Episode 144: Interview with National Scout and Hitting Coordinator for the Kansas City Royals Joe Raccuia

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[00:01:12] Speaker B: Welcome to this week's edition of Dugout Dish Podcast. I'm Andy Kirakidis, joined by my Wonderful co host, Mr. Keith Glasser. How we doing? Great. [00:01:20] Speaker A: How are you? [00:01:21] Speaker B: Got a special guest today. [00:01:22] Speaker A: Sure do. [00:01:24] Speaker B: A man that we both played for. He helped lead the Fighting Red foxes to a 2005 Mac championship, took us down to LSU. [00:01:36] Speaker B: Has had a couple different stops as an assistant at George Mason GW in Alabama, not in that order. And he's also the head coach at Radford University in Virginia, where he took them to two NCAA tournaments, one regular season title and two conference tournament championships in 2015 and 2017, I believe. But we're pretty fired up to have our former head coach who had a big impact on us, who is currently the national hitting cross checker and assistant hitting coordinator as a part of the hitting leadership department for the Kansas City Royals. Mr. Coach Joe Rakuya. Thanks for coming on, Coach. [00:02:14] Speaker C: Hey guys, thanks for having me. It's pretty cool when your former players are still involved in baseball and have a passion for it. So anytime that I can get back and and chat with you guys about baseball, especially now when you guys really, at your age, know exactly what I was doing and why I was so adamant about certain things, you probably understand it a lot more now than you did back then. [00:02:39] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. [00:02:41] Speaker A: A lot of truth to that. [00:02:43] Speaker B: Also sit back and think about the team that you had to handle at Mariston. I'm sure that that was a stressful at times, but you're able to find a way to get the best out of us. So always appreciate that. [00:02:56] Speaker C: Well, you guys were the calm ones. So. [00:03:01] Speaker C: You, you guys were the most normal that I've had. So you include Traz in that. And then over the. After that, then we started getting a little, a little risky, but it was, you know, as, as I know, I went back to, to their kickoff banquet last year with you, Andy and Keith. You couldn't make it, but. [00:03:24] Speaker C: That was one of the most special teams I've been around and probably my most fun team I've ever coached and a group of guys and that, that'll be, I'll go back, you know, it'll be years from now, but that'll be the team. One of the very few that, that I like really remember of like just consummate, just grind guys and just blue collar and work ethic and compete and to a high level and that was cool to be around. [00:03:53] Speaker B: No, you, you found a way to get the, the best out of a. I don't want to call us midfit misfits, but a, a unique bunch of personalities who just really like to compete. And yeah, you know, it all kind of came to a head after a rough start. You know, ended up making a really good run and. [00:04:14] Speaker B: Yeah, always be thankful for that year. [00:04:17] Speaker A: Yeah, so that was a great year. [00:04:22] Speaker B: Tell us you've been around this game for a long time, going back as a player. [00:04:29] Speaker B: Coaching college for however many years, and now you're on the pro side of things. Like, give the listeners a little bit of rundown of how you got to where you are with the Royals right now. [00:04:40] Speaker C: Well, I'm originally from Buffalo, New York and went to Kenesha's high school. And. [00:04:46] Speaker C: As you guys know, back in those days there weren't travel teams, so it was really hard to get seen and noticed. And we had to go through a process of like, sending handwritten letters and, and typed up letters that said, I wanna, I wanna come there and play there. And you know, I always tell the story that one of my. We never ran a 60, so I didn't know what I ran. So my dad just made up a number and he put me down as like a 62 runner. And I'm like, now that I know, you know, I'm like, oh my God, I'm a world class athlete. And. But that's what recruiting was. It was like, it was really hard to get out of western New York. [00:05:31] Speaker C: There were, you know, Kenesius, Niagara, Saint Bonaventure were the schools up there. And at the time, believe it or not, when I was coming out of High School, LeMoyne was a powerhouse And. But other than that, you didn't see many guys get out of there. There weren't showcase camps. There weren't all these other things. It was like word of mouth and connections. [00:05:53] Speaker C: So my. And it's pretty interesting to talk about recruiting because my. [00:06:00] Speaker C: My recruiting story is really confusing. Like, when I first signed, I first committed to Methodist College, a Division 3 school in North Carolina. Well, I graduated high school, I was going to Methodist, and all of a sudden, you know, my uncle. I had. Half my family was from Miami, and my uncle knew Charlie Green at Miami Dade South Community College, and he called Charlie Green, and all of a sudden, next thing you know, I'm. I'm in a workout at Cazanovia park in Buffalo with Cy Williams, an old scout who has since passed, and his son, Jimmy Williams. And they worked me out, and they called the coach at Miami Dade, and then I ended up going to Miami Dade, and then I missed home and went to Bonaventure for a semester. And then my parents moved to Florida, and I just went down with them for the summertime with all intentions to go back to Saint Bonaventure and play for Coach Sudbrook. And the new junior college coach at Edison Community College in Fort Myers saw me play in a summer league game and says, if you stay, I'll give you a scholarship. I said, okay. So I ended up. That's really where my career started, was Edison Community College for two years. And then, you know, obviously my coach in junior college had worked at Old Dominion Camp years ago with Scott Gynes and Luke Kent, and they needed a second baseman, and they made some calls, and that's how I ended up at Radford. I'd never been in Virginia a day in my life, probably just driving through to get to Florida, but that was really about it. And so, you know, everybody has these recruiting stories, and every parent and kid thinks these recruiting stories should be easy. Like, okay, I want to go to these three schools, you know, this and that. Well, it's not. It's a distorted process for some. Some of it's a really clean process. But not every recruiting story is the same. And every parent and kid kind of want to have it scripted. And to me, it's never scripted. You know, the time frames are never what you think they're going to be. Sometimes they're early, sometimes they're late. Even, like my son who's now at Radford University. [00:08:30] Speaker C: Joey was late, and he was getting frustrated. Why isn't anybody calling me? Why isn't. And I said, you know why? Because you're not good enough yet. Because if you were, with what it's like nowadays, they'd recruit you. So to hear that, you know, it was frustrating to him. I just, But I didn't say, like, it's never going to work. I just said, you got to keep working. You know, I never recruited somebody I didn't want to recruit, so it, you got to keep getting better and forcing their hand. And he got an opportunity and he, so far, he's making the most out of it. [00:09:10] Speaker A: You know, I think you're dead right. Like, the, everyone thinks that the recruiting process is, is clear, everything's super clean, like, oh, you're good enough. And every school that you could potentially fit, that's going to call and you have the pick of the litter of where you want to go. And it's the complete opposite for likely 99% of people out there. Like, sure, you're top end dudes who are being recruited at Vandy, Arkansas and lsu, like, sure, but that's not the reality for the vast majority of people. I like, I remember when you first called me when you got the head coaching job at Marist and you were like, do you know where Marist College was? Is? And I was like, never heard of the place? [00:09:56] Speaker B: No. [00:09:57] Speaker A: Absolutely no clue. And I would, you know, it ended up being the best decision that I made, but it was like, to your point of it, not like it's. It can spin up very quickly and you could end up at a place that you've legitimately never heard of in your life. And I mean, Maris was an hour and a half from home for me, but I had no idea that that place existed and what it was going to offer me and ultimately do for me and my coaching career and what we do now with Andy. But, you know, I think that, like, it's there, there's a lot of truth behind the fact of, like, this isn't. It's not a super cut and dry, clean, easy process for most people. It's. It's kind of wading through what's going on and finding the place that is ultimately going to be the right fit for you. And that timeline is different for everyone. Some people it's going to be, you know, two, three weeks, a month. Other people it might be a year, a little bit longer. And you just got to stick with that process and continue to get better as you go. [00:10:53] Speaker C: Keith I wanted to go to two schools, LSU or Miami, out of high school. [00:11:00] Speaker C: And every time somebody would tell me, Ronnie Lieb who used to be head coach at Niagara and coached Leebs baseball in Western New York, one of the better, you know, summer league teams. And he had all the college guys on it. He was doing something very similar to what you guys are doing at a lower scale, like sending, you know, emails. And he told me one day, he said, you're not going to play at LSU or Miami. I was pissed. I mean, I was, I was livid. How dare he say that to me? And then three months later, I'm committing to Methodist College, a Division 3 school in North Carolina. Like, so I don't. It's good to have those dreams, right? And that's one of the reasons why I stayed and was convinced. I convinced myself I'm going to stay at Edison because my goal, my dream is still alive to maybe play at Miami if I really perform. But then when Eckert and St. Leo and Embry Riddle and Rollins are calling me, you're like, well, where's FIU and where's Miami and where's LSU and where's. They were nowhere to be found. And I just lucky that Bradford needed a second baseman in the summer and they can get a plug and play kind of older player in that. That's, that's what happened. [00:12:25] Speaker A: I think the interesting thing too is that us, like, you've been in this longer than us, but, you know, we, Andy and I did this for a long time too, you know, being Andy from Massachusetts, but us upstate New York guys, western New York guys, there's. You don't have any concept of how good baseball is all over this country until you actually go see it and play it and, you know, you rattle off St. Leo and Rollins and you know, the Sunshine State Conference with Tampa and Lynn and like, that's big boy baseball too, you know. Yeah, it's not, it's not the sec. Like, let's, you know, it is what it is. But like, you know, just because it's Division 2 baseball, it doesn't mean that it's like, it's not high level, really good, talented baseball. Like, there's, there's big leaguers that come out of that conference and a ton of draft picks like you, you still have to be able to play at a high level to play. I mean, Tommy Kinley pitched at Lynn when I was coaching at West Alabama. That was in 2008, 2009. Like, you know, they're. There were. They had Hayden Simpson in that. He was in the, he was at a Southern Arc. He was a first rounder who was like, 94 to 97 in 09 when there weren't a ton of guys that were doing that, you know, and it opened my eyes because I, you know, being an upstate New York guy who play, you know, and then I went and coached Division 2 baseball in Alabama. I was like, how good is this going to be? Because my reference wasn't anything that was, you know, that high level. And all of a sudden you down, you're playing southern Arkansas and Tampa and the delta states of the world, and all of a sudden you're like, wow, this is pretty legit baseball. And then the flip side to it and the, the like, it was so juco heavy from a recruiting standpoint at. Sure, it still is. But, you know, again, my reference for juco was just, okay, baseball. And then you go watch the Itawambas and the meridians and you're like, wow, like these dudes can flat out play. And you know, it's. And I think sometimes people look down their nose at juco and you know, I know that's not Andy. And I try to dispel the myth. Like, go look at rosters at the highest levels. They're riddled with juco guys. Like, it's not by mistake those dudes can play. And I think sometimes, you know, some people get it, you know, you know, they get lost in the sauce of like, well, it's Division 2 or it's Division 3. Like there's Division 2 and 3 schools out there that will beat Division 1 schools. Like in a three game set, they'll probably beat them pretty convincingly. [00:14:53] Speaker C: My junior college was very average. We were, we were, you know, 18 league. We finished third, fourth, fifth. Right. [00:15:01] Speaker C: We had way more draft picks on those two years that I was there than Radford university did on a yearly basis. I mean, I had. I played with two big leaguers from Madison community College. You know, my catcher made it to triple a. And yeah, I mean, the tools wise, it's like their tools were really good. Some of them. You know, sometimes you got tools, but they're not good players. Right? But. But they're tools and there's reasons why they're there. It could be that was they wanted a draft and sign at that point and just be a juco draft and sign kind of guy. Or. Or they just wanted to get more playing time early on. [00:15:44] Speaker C: But it's conversations like that, you know, it depends on what they want. I always done. You guys have done them and I've done them at every one of my camps at radford or Marist talk to the parents and it's like a kid, you know, just because they get a feedback letter inviting them to camp, it's like a trophy for parents to say, hey, my kid was invited to the Miami camp. I'm going to bring him down there. I'm going to send him down there. He had no shot of playing down there. But it's a camp, so they invite you to camp. Or a kid goes to an Ivy League school camp when he's got a 900 sat and a 2.8, which makes no sense, right? So I put a lot of this on the parents to. It's hard to be realistic when you're a parent. It really is. You know, it's. You know, there were times when my kids were in high school playing and if they're not getting in the hitting in the right spot in the lineup, I'm questioning it. And you got to pull yourself and remove yourself and be really honest about what are they, you know, what. And when they go out, they only see their kid, right? They don't see the other players around that they're playing against because it's. They don't want to. The hard truth of. And I'm very straightforward when I say that. I put a lot of emphasis on the parents because they're the mature ones. Like when you guys were kids, right, when you guys were growing up and trying to get to college or came to a camp, if you came to a showcase camp at Radford, the first thing you walked into. [00:17:23] Speaker C: Was a presentation of all the gear. Just hanging there because I wanted to, I wanted to draw attention to their senses of man. They got great uniforms. I want to wear those uniforms. They got great gear. Look at. They use that. And that stuff means absolutely nothing. Nothing. But it's real. I mean, look, my former pitching coach and assistant coach Justin Willard is now going to be the big league pitching coach of the Mets. He was the first guy that told me, hey, let's. When we go to the locker room and show them the locker room, let's put, let's put those little plug in smells and let's put some music on that's upbeat. So when they walk in and we're talking to them and I'm like, why? And he's like, well, don't you. When you go to Abercrombie and you walk by it, don't you remember their smell? Yeah. I said, he goes, when you go into Target, don't you know the music, it gets you pepped up. It Gets you bopping around a little bit. Yeah, it's a game. It's a game. It's to draw to their senses. And it was right. Like, he was dead on. And it's like going to a cash register, Right. And checking out at Target. And they got all these little things right there that you don't need, but your impulse buys them. Oh, we need that. I need another cue for my phone. Oh, I need. I need this candy bar when you're just about to go for dinner. It's. That's what recruiting is. You know, we never sent kids when we gave them directions to Radford. We never let them get off exit 105. We let them get off exit 109. Because 105 entrance is not the most nicest area of Radford. So we never want them. When we took the golf cart around, we tried to stay away from all the trash receptacles and those type of things. We never wanted them to see any of that stuff. So, you know, the locker room is perfectly clean and. Oh, it's so nice and clean. Yeah. You really realize you think it's like this every day, but. But you're never gonna show any of the bad side of it, Right? And I'm not saying it's a bad side, but there's parts that parents don't understand that what coaches do to. To attract players. [00:19:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:55] Speaker B: You gotta sell something. And I mean, you know, like, you get guys who come to camp that you'd like. That display isn't for everybody. I mean, in a sense, it is, but if you got 50 kids to come to your camp, there's probably 10 or 12 of those kids that you know ahead of time. Like, that kid is a guy that we're legitimately interested in. You're probably kind of getting your final feel for the kid. I mean, the rules were a little bit different back in the day, but, like, that might be your first real chance to be, like, truly face to face with that kid. And if having your Nike uniforms and the logo and a nice smell and dugout is something that might move the needle, like, yeah, makes sense. [00:20:39] Speaker C: It's funny that I do lessons. Right. I always said I would never do. I hated camps. I liked recruiting camps, but I hated the youth camp. I just felt like I was. [00:20:51] Speaker C: Not recruiting. You know, if I was spending time there, I wasn't spending much time on my program. [00:20:56] Speaker C: But since I got out and I. Before I started working for the Mets, I started doing lessons. I still do them. I got 20 clients, 25 clients. Like I did three of them today. [00:21:07] Speaker C: Kids are 12 years old and parents are asking me what camp should I go to and when should he start lifting weights. And. [00:21:16] Speaker C: And they're, they're going to like these prestigious universities ACC camps and they're not ACC type players and they're, they're asking me about PDG and P27 and Pro5 and IMG. They're at OSHA. I'm like, look, you, you just need to keep doing what you're doing, which is coming to me and trying to get better, you know, listen to me, when it comes to what you need to be doing in the weight room or, you know, just get a water bag and just get your core stronger in the middle of your body stronger and find balance and find, you know, and, but that's, but what they see is, well, if he doesn't look the part physically, you know, he's not going to get there if he doesn't throw hard enough. He's not going to get there if he doesn't hit the ball hard enough. You know, I get text messages all the time, hey, I want my son to come work with you. He's hitting the ball 92 miles an hour and we've got a showcase camping. Can you get him the 97, 98? No, I, I can't tell you I can do that. But I can tell you I can try to get in the move better and try to get them to understand how to hit and what positions to be into. But it's all metrically driven to get recruited. [00:22:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it's such an interesting, it's such an interesting time with all of this and like going back to what you said about how you, you phrased it with Joey, a lot of times that's the first conversation that you have to have with a kid regardless of where they're in in the timeline. Like if you got a 28 who's really good right now, right, Nobody can talk to him. Don't worry about getting recruited. What are you going to do between now in June of next year to get yourself in the conversation with the schools that are actually going to care about 28s next summer? If you're a 20, 27 and you're not getting recruited right now, which most kids aren't, is the reality of it. [00:23:17] Speaker B: To your point. That's a clue that I need to do something to get myself in the conversation first. And the earlier kids figure out that that is the first step that they have to take. [00:23:32] Speaker B: The quicker they can get to the result that they're looking for. [00:23:36] Speaker C: And well, think about kids, Andy, that, you know, I had a kid go to the Wake Forest camp, you know, and he's not a bad athlete. [00:23:47] Speaker C: But he went and showcased there and he's a sophomore and he ran a 72 and he hit the ball 88 miles an hour. And I think he's got a chance to be a good player. But what he showed those metrics. [00:24:03] Speaker C: Are now on paper for those other schools and they've got to project a whole lot instead of, hey, let's get your speed to where it needs to be before you go try to showcase it. Let's get your BP or bet. Let's get your. Let's get those things improved before you go showcase them. My son's the worst player you can be. If you put him in a pro style workout. Like he's went to east coast pro, you know, he didn't go. He got invited to go play in it because I was a scout and they do those type of things. But like he, he wasn't good enough. And when he was on the field with those kids that were going to power fives, man, it was who a big difference. But he kept working and who knows, like if he has two good years early on in his career, you know, he's probably going to look at me and go, well, I started every game at Radford as a freshman or a sophomore, you know, now I can go into the portal which is, you know, I'm gonna go fight him over that. But you know, but that's their thought process. [00:25:10] Speaker C: Yeah, they use decommit. Decommitted as a verb. You know, all his roommates that he at PDG, they would say, Mr. Rakuya, you know, I, I want to decommit from my, from my commitment. Why I think I'm better. [00:25:27] Speaker C: Oh, so you don't. The school that liked you and the school that believes in you and you built a relationship with. Now you think you're better than. How do you even know you're better than. You haven't even played in a college game yet. [00:25:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that. [00:25:42] Speaker B: It'S just so different and we didn't have those outs as players. Not saying that I would have been able to take advantage of it in any way shape or form, but it's such a different time because I do think it. You do run into these situations where it's like, well, I'm here, like what's the next best thing? But I can say it from my coaching experience at William and Mary with some guys that you're familiar with. The Cullen larges of the world. Shoot. You got one of them in your. In the Royals organization. Vinnie Pasquantino. He didn't play for us, but it's somebody that we really tried to get to come to William Mary ended up going to Old Dominion. I'm sure every SEC school, when it was all done said and done, would have loved to have Vinnie Pascantino playing for him, you know, future big leaguer, but he wasn't there yet. But if Vinnie doesn't go to Old Dominion, if Cullen doesn't come to William and Mary and play every day for three years, they don't get to where they are. You know, Cullen ended up signing in the fifth round, playing in aaa, you know, Vinnie, you know, ultimately makes it to the big leagues. And is. [00:26:48] Speaker C: Is with you guys, this Vinnie Pass. [00:26:51] Speaker B: Cantina, one of the best followers. [00:26:54] Speaker C: Look, glass. Do you see it? [00:26:57] Speaker C: You know what it says? Joe, you never offered me Vinnie Pasquino. [00:27:06] Speaker C: And it's a lie because. Well, it's really not a lie. But Guerra and I had him on campus. And you can only imagine that when the Pescantino family meets the Rakuya family and the Guerra family, there's a connection there. Okay? And our last words were him to him were, you tell us what we need to offer you and we will offer you. And then he called and said he was going to Old Dominion. So, you know, I don't know if there was no offer, but it could have been upwards of 90% if he just would have said, I need 90%. [00:27:44] Speaker C: And the funny part was, I don't know if anybody's worth 90%. You know that in the same breath. [00:27:52] Speaker C: I would have given him a full. Just because he was Italian and he can hit a little bit. Like, I just wanted that dude in the program. [00:28:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's. But I think that that's sometimes what. And it's not that the grass can't be greener. Like, we've seen guys from Maris go to Wake Forest and find that extra gear with Billy, you know, down there, you know, with Ethan Conrad. But a lot of times the grass isn't greener. And your path to pro ball. And you can elaborate on this. [00:28:24] Speaker B: If you can really play. Most guys don't go unseen anymore. [00:28:29] Speaker C: No, no, no. I'll give you another one. [00:28:34] Speaker C: There's Spencer Horowitz's bet. [00:28:37] Speaker B: Yep. [00:28:37] Speaker C: Okay. So, Spencer. I'll give you a. Spencer's recruiting story. Andy, you've been through this Glass. You've been through This I told Guerrero when, before he went to jmu, I said, alex, we don't need any more position players. But we were recruiting all these kids from the Mid Atlantic Red Sox. And after about 20 games of me sitting and hovering over this one team because we were on three of their guys hard, I looked up at the end of the summer and said, who's this left handed hitter that just keeps getting all their hits? And he was playing catcher and he couldn't catch and you know, then he played second base and he wasn't good at second base. [00:29:20] Speaker C: And then I finally said to my staff, I'm calling Spencer Horowitz because I couldn't get over the fact that he just kept getting hits. And believe it or not, he didn't show any power. He was just getting hits all the time. Called Spencer. I said, hey, who's recruiting you? He said, nobody. This was August of going into his senior year. I said, nobody. He goes, yeah. I said, how about you come on campus? He screams at his mom, can I go on Radford campus? Can we drive down tomorrow? Yeah. He committed that afternoon for no scholarship. And I told him if I found him 25% I would give it to him, which we did. It always opens up. [00:29:58] Speaker C: Well, he's hitting in my three hole in his freshman year, like, and he's a big leaguer right now. He's now in. He's played his second full year of being in the big leagues. And next year when he goes to arbitration, he's got like a 4.0 or 41 war or 38 war, which means he's going to make three and a half to $4 million next year. You know, and this is a kid that nobody recruited. [00:30:27] Speaker C: It's. [00:30:28] Speaker B: We've said this before on the podcast, but I think baseball is really unique. You know, you see it in football. You see guys like, you know, we were talking about him before, like Josh Allen, who nobody cared about until he was a junior in Wyoming. Right. But in baseball, rarely is the best 16 year old the best 18 year old, rarely is the best 18 year old the best 20 year old, rarely is the best 20 year old the best 23 year old. And I attribute it to kids mature physically at different rates. But I think the reps that you get along the way, how much you play, the at bats you get, the time you spend in the gym, the time you like, that's what ultimately ends up separating these kids in the long term. And you see a lot of it in college and then you're seeing it in the big leagues that not all these guys who were pitching on television, like they weren't all SEC guys. Some of these guys stories to get there are unbelievable. I mean like we had Tim Mesa on the podcast a while back and you know, he's a lightly recruited left handed pitcher out of Philadelphia who goes to Millersville and you know, ends up pitching in the big leagues for eight years. We had Eric Kratz on the other day and you know, he, he played at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Yeah, for four years, grinded it out in the minor leagues for eight and ultimately had a 10 year big league career. I'm not saying that's the norm, but there's way more of those type of stories and I think people recognize because you just see those guys on television. Well, the thing, oh well, it must have been easy the whole way. [00:32:05] Speaker C: Kids have one thing in common. [00:32:09] Speaker C: We, we all played Little League when kids were better than us, right? And they never went to college, but there were kids that threw too hard for me. I was petrified of them, you know, and then you look up and they never played college, but I did. They never played Division 1. I did. And I'm not saying I was a good player at all, but all I'm saying was I was relentless. And the players that are relentless in trying to get where they want to be and doing it and don't have any, they don't think anything's an obstacle. You know, they, they okay, I, I'm not playing. Fine, I'll get in the lineup. Let me figure out how to get in the lineup. Look, if I'm not being recruited, what do I need to do to get recruited? If, you know, if I want to make, make it to professional baseball, what do I need to do to get drafted and, and be relentless in that and, and even if they don't succeed. [00:33:11] Speaker C: The effort you put in along the way and the, the motivation that you had and the, the being structured and, and just committed to a goal is going to carry on for the rest of your life. But all these other guys are just, oh, I, you know, I ended up at this junior college and my knee got hurt. Oh, you know, you know, you hear a lot of them the, oh, I played semi pro or I could have played pro ball, but I didn't. Why not? [00:33:43] Speaker C: Well, I didn't care. Well, well, guys that are playing at that level, they care. So like it's, but they don't want it to be hard. Like everyone never, nobody for years ever thought Niagara is any good. They got like four big leaguers. [00:34:02] Speaker B: It was good when we had to play them. [00:34:04] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, they, they got guys in the big leagues right now playing. They played in the playoffs. So I don't, you know, I don't. [00:34:13] Speaker C: It's interesting. You know, Spencer Horwitz was 24th round pick. There aren't even 24 rounds anymore. [00:34:21] Speaker C: But the reason why he made it. [00:34:26] Speaker C: Is, will lead us into that topic that you want to talk about is the reason why he climbed every level. He didn't swing and miss, he didn't strike out, he walked. And meanwhile all the guys that were drafted ahead of him that had more power than him, that had a high K rate or swing and miss rate, Spencer didn't have that. So he just kept climbing levels. So what we value sometimes is not real. But I think the game is really starting to figure out what, what to value because of the data and analytics. [00:35:02] Speaker B: Before we get into that, like you hit on the grittiness, like kind of that relentless mentality and I mean you obviously embodied some of that as a coach and you know, I think that's why you were able to get the most out of the gritty group in 05. But like you did it as a college coach at a bunch of different levels whether it was Alabama or Radford or GW George Mason and now you're doing at the pro level. [00:35:26] Speaker B: How do you, how do you figure out if that guy's got it? Because I got to imagine that it's probably even more important in pro ball than it is in college because you kind of have to have the self motivation in pro ball. Like there's, you know, I never played pro ball, I never, never that good. But it's got to be less hand holding. Like in college you got your, like you kind of got your fingers on players. When they get on campus, you got them pretty much nine months out of the year. And even the kids who don't want to do the extra stuff, they're at least going to meet a threshold that bare minimum. They're going to be in the weight room four days a week. Like they're going to do the minimum. You go out and you're talking to top prospects and you're, you're evaluating potential draft picks and you're working with your minor leaguers. Like how do you figure out if a guy's got that. [00:36:18] Speaker C: Well, if anybody can figure that out. [00:36:22] Speaker C: They'Ll be a billionaire. Right? So makeup. And we get in these conversations all the time, oh, he's got great makeup. Okay, what is it? What does that mean? Like, in our view, your view of makeup may be different than my view of makeup. Early on in my career, it was the. The guys that had the best makeup were the yes or no, sir guys. Well, that. That's not necessarily true either. The guys with the best makeup are guys that are. Are they. They have goals, they have dreams, and they are going to be relentless in their pursuit to try to get to those. [00:37:07] Speaker C: Other parts of makeup is their cognitive stuff. You know, how do they handle adversity? [00:37:15] Speaker C: What do they. You know, again, we. We can talk about my conversation with Andrew Fisher, who I thought was. When I had a zoom call with them, egotistical was going to be bad in the clubhouse. But the more I got to be on a zoom call with him, the more I loved him. [00:37:34] Speaker C: You look at AJ Ewing. I took AJ Ewing in the fourth round two years ago, and everybody in the state of Ohio didn't like the kid. They didn't. He knows it. He went to east coast pro. He turned some people off. He wore the wrong shirt one time. [00:37:54] Speaker C: He had a bad at bat, and then a scout tried to say something to him in the dugout, which is probably the wrong time to do it. And the kid just kind of, you know, he's. He's trying to survive. He's swimming uphill facing 90 to 95 with sliders, and. [00:38:10] Speaker C: And they're trying to talk to him about mechanics, so he didn't respond the right way. So they're saying he's uncoachable. I went and watched him play, and he knows the story. I went to watch him to cross him off the list. [00:38:24] Speaker C: And I watched one at bat, and I watched two swings. I called him that night, and I said, can I come in your home tomorrow? He said, yeah. [00:38:32] Speaker C: I was waiting for this arrogant, pompous kid to show up. This kid. [00:38:40] Speaker C: Is as driven as you can possibly get. And I walked out of that, and I go, I got no qualms about this kid's makeup. [00:38:53] Speaker C: People don't like the flare, you know, the. The glasses on backwards in the back of the head, or the. The hair and all the arm, guard, shin, guard, and him pimping home runs. You know, you can pimp whatever you want. You keep hitting that home run, you can have at it, right? Sometimes that turns people off. [00:39:15] Speaker C: Like, and you got to be careful what. Of what you're presenting. Joey has tattoos, and he wants one on his sleeve. And I said, no, you can have them anywhere. But. But your arm sleeve. And then I caved in. Then he wanted another one. I said, no. And he goes, why? What if it doesn't matter if I'm good enough? I said, you're right. [00:39:37] Speaker C: But if people are questioning what type of kid you are, it can cross you off the list in two seconds, whether it's recruiting or scouting. [00:39:49] Speaker C: And the makeup can. If you're dead on in the makeup, it can push you ahead a round or two, you know, just because you got a gut feel of what the kid's all about. And, you know, when you're in the pro side and you're investing sometimes millions of dollars on players, we want to know everything about the kid and. And how they tick. [00:40:13] Speaker C: Sometimes you're wrong. It's. It's not. It's not perfect. [00:40:19] Speaker C: You know, and how do you know when you're right or wrong? It's really what they're doing every single day. How are they approaching practice every single day, the weight room every day? How are they, you know, even the. The. The kids from the doctor or Venezuela, are they, you know, are they adjusting? Are they eating right? Are they taking care of their body? Are they learn. Trying to learn English? Are they, you know, and even from the coaching side, are we trying to learn Spanish? Are you trying to meet them where they are and at least be able to recognize, hey, man, there's a language barrier there. So there's a lot of things that go into makeup. And we have kids all throughout our system, the MET system, wherever system I've been in that have tools that I just may not make it just because of the makeup. [00:41:11] Speaker B: You feel like sometimes the evaluation process becomes more of a not what a guy does well, but what a guy doesn't do well. [00:41:20] Speaker C: It's easy to see what a guy does well. It's easy to see arm strength, power, a breaking ball, a guy with a good arm. It's easy to see those tools. It's not easy to see the other tools. [00:41:36] Speaker C: And the more you can be around a player, and that's what's wrong with this day and age in college is. You know, how many times I mean, Glass, I made a home visit with you, right? There are no home visits anymore. I used to go in every kid's home that. That we would recruit, and I wanted to see how they handled, you know, treating their parents, how they. Were they respectful? Were they, you know, did. Were they able to have a real conversation with you or at least were they trying to have a conversation with you? It's not easy to have a Conversation with a grown adult. But were they trying. [00:42:18] Speaker C: You know, when. When you sit there and you talk to AJU and you said, tell me about your day. And he goes, well, I got up at 6 today and I hit. Then I lifted, and I went to school, and then I took early bp. And then you go to the high school coach and you say, okay, look, tell me the truth. Tell me what his teachers would say. And those are the things that no rock should be ever unturned. We try to do it as best we can. Whether you're in college or not. The problem is that in college, you go on a visit and they want you to make a decision. You've met the kid for two hours, and they want you to make a decision right away. [00:42:55] Speaker C: Because they can offer a scholarship or a spot and then do away with it in two months. So if doesn't. It doesn't matter. Right. They can. And the player can walk away from it, too. How many guys are doing that? Oh, I just, you know, the kid committed, and then the coach didn't call me for three months after that. So I just don't feel the same way about the coaching staff. Meanwhile, they're in the middle of their season playing 56 games, you know, and that's not where their focus is. So. [00:43:28] Speaker B: No, that's. [00:43:31] Speaker B: The. The pro part is. Is such an interesting beast, because I think you guys do. [00:43:36] Speaker C: You. [00:43:36] Speaker B: You don't get to turn back when you draft a guy as easily as college guys can say, you know, you committed 27 right now. Well, if that kid's not good enough in a year, you know, and we see it all the time. You see it. You see it on Twitter and all that kind of stuff. I don't think it happens as much as people, you know, people love to grasp at, you know, that it's an epidemic and it, you know, it happens. But they also lose sight of the fact that these guys are trying to put together teams to win games. And, you know, some of these coaches are making quite a bit of money now that there's pressure to win. You got to make sure your team's good, but you guys don't have the luxury of doing that. Like, if you draft a guy next June. [00:44:15] Speaker B: You feel like you got the right guy. [00:44:17] Speaker C: Right? Like, yeah. [00:44:19] Speaker B: That really what it comes down to. [00:44:21] Speaker C: Yeah. And when you make the pick, you think you got the right guy. But the sad part about it is how many guys from a draft class ever make it to the big leagues? 2, 3, sometimes 1, maybe 5 if you're lucky it's a great draft class. [00:44:41] Speaker C: And it's the same thing in recruiting. You know how many of those guys that you sign end up being starters and some of them never end up being starters and some of them aren't a lot of scholarship money. And you know what people don't understand about college and it doesn't matter what level of college it is, coaches want to win. You know, you get a young head coach at a Division 3 school, takes a job at 28 years old, if he doesn't win there, his, his career gets slowed down. And so it's it, that's, that's part of it, you know, oh, if I go to Division 3, I'm going to get some at bats. Joey used to say that if I go to junior college, I'm going to get it at bats, right? No, I can't promise you anything like that. [00:45:28] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's a meritocracy no matter what level you get to, like when you get to college and you know, me and Keith talk about this, it's 8% of kids go play division one, two or three. You know, if you throw juco in there, you're looking at, you know, 10 kids. So 10 out of every 100 kids in every class that play baseball are going to get a chance to go and do it. Like the filter gets finer. And you know, you show up on campus and you go from being the big strong 17 year old to now you're playing against 22 and 23 year olds. And if you think you're going to walk on any campus and get innings or get a bats just because you are a pretty good high school player. Well, everybody was a good high school player. [00:46:11] Speaker B: Everybody was good. Even the guys. I look back at the guys that we played with and guys that I coached, even the kids who weren't good were good. They just weren't better than the guys that were playing. [00:46:22] Speaker C: Yeah, no doubt. And it could have been where a coach made a recruiting mistake or it could have been where they just didn't develop and the other guy developed or could have been a makeup issue. It could have been, could have been a lot of things, but players, players need to go to schools, you know. [00:46:42] Speaker C: And play the game because they love it. They love it. Not because you were recruited. You know, you, you get that sometimes where kids go to Division 3 and they go, oh, it's okay, you know, I'll go there or I'll go to a really small school. And you know, it is what it is. And, but. [00:47:04] Speaker C: Everybody There is investing time into you, you know, and whether you're a pro guy or not, if that's what you're choosing to do, then you need to give everything you can to, to that program or team. [00:47:22] Speaker B: It's funny you say that. You got to love it, right? I think that some kids who go through this, they love the idea of playing college baseball. [00:47:30] Speaker B: They don't love, they don't necessarily know what that experience is going to be like and may not be ready to take on what is required of you, kind of bare minimum. And that can be a little bit of a gut punch. And you see that. I mean, you've seen it with freshmen, like those first six months when a kid steps on campus, they, they're not always make or break, but if those first six months go bad, the kid has trouble getting acclimated or, you know, maybe the level of play, you know, kind of catches up to him a little bit and he struggles a little bit. Like a lot of those guys have a trouble getting back in the mix because then next year you got another group of freshmen. Then those sophomores that they were with, they develop a little bit more. But I had this, I don't know if I want to call it an epiphany, but when you're talking about youth sports and you're talking about 12 year olds and families saying, you know, what do I need to do to get my velo up? And I, I kind of always think, and I hope I handle it with my son when it's, when it's the time for him to do this kind of stuff. It's like, make sure they really enjoy doing it. Because at some point, if they don't love doing it. [00:48:38] Speaker B: They'Re gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna quit on it. And for some guys, the love of the game doesn't stop until they get to pro ball. And they go, man, I didn't know it was go like this. You know, we've all coached guys that were great college players that ended up going on to play professional baseball. And they get into one year of pro ball and they're like, yeah, I'm not ready to, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to do this. Like, they see the guy who, that's the only out he has and they're like, well, I could go and, you know, work for my dad, or I could, I could do something a little bit easier. I could be closer to my family. And that love of it, I think, is I Think it gets understated that, you know, if you're going to go play college baseball, you better love playing baseball. Like, you better enjoy your worst day on the field. Like, you still got to enjoy it. The days that suck because you're gonna have them. And I think that gets overlooked sometimes. [00:49:31] Speaker C: Your hat that you're wearing, for example, that logo looks. I don't even know what it is, but it looks pretty cool, right? But if you look in the inside of the hat, it's all stitching. That is crisscross zigzagging all over the place. That is what, to me, what an. The process of a good athlete looks like. It's ugly, it's hard, it's grueling. You want to probably quit. [00:50:02] Speaker C: But ultimately. [00:50:05] Speaker C: The more you put to work and put that needle to work and that stitching to work, look what shows up on the other end of it. [00:50:14] Speaker C: But that inside of that hat was hard to make, man, especially if you're doing it by hand. It's not a machine, and people aren't machines. So those zigzags of their careers of whether they're not being recruited or they got an offer, and then they. They waited too long, and then the school pulled the offer, and then. And then they're like, well, I don't want to do this anymore, and this isn't right or this isn't fair, or, I was better than this kid that signed at Radford. Why am I not being recruited by Radford? Well, you don't get to make that choice. You get to make one choice, and the choice is to wake up every day and grind through. You know, we use that term, and relentless and grind. Yeah, they're cliches, but they're real. They're real. You know. [00:51:05] Speaker C: If you enjoy the ugly part of the process, usually you'll end up. And there's no guarantees. It's just like investing money. There's no guarantees. Just because a kid goes to. Goes and pays $3,000 to play on a travel team does not guarantee you're going to get recruited. Does it help? Maybe. Does it? You know, I tell this to kids that I do lessons to. If you're looking for me to make you a major league baseball player, I can't tell you that I'm going to get you to start in your varsity lineup, but I'm going to try to give you the best shot to do it. But it may be uncomfortable for a while. And those kids. People make changes. You know, we were. You know, we can run off on tangents. But while I was on this kick with our assistant director of player development where Vladi Guerrero bat tip is different timing wise than it was last year. [00:52:03] Speaker C: Well, why would Vladi Guerrero changes bat tip? He's already hitting.300 and already been an all star and he's still trying to get better. Why do these pitchers create different pitches? Because there's trying to survive and get better and they're trying to keep more moving so their career don't stall. And that's your career stalls when you stop pressing the gas. Then the car comes to a stop and it doesn't matter if the car is going a mile an hour, don't stop. You know, one mile an hour, one step ahead is one more foot forward is still progress. But they automatically think, you know, like, I won't take a kid in lessons. If they just want one lesson to get them back on, it's not, I'm not a band Aid. Like, nothing's a band Aid. Band aids are meant to get ripped off, you know, so, you know, you, you have to invest and go through that. [00:53:06] Speaker A: It's too hard of a game to. [00:53:09] Speaker A: Fix whatever it is you want fixed in one session. Like, I don't care how good you are as a hitting coach or a pitching coach, you're not going to fix that in one session. This is all repeatable stuff that, you know, Sure, I guess you could probably be like, well, your hands are down by your waist and that's probably not the best place for them to be, so let's raise them up. But by and large, that's not something that is, is going to be fixed in a 45 minute hitting session. Like, you have to go do that over and over and over and over again and to get to that point. And I think that's where, you know, that's where people lose. I think, and I think part of it is like, you see all the success that people have, but you never see what got them to that point and how they got there. And I think that's where people struggle too. When you get to those levels where like you, you may not struggle in high school, but you're, you're going to struggle when you get to college. It's just a reality. There's very few people that are going to step on a college campus and not, not have some semblance of struggle at some point in their careers. It could be early, it could be middle, could be late, but the, the likelihood of you struggling is, is going to be high. Now, do you respond to it, you know, and I think that, you know, I've talked about it on here a lot. Like, I struggled early in my career because I, I didn't know enough about baseball to, to really be able to get myself on the field as much as I wanted to. And I was fortunate enough that we had a lot of really good people in our program that teach me that stuff. Like, I tell the story all the time where we were doing double cuts. Like day one, it was like day two of the fall. We never did double cuts in high school. I had no concept of what a double cut was. And I just remember yelling 2. And Andy being like, figure it out, dude. Like, what are you doing? And I was like, yo, I don't know what a double cut is. And I'm just yelling too. And like, there's no two call of a double cut for everyone who listens. But like, I had no concept of, of a lot of those high level things and like, it was eye opening to me. Like, wow. I thought I knew a lot about baseball and I know literally nothing. And I think it happens when you, if you eventually move into coaching, I think the same thing kind of happens. You have that epiphany early in your career where you're like, all right, I played baseball, I know what I'm doing. And then you start coaching, you're like, I know nothing. [00:55:32] Speaker A: This is way more than I thought it was. Like, you know, I didn't know what it was when I was, when I played. And now on the coaching side of things, it's like, wow, there's a lot more work that you have to put in to, you know, make yourself better and be able to relate to kids and coach kids and recruit them and the valuation process and all that goes with it. And if you're not willing, regardless of what you do, if you're not willing to kind of go through that struggle and, and figure it out, like, you're, you're likely going to find yourself out of sport very quickly, but, you know, probably not doing much on the, you know, climbing the ladder on the other side of things too. [00:56:08] Speaker C: Well, you find that out in scouting and you find that out in the, in the pro side of coaching. [00:56:15] Speaker C: There are veteran coaches and scouts that don't believe in the data and don't, don't. And I'm like, how can you not believe in it? You. Because they don't know it, so they're refusing to learn it. Right. And, and that's not a very positive growth mindset in my opinion. Everyone thinks I'm old school, but then when they start talking to me, they're like, you know, my former players and former Legueros in shock when I talk to him about, you know, going through true media or going through our system and looking at connecting dots with numbers. And it's. Again, I keep. I go back to lessons right there, there. Sometimes our kids, I know that are frustrated when they leave a lesson because they only took 25 swings. But we did med ball stuff and we did movement stuff that they don't think is hitting. But I'm getting their body in better positions to hit and to move efficiently. But they just want to just go whack away. And even if they're not hitting the ball the right way, and I'm saying, good job, and they're like, I don't understand. Good job. I didn't hit that ball the right way. No, but you moved better. And that's what I'm trying to get you to do. Like, it's that ugly process that nobody wants. They want to pay whatever they pay for a lesson, and they think they should get 100 swings. Well, it's not that. And it's the same thing in. In recruiting. Right. And being evaluated. Well, if I do this, and I'm going to get this. Well, if I do this, I'm going to get this, and it's not how it works. [00:57:55] Speaker A: Yeah, there's no real cause in what's the cause. And I was a Maris guy. Like, you do something and then you have the outcome. [00:58:06] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go. I didn't think that was the right word, but, like, there is. And it's hard in baseball, I think, because it's. It's such a. It's such a tough game to do. And I like. And when you're hyper competitive and you want to try to be good at things, being able to kind of slow the reins down on. On it is. Is tough because you want that, you know, you want to be able to hit a thousand. Like, you know, you'd have this conversation. I'd have this conversation. Like, no one's ever hit a thousand over the course of a season. Like, you're going to get out. It just is what it is, you know, what are we doing with them? What's our swing look like? You know, when we're doing it, are we getting ourselves out? Pitch reckon, you know, there's way more that goes into it than just like, well, I just want to get a hit. And, you know, I think, like, we, you know, Andy and I, you know, not to, not to be negative, but like, I feel like we like the whole like backspinning the baseball all the time was like a huge thing 20 years ago. And then now it's like, it's not necessarily like it's shifted to another. I don't want to say, like, you've gotten away from it, but like, you know, I remember having a conversation with Scott Jackson when I was doing the. The hit doctor camp, and he was like, well, I don't care if a guy backspins the ball into the right center gap. Like, what do I care? Like, if he's strong enough to do it and can do it. Like, I'll take a backside double. That's not backspun. It's a hit. And it kind of like blew my mind as a young coach of like, huh? I guess, like, we don't have to constantly worry about that. And again, sent me down this path of like, there's other things out there that, you know, you can still find success, you know, but I think that it's, you know, that there's no real, you know, it just because you do X, you get why in this game, like, there, there's a lot of different ways to skin a cat that, you know, allow you to find a lot of success in this game, especially from the hitting side or, you know, even really the pitching side. But like, you know, finding two guys that hit the same. Now if we want to go down a rabbit hole of Twitter arguments, but like, they kind of all do. They all get in the same spot, but they all look different doing it. And there's different ways to get to that point to find your success. [01:00:21] Speaker C: Yeah, the. One of the best hitters I've ever coached, Alex Gregory at Radford, did not have a good swing. [01:00:31] Speaker C: But he was on time. [01:00:34] Speaker C: Some things might have been in his vision, might have been in his pulse. Might have been just an innate ability to time a pitch. You know, I'm down a rabbit hole right now, guys of, you know, we, we, we can fix. Not fix. It's a heart. That's a strong word. We can help bat path. We can help contact quality, meaning they hit too many ground balls. We can get the path better. We can get their exit velos better. We can get them to hit the ball harder because of the weight room or just moving them better. We can get their mobility better. We can get them to load better. We can get them to do a lot of different things. We can get their chase rates better. That's just approach or Maybe where they're trying to see the ball out of a certain window, or maybe it's some kids just, hey, don't chase, but just don't hit curveballs. You know, don't, don't, don't swing at spin until there's two strikes. That's going to help the chase rate. Obviously, one of the things that we can't, we can't seem to wrap our head around is swing and miss. We can't seem to fix that. But we fix path and we fix loading and we fix this and we fix that. So what is it? What is the swing and miss? Is it anxiety? Is it, is it timing? Is it vision? Is it, you know, so I'm down this rabbit hole of timing and vision because if I don't, am I just caving into. We can't fix swing and miss. And who knows, we might not be able to fix swing and miss, but there's other things that we really need to dive into to maybe possibly get that. [01:02:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting. [01:02:25] Speaker B: I'm fascinated by the swing decision stuff. [01:02:30] Speaker B: And I think that. [01:02:34] Speaker B: It'S not a low hanging fruit. But to your point, like if you can get a kid to understand how somebody's trying to get them out, what the pitcher's pitch mix is. [01:02:46] Speaker B: What they do. Well, count leverage, situational baseball, like you could probably move the needle pretty good, right? Is that, that's kind of what you're driving at? [01:02:55] Speaker C: Yeah, except count leverage doesn't mean anything anymore. Even in college. It's three old breaking balls and you know, so yeah, you're trying to. So we, the way we have it, and a lot of organizations do the same thing, right. We've got swing decisions in one category, we have contact in the other category, meaning swinging, mass or chase. And then we have contact quality, whether it's exit V of those. [01:03:26] Speaker C: You know, launch angles, ground ball rates, pull rates, oppo rates, you know, in the air, all that kind of stuff. [01:03:36] Speaker C: The thing that always keeps sticking out is, you know, if a guy is in college striking out 24%, 25% or swing and miss in zone at 20%. [01:03:53] Speaker C: They don't make it. They don't make it. You know, we can help the other things, but those things have been shown to not to not make it. I did a deep dive on all the big league rosters of college drafts that we thought were average big league hitters and only two had a 20% K rate or higher in college and that was Westburg from the Orioles and Aaron Judge. Those were the only Guys, Cal Raleigh had a 16% K rate. Schwarber had a 9% K rate at Indiana, 9%. And now he strikes out. You know, last year was good, but it's usually between 30 and 36%. [01:04:39] Speaker C: That those things are hard to. Because it's only going to get harder. If you swing and miss in high school, even if you have power, God knows it's going to get exposed in college and it's going to get exposed in definitely professional baseball. [01:04:56] Speaker B: Is that, I mean one of the questions I had for you is like, what are the, you know, one of the traits or skills that you think are the easiest and the hardest to develop? Like I'm assuming that that is going to end up on the hardest scale, like kind of hard to fix that. And I, I feel like I've heard a lot say it. [01:05:12] Speaker C: Miss and swinging, miss on the hitting side and, and not being able to throw strikes on the pitching side. How many guys have we had. [01:05:26] Speaker C: It shockingly in our dugout, I had better arms that never pitched me at Radford that pitched better arms, better pure talent. But I couldn't put them on mount. [01:05:37] Speaker C: Because they didn't throw strikes. Or, or we go, we have a pro style workout and one of the scouts says, who's that guy? And I'm like, I know tools. I got it out 40% of the time. Can't put him in the lineup. [01:05:54] Speaker B: Do the pitch inside to me is interesting because I think a lot of people would quickly point the easy out would be like, well, everybody's trying to throw harder. [01:06:04] Speaker C: This dude. [01:06:04] Speaker B: That's why they can't throw strikes. But it was the same issue with guys that I played with and guys that I coached that you had guys just the strike zone was hard for them to get into and it didn't mean, you know, you have guys who throw 88 who struggle to throw strikes versus yeah, we all had to do 94. And here like, man, I hope he, I hope today's the day that it clicks for him. You know, I hope today's the day figured it out. But do you think there's anything innate there? Like you think guys don't play enough catch? Like yeah, anything that, that you think might be attributed to a guy not being able to throw enough strikes? Like what does that look like from scouts view? [01:06:49] Speaker C: I, I, it's, it's just feel for the ball and it's, you know, and it starts at a young age. Guys that throw strikes when they're younger throw strikes when they're older guys and Again, there's outliers, right? Randy Johnson didn't throw strikes and then he started throwing strikes, okay? But these guys, most of them have always been strike throwers. Most of these guys, you know that from a hitting standpoint, have always been able to put the barrel on the baseball when at a young age. Right? [01:07:25] Speaker C: And it's only going to get even if you're like, you're elite. Like you look at Schwaber 9% K rate and then he goes to pro ball and it's, it climbs to 30 or something like that. Percent right? So those, those are the guys that you, you know, if you can develop their other skills, knowing that they can throw strikes, you can always get a guy to throw harder. [01:07:53] Speaker C: You can get a guy to throw harder and you can get a guy to hit the ball harder. But if they don't make contact and they don't throw strikes, that's where the red flag occurs. [01:08:02] Speaker B: Yeah, Billy Solano, pretty good, had it, said it pretty good when we were on here that you don't play baseball at a carnival. Like you don't get an award for being able to hit it 100 miles an hour off the tee. Like it has to show up in the game. Same thing with the pitch and stuff. And I think that because the evaluation for younger kids, they gravitate, gravitate towards the tangible metrics that they shoot for those and oftentimes they lose sight of like that's kind of the bare minimum. You got to be able to do the other stuff. Like if you're a right handed pitcher right now and you're in high school and you're 87, 88, like, congratulations, you just got into the conversation. Now you need to be able to do some of the other stuff. Can you, can you spin a breaking ball that's got a chance to be effective? Can you manage the running game? You know, never mind. Can you control both sides of the plate with a fastball, but like, can you consistently throw the ball to one side of the plate with any type of effectiveness? And I think that we lose some of those baby steps because the easy thing to grab is my trackman said, I was 88 in, my extension was here and this, that and the other thing. And yeah, the college coach, if I send that to a college coach, if I sent that to Eric out at San Francisco, it said, hey, I got this kid, he's got a really good arm. Here's his trackman data. His next thing is going to go, all right, well when can I see him pitch Like, I need to see if he can actually pitch. [01:09:27] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:09:27] Speaker B: How does he compete? How does it react to when somebody punches a double off the wall against him? What's he doing? His shortstop kits, a routine ground ball. You know, can he. Can he cross count somebody with a breaking ball with some confidence? Like, can you do some of the things that I'm going to need you to do when you get to college? And your 90 mile an hour fastball is about as running the mills, running the mill gets. You got to be able to do some other stuff. [01:09:54] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I mean, Willard. Willard says it best from the pitching side. [01:10:01] Speaker C: If you have strike, if you have stuff and you're in the strike zone, draft them, you know, and it's. But it's the guys that don't that have stuff, but not throw strikes. And the hitter, for example, you know, I have like six things that I presented to the Mets one time during our scouting meetings of what I look for in a hitter. And one of them is swing at strikes and take balls. And they looked at me like I was so basic and I said, no, that's fact. Be able to swing at strikes and take balls. You know, we go through this with a lot of our younger players, you know, oh, we want to challenge them with slider machine and this machine. I said, they can't even hit a fastball down the middle right now. Why aren't we focusing on that? [01:10:55] Speaker C: So the most basic things are still there, you know, that are real, but now they can be evaluated by, you know, if you go see a hit, I mean, I can tell you stories about me going scouting and the data people saying, hey, go see this hitter. Because he doesn't strike out, he doesn't swing and miss. Well, the day I went, he swung it through seven straight fastballs. And I'm like. [01:11:19] Speaker C: What do I write down? Because I can tell you that he swung and missed. But the data is telling you, maybe I got him on a bad day. Maybe he wasn't seeing the ball well, maybe his contact was ripped. I don't know. You know, but those are the things that, you know, nobody walks away from guys that throw strikes and can spin stuff or throw, you know, command a couple other pitches or. And nobody walks away from guys that have bat the ball. [01:11:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I think a lot of this stuff too. Like we talk about a lot. Your metrics can be great, but it's got to show up in game. You still have to be able to go play the game of baseball and defend and hold runners, field your position like Your exit velo is great. Being able to, like, really what we're driving out here, like, it's all great, but like, you still have to be able to hit in game and you still have to be able to throw strikes in game and get other guys out. Like, there's a dude standing 60ft, 6 inches away from you that's trying to get you out. You have to compete and, and not not get out. And you have to conversely get that dude out. Because if you don't, the likelihood of you being on that mound for a long, extended period of time is slim. Like, there's that aspect to it too, that I think, especially at the youth level, we've kind of lost sight of in some regards. Where, you know, my exavilo is this or I want to be able to, you know, do all these things. Like, you know, you still have to hit in game if you can't hit a slider and you can't hit a fastball. Your exit velo is irrelevant in this conversation from a recruiting standpoint or a draft standpoint. [01:13:05] Speaker C: I work for an organization, Keith, that is. We're all, we're all trying to be progressive and we're all trying to. [01:13:14] Speaker C: Win in the margins, but we still always go back to, hey, man, like, you may have to move a runner over, you may have to bunt in the playoffs, you may. To win a game, you may have to get a dirt ball read like we work on dirt ball reads with the Kansas City rules. You know, I know other organizations, they don't even, it's not even in their vocabulary. But like, there are things that you're going to be asked to do on a big league team. You know, we talk about it all the time. When your prospect gets called up the big leagues, he's hitting in the six or seven hole or eight hole. He's not hitting in the three hole. Nobody coming up from Triple A or Double A is going to move Bobby Witt, Salvador Perez or Vinnie Pascantino or Mikel Garcia out of those spots. So when they get called up, they're going to be hitting in situations where the manager and it doesn't matter, Matt Catraro, who is our manager, who's from the Albany area, he, he needs a guy that comes up. We don't need a home run out of our eight hole guy. We're going to get it from Vinnie and Bobby and Salvi. We need a guy that takes a competitive at bat. We need a guy that can manage his at bats. We don't need a 330 hitter with 30 pumps. And you look in the playoffs, and that's what it is. Look at the Blue Jays and the Dodgers. And those guys are relentless at the plate. [01:14:44] Speaker C: And that's why they, that's why those teams are winning. That's why the brewers won this year. It's they, they competed, you know, day in and day out, one through nine, consistently. [01:14:59] Speaker B: And in college, like, over the course of 162 games, like, you know, to a certain extent there's throwaway days, you know, guys go through stretches and that, you know, that at bat in the middle of July might not matter as much. The way I try to equate it to college baseball is when you're playing 56 games. [01:15:17] Speaker B: It'S not 56 playoff games, but like, when you get into conference, it's basically playoff games. And like being able to move around. [01:15:24] Speaker C: Or there is no playoff. [01:15:26] Speaker B: Yeah, like being able to move a runner on a Friday night in the second inning to get somebody into scoring position or move a guy over to third with a productive out because the kid took a really good two strike at bat and found a way to, you know, hit a ground ball to the right side or something like that can win you a series. Like taking that 13 pitch at bat in the fourth inning off the starter, maybe you get him out in the sixth instead of the eighth. Now that team's got to go to an arm that they don't really want to go to because nobody wants to throw a middle reliever. And all of a sudden their best reliever has to come in and that dude can't come back on Sunday. Like, that's the difference for me in college. And you see it. That's why I love playoff baseball, because every pitch is. There's so much more consequence to it. And that little stuff shows up in a seven game series and how you are able to do that. And you're talking about being able to grind that stuff out, which I think the young kids who are going through right now in high school, like, to your point, the kids who don't strike out, the kids who are always getting the ball in play, like, yeah, they might not be strong enough to hit home runs right now. [01:16:34] Speaker A: Right. [01:16:34] Speaker B: You're talking about it with Joey, like, but the fact that the ball's in play, he competes his butt off. Like, as he gets stronger, those singles turn to doubles, those doubles turn to home runs. But that bat the ball and that ability to be kind of a freaking pest, it pays off in the long run. And I think More of these guys that you watch on TV have that in them that people recognize because they, they see. [01:17:02] Speaker B: What'S his name, the third baseman for the Dodgers there, like drawing a blank on his name right now. They see Muncie hit that freaking poolside Jack in the World Series, but they neglected to notice how that dude just grinds out at bats, at bat, after a bat, after a bat, after a bat. And then, you know, the home run ends up happening. But it's just, it's interesting that we go to these big flashy moments, but it's the little things that, that really end up moving the needle. [01:17:33] Speaker C: Yeah, look at it brings you to another, like all these people that are complaining, especially the pro guys in the former big leaguers. Tony Vitello becoming the manager of the Giants, you know, in minor league baseball a lot of times, and I'm not going to speak for every organization or even ours, I'm just going to tell you that sometimes we don't have a choice at the lineup. Like they're going to put the prospects in the top four spots to give them more at bats over the course of a year. You don't really pinch run a lot. You don't pinch hit a lot. And you use your bullpen, not for the win, but you use your bullpen for, okay, this guy's got a throw today. He's your closer. I know he's your best bullpen guy, but he's got a throw today even if you're down by 12 runs. So my point on Tony Vitello was he's had to manage real games consistently to win every game. He's had to make the lineup the right way. He's had to pinch run, he's had to pinch hit. He's had to make moves out of the pen. And sometimes people don't value, like the college coach that has had to do those type of things because Tony Vitello didn't play in professional baseball or he's never managed in professional baseball. You know, we're. And he's got a dynamic enough personality to manage a big league clubhouse. Where like, if you put me on a big league, if you told me how to manage a big league game tomorrow, I wouldn't be afraid one bit to do it. If you had told me that I need to understand and how to deal with Bobby Witt. [01:19:15] Speaker C: It'S a different animal. I can deal with a guy that's got a contract for $300 million. You know, how do I, you know, I don't understand the Stresses that those guys go through. I never, never been part of that. So I never understand the agent or the tickets he's had to get that day or something's happening back home or, or what. Just never, you know, that's a hard concept. But you learn if you're, if you're good with people, then you'll end up being in. Tony's obviously good at people and with people and he's not going to have a problem with dealing with the media, obviously. So he's going to surround himself with good, qualified people and he's going to be fine if they. But it all goes back to what, having the right players too. Right. Same thing with a hitting coach. Oh, you think this guy's a good hitting coach? Why? Well, they always hit well, maybe they just signed the right players. [01:20:10] Speaker C: No hitters hit. [01:20:13] Speaker B: That's, you know, there's guys out there that are probably better at it than some. But you know, if you're a college guy and you get a bunch of really good hitters and don't mess them up, that works too. [01:20:23] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:20:24] Speaker B: If you get a lineup full of guys that can, they can swing it and you have enough self awareness to not get in the way of letting guys be. Do what they do. Well, like I think that's a superpower in coaching as well. Like I think it's one of the more understated things about coaches is sometimes the best thing you can do is not say anything. [01:20:40] Speaker C: No, the best team I ever coached was literally being a head Coach, was a 2015 Radford team. Well, I knew when we got to the sixth inning I was going to use Palmer in the seventh, Bridgeman in the eighth and Meisinger in the ninth. I didn't make any decisions. And by game 25 they knew when to get loose and when they were going in. [01:21:01] Speaker B: Meisinger was tough. [01:21:03] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:21:05] Speaker C: They knew, they knew when to get loose and sometimes mice had to get four outs instead of instead of three, or Bridgman needed to give four outs instead of three or Palmer, you know, but those were the three guys. And I was like, you guys, I've heard that. Oh, you managed that bullpen well. What? I didn't do anything. [01:21:25] Speaker C: They created their roles and I just made the switch when it was the right time. [01:21:33] Speaker B: Trying to win games with a six man pitching staff at Marist was a lot more challenging. [01:21:37] Speaker C: Absolutely. [01:21:40] Speaker A: John Smith just, you know, let it rip. [01:21:43] Speaker B: Just, just Hope we score 14 on Sunday so John can go in there and just flip a bunch of bad breaking balls in Lucky John Smith competed his ass off. We've had you here for a while, but I got to ask you a question about the defensive side of things. Like. [01:22:00] Speaker B: It'S such an important piece of baseball, right? Like, we love home runs and you know, we love scoring runs. Like, and that's what kind of puts butts in seats per se. But at the end of the day, it's a run prevention sport. And. [01:22:14] Speaker B: How does that factor in your evaluation with guys? And like, how does that change how you look at a prospect in terms of like a kid who can really defend? But like, you know, we've been sitting here talking about hitting, which I love hitting, but I'm an infield guy through and through. [01:22:29] Speaker B: Where does that fit for you in the evaluation? [01:22:33] Speaker C: The bat. You have four chances to affect a game with the bat. And sometimes, sometimes you're completely overmatched and sometimes you go for four and line out four straight times. The, the things that you bring to the game on the defensive side are always there. So, you know, always people talk about how to score runs. You got to learn how to prevent runs too, because you always look back at a certain inning and go, if we would have just prevented and not let them have five, but just let them have four, you probably end up winning that game or potentially being closer in that game. [01:23:16] Speaker C: I, I have a, you know, and it's because I'm close with Todd Raleigh and friends with him and known him for a long time. But I have, I don't think Cal Raleigh, he should have been the mvp. And the reason why he should have been the MVP is because he did that from a position of he caught 109, did the numbers he did caught 119 games like, and he didn't have a pass ball until the playoffs. So a catcher that hits 60 home runs and has 100 RBIs and doesn't have a pass ball and is one of the best ones at throwing guys out. And he managed a pitching staff because they all love throwing to him. He's always been a great receiver. [01:24:06] Speaker C: There was a no brainer for me. And one of the biggest issues that I have is when you look at, even in college when they look at all conference, they send you over the ballot and it's all their offensive numbers and didn't say that Andy Karaketes, you know, made five errors in 50 games. It, it doesn't say that. It says what did he hit, how many doubles he had, how many RBI he had. And, and little does it know did Andy Kidis Led the league maybe in sacrifice buns or move the runner over. That doesn't even come up right. So, no, it, it doesn't, it doesn't put a value on the player. The numbers don't. But if you want to win, you gotta play defense. If you want to win consistently, you, you have to play defense. [01:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah, we try to work on that when we, when we talk on here. Just talk with kids in, in particular, like, it's easier to go get swings. It's more satisfying. But if you want to play in college, like, you have to be good enough to put a glove on somewhere because there's only one dude who just gets to swing the bat. And let's be honest, that's usually a guy who can play somewhere else, positionally, platoon guy. You know, you get to college, lineups are set different. You got a lefty and a righty and all that kind of stuff. But if you want to get on the field every day, you cannot be a black hole defensively. Like, you don't simply get on the field anymore just because you can hit. You got to be able to do some other stuff. And I think in the development process, a lot of guys lose sight of that in terms of, I need to be pretty good at this when this glove's on my hand. I need to pay attention and be really good at playing catch every day so that I can be somebody good, effective thrower. [01:26:01] Speaker C: I can hide your offense. [01:26:05] Speaker C: I can hide your offense by bunning or a situational thing or, or, or anything. Right. I can hide the offense. I can tuck you in the eight hole and protect you or down at the bottom of the order. [01:26:19] Speaker C: But you can't hide the defense. You can't, it gets exposed. And, and not only does it get exposed, it, you know, think about if Traz is on the mound and, and, and I've got a black hole at shortstop, Andy and, and, and Trash now is out of the game in the fifth inning versus seventh inning. It doesn't matter how many runs you can produce from an offensive standpoint, because not only you may have produced them, but now they're going to get into our pen. Right, like you just said before. So now you can't, you can't get exposed on the defense. I mean, Glass was recruited because I thought he can really catch and throw. [01:27:01] Speaker A: Thank you. [01:27:02] Speaker C: And that's why you got recruited. [01:27:06] Speaker A: But I, I think it's also for college kids and you're high school kids that are going to college. And we try to harp on this with kids we Work with plus on this podcast. And I've said this a bunch, so it's probably going to, if you listen to a lot, it sounds like I'm beating a dead horse. It's the easiest way for you to legitimately find playing time as a younger player in college if you can legitimately defend because especially coaches aren't going to. [01:27:35] Speaker C: Ask for you to be the most productive. No, he's not going to care because. [01:27:39] Speaker A: You get, you know, and especially if you're playing in the middle, if you can really defend, you can be hidden in the 78 hole and be protected by guys who, who are older. But hey, like he's going to, he's going to go out there and field 986 or, you know, he's going to be able to handle a pitching staff and catch and throw or he's going to run it down in center field. Like you can, you can be hidden in certain spots because in college you're a little bit more of a team offense than you are necessarily in the pros over that course of a season. But I think it's the, it's the fastest way for you to be able to get on the field because the, the likelihood of you being physical enough as a, as a legit true freshman walking onto a college campus is, is not as high as you might think that it is. Like you're, you're going in and competing with 21, 22 year old guys who have been in the weight room for four or five years that are more physically mature and they're going to hit the ball harder, they're going to be faster, but if you can defend, you're going to give yourself a chance to really be able to define playing time. And I think that, you know, obviously it comes with, with coaching and things like, you know, I remember, you know, the game is so fast when you get to college from what you're used to. And you know, I remember feeling like I was on a speeding bullet train catching and doing stuff in the fall. And I remember Barry pulling me aside and be like, hey, you just need to slow the game down for yourself. However that works, like, figure out a way to slow the game down for yourself. And there's a lot of truth to it where like everything, you have to figure out a way to make a game where dudes are throwing 88 to 94 miles an hour and plays are being made in four seconds that somehow seems slow. And there's, there's ways to do it but like, everyone does it differently. But like, that was a huge. That was a huge moment. Obviously. I remember 20 plus years ago in my career where I was like, whole, like, okay, this is something that I need to start to figure out. And, you know, I. I just think, like, I put a premium on defense for myself because, I mean, I wasn't the greatest hitter in the history of the world at the college level, you know, but I could catch. And that's what, you know, that's what led me to being able to play in a lot of baseball games and be a captain and, you know, ultimately be able to coach for 16 years and do stuff, you know, because I. I really focused on trying to be as good as I could defensively because that was my path to being able to get playing time and not sit on the bench. And that's what I didn't want to do that I wanted to be out there playing. I wanted to be the guy that guys wanted to throw to. Like, that compete factor for me in that aspect was like, okay, like, we'll bring the hitting side along, but, like, defense is. Is where you can find yourself a spot. And, you know, that's where, you know, I kind of made my career from a playing standpoint. [01:30:34] Speaker C: You lose games on defense. Yeah, you don't necessarily win games on defense, but you lose games on defense. And in the offensive side, that helps you win, you know, but you can. There's. There's ways to score runs. There's multiple ways to score runs. There's not multiple ways to play defense. And. And it's not about stealing outs. It's about catching the outs, you know, and making routine basic plays. You guys remember. I mean, remember one time I lost my mind, Andy, and I just hit all the balls around the field because you guys were playing so bad at defense. And, you know, like. And it was. But it was, you know, it depends on the program, but we put such a premium on it, especially even at Radford. Like, we were just. The players knew, if you don't defend, he's not putting you on the field. So I think we did 21 home. [01:31:31] Speaker B: Runs as a team in 2005. Like, we weren't winning games because we were leaving the yard. [01:31:37] Speaker A: That field was a graveyard. [01:31:39] Speaker B: It was. [01:31:39] Speaker C: But, you know. Yeah. So. [01:31:43] Speaker B: Well, listen, one last question. [01:31:46] Speaker B: You can impart a little bit of wisdom to the listeners about, you know, you. Obviously, you went through this as a coach, you went through it as a father. Any advice you have to high school kids or kids who are currently in the process that. That are pushing to be college players. Any advice you have to them in. In terms of how to get there. [01:32:08] Speaker C: Yeah, always can always try to reinvent yourself. Always try to make yourself a better version of it. You know, just because you think you can hit doesn't mean. [01:32:25] Speaker C: That you. Your defense is fine, doesn't mean that you're throwing is fine, doesn't mean that your speed is fine. You're always. You're always trying to make your game better, no matter what stage you're at. Where you're at is where you're at, but doesn't mean that's where you're going to end up being. But you'll end up being there if you don't. If you don't put the work and you don't value all the little things that. That are involved in it. [01:32:56] Speaker C: Everything's out there for players now to get better. You know, the. The. The indoor facilities, the. The turf to take ground balls at. The weight rooms are different. [01:33:09] Speaker C: You know, I ask kids all the time about, do you work on your mobility? No, I stretch. No, your mobility. What is that? And you're, like I said, just go on YouTube and just press mobility for HIPS, and 5,000 things are going to pop up about how to get your hips mobile and get your shoulders more mobile and get your pelvis to operate the right way. Like, those things are out there. And. [01:33:38] Speaker C: If. If they're not doing it, then that's where they're going to stall out. But. But just because your body's at a stage where it's at right now doesn't mean where that's where it's got to be in six months. And all it takes is one click of something to work more efficiently, and then all of a sudden, now you're. You're just better. You know, it could be just one drill that takes you over the hump from a hitting standpoint or one phrase that takes you over the hump. So you get. They keep learning. You keep keep going and keep learning. [01:34:16] Speaker B: Well said. Well, coach, we've had you on for a while. We appreciate your time, appreciate everything you did for us as a coach. It was awesome catching up with you in January. Hopefully it won't go. Don't go as long next time we talk. [01:34:31] Speaker C: But no, no question. No, really appreciate it, you guys be good. And continued success at getting guys to college and reaching their dreams and a lot to be said for. For what you guys are doing. [01:34:45] Speaker B: Appreciate it. [01:34:46] Speaker A: Thanks, coach. [01:34:47] Speaker C: All right, fellas. [01:34:48] Speaker B: Thanks, everybody, for listening. Tune in next week. Thanks, y'. [01:34:52] Speaker A: All. [01:34:53] Speaker B: 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.