LOS ANGELES -- Brock Stewart arrived in Anaheim over the weekend throwing 97 mph, and where was that when he pitched for the Dodgers?

It's a long story, and a good one. It also puts a face on the issue that has dominated the major league conversation this month: What is causing all these pitching injuries, and what can we do about them?

Stewart, now pitching for the Minnesota Twins, made his major league debut with the Dodgers in 2016. In his first home start, he pitched five shutout innings. He still has a recording of the game.

"Vin Scully called it," Stewart said. "I will cherish that forever.

"I loved my time with the Dodgers. That's about as big league as you get: Dodger Stadium, and Hollywood."

For four years, the Dodgers shuttled him between the starting rotation and the bullpen, and between the majors and the minors. In 2018, his average fastball dipped from 93 mph to 91 mph.

From the middle of 2019 to the middle of 2020, he journeyed from three organizations — the Dodgers, Toronto Blue Jays and Chicago Cubs — to the independent Chicago Deep Dish. The uniform top there was covered, if you will, with what Stewart described as "a deep dish slice, with melted cheese falling off of it."

As summer turned to fall in 2020, Stewart and his wife hosted a barbecue, and one of the guests — "a friend of a friend's boyfriend" — ran a baseball development facility called Tread Athletics.

Driveline is the brand name in the field, but the common goal is better performance through intensive analysis. For pitchers, throwing harder can be a goal in itself, not a byproduct of a new workout routine.

Within weeks after he got on the Tread program, his velocity spiked. Five months later, he had Tommy John surgery.

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