Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey, parents and coaches, are your kids using the right glove? The most important skill for youth athletes to learn is how to play proper catch. The problem is most youth gloves are made with bad leather and are too big for small hands. They actually make it harder to play catch. That's why former Major League Baseball shortstop Kevin Smith created Cali Gloves. Cali Gloves are crafted from 100% Japanese kip leather and are the perfect size for kids.
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[00:01:10] Speaker B: welcome to this week's edition of in
[00:01:13] Speaker C: the Clubhouse with EMD Baseball. I'm Andy Kirikidis, joined by my Wonderful Co host, Mr. Keith Glasser. How are we doing?
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Great.
[00:01:19] Speaker D: How are you?
[00:01:19] Speaker C: Good.
I'm going to quote a good friend of mine who I've known for a long time. He's a junior college coach, played at the University of Florida, comes from an extensive baseball family who spent decades in professional baseball. And he knows a thing, a thing or two.
And we have kind of a moniker that we've used on this podcast before.
You need to be recruitable before you can get recruited, but I want to take that to another level. And I'll shout out Jericho Weitzel on this, but he said something to me the other day that stuck out is that college players act like college players before they're college players.
And I'm going to say that one more time because I think, you know, I kind of got to let that sink in a little bit. But college players start acting like college players before they're college players.
And you know, for me, what this means is that if you want to be a college player, you need to start acting, thinking, behaving and competing like a college player does while you're in high school.
Well, before it, right. You're a freshman sophomore in high school and you got aspirations of playing college. Well, we need to start acting like one. You know, we need to start doing the things in the weight room. We need to start competing the right way. We need to show up to the field the right way.
We need to warm up the right way. We need to prepare the Right way.
And you know, with the access that you have to college baseball at this point, you got a pretty good blueprint out there in front of you of what these guys look like and how they act and how they compete, the composure they have, the discipline they have, how they play the game.
And I think sometimes that gets overlooked in this rat race of recruiting is that, you know, you need to be recruitable but you kind of, you kind of got to act apart. And the last thing I'll say before I kick it over to you on to get some thoughts on this, because I know you have some, is like when you show up to a field, it's not hard to pick out the guys who have a chance to play at the next level. By watching how they act, how they move and just their general mannerisms, you can see kids physically, you can see them, how they behave, how they interact with their teammates, how they go about their business pre game. And those guys who act like college players and they go through their warm up routine and they stretch the right way and you can see that they're preparing to go and play a game. Those guys stick out like a sore thumb.
I use the example of my wife who is a, you know, collegiate soccer player, Division 1 soccer player that, you know, she's not super well nuanced in baseball, but if I brought her to a high school baseball game, she'd have no problem picking out the guys who could play in college pretty quickly just by watching how they behave and how they act.
And I think it's something that people need to wrap their head around and you know, young guys and parents need to think about, you know, that's kind of where it starts. You want to play in college and you start acting like one. Now.
[00:04:26] Speaker E: If you're the parent of a high school baseball player with college aspirations, you already know the recruiting process can feel overwhelming. Endless showcases, non stop emails and big promises with very little clarity. That's why we recommend Diamond College Showcase Camps, the nation's premier academic baseball showcase. At Diamond College showcases, every college coach in attendance is there with a purpose to coach, instruct, evaluate and recruit. Every player is seen, every player is engaged, and every family leaves with a clear understanding of where they truly stand. This is not a mass camp. College coaches run the drills, evaluate every athlete and provide honest professional feedback that you can trust. Diamond College Showcase Camps are built for serious student athletes who are who value both baseball and academics. If you're looking for transparency, clarity and a recruiting experience that respects your time and your players future Diamond College Showcase is the place to be. To learn more, visit diamondcollegeshowcase.com.
[00:05:29] Speaker D: Sure.
I think the one thing we should probably talk about is what does it like, what is it?
You know what I mean, what is it? It's easy to say college baseball players act like college baseball players before they're college baseball, but what does that look like? What is it that you should be doing in order to present yourself in a way that you want to play college baseball and can portray that with your look and your body language and your, your general overall, overall attitude towards everyone here.
But I think that, that, you know,
[00:06:11] Speaker C: that
[00:06:14] Speaker D: it's a great line or a great, you know, a great idealism. Right?
And I think that, you know, if
[00:06:22] Speaker E: you want to go play in college,
[00:06:24] Speaker D: you have to have some semblance of maturity about you when you are going through this process and getting recruited, figuring out what it is that you want out of your college athlete experience, but also being able to outwardly show not only with your, your physical presence, but also with, with how you play and how you prepare and what you do off the field when no one's looking, that starts to set yourself apart. Right? You know, it's easy when you show up to a game and this has happened more times than I'd probably like to admit, and you see three quarters of a team walk in wearing Crocs and I'm going to sound like the old guy screaming at the clouds here. But, like, that doesn't happen in college, really.
[00:07:10] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:10] Speaker D: Like, I suppose it probably happens a little bit more now with turf fields and things of that nature where like, yeah, man, maybe you show up wearing Crocs because it's turf and you just, you don't have to pull the tarp, you don't have to do field work. You have to do any of that stuff where, like, if you're raking a grass field, like, you ain't doing it in Crocs.
And then also, like, you know, I've seen guys throw pregame in Crocs like you don't want to. You're not serious about this.
No one is. No one should ever go onto the field. And I'm not saying it because you're wearing Crocs, but, like, you run the risk of hurting yourself. You're not really showing me that you're prepared for what's about to go, like, what you're about to go do. You're just there to be there,
[00:07:55] Speaker C: you
[00:07:55] Speaker D: know, and it's showing up with your, you know,
[00:08:01] Speaker E: with your Jersey on.
[00:08:02] Speaker D: You know, without your jersey tucked in and like in, some of this stuff seems trivial, but it matters to some coaches. Does it matter all of them? No, it doesn't really. Like, if you're going to be a left handed hitter who's just going to, you know, jump the yard and hit doubles, there's not going to be a lot of guys that care whether your jersey's tucked in after bp, you know, during BP or not. But there are some coaches, they're going to be like, yeah, that, I don't like that.
But you have to be aware of what some guys like. And you know, some guys like that, some guys don't. Some guys don't like when mom and dad bring you a Gatorade to the, to the dugout. Like, I could have cared less.
Yeah, man, he wants to hydrate. It's 92 degrees out here and it's 110 on the turf. Like, kid probably went through five of them. Let him get hydrated, who cares?
But I think it's more the, the preparedness that you need to undertake in order to actually be considered to go play in college. And that's the weight room. You know, being in the weight room consistently week in, week out, multiple times a week, working on getting more physical, working on getting more strong, working on getting stronger, working on getting faster, those things. It's the classroom making sure that you're going to class, turning in your stuff on time, getting the best grades that you possibly can. It's the being in the cages or being in the bullpen and working on what it is that you are good at and making those strengths sharper while also bringing your deficiencies along. You know, like, hey, I'm really good at being able to handle balls on the inner half, but I struggle on balls away. I struggle on spin away. Like, what are you doing in your off time to, to get better at it? Or you just like, man, whatever, I'm just keep flipping me underhand toss and I'm just going, trying to, you know, be good at this.
You know, what are you doing defensively? You know, are you going out and you know, working on catch play, right? Like, how do you warm up? What does that look like? You know, are you string. Are you lengthening it out so that you're getting more arm strength? Are you playing short toss where you know, your quick hands on, on your, when you bringing it back in?
You know, what, what does that look like if you're a catcher? Like, you know, it's pretty easy nowadays to be Able to find a hack attack or a three wheeled machine and just have someone feed it for 15 minutes and just catch as many balls as you possibly can and get good at receiving, have them spike some balls, you can block them in fielders, you can set the same machine up and take ground balls, right? Like you don't necessarily need to have a fungo hitter anymore. Like if you have access to that stuff, I mean, if you have fungal, awesome. But there's a lot of things that you can do in order to prep yourself for what it is that you want to go ultimately aspire to do. And it's not just the, you know, I'm going to lift twice a week with my team, I'm going to hit once a week with my team, or I'm just going to take BP in practice and then think that that's going to be good enough. Because especially in a high school practice, you're not getting enough swings to really get yourself dialed in for what it is that you want to do. You're going to have to do more.
And the same thing is going to hold true if you want to go play in college. You're going to have to do more. You're going to be hitting on your own a lot more than you're actually hitting in practice because you're only going to get, you know, 20, 25 swings a day during BP, you know, a little bit more obviously, because if you have cages that are close to the field, you can hit the cages then come in and take BP, so you're taking some more. But ultimately like those 45 to 50 swings aren't going to be good enough for you to actually be able to be dialed in for what you want to do. And you're going to have days where you're off and you're going to want to go, you know, work on some stuff in the cages afterwards or before, you know. So it's, it's being able to show the maturity to be able to do, to go above and beyond what the guy that what the best guy in your program is doing.
Because that's what you're going to have to do when you get there and you turn in more days of doing more and being really good at what you do. You're going to ultimately start to see the fruits of your labor where you're going to start being better when the lights are on. You're going to start getting noticed from a physicality perspective and guys are going to want to recruit you and then when they have conversations with People like us, who you're working with or with your high school coach or with your travel coach, like, yeah, man, that kid just, his work ethic is off the charts. Like, he's always hitting, he's always taking more ground balls. He's always in the bullpen, you know, not necessarily throwing all the time, but like trying to figure out different grips for breaking balls and trying to make his breaking ball sharper. He's trying to, you know, make his change up, spit, sink a little bit more, whatever it might be. And like that clues in college coaches to, okay, this kid is actually, he has an idea of what he's trying to do. He's a rat. He wants to be really good at this game. That's a kid that I want to go down the road with from a recruiting standpoint. And if the compete factor ends up being off the charts, you're going to find yourself in a really good spot. But if you just want to do the, the absolute bare minimum and expect that you're going to be able to get unbelievable results, that it's not really going to happen.
[00:12:58] Speaker C: You have to, you have to be
[00:12:59] Speaker D: willing to put in more time and effort than anyone else that you know. And that's hard as a high school kid, but if that's what you want to do as a goal, that's what ultimately is going to lead you to the spot where you're going to be able to be recruited and ultimately end up and play college baseball.
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[00:14:01] Speaker C: yeah, they.
I don't even need to double down on that, but just, just doing the things that people don't see that college guys are going to do. Like all the extra work that you just talked about. I think the one piece I want to hit on a little bit is kind of the game day stuff.
When you show up to the field, I think there's a. When you watch college guys or guys who are going to play in college, and it's very Clear that they're going to go play in college. Or if you go and watch a college game, there's a level of intentionality behind what they do and there's an energy and focus about how they go about getting themselves prepared to play and then there's a composure that is associated with them during the game. And if you start with the pre game stuff, it's having some intention around how you're actually getting loose. Right? You know, you go, we've all been to it. You go to high school games and guys do a couple arm swings and they jog a couple times and it's like, oh, well, I'm ready to go. No, you're not.
The guy who plays in college will find a little extra time to make sure that he gets his full warm up routine in. When the infielder who's going to play in college is playing catch, there's a certain level of precision to what they're doing. There's some intention behind how they're going about their business. There's some snap, there's some focus, there's some energy behind what they're doing. You know, the guy who's going to go pitch in college doesn't throw some med balls and then go hop on the mound and throw their bullpen. They're, they're going to, they're going to get hot, they're going to run, they're going to do a full dynamic stretch, they're going to go through their catch play stuff, they're going to do their arm care stuff, they're going to have a routine that mimics that of a college player. And you know, having been on the road and done this and been involved in college baseball for 20 plus years, sometimes it's as simple as guys making an adjustment to learn how to prepare that way. And you can see them unlock some skills that they may not have had just by being a little bit more intentional about how they show up every day. But the guys who already do it, they've got a leg up on their competition immediately because they're prepared, they're ready to go when they get there. And then some of the gameplay stuff, you know, the, the play hard stuff, you know, guys who are going to play in college, they play hard.
I'm sure there's some outliers out there, but you know, they, they can smell an infield hit, they can go first to third, they're going to leg out a double, they're going to compete in the batter's box, they're going to get on and off the field.
The guys that do that kind of stuff, they. They stick out. When you go watch a game, you know, when the guy's first out of the dugout every inning with some pep in a step, you know, like, that kid catches your eye, the guy who grabs his third baseman's glove because the third baseman, you know, flew out to center field and he brings it out to him at second base. Like, that seems like such a.
A minimal thing, but when you're sitting there and you're watching all this stuff kind of play out and you've watched, you know, thousands of games over your career, like, there's certain really small things that clue you into. Like, okay, that's a little bit different. Not everybody does that.
And you're really. You're looking for outliers. Like, you're looking for the guys who do things differently.
And differently might not be the best way to put it, but you're looking for guys who stick out with how they do things.
And the preparation and how you show up and the energy that you bring to a field can really be a separator. And if you do it enough, you can really elevate yourself on a daily basis, period. So, you know, if you don't know what an example of this looks like, like, turn on college baseball. Watch how these guys act. Watch how they take pitches. Watch how they react to strike calls. Watch how pitchers gather themselves and are composed. Watch how guys get on and off the field.
It's a, you know, it's a free lesson in how you should behave and how you should act if you want to play at that level.
Yes, I think we covered that one pretty good. Yes.
All right, thank you for listening, everybody. We'll talk to you next week.
Thank you for listening this week. If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead
[00:18:20] Speaker B: and hit that subscribe button and subscribe.
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[00:18:33] Speaker B: If you want to find out what me and Keith do to help families
[00:18:36] Speaker C: and players navigate the recruiting process, go ahead and check us out on emdbaseball.com
[00:18:42] Speaker B: take a few minutes to check out
[00:18:43] Speaker C: our new online academy. I promise you'll get some good information out of that. Thanks again for listening. Check in with with you next week.
