Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey, parents and coaches, are your kids using the right glove? The most important skill for youth athletes to learn is how to play proper catch. The problem is most youth gloves are made with bad leather and are too big for small hands. They actually make it harder to play catch. That's why former Major League Baseball shortstop Kevin Smith created Cali Gloves. Cali gloves are crafted from 100% Japanese kip leather and are the perfect size for kids.
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[00:01:10] Speaker B: welcome to this week's edition of the Dugout Dish podcast. I am Andy Kirikidis, joined by my Wonderful Co host, Mr. Keith Glasser. How we doing? Great.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: How are you?
Good.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: I feel a little awkward having trimmed the beer down for the stretch. I mean, it'll be back soon, but, you know, for anybody watching on YouTube, don't.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: A lot younger.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: I think that's a good thing. I miss my beard a little bit, though.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: But I mean, if you go to an establishment that is serving beverages that you have to potentially be identified for, I think you might be getting identified. Wow.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: I appreciate that, Keith. I appreciate it.
I've got a really good skincare routine that I like to stay too.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: It's a good thing at our age, you know, there's parents. Listen to this. Like, you know, you're younger, you don't want to be identified, and then you get older and you're like, well, wait a minute, aren't you supposed to ask a question here? I want to at least look like I'm borderline.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: You know, it's always.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: I think, I think you are well within the borderline area of having to be questioned.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: I appreciate that. You just made my whole night, Keith.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: No, you're welcome.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: So today's podcast, doing a little data digging and we'll get around to the crux of this. But I'm going to throw out some numbers here real quick because I think they're compelling numbers and I think while they're, you know, there's no absolutes in anything that we talk about, I think it leads us into our conversation here pretty well.
So we took A look at some of the team level statistics for the 2025 season. So last season, obviously this season, you know, 13, 14, 15 games in, not really a good enough sample size to draw any conclusions. But one full season, I think we can, you know, we can, we can draw some conclusions out of this data.
So our Baseline number is 299. It's a number of full time Division 1 teams last year. There's some that are crossing over this year and some that, you know. So I think the number this year is actually 307. But last year 299. 299 division one teams.
So we looked at a couple different things. We looked at era. We use that as, I mean, obviously it's the earned run average. So it's a, it's somewhat of a reflection of your ability to prevent runs. It's not the full reflection of it because we don't have.
There's no easy statistic without going through each and each individual team sheet to get you runs per game. I wasn't able to find that very easily. So we're going to use ERA as a run prevention metric. And then we have run scored, so we have average run scored per game as kind of the two metrics that we dove into here.
95% of college baseball, so 284 out of 299 teams score at least five runs per game.
All right, so there's the 15 teams that by all definitions were really poor offensively, but 95% of them some way somehow are able to push five runs across across home plate on any given day.
High Point led to country. They were the only team that was in double digits.
So those of you who've watched High Point recently, they smash and they continue to smash.
From an earned run perspective, There are only 70 teams in college baseball last year who pitched the baseball at a clip under five. So an ERA under five, so that's 24% of college baseball.
Only 49% of college baseball pitch it under a six.
So there's 146 teams were better than a six ERA.
Couple fielding percentage metrics we'll throw out there just for, just for a little bit of feel. Kind of the distribution of this, anything 975 or better is pretty high end when you're talking about the ability to catch the baseball.
And only 67 teams did that. So 22% and about 46% of teams fielded it better than 970, which is very good.
You know, not elite, but very good.
Now to correlate that to some wins and loss numbers here, I thought this is really interesting. So if you pitch it under a five, there was a 96% chance that you had a record over 500.
And there were only five teams in that 70 team subset that didn't win at least 30 games. In 30 games for folks is, you know, it's, that's a really good number in college baseball. You know, I know we see college World Series stuff and you see these teams with 47, 48 wins, but, you know, the reality is if you can win 30 games, that's a pretty good season in college baseball for the vast majority of programs.
If you take that to the 146 population of teams who pitched it under 6, 87% of those teams finished above 500, and about 78% of those teams had at least 30 wins.
So why are these numbers relevant?
These numbers are relevant because as you've heard me and Keith say, if you've listened to this podcast, baseball is a run prevention sport. It is very, very hard to scheme your way or create defense. There's some positioning you can do.
If you've got a pitching coach who's an elite pitch caller, you might be able to elevate a pitching staff with pitch mix and understanding and really, really being dialed into what your guys do really well. You know, and then all the data that everybody has is kind of close the gap on some of the, the advantages that the teams might have in that realm. But it's really, really hard to prevent runs organically. Right? With just, I should say, it's really hard to prevent runs in any other way than having guys who can really defend and guys who are effective on the mount.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: There's, there's not a, there's not some secret sauce. I think what we see on the offensive side is that it's pretty darn easy to create runs when you look at it in the grand scheme of things. And there's a lot of ways that you can do that. You don't have to have a bunch of masters. You can have guys who can run. You can be really good in the small ball game, you can be really good situationally, you can be really good run in the bases, you can have some trick plays up your sleeve.
There's ways that you can manufacture runs in baseball, and it's really, really hard to manufacture defense.
Which leads us into kind of the bulk of the conversation today, which is why explain. This is a good explanation as to why college coaches focus intently on guys who are athletic and guys who can help them with a glove on their hand to be able to win games. It's why the 60 time, it's why some of the arm strength stuff, it's why the range and mobility are often separators in the recruiting process, because athletes generally can defend. And it's usually easier to teach an athlete who is strong and physical to do some of the things offensively. And you can bring them along with game plan, you can bring them along with swing adjustments, but it's really hard to make a below average athlete an above average defender. And if you're going to be good in college baseball, if you're going to win a lot of games, the numbers will tell you if you can prevent runs, you got a really good chance of getting it done.
And it's a, it's, it's kind of the core of recruiting, especially at the highest levels. You need to meet an athletic threshold.
And I think some of these numbers are really compelling. So.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Sure.
You know, I think the.
We're going heavy on defense the last couple of podcasts, huh? I love it.
But I think it bears out the things that we continually talk about on here that we as a sport in general. I would say that we've gotten away from the, the defensive end of things.
When talking, recruiting or thinking about being recruited, you know, you look across social media, you look across what, not only what kids are posting, but what organizations are posting and what people are doing. And it's, you know, obviously the pitching side is relatively straightforward, but for the most part, like, we're only really concerned about velocity, you know, and from a position player standpoint, we're really only concerned about the swing.
But you still have to go put a glove on at some point in time as a position player.
And the other side of it with arms, is that it's not all velo. And I say that with a caveat because obviously with, you know, offenses being able to score five runs and not a lot of people pitching under a five, that being kind of the benchmark. Right? Like if, what did you say? 96% are who pitch under a 5,
[00:10:37] Speaker B: have 30 wins, 96% are above 594% had 30 plus wins if you pitch it under a 5.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Okay, so in that, like for clarity, like that's from 4, 9, 9, all the way down to the twos, you know, so there's some pitching staffs out there that are, that are excellent. But you know, from a five, you know, a lot of that stuff, you know, it's going to be how you're how your pitch mix and how your stuff plays in game too and the ability to be able to go out to compete, you know, and I always think back and reference back to Matt Hobbs when he was on here with us a while back. And it's more than just what you can do with your pitches, I think is the best way for me to frame this.
You still have to field your position, you still have to be able to hold runners, you still got to be able to compete and you ultimately have to get outs.
Your stuff can be, you know, you could be 95, 96, you know, if 95% of college baseball can score over five runs a game in. A lot of people scared of the Velo anymore. And I think that that's something that, you know, doesn't necessarily get talked about
[00:11:47] Speaker B: a whole lot out there nowadays.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: And you know, we had this conversation off air last week when we were, we had Kevin on where, you know, it's something where I think kids are coming up nowadays. I don't think I know kids are coming up nowadays. We talked about it with Joe too, where you can train Velo and you can train seeing that stuff. And it's a lot more readily accessible now than it was when you and I were coming up in this game.
And not that we're old, I just told you that you look like you should be ID'd, but we grew up with the two wheeled jugs machine that threw yellow dimple balls that would like ruin your bat. And nowadays we have three wheeled machines that will spin right and left handed breaking balls, right and left handed sliders, right, left handed change ups, fastballs up to 100, knuckleballs, sinkers, cutters, whatever you could possibly imagine you can spit out of a machine with a, with a real baseball and get a feel for it. And I think the one interesting thing too is, you know, if you remember correctly, the jugs machine pretty much put the ball in the same spot every time. It was actually a model of consistency.
Same thing with the old iron mic that come up and, and slap you back the, you know, the three wheeled machines. There's some variation in it, right? Like sometimes it might ball a pitch, you know, if it's a ball that gets shot into the machine that isn't that all that clean, you know, it can ball that pitch. So you know, you get some variation which I think lends itself for hitters to be a lot more game ready and game prepared for some of the stuff it is that they're going to see now hitting is still hard, do not get me wrong. But I think with some of the stuff that's out there, you know, and anecdotally, I would say I haven't done a deep dive on this yet. I haven't had the opportunity to. But I scour box scores pretty much every day from February 13th, 14th this year because we started on the 13th all the way through the end of the season. I feel like there's a lot more walks and hit by pitches this year than there have been in recent memory, which obviously lends itself to higher eras and guys that get on and higher whips and all of those things, you know. But I think that I'm getting away from the main point of this. My point is that I think it's a little bit easier. I want to say easier. It's easier to train hitters to see some of the stuff that they're going to see.
From a pitching standpoint, for you to be able to be recruitable and thrive at the college level, your stuff has to be able to be swing and miss. It has to be able to get outs.
And from a conversely, from a position player standpoint, you have to be able to defend the baseball on those balls that are going to be put in play. And that's just.
It sounds very simple when we say that, but it gets difficult at the next level because the game is faster.
If you haven't necessarily put a ton of time into being good defensively, you're going to have a very steep learning curve the second you get on a college campus. Because to your point, if you're fielding above 970, you're doing pretty good. If you're field above 975, you're doing even better From a total team standpoint, if you can't pick it at that level, the chances of you finding yourself on the field regularly are going to be slim because defense is going to be at a priority in the collegiate level. It just is. Balls are going to be put in play. You got to be able to make out. It's not the big leagues where, you know, guys, they're fielded989 and.993, but 97% of the time we want to make sure that we're getting those outs. And that's. It seems very easy on its surface, but I think that we've gotten away from it and it's something that we need to do a better job of, of coaching kids up. Because when you get to the next level, in order to be even recruitable at the next level, you have to be able to be formidable enough with a glove on your hand that coaches can look and be like, okay, really like the bat.
But yeah, he might not be able to play center, but he can play left or right. Or he might not be able to play short, but I think he could play second or third, something like that. You know, it's, it takes a high level of defense to be able to play at the next level.
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[00:17:10] Speaker B: and I think it's exactly why when you start to think about how coaches and we've had plenty of guys on there on here who've talked about this specifically, but when you recruit in high school, you recruit guys who play in the middle of the field.
That's where you start.
You recruit high school shortstops, you recruit high school center fielders and you make your decision on where they best fit at the college level. Because obviously the filter is finer. You know, you only can start one of those guys, but you know, if you're a legitimate high school center fielder and you have the other skills that are required to play at the college level, then you're probably going to be able to play left or right field. If you're a high school left fielder, you, you know, you got to be able to do some pretty special stuff to make up for the fact that you're playing left field for your high school team, right? And hey, listen, there's no absolutes in this, right? Like you could play on a legit high school team and your center fielder could be, you know, kid going to Texas. Okay, yeah, you're probably not going to play center with that kid, but they're still going to evaluate you on your Ability to stay in the middle of the field.
Same thing with high school shortstops. It's why you see, you know, you go on a perfect game and you see all these commitment. It's, it's like, oh, well, so you know, they already committed five shortstops. Like, they're not all going to play short one. The high school shortstop who's going to play third. One's a high school shortstop who's going to move to the outfield. One's a high school shortstop who's going to go to second base.
Somebody might get converted into a catcher, like, I don't know. But there's a reason that you recruit the shortstops. It's because generally in high school, when you go to a high school game, the kid who's playing shortstop is the best athlete on the field.
And that rings true pretty much across the board.
And then obviously catching is paramount.
And it's a super hard position to grade out for a lot of different reasons that coaches have talked about. I would actually argue.
We did a podcast and Coach Mamula spoke about it. But like, high school hitters are really hard to evaluate. I think high school catchers are really, really hard to evaluate for, for the same reason is all right, you can look good catching 84. Yeah. Like, well, so can I. What are you gonna do when I ask you to go catch Chris levonis? And he's 96 to 99 with an absolute knee buckle breaking ball and at times might not know where it's going.
So you got to be able to account for, for different stuff like that and like, how do you handle guys like that?
So being able to find somebody who can defend behind the plate, it's really hard to be good if you don't have one.
And that's why coaches focus there. And obviously arms. Like everybody needs guys who can get guys out and.
But when you're thinking about it athletically from a position standpoint, it's a region that coaches do actually value the 60. It's not the end all be all. But you know, if you run 7:2, you're a below average runner at the division one level.
It's just the reality of it. It doesn't. Unless you're a catcher, you're a below average runner and you know, coaches are going to look at that because it's a reflection of your athletic ability. Right. It's why guys, you know, when we talk about the size and weight of college baseball players, like that's part of the athletic evaluation is like, what does that frame look like. And if you're going to be a skinnier, smaller frame, you need to have one of those other outlier tools. You need to be able to run.
You need to be able to be an elite defender who can throw and make up for maybe some of the physical deficiencies that you might have in terms of, you know, maybe you're 5 foot 9, 175 pounds. Well, if you run 6, 5, that matters less. If you run 7, oh, you're probably not going to be a Division 1 recruit. Like, that's just the reality of it, unless you do something super special.
But the days of coaches being able to just go and recruit a hitter, they're kind of afterthoughts. Like, they're nice to haves, right? There's not a lot of, you know, you see the York kid who, who's DH and for lsu, like, there's not a lot of kids running around like him that are pretty much just dhs and like, yeah, he can go and play first base a little bit, but I'm sure Jay Johnson doesn't want to run that guy out at first base for, for 65 games to probably get exposed. There's a reason he's DH and he's not playing first.
There's just in the way the college game works with mixing and matching lineups. Like that DH spot is often a little bit of a revolving door. So if you want to get on the field, you better be able to wear a glove.
And I just don't think it's a coincidence when you think about wins in your ability to prevent runs. I think it is way more closely tied to athleticism.
And I think when you have an athlete, you can find ways to get those guys to be a productive offensive player. Because everybody wants to focus on hitting, right? The swing mechanics and the launch angles and the exit feels. Yeah, that stuff's great. It's awesome.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: It's.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Data's a cool thing that we have now that makes things very tangible. But you don't have to do all of those things to be a productive member of an offense.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Right?
[00:22:13] Speaker B: They're nice. You need to hit a baseline for some of that stuff. But if you're the eight hole guy who can really play defense at shortstop, you can still help that offense be good by being a tough out, by being able to move the baseball, by being able to bump, by being a really good baserunner, that still moves the needle. And you can contribute to being able to score runs, but it's really tough to contribute to scoring runs. If you can't get on the field, and if you want to get on the field, you need to be good enough to put a glove on.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, it's especially in tight games where, and I know that this number bore out when I was still coaching five years, four years ago, like 50% of your games are one run games.
So you're, you know, I don't know what that number is now, but I would imagine that if 95% of college baseball is pitching around a five, it's probably close to that. Right.
So defense comes at a premium because especially late in games, you have to be able to make plays. We've talked about it before. It's one of the easiest ways you can get yourself on the field if you, you know, devote yourself to being good defensively because you can go out there and make plays and eventually work yourself into the lineup.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: But I also, I want to go
[00:23:28] Speaker A: back to, you know, the, some of the pitching stuff I was talking about, and it made me think of it when you said the, the, you know, the 60s, not the be all end all. Like, you know, Velo is not the be all end all either. Right. But there is a floor in which it's not going to work at college baseball.
And I think that a lot of times, you know, if you hear people like, well, you know, he doesn't really throw hard, but he's crafty and he gets his eye. He gets out. Like, yeah, if you're 72 to 73 and you're getting high school hitters out, that's not going to actually play at the college level. No matter what you think that is a BP fastball that has zero ride, zero cut, it's probably straight and it's just going to get lashed. There's every college hitter in the country, from Division one all the way down to wherever we're at the bottom is going to be able to handle that stuff. So there is a floor in which it's not going to be recruitable.
And you just have to understand that. I think there's some times where, you know, you're a kid or you're a parent and you're worried about, you know, your kid's trying to get recruited and he's 71 to 73, that's not going to play at the college level and that's okay. And you can figure out ways to try to increase your velocity, whether it's putting on weight or, you know, having a pitching coach and weighted balls and all these other things.
But the reality is There is a floor in which that's not going to work. Just like there's a floor with the 60. Yes, it's not the be all, end all, but if you think that you're going to play in the middle of the field and you run a 7, 8 60, you're sorely mistaken. That's not going to play at college baseball running almost an 8 in a 60 yard dash because it's, it's not going to promote the athleticism. You're not going to be fast enough, you're not going to be able to get off the ball, all of those things. And when you hear us talk about here, on here about like, you know, guys can play up from their 60s, you know, we're talking about guys that are slightly below average to average runners who then can play up on speed a little bit because their first step is really good or they get off the ball and they, they make good angles and they have good reads in the outfield, things like that. It's not a, you know, hey, he runs an 860 but you know, he takes good angles. Like it's still going to be too slow.
It's going to, at some point there is going to be there, there is a floor in which you have to be at in order to be recruited.
And it's at all levels. It's not just Division 1. I know our numbers that we were discussing are at the Division 1 level, but these are, these are truisms across all of the divisions. There's going to be hard line numbers that people are going to look at and say not fast enough, not big enough, not quick enough, whatever it might be.
You know, and that just doesn't, you know, there's going to be programs that value things differently, right? Like you're going to have some programs that are going to put an emphasis on defense. Hence the reason we're having this conversation where guys who maybe your son or you as a player are better than you think you're better than a hitter that's going to a Division 1 program, well, maybe you are, but maybe that kid's an elite defender and you're not. And that's why they, that's why that program went after him. You know, it doesn't necessarily, doesn't mean anything. You know, we talk about all the time of just not, you know, not comparing yourself to anyone else in your recruiting process because everyone's different. But you know, programs are going to put a different emphasis on certain things. And you know, what works for one program might not work for another. So you know that I think the, the truth in all of this is that if you can be a very well rounded baseball player where you can, you can hit and you can defend, you're gonna find yourself a spot likely to play college baseball. If all the other things work out. Right, the academics, the physicality, the metrics, things of that nature and same thing, velocity wise or pitching wise. Right. Like if you can hold runners and you can feel your position, you get outs and you have swing and miss, you're going to find yourself in a conversation of being recruited, you know, but it's not just the, it's based off of these numbers. It's not just being able to throw hard and being able to hit. Like you have to be able to defend, you have to be able to do other things. You have to be well rounded baseball player to be able to, to be recruited at any of the levels of college baseball.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean from a pitching standpoint I would even go as far as, I mean velocity, it's a threshold at this point.
You got to get to a certain velocity threshold to get into the range where you can be effective. But I think at the end of the day it's more of a reflection of if you have velocity, you probably have the ability to do some other stuff with your breaking ball, with change ups and have an elite second pitch. Because I think that that's the thing that is starting to really show through is that, and you talked about it like hitters ability to hit below.
Well, how do you combat that? Probably have a really good secondary pitch, you know, and if you throw 92, you probably throw a harder slider than the kid who's throwing 86. You've also got more room for error with your fastball. If you do middle, middle a ball, it's a lot harder to square up 92 than it is to square up 86.
Right. And it's why, it's, it's why there's, you know, you turn on the television and you watch Division 1 baseball these days, you know, especially at the higher levels of it.
You're not seeing guys come, you're not seeing guys throw 88.
And if they do, they're the kid from Vanderbilt who's a unicorn, who's a five pitch mix, low slot freaking brass balls, not scared of contact, elite strike throwing, you know, 65, 70 grade command guy. Like it's just really hard to be competitive there. But the thing that people miss out on is that they focus on that true velocity number.
Well that's great. Everybody throws hard. Now you have to do other stuff that's going to make a difference. Can you locate the ball to both sides of the plate? Can you spin an effective breaking ball? Can you cross count somebody with that pitch?
And then you start to get into the actual gameplay stuff like you talked about. Can you hold runners? Can you field your position?
Do you have the composure to be able to go out there and pitch? You know, I think this is a little bit of a side tangent, but I think the composure thing is the one that I always, I keep coming back to on how important it is to be able to kind of have the, the personality to be able to pitch in some of these situations. And I think of the Contreras kid who threw for team Brazil, right? And everybody is buzzing about the kid going in there. He got Aaron Joseph ground into a double play and you know, everybody's crazy about the stuff. He's 95 to 97 and yeah, I mean, it's amazing. That kid's got an incredible future ahead of him after watching. And I think the most impressive thing is how many 17 year olds can stand on that mound and go and actually attack literally the best hitters in the world.
Like he's been doing it his whole life. Like that's a character strength, that's a, that's composure that you can't coach.
And there's other high school guys, there's college guy whose stuff is that good.
They're all over the place. There's plenty of college guys who are 95 and 97. I don't know if all those college guys could stand on that mound and throw in that situation with that level of composure like that kid is. He's got something from a character perspective when he toes that rubber, that's just different.
And I think that that's a huge separator in this too is, you know, do you have, you know, kind of the spine to stand out there and really compete?
I think a lot of times what happens with guys when they get to college is, you know, they're used to being able to throw the ball over the white of the plate and not get hit in high school. And then you stand out there and you're, you know, you're there in the fall or your first outings in the spring and all of a sudden you're getting hit a little bit and you get scared of throwing the ball in the strike zone.
And you know, it's hitting is really hard, but it's also really easy to shy Away from throwing a lot of strikes and you start to nitpick and you start to walk guys and then you start to pitch in bad counts and you know, it can kind of unravel on guys. And I think that there's, I think there's a. I don't know if it's a skill, but I think the mentality of being able to attack a hitter and not being scared of contact, I think that's a big piece of the puzzle too. And sometimes you don't figure that out until a guy gets to campus. But I think that's the hard thing to really pin down because it is, it's not hard to find guys who throw 90. They're all over the place. Now, good, bad or ugly, people can say what they want about it. You know that guys only try to chase velocity, but you know, there's, there's all kind of data suggest that the harder you throw, the harder you are to hit. So until, until that changes, I think guys are going to chase some velocity. But you know, if you want to get on the mound and you want to compete just like, like Matt Hobbs said, you know, we got to get to certain strike percentages with our fastball, then we got to be able to do something with our breaking ball and then we got to be able to hold runners. So there's, there's all different phases to this when it comes to pitching in the run prevention portion of it,
[00:32:54] Speaker A: make him beat you.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: And then when you look at pitchers like we're talking about the athleticism part, most guys who throw hard are bigger and stronger and more athletic than the guys who don't throw hard.
True. The guys who are undersized. Right. The 5 foot 10 guy who weighs 180 pounds and is 90 to 93, he's an outlier. He's not the norm.
You know, there's a reason that, what
[00:33:21] Speaker A: do they say, mass equals gas, Mass equals gas.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: Like if you're 5, 10 and like people be like, well, Tim Linton come did it. Like, have you watched Tim lynch come throw baseball? There's not a normal, is not a normal human being. Like the athleticism and the coordination and the timing to required to do what that dude did to get to where he did.
You know, it's pretty wild. But it's not a coincidence that you don't see a lot of small guys be super successful. There's huge advantages to being tall and you've got longer levers.
A lot of these guys, a lot of pitchers these days are really Good athletes. I think if you went back 20 years ago, you had bigger, stronger guys that probably weren't great athletes. I think now the pitching side of it, like these guys, these kids who are throwing their athletic, you know, a lot of these kids are high school shortstops and outfielders and can do some other stuff. And you know, I think that that's a separator on the mound too. I think it allows you to make adjustments. I think it allows you to have better command. If you're more athletic, you're going to be able to field your position.
You know, those are, those are athletic traits.
And having gone through this as a, as somebody who's recruited and somebody who's helped out, families like coaches have asked those questions. You know, let's see, a kid who, you know, 6 foot, 290 pound kid who throws decent and be like, well, can he run at all?
You know, and at first people like, why do you care if a pitcher can run? Well, it's an indication of, can you be explosive? Can you be athletic? Because it can give you an idea of like, all right, well, you know, if that kid's a 6, 8 runner and he's only 85 to 87 right now, that means there's some explosiveness in that body. Like maybe he's got a chance to throw really hard.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: You know, and the Bowie kid, Reese, who's at Wake Forest, and he's been throwing the ball really, really well for them.
He's a great example of that. Like, he didn't throw 95, 96 coming out of high school, but he was, I wouldn't call him an elite athlete, but he was well above average. He's a 6, 7 runner.
Like he could hit a little bit, he could run really good outfielder. And that was actually something that Wake liked about him is like, man, this kid's a really good athlete. Like there's more in the tank there and he does some stuff that we really value. And you know, obviously Billy's a really good evaluator and you know, but they're, they're bearing the fruits of that evaluation where they're able to say, all right, this kid, there's something about this kid, competes his ass off, really high end athlete, you know, and now they've got a really high end left handed arm to bring in out of the bullpen at this point in his career. And I mean, you will. I'm glad I'm not left handed having to hit him right now. But, you know, there's a correlation between a lot of that stuff. And coaches dig into this. I don't think they readily talk about it all the time because I think it's easier to talk about some of the other things that are more tangible. But you sit down and you talk to some of these guys, they're looking at exactly what we're talking about, the pure athleticism, because it gives them an indication of what is your ceiling.
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[00:37:07] Speaker A: yeah, sorry, I think I'm going to keep talking.
No, I think it's.
It's not talked about, but I think it's something that everyone has moved towards from a recruiting perspective, really. And there's different body shapes and there's different things, but generally speaking, the more athletic you're going to be on the field as a team with their players, the.
The more you're going to be able to do it. Sounds super simplistic, but the reality is the more athlete. If you can be uber athletic all over the field, it's going to be really hard to.
For the other team to get hits. It's going to be from a pitching perspective and a defensive perspective. They're going to be able to hit, they're going to be able to run, they're going to be able to. You become a lot more dynamic as a team the more athletes you have on that field, which back to the original point, is why the middle of the field gets recruited a little bit more.
Now, there are caveats, obviously, there's outliers. There's going to be people that are playing Division 1 baseball that are, you know, play third on their high school team and play shortstop in high school, in college, because there's two really good shortstops on the team. That happens. But the general rule, recruit the middle of the field catcher, short pitcher, short center.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: J.J. from Wofford, who we had on the podcast. Anybody listening? I suggest you go listen to that one. But I asked him, what do you think this is back a while ago, but I asked him, like, what do you think one of the biggest transitions to colleges, he said the outfield play is significantly better.
And I don't know if a lot of people would even think about that, but there are so few. There's significantly fewer hits in the outfield when you go from high school to college because it's a bunch of center fielders running around and fewer balls drop. And I think it's.
I, I never really heard anybody answer the question that way because, you know, usually it's the speed of the game and, you know, the details and stuff, but I thought that was a really interesting take, and I think it's 100% true, is that each way fewer balls drop in the outfield in college.
Yeah, that's a reflection of better athletes being out there.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree.
I think the outfield play in general is better. The positioning is better.
Obviously, there's better outfield. There's better athletes that can run down balls.
You know, I've seen plenty of videos in my life where someone backsides a double and you watch the video and the right fielder is standing on the line protecting against.
Lord only knows what you're just thinking,
[00:39:54] Speaker B: that's an out in college.
[00:39:55] Speaker A: For those of you out there, no one stands on the line in college. Like, we're conceding that double. We're actually going to try to protect more of the field than just the line.
But, yeah, no, I agree. Like, I think that it's. It becomes a lot more difficult because guys have a lot more range and guys can run down balls a lot more. And, you know, it's.
And I think even on those balls where, you know you're dying, balls that are blooped out over the infield, your infielders are even more athletic, where outfielders and infielders are converging on that ball. Like, it's just a harder.
It's harder to get hits, which is why everyone wants to hit the ball hard. Because generally, if you hit the ball hard, gives yourself a little bit more of an opportunity to be able to be successful offensively. Yeah, it's harder to build. It's harder to catch. It's harder to do those things. But, you know, it's, you know that I saw it even the back end of my coaching career at Division 3 level. Like, the outfield play at the Division 3 level is what was exponentially better on the. In year 10 than it was in year one when I started at the Division 3 level and we were getting better athletes and guys could run balls down and you were capable of doing a lot more with your outfield than you were a decade previous.
[00:41:14] Speaker B: I mean, I guess maybe the best way to put it when you talk about the increase in athleticism and the importance of athleticism is that essentially what ends up happening is you shrink the field.
Yeah.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: And I think like, I mean it got to the point, I want to say the last like probably five, six years as rpa, like we did, we did something. I don't know how many people do this, but we would do like our infield and outfield had different calls for the ball. Right. So like this is a little off, off topic, but my point is, is that we could get to so many balls that our infield had a different ball call than our outfield.
So that obviously with priority for everyone who doesn't necessarily know, like center field has priority in the outfield, outfield has priority over the infield, shortstop has priority in the infield over everyone else, so on and so forth.
But we like, we got to so many balls in shallow center, shallow right, shallow left and down the lines from an infield standpoint with our outfielders crashing that we were running into issues like with them screaming ball, ball, ball at the same time.
So like, you know, they weren't hearing each other. And then either a ball would drop or there'd be a collision, something like that. So we changed it up so that the, if infielders heard, I think outfielders were ball, infielders were mine. You know, if infielders heard ball, ball, ball, they peeled off and got out of the way. Because I don't feel there has priority coming on that one.
And same thing like if they couldn't get to the ball and they heard mine, mine, mine, and they, you know, they would say take it or you know, they would say nothing, you know. But my point in it is, is that we had to change up our, our vocabulary and our vernacular from how we went about catching balls because we were getting to so many more than, you know, your traditional, I'm just going to call the ball and try to catch it and see what happens. Because no one else is going to be around where there were two or three more guys converging on balls than they had been previously. So we had to change things up so that we avoided, we mitigated collisions and dropped balls.
[00:43:27] Speaker B: Yeah, just those details, you know, you just don't have as many of those mess ups that you see in high school, you know, the communication.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: But you're still gonna have some.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: Yeah, of course, Yeah. I mean, you see it yeah, you see it every week, like somebody's gonna drop a fly ball or, you know, you see it in the big leagues. Like it happens. Like it's just part of the game, but it just happens few. As you go up the level, the field shrinks because the athletes are better. It's harder to get hits because the athletes are better. It's harder to get hits because the pitchers are better. And it's why athleticism, I think, is at a premium. And I think that, I think you're going to see an increasing shift towards the importance of defense. And we've talked, I've talked about this with a handful of guys throughout the different levels of college baseball, but I think you're going to continue to see the importance of your ability to play defense. Move the needle from a recruiting perspective because it has become glaringly obvious that if you can defend when the technologies that we have to get hitters prepared, it's a lot easier to help a kid become a good offensive player than it is to create a really good defensive player.
I think, I just think that's the trend you're going to see and I think it's going to hold true to run prevention sport always has been. Everybody loves home runs and doubles and all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, you know, you see it in Major League Baseball playoffs, like the teams that can play really good offense, not necessarily rely on the home run all the time, but play really good offense and teams who can really defend, they're the ones who, who go the farthest and eventually they end up getting exposed. You know, just ask the Yankees fans.
[00:45:08] Speaker A: Yeah, facts, facts.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: But I mean, I don't have much more to add to this.
I think I just, I think it's an, it's an important piece of information for people to wrap their head around and families to wrap your head around, especially young guys who are really trying to.
You're in development mode and you're really trying to close the gap on your competition to become a recruitable athlete. Like focus on ways to become more athletic and make sure that defense doesn't fall to the wayside because you, you got to be able to wear a glove. And if you want to get noticed by coaches, a really good way to get noticed is to have a strong athletic frame and be able to do some things athletically that are, that are above average. Whether it's. Be able, you know, in running is certainly one of them. Right. If you want to get recruited, your first goal from a speed perspective is like, can you get yourself under 7?
Then you get in the conversation when people start paying attention and we've been there, we're at showcases, and you get the list of 60s, where do you go? You go and you circle all the dudes that run under seven.
It doesn't mean that those other guys won't get recruited. That's not the point. But guys who can run under seven usually can do some other things pretty well.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: Mm.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: So anything like that on that one, Coach? No, sir. All right, well, thank you for listening, everybody. Tune in next week. We'll have more for you then. Thanks, everybody.
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