then you’re not a big leaguer,’” Boddy said. “But people take it way too far. It’s only important insomuch that you need it to get past the gate.”