Episode Transcript
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[00:01:11] Speaker B: welcome to this week's edition of in the Clubhouse with EMD Baseball. I'm Andy Kirikidis, joined by my Wonderful Co host, Mr. Keith Glasser. How are we doing, sir?
[00:01:18] Speaker C: Great.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: How are you?
Good. We have, you know, we're in the fall season, a lot of tournaments coming up. We've talked about this on other podcasts, but not haven't dedicated, you know, specific time to talk about this, but want to take a couple minutes to talk about what players should be doing ahead of tournaments as far as reaching out to coaches, planning so forth to make sure that they're giving themselves the best chance to get noticed at a particular tournament.
You and I both know that you go to some of these tournaments and this time of year there's actually some pretty big tournaments. You know, they're not Atlanta big, but yeah, you've got a bunch of the Jupiter qualifiers. You've got some stuff that's going on at Diamond Nation, you got some stuff that's going on down in Atlanta, you've got Fort Myers.
Some of these tournaments, they're still a pretty large size. You know, you get a couple hundred teams in some of these tournaments. But even, even 50 to 100 teams in a tournament is a lot for a coach to sit through.
And I think it's important that kids have a little bit of a plan in terms of what that should look like in terms of getting information out to coaches, different mechanisms to do so, and the timeliness of those emails because we both been on the other side of it.
If we know where guys are, there's a much better chance that we're going to show up and try to watch them play.
Right. Knowing what their schedule is, where they're going to be?
Hopefully some things line up, but it's tough for a coach if you just go into a tournament without any previous outreach and just kind of winging it.
You're. You're kind of laying it to the, to the baseball guys that you're just going to happen to play well in a game where a school that you're interested in is going to be there and they're going to like you.
And that doesn't work for most kids.
Bit of a plan, I think is important. So what are your thoughts on this? What are some of the stuff that hit home for you when you were coaching that you wanted to know ahead of a tournament? What's the stuff that you needed in your inbox in order to do your due diligence on a kid who you
[00:03:39] Speaker C: play for, when you're playing, the times, the field?
I mean, generally speaking, I could probably figure some of that stuff out, but with some of these tournaments, you can access the schedule prior to.
As a coach, you kind of find the schedule as you, as you go or when you show up. So it can be, you know, beneficial if you're getting emails on the front end of kids saying like, hey, I'm playing at two on Saturday and four on, you know, field three.
Also, what position you are, if you're pitching, when are you pitching, what time, you know, if, if they give you the innings, what innings?
Just so that you know, if you have a list of guys, especially in the fall, because it's a condensed time frame that you're going to be at those games. You know, it's not like the summer tournaments that you're there, you know, like Wednesday through Sunday or Wednesday through Saturday, and you can kind of spread it out and see. You need to see, see, you know, falls a lot more condensed or you're really only playing probably Friday evening, all day Saturday, Sunday. So, you know, you kind of want to plan out who you need to see pitching wise. So if you are a pitcher, when and when are you throwing? What innings are you throwing? Can make it a lot easier on coaches, you know, and then obviously, you know, where, where you're from, grades. If this is the first time you're reaching out to me, you know, what, what have you been doing all summer? How have you played any video that you might have? What are you interested in, you know, this time of year? Like maybe you have applied to the school, things like that.
Is it overwhelmingly necessary for all of it? No, but it at least provides some semblance of interest and you know, could pique my interest if you're, you know, if you are interested in our program and I see some video and you're good at least I think right on video.
Hey, the kid has some serious interest. He's applied here.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Video looks good.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: I should definitely try to check this kid out at some point this weekend and see when he plays.
So, you know, it sounds rather basic, right?
You know, but hit the highlights. You know, if we've already had communication, just tell me, you know, who you're playing for, what team, what time, what field.
Hopefully I'll get there. If we haven't had any communication, you know, introduce yourself quickly. Hi, I'm Keith Lasser from Columbia High School. I am a 22,004 graduate.
I'm a catcher, right handed hitter, I was a history major and here's my grades and I'm playing with the South Troy Dodgers at 9 and 11 on Field 2.
There was no none of this when we played. But you know, if you're the parent
[00:06:16] Speaker D: of a high school baseball player with college aspirations, you already know the recruiting process can feel overwhelming.
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[00:07:09] Speaker C: is the place to be.
[00:07:11] Speaker D: To learn more, visit diamond collegeshowcase.com yeah,
[00:07:17] Speaker B: need, need that info. I think you hit on two things.
The video, especially if you haven't been seen by a coach, video is really important. And then the other thing that I always wanted to see, it's, it's one thing to know what team you're playing on. I need to know who I can call.
[00:07:35] Speaker C: Yeah, good one.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: And you know, whether it's your travel ball coach. I want generally rule of thumb is I want to know your travel ball coaches and I want to know your high school coach. Those are probably the two guys that I'll call first in terms of trying to better understand what's going on. But anybody who can speak well of you as a player and a person, I will speak honestly of you is probably even more important.
Not that, not just blindly, you know, saying things about you because you're going to get found out, but somebody will speak honestly and give me good information on you. That's going to be really important.
I think we've, social media can certainly get leveraged in this. Like if you're traveling, if you're a 20, 28 and you're going to Fort Myers in two weeks, you should 100 post your schedule online. Post it on, on Twitter, on X, post it on Instagram, tag your, tag your coaches. Make sure that that's up there. Anybody who's follow you, any coaches who are following you, you know they're going to be able to see it. You can kind of do a blast update if you need to if something changes because inevitably stuff changes at these things.
Make sure you tag your travel ball team, so on and so forth.
But I, I think that the crux of this is that very few kids just get found out without doing any legwork and taking any agency in this process. And we've talked about this before. If it, if it's too much work for you to send out 15 or 20 emails ahead of a tournament to increase the likelihood that a school that you're interested in shows up to evaluate you, this isn't for you.
Right. And are there kids that are going through this process that, that doesn't matter for. Yeah, they play on the best travel teams and everybody knew about them before their recruiting window even opened up. But the reality is, is that for most kids, even really, really talented kids, they, they need to do this legwork. They need someone in their corner to, to pick up the phone and call the coach and say, hey, hey, so and so you're going to be at this tournament this weekend. If you are, you know, little Jimmy Smith's going to be playing shortstop. I think he's a pretty good player. Like, let me know what you think of them.
That's a, that's a huge piece of the puzzle in this process too.
So, you know, taking the time to do this, being thoughtful about who you're sending it to, it's important. And I think it gets overlooked sometimes that people say, oh, I sent out, you know, 50 emails and only got six responses. Well, if you didn't send out any emails, you wouldn't have got any responses.
[00:10:20] Speaker C: It would have been a big zero, big zero.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: So, yeah, it's imperfect, but it's it's still necessary. Coaches still check their email, Social Media 100 has to get leveraged in these types of situations, and you're. You're doing yourself a little bit of a disservice if you're not taking time to do some of this stuff.
[00:10:41] Speaker D: Yeah, no.
[00:10:42] Speaker C: I think that taking 10 minutes to fire off some emails is a lot of easy. You know, you'll start to see the fruits of your labor. At the very least, people will respond and they'll show up. It's on you, obviously, to do well,
[00:10:58] Speaker B: but
[00:11:00] Speaker C: they'll know where you play.
[00:11:02] Speaker D: So good for you.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:11:06] Speaker D: But if you want to do it,
[00:11:07] Speaker C: take the 10, 15 minutes to do it.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
Give yourself.
You got to do everything you can to tip the odds in your favor, and this is one of them.
[00:11:21] Speaker C: So the odds ever be in your favor.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: That's. That's what we hope. We hope for everybody who listens here that the odds are always in your favor.
Anything else you want to add on this particular topic, Coach?
[00:11:33] Speaker D: I hit my microphone.
[00:11:34] Speaker C: Sorry. No.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: All right. We'll probably get somebody else in the comments. Talk about clumsy you are.
We're not listening to the podcast anymore. Coach Glasser hit his microphone while I was driving.
[00:11:47] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Caused me to swerve, made an uncomfortable noise, and I swerved into and hit a squirrel.
Tough.
[00:11:56] Speaker C: I almost hit a squirrel today. I stopped. I didn't hit him.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Bold move.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: There was no one behind me.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Fair.
All right, well, thank you for listening, everybody.
Talk to you next week.
Thank you for listening this week.
[00:12:18] Speaker E: If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and smash
[00:12:22] Speaker B: that like button for us.
[00:12:24] Speaker E: 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.
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