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.
All Cali Gloves come with palm slits, finger loops and elastic wrist lacing that encourage proper hand placement. The right closing patterns and give kids more confidence to go make plays. Cali Gloves even allow parents to break in the glove without stretching out the fit.
It's the glove Kevin wishes he had growing up and the glove all his teammates want for their kids. Visit caligloves.com to learn more and help your kids play better catch.
Cali Gloves K a l I gloves.com
[00:01:11] Speaker B: welcome to this week's edition of in the clubhouse with EMD. I'm Andy Kirakidis, joined by my wonderful co host, Mr. Keith Glasser. How are we doing sir?
[00:01:19] Speaker C: Great.
[00:01:20] Speaker D: How are you?
[00:01:21] Speaker C: Good.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Want to we are firmly in the off season for the vast majority of kids.
Maybe one more weekend of travel ball but we're getting into that late October, early November window of time where guys are going to start to shift their focus should be shifting their folks to the weight room and getting their swings in and all that kind of good stuff.
And what I want to take a couple minutes what we want to take a couple minutes to talk about is make your practices hard.
And I think this is particularly relevant for, for hitters and the reason I say this is I think it's very easy for hitters to fall into the trap of taking BP and feeling good coming out of the cage. And my swing feels dialed in and you know, I'm using the middle of the field and okay, well it's a 72 mile an hour middle. Middle BP fastball.
I'm a big fan of feel good rounds. I think it's something that is a big part of pregame routines for a lot of guys.
But if you're really trying to improve yourself as a hitter this off season, that cannot be your approach in order for you to close the gap on your competition.
What are your thoughts on this Coach?
[00:02:39] Speaker D: Yeah, no, I agree. I think that, you know, I think BP in general and I stole this from coach David Steed, who was the hitting coach at West Alabama my first year in college coaching.
Played in AAA for a really long time with the Rangers and Dodgers, excellent hitting guy, but he had a list of what the BP the purpose of batting practice was.
I can't recite all of them off the top of my head right now, but it went along the lines of, you know, sharpen your strengths, strengthen your weaknesses, know what you need to know what your weaknesses are so that you can then work on them.
Being able to use the middle of the field, it was a whole, you know, slew of things situational hitting, you know, where in certain situations, where are we trying to hit the baseball, you know, are we trying to hit behind the runner or are we trying to move, when we're moving them, like what? You know, infield, in infield, back, things of that nature.
But the point was that when we took batting practice at west of Alabama and we were, we were really good in 2009, it wasn't just all straight up feel good rounds, right like there, there was designed to make hitters uncomfortable.
It was designed to challenge them so that there were, we could work on things that they weren't necessarily good at so we could then get them better so that we could then transition that into the game. And I think that that's something that you get a lot of at the
[00:04:12] Speaker C: collegiate level nowadays, right?
[00:04:13] Speaker D: Like you can probably go on Instagram and see what they're doing at practices with hack attacks and junior hacks and you know, some of my favorite drills where the, you know, we would do three plate drills or two plate drills with junior hack attacks where first plate is, you know, simulating, you know, 89.92 back plate, simulating 72, you know, breaking ball, slider stuff, just stuff that you, you need to get better at and see more of. And I think in today's day and age there, there's so much more technology available to these kids that you have the opportunity to do these things.
Of course there's going to be variation in it. Like, you know, I know people get mad with the hack attack where it's like, it doesn't throw in the same spot every time. Like, yeah, it's the point. Like you don't walk up to a plate in a game and be like, hey, could you throw it right here, middle in, you get it to the inner third at like 89. Like I can, I can sit and spin on this ball and hit it hard. Like, that's not the point that dude's trying to get you out, you know, but the sliders and the changeups and the breaking balls, you know, it's so much Better than it ever was before. I always make light of it with the, you know, we had the jugs machine, you know and kudos to jugs for having those two wheel machines but it was like it only threw a 12, 6 breaking ball in the same exact spot every single time with a yellow dibble ball like now you can throw it with real baseballs and through wheel machine you get right left handed sliders, two seamers, four seamers, sinkers, change ups like it's legit.
And I think that you have to challenge yourself if you are looking to up your game so that when you actually, you know, play when the lights are on and guys are coming to watch you play, it's not just straight up 72 mile an hour fastballs, middle, middle that you're not really going to see in a game, right? Like you, you, you need to face some velocity, you need to face some change ups. You need to face things that are going to fade away to you and run to your back foot and breaking balls like yeah, you can work middle, middle breaking balls. Guys are going to try to flip breaking balls in an OO count to get ahead.
Work on it, see it, you know, so I, I think that it's, it's never been more easy to do but I, I think that it's, it's a necessity if you want to up your game and become a more complete hitter to challenge yourself, challenge yourself in those environments and it's the easiest thing to do, right? Like this game is predicated on failure. But we're not, you're not playing a game right now. Like especially if you're in the Northeast. Like you know, we're towards the end of October. Like you might have one or two weekends left and then it's going to be shut down, right? Like you have November, December, January, February. Like you ain't playing any games up here. Really challenge yourself in the cage and try to get better at this stuff so that when you do play games come out in high school, you're in a far better spot to put yourself in to be successful once you actually, you know, start playing.
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[00:07:45] Speaker D: is the place to be.
[00:07:46] Speaker C: To learn more, visit diamondcollegeshowcase.com
[00:07:53] Speaker B: yeah, if you're. If you don't have at least a portion of your offensive day where you're uncomfortable, meaning to your point, like, velocity's high and like, I gotta, I gotta execute moving parts of my swing. I need to make sure that I'm, I'm starting my movements on time and I'm getting to the right spots. Like, if you're not at least doing that or seeing some quality spin, get after you.
Like, it's not that it's a waste of a day, but you need to be doing that pretty frequently if you want to really prepare yourself to take better at bats and take some of those metrics into the game. Right? So I think that people fall in love with the tangible portions of this recruiting process, which is the exit below and the 60 time and the velocity. And that's all great, right? It's all great and it all matters. It definitely does.
But if you're the guy who's got a 99 or 100 mile an hour exit velocity right now, your concern shouldn't be, should I get to 102?
It should be, how often can I get to 100 when somebody's trying to get me out?
Not how often can I hit 100 mile an hour exit velocity when everything in the environment that I'm in is, is controllable.
The, the only other thing I'll add to this is that I think guys spend way too much time on tees and I think guys spend way too much time on front toss. I think you need to develop a routine that helps you get ready to go and hit.
But no, nobody's ever become a good hitter by just hitting off of the tee.
It's just, it's the most controlled that you can get. Do I think that guys should have drills? Do I think guys should use the tee as a way to prepare themselves? 100%.
There are drills, there are movements that players are trying to iron out, they're trying to feel good about whether it's bad angle, entry angle, contact point, whatever it is. Like, the tee is a wonderful, wonderful tool to use, but it should be a tool that you use to get yourself ready, not a tool that you lean on as to make you a better hitter because.
Or I should say a better offensive player. And that comes down to handling velocity, seeing spin, recognizing spin, being able to grind out some at bats like. And you can with these pitching machines.
You. You alluded to it. You can simulate so much of this.
You can have legitimate pitch mix batting practice where you can see sliders and then you can see velocity. You can see balls out away from you. You can see balls in.
I'm really struggling with the ball at the top of the zone. All right, well, we can freaking hammer the top of the zone. Like, the precision at which you can deliver baseballs allows you to work on basically what a tee allows you to work on. But the ball's moving.
So I implore all you young hitters out there to make the environment that you're hitting in difficult because it'll make game time less difficult.
Fair, fair, fair.
That's all we got this week.
Limit those feel good rounds.
Get after it. See some spin, see some velocity. Get yourself ready to smash some baseballs in the spring.
Thank you for listening. Talk to you next week.
Thank you for listening this week. If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and smash that like button for us. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Google podcasts, as well as Spotify. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram MD Baseball. If you want to find out what me and Keith do to help families and players navigate the recruiting process, go ahead and check us out on emdbaseball.com take a few minutes to check out our new online academy. I promise you'll get some good information out of that. Thanks again for listening. Check in with you next week.
