Latest / From the Coach's Mouth / Episode 49: Rachel Folden

Transcript

Episode 49: Rachel Folden · From the Coach's Mouth

• 0:00
  If you listen to really good hitters talk, they're OK with
• 0:03
  telling you when they got beat, they're OK with telling you.
• 0:06
  And it's almost like a funny story that they tell in their
• 0:09
  head. And I think that's a that's a
• 0:12
  skill that can be taught of, hey, I'm going to reframe this
• 0:16
  as something funny that happened when I screwed up versus how I
• 0:20
  let everybody down and how I failed and all the anxiety that
• 0:23
  I feel going into the box. I think those are two really big
• 0:26
  things that separate good hitters from great hitters.
• 0:28
  At the field, in your car or on the couch, get your basket from
• 0:35
  the coach's mouth. Welcome to the From the Coaches
• 0:51
  Mount podcast with your hosts Jay Bolden and Ken Krause.
• 1:11
  Hello everyone. Yes, welcome to the From the
• 1:13
  Coaches Mouth podcast. Once again this is Ken Kraus
• 1:17
  here with my good buddy Jay Bolden.
• 1:19
  Jay, how we doing this morning? Actually, Ken, I'm doing really,
• 1:22
  really well. Things are going good.
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  Can't really complain too much. I wanted to ask you a question
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  though, Ken. I've been, I've been really
• 1:28
  thinking about some things, you know, over the last couple
• 1:31
  months, just how, how I've evolved as a coach and how you
• 1:36
  just kind of have to keep moving with the times.
• 1:38
  Have you, have you done that over the years?
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  Have you evolved as well too? Or do you feel like you're still
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  kind of in the same boat, if you will?
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  I'm back in the same Stone Age I always was.
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  No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, I think.
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  I think constant evolution is important.
• 1:53
  You know, if I find better information, a better way to do
• 1:55
  things, I'm always going to to try to update what I'm doing and
• 1:59
  change it and be unapologetic about it.
• 2:04
  Yeah, I think. Sometimes people say, you know,
• 2:06
  you. Yeah, you told me to do this
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  before. And I said, well, I've learned
• 2:10
  more since then. Yeah.
• 2:12
  Again, I think it's, you know, evolving.
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  And I think the best part is like just trying to keep keep
• 2:16
  learning, right? Like I think that's one of the
• 2:18
  biggest things about about it. Like don't don't stop, right?
• 2:21
  Just because it worked then for somebody doesn't mean it works
• 2:24
  that way for everybody. And so, yeah, but I just, I just
• 2:27
  want to ask you, I've been really kind of reflect a little
• 2:29
  bit on the coaching and so on. And then you know my path.
• 2:32
  So I'm I'm really wanted to get your take on that too to see if
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  if you've been the same way, so. Yeah, You know, I mean, there
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  were some things I've noticed that I did like early on in my,
• 2:42
  as a pitching coach, I never really talked about brush
• 2:45
  contact. I never mentioned anything about
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  it, never even thought about it, never considered it.
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  But I go back and I look at videos, you know, from 10-15
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  years ago, all my girls are getting it because I always told
• 2:56
  them to keep their arming close. There were other things I was
• 2:58
  doing right. And that was one thing that, you
• 3:01
  know, just kind of happened by accident.
• 3:02
  Now it's much more of a focus. So it's conscious to be doing
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  that. I think for me and I, you know,
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  for you as well, Motor preferences has opened our eyes
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  to a lot of things. So yeah, yeah, you know, never
• 3:15
  really tried to clone kids or make them all look exactly the
• 3:19
  same. But I think I've opened myself
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  up more as to what, you know, what's different.
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  And I think video is video as well-being able to see like with
• 3:31
  hitting. And I'm sure we'll get into this
• 3:33
  with our guest, but there's a big difference between the
• 3:36
  moment of contact, where the where they are and where they
• 3:40
  finish up after the swing is over.
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  I know I was guilty of thinking, oh, this kid isn't getting here
• 3:46
  or isn't doing this or that. And then I shoot a video of
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  them. I was like, now they're
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  perfectly fine. They're just ending up in a
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  different position that I would have thought they should have
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  been so. Yeah.
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  Well, again, that that's evolving is great.
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  And, and our guest today, I think we'll talk a little bit
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  about that as well too, how she's evolved.
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  So why don't we stop talking and, and introduce this amazing
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  guest that we have today, especially on the hitting side
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  of things. I'm, I'm sorry, not just that,
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  but even the the relationship piece is something I want to get
• 4:14
  in with her as well too. So go ahead, Ken, give some
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  information. All right, everybody, hold on to
• 4:20
  your hats because this is going to take a little while because
• 4:23
  today's guest probably gets tired of hearing herself
• 4:26
  described as a trailblazer. But it's an apartment
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  description nonetheless, which is one of the many reasons we're
• 4:31
  so excited to have her with us today as a player for the
• 4:34
  Marshall University Thundering Herd.
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  Our guests came out hot earning the Mid American Conference
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  Freshman of the Year title along with First Team All Mac and
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  Third Team All American honors. As a sophomore, she earned the
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  Triple Crown in hitting along with Conference Player of the
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  Year in Conference USA and Second Team All American honors.
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  As a junior, she was named to the All CUSA First Team and
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  Second Team All American and then as a senior she again
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  earned All CUSA and Third Team All American recognition.
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  She was later inducted into the Marshall University Hall of Fame
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  in 2019. After her collegiate playing
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  career finished, she was selected 7th overall by the
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  Chicago Bandits in the 2008 National Pro Fast Pitch League
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  Draft. It turned out to be a good
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  choice for the Bandits as our guest earned Rookie of the Year
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  honors for her first year and later went on to be named the
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  Worth Offensive Player of the Year as well as all NPF.
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  Around this time, she also launched her coaching career,
• 5:34
  first as a student assistant at Marshall and then with Holy
• 5:37
  Names University in California before joining the staff at
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  Valparaiso University in Indiana.
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  She subsequently opened her own training facility for baseball
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  and softball hitters using technology and data based
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  instruction. In 2019, her career took a
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  monumental turn when she was hired by the Chicago Cubs as the
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  organization's first ever female coach, taking a position as the
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  lead hitting, lab tech and rookie level hitting coach.
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  She was then promoted to minor league hitting coordinator
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  before becoming the hitting coach at AA Tennessee and AAA
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  Iowa. In November of 2025, it was
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  announced that she was leaving the Cubs to become the hitting
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  coach for the New York Mets AA club in Birmingham.
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  Of course, we can only be talking about one person.
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  Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the amazing Rachel
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  Folden to the From the Coaches Mouth podcast.
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  Welcome, coach, welcome. We're so happy to have you
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  today. Thank you for taking time to
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  talk to us, to goofballs today. So we really appreciate your
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  time today, Rachel. Of course, thanks for having me,
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  I'm excited. Take us back to the beginning.
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  How did softball first become a part of your life?
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  To be honest, it was an accident and a really happy one.
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  I hated softball. I thought it was the dumbest
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  sport in the world. I was.
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  I'm being completely honest. I played baseball first and I
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  thought softball was just, you know, in my head it was slow
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  pitch and it was just recreational and it wasn't
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  serious. And that was my, my perception
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  of it. And so I got all the way to
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  middle school, played basketball for one of my best friend's
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  dads. And I was pretty good basketball
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  player, pretty good athlete as a kid.
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  And he asked me to play on a softball team with his daughter.
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  And I told him I thought softball was stupid.
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  And he said, you know what? He's like, you're probably not
• 7:30
  very good at it anyway. And that was all I needed to
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  hear. I was like, OK, you're, you're
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  saying I'm not going to be good at softball.
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  I already had this terrible image in my head of softball.
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  So I was I I was like, I'm in how much does it cost?
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  He said $80.00. And I said, I can't afford that.
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  I didn't grow up with a lot of money in my family.
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  And so he went and talked to the league and I ended up having a
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  my fees covered if I sold twice as many chocolate bars as
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  everybody else. So I went and hustled and
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  started playing softball on his team and immediately fell in
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  love with fastpitch. And I think the biggest reason
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  was everybody looked like me. I got sick and tired of being
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  the only girl on the on the team.
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  It was always a topic of conversation.
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  It was never about my ability. It was always just about, oh,
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  she's really good for a girl or Oh my God, that team has a girl
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  on it. And I hated it.
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  So when I got to softball, I was like surrounded by women and it
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  was amazing. And my confidence just soared
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  and I fell in love with the sport and the rest is history.
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  You know, Rachel, I want to, I'm going to jump off ship here
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  already because you made a comment and I've seen you post
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  this before, which I absolutely love you.
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  Would I, if I'm not mistaken, correct me if I'm wrong, but you
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  made, you know, I follow you on social media.
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  Of course I love your tik toks and and stuff you post on
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  Twitter. You know, I think you made a
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  comment years ago about how we have to stop coaching girls like
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  girls, like we have to coach them like we're going to coach
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  men or we're going to coach whoever, doesn't matter, You
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  know, what gender you are. It matters more about just
• 9:00
  coaching that athlete. And that was something that
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  really resonated with me is like, Hey, it's these these
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  players want you to be hard on them when you need to be hard on
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  them. You know, they also want to know
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  that you need to be there for them, you know, when the time
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  comes to. So I thought that was something
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  like you kind of talked about already, like when you were
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  growing up, it was like, well, she's good for a girl.
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  I've seen more softball players throw the ball better than half,
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  half of some of the baseball players that, you know, at that
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  age. And, and I just thought that was
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  something that resonated with me for, for, you know, quite a lot
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  long time. So that was that was pretty
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  awesome to to see you post that. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think
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  competitiveness is genderless. I think that's the beauty about
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  the ball field or the court or whatever our surfaces that we're
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  playing on is. It's very merit based.
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  So if you can play, you can play.
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  And that to me is the fairest representation of what it should
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  be. So I think that's why you see a
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  lot of some of the social justice changes happen on the
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  field first before they bleed into society, because sports is
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  a very, it's a meritocracy essentially, at least in theory
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  it is. And I know that that changes in
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  certain places. But for the most part, if you
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  can play and you can help our team win, we want you here and
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  we will embrace you and we will celebrate you.
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  And I think the more that we can understand that that doesn't
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  only help women. Obviously that helps women
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  because that helps make them feel like they're a part of
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  something greater, which society historically has told them that
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  they are not. But I think it also helps the
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  men as well in being a little bit more understanding of other
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  people who don't necessarily look like them as well.
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  Yep, absolutely, absolutely. Talking about playing Rachel, I
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  want to go back to your time at Marshall.
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  That was a huge chapter for you. Like what did that environment
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  teach you about elite performance?
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  Because you were just dominant when you were there.
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  I had no idea what it meant to perform at an elite level until
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  I got there, and I think I credit my coach Shonda Stanton
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  with that quite a bit. Shonda's an elite thinker and
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  she's an elite performer in her own right, and she's also one of
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  my favorite people. I think where what I learned
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  from her and how to play in that environment is I will do
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  anything if I know that the person that is asking me to do
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  it cares about me. And she cares.
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  And I I would run through a wall for her because I know that she
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  would do the same for me. And we still have a very, very
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  good, strong relationship. I love that woman with all of my
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  heart, but I think her competitiveness and she was
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  unrelenting on what the expectation was.
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  And this is something that I, I didn't realize about my I could
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  always turn it on if I was provoked.
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  And that was always something that I was good at.
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  Similar to my get into softball story.
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  I could always turn it on if I was provoked.
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  But what Shonda taught me was how to keep that level of
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  excellence at all times, no matter what I was doing.
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  So that would mean at practice, when it was kind of a mundane,
• 12:03
  ordinary practice, elevating my level in the classroom, off the
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  field, with my relationships with people, she just really
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  held herself to a standard that elevated everybody else around
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  her. And I think that really helped
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  me. That kind of reminds me of the
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  the first Avengers movie where they're in there and they're in
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  New York and they're doing the big battle and Bruce, Bruce
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  banners there. And I think Captain America
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  turns 1 says Bruce, time to get angry.
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  And he says, here's the secret. I'm always angry.
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  That's kind of kind of that mentality, right?
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  Yeah. What's a moment from your
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  playing career that really stands out and, you know, maybe
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  shaped how you coach today? Oh yeah, there's so many from my
• 12:46
  playing career. I got to play with some
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  incredible, incredible softball players.
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  I can think of a lot of moments I the first thing off the top of
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  mind just because I spent the last couple.
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  I saw her twice in one week, which is unheard of.
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  But I played with Jenny Finch and she was the greatest
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  competitor I've ever played with.
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  I've said this to multiple people.
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  I've never seen anybody have all of these off field distractions,
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  have to travel here, have to make appearances here, coach a
• 13:15
  clinic here. And then she'd show up to the
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  ball field and it was just like she became a different person
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  and could just compete her tail off.
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  And watching her do that was so monumental in my career as a
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  coach. Afterwards, I can we told the
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  story this weekend and she didn't even remember it because
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  this is just kind of the person that she is.
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  She's just so good at everything that there's so many moments
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  that we all like hold on to and I'm sure she just forgets about
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  because she's had so many of them.
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  But I remember I was, I was DH ING a game.
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  We were playing in Julia at the Jackhammer Stadium and she threw
• 13:51
  a perfect game and I she had just gotten off of a plane.
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  She had her son with her at the time and her traveling nanny and
• 14:02
  her nanny forgot to pack cleats. So I she she wore my shoes to
• 14:08
  warm up in. I think she wore them for the
• 14:09
  first inning. Her nanny came back, she went to
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  like Dick's Sporting Goods and bought her a pair of cleats and
• 14:14
  she pitched in brand new cleats and ended up throwing a perfect
• 14:17
  game. And you just watch someone
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  compete at that level is pretty incredible.
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  And I think another, another moment.
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  And it's funny because these are two moments where I got
• 14:25
  outsmarted. That really taught me about
• 14:27
  that. There's just another level of
• 14:28
  thinking through the game. But I was playing against Kelly
• 14:31
  Kretchman, who's probably the greatest hitter of all time, to
• 14:34
  be honest, and played for the longest, and I watched her or
• 14:39
  no, this wasn't Kretchman, this was Bustos.
• 14:41
  I apologize, this is Crystal Bustos.
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  Another great hitter. Another great hitter, right?
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  And unreal. And I was catching it.
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  I remember I was, it was my second year.
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  My rookie year was the Olympic year.
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  So all the Olympians were gone. So they came back and played in
• 14:56
  2009. And I was catching.
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  And the first pitch Busto swung like way too early.
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  And it was, I don't know, something like a curveball or
• 15:05
  something. And I was like, oh, sweet, we
• 15:08
  got her right where I want her change up.
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  She sat all over the change up and hit the ball like 500 feet.
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  So she baited me into it. She 100% baited me into it.
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  And I was just blown away. And I was like, I just got
• 15:22
  outsmarted. And then the very next game,
• 15:26
  this is this is where I just knew.
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  It's like, hey, welcome to the league, rookie.
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  Like this was my kind of moment with that.
• 15:34
  But the very next game, Bustos walks or something, she's on
• 15:38
  first base and she takes a humongous lead and I'm like, all
• 15:42
  right, cool, I'm going to pick her off on the next on the next
• 15:44
  one I was catching, I'm going to pick her off.
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  I turn to throw, she takes off, steals second base on me.
• 15:49
  And I was like, you've got to be kidding me.
• 15:52
  So then the next inning she's on first base again and the first
• 15:58
  pitch she straight steals and steals a base on me because I
• 16:00
  didn't expect her to run because she knew I was going to throw.
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  So I was like, oh, she's not going to run on this one.
• 16:06
  Nope. She's still second base on me.
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  And I just thought to myself, I'm like, I just, I am playing
• 16:10
  checkers and she is playing chess.
• 16:12
  And I really have to start studying and getting into
• 16:16
  understanding how other players play the game on a so much of A
• 16:19
  deeper level than I was used to. And I think that transition from
• 16:23
  college to pro, when you're in college, almost everything is
• 16:26
  regimented for you. And then when you get to
• 16:28
  professional softball or professional baseball, it's now
• 16:32
  up to the players to think through the game.
• 16:35
  And so I think where that shaped me as a coach, to have this long
• 16:39
  story answer your actual question, is teaching players.
• 16:43
  For me, it's so important to teach players how to think
• 16:45
  through the game versus how to listen to you as a coach.
• 16:49
  Because if all you do is give them drills and you tell them
• 16:52
  you give them prescriptions, they never really learn how to
• 16:55
  think through the game themselves.
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  And I want players that can outsmart their teammates and can
• 17:01
  give and outsmart their opponents and can give them
• 17:04
  those Crystal Bustos to Rachel Foldon type moments.
• 17:07
  Because I think that's where that's everybody's going to end
• 17:10
  up being good. That's what elevates them to
• 17:13
  great in my opinion. Yeah, You know, it's funny.
• 17:16
  I remember a story, we were at a a coach's clinic and somebody
• 17:20
  was talking about Crystal Bustos.
• 17:22
  They were talking about strategy.
• 17:23
  We're talking about Bustos specifically.
• 17:25
  And they said, you know, you're in a in a tight game, you got a
• 17:28
  two run lead and Crystal Bustos comes up to the plate with the
• 17:31
  bases loaded. You might want to just walk her
• 17:33
  anyway, walk in that run. Better to give up 11 than 4.
• 17:37
  100% Just like how everybody talks about Barry Bonds, 100%.
• 17:42
  Yeah. But yeah, it's, I think that
• 17:45
  really is important to get players to be able to think
• 17:48
  through the game. I I think that's one area where
• 17:51
  I think softball has kind of gone off the rails a lot.
• 17:54
  It's become so regimented and so data-driven that in a lot of
• 17:59
  ways they don't give the players in college the ability to just
• 18:02
  make decisions. You know, you see kids hesitate,
• 18:05
  go from 1st to 3rd. If you think you can make it,
• 18:08
  you know, look for some help from the coach because the play
• 18:10
  is behind you. But that balls hit the right
• 18:12
  field and you've got a good jump.
• 18:14
  You shouldn't have to wait for somebody to say, OK, you're just
• 18:19
  kind of looking for clues. If the balls hit the left field,
• 18:21
  you can see the play as well as the coach can, you know how you
• 18:24
  can run, you know, make that play.
• 18:26
  And, you know, there's so many of those things that I think
• 18:29
  maybe getting lost. What do you think?
• 18:31
  Oh, I 100% agree with you. I think a lot of I think it's
• 18:36
  ego driven to be honest. I think when you especially when
• 18:38
  you start throwing money around and I did this early in my
• 18:41
  career. So this is where I actually feel
• 18:44
  like I can speak on it because I used to be like this and I had
• 18:47
  to, you know, understand how to how to change my mentality.
• 18:50
  But when you give lessons for so long, people just when they walk
• 18:53
  in, they hand you money and they say coach my kid.
• 18:55
  So you feel like you have to have all of the knowledge to
• 18:58
  coach that player. And so because of that, you then
• 19:03
  and make that player reliant on you.
• 19:06
  And that's the wrong approach to do things.
• 19:08
  And I did that for a long time and you feel pretty good about
• 19:11
  yourself because you say, oh, these kids are good and they're
• 19:13
  good because I taught them. And that's in reality, that's
• 19:16
  not the case. Most of the time I was coaching
• 19:19
  12 to 14 year olds that are just hitting their biggest growth
• 19:23
  spurt that they're ever going to hit.
• 19:25
  And I'm thinking that it's me that made them better.
• 19:27
  No, nature made them better, right?
• 19:29
  They just got bigger, stronger, faster.
• 19:30
  In a two year period, they just happened to hit with me once a
• 19:33
  week. And so now I'm sitting here
• 19:35
  trying to take the credit for it.
• 19:36
  And I think what it was was his 100% ego.
• 19:40
  And you just, you move on from that and you realize that, OK, I
• 19:45
  what's my goal here? My goal is to make them good in
• 19:48
  the game. Not good in the cage, but good
• 19:50
  in the game. How do I do that?
• 19:52
  There's a disconnect between what we're doing in here and
• 19:55
  what they're doing out there. And I know this because their
• 19:58
  parents are coming to me and going, why can't they hit like
• 20:00
  this in a game? Well, it's like, OK, well, I'm
• 20:02
  not creating an environment that mirrors the game, so I got to
• 20:05
  start doing that. And so.
• 20:07
  You have to teach them how to work through these challenging
• 20:10
  moments, which means you got to create challenging environments
• 20:13
  for them because I can't coach them during the game.
• 20:15
  They have other coaches for that.
• 20:17
  So for me, it was about let's create an environment where it's
• 20:22
  hard, there's some failure involved, and now we're going to
• 20:25
  work through these things. And then also on the flip side
• 20:29
  of that, I think where most coaches get it wrong is they
• 20:32
  don't teach players how to evaluate themselves.
• 20:35
  So players are notoriously terrible self evaluators.
• 20:38
  And they're either they either think they're better than they
• 20:41
  are or they either think they're far worse than they are.
• 20:44
  And you guys have both coached both of those types of players.
• 20:47
  And you understand, we have to get them to where they can
• 20:50
  understand who they are as a player, which means what pitches
• 20:53
  are you good at hitting? What pitches are you not good at
• 20:55
  hitting? It's OK to admit that you're not
• 20:56
  good at hitting certain pitches. I didn't learn how to hit a
• 20:59
  pitch on the inside corner until I was a professional for three
• 21:03
  seasons. If someone in college would have
• 21:05
  just tried to jam me inside, I would not have been a four time
• 21:09
  All American. I'm telling you right now, I had
• 21:10
  a hole that no one seemed to be able to figure out, but I knew
• 21:15
  that about myself. And that was that's something
• 21:18
  that I want players to understand is they have to be
• 21:20
  good self evaluators. But as coaches, it's our job to
• 21:23
  lead them into that. And more importantly, it's we
• 21:26
  have to now lead the parents into that too, because the
• 21:29
  parents are who they're going to hear the other six days out of
• 21:31
  the week. They're going to only hear us
• 21:33
  once, but they're going to hear their parents voices six days
• 21:36
  out of the week. So we have to educate their
• 21:38
  parents on what their abilities actually are.
• 21:41
  And that might mean telling them that they're not as good as they
• 21:44
  think they are, which is a risk for us because that is literally
• 21:47
  our livelihood. And they're they're paying US
• 21:50
  money to to be a support system for their kid.
• 21:53
  If we piss their parents off, they might leave.
• 21:56
  So what that we have to be OK with being honest about where
• 22:01
  your kids at because that's the only way that we can really help
• 22:03
  them. Yeah, I will say this too,
• 22:05
  Rachel. I think sometimes for me, when
• 22:07
  I'm doing stuff, sometimes the best thing I can do is stay out
• 22:10
  of the way, right? Like, yeah, I can't over coach
• 22:13
  this kid because if I do that, they're gonna be they're they're
• 22:16
  waiting for the response from me.
• 22:18
  And I'm like, what did you think about that, right?
• 22:21
  Like you, you saw what just came out of your hand, right?
• 22:24
  Was that good or bad? Like you don't need me to tell
• 22:27
  you what is good or bad. And so sometimes I'll say to
• 22:29
  myself, you know what, stay out of the way.
• 22:31
  Let this kid work through this and figure it out.
• 22:34
  And I think, you know that you said that parents want to have
• 22:36
  that feedback from the pitching coach or the hitting coach all
• 22:38
  the time. Like, oh, you got to do this.
• 22:39
  You got to do that sometimes, like, no, we got to let them
• 22:42
  just kind of work through this and, and get out of the way
• 22:45
  sometimes. So, you know, I, I just to me,
• 22:47
  I, when you said that, I was like, yeah, that's sometimes I'm
• 22:50
  like, you know what? I'm just going to stay out of
• 22:51
  the way. So.
• 22:53
  I, I, you know, it's true. I have a question for you just
• 22:56
  off of that same vein. You give a lot of pitching
• 22:59
  lessons. Do you ever tell the parents to
• 23:02
  stay out of the way? Like do you ever tell the
• 23:03
  parents leave them alone? Rachel I have had times where I
• 23:09
  have actually gotten up and been like, if we need to end this
• 23:13
  lesson right now, please go. Honestly, Rachel So for me, this
• 23:18
  isn't my livelihood. I have a great job, right?
• 23:21
  I have I get a salary and I tell people all the time when you
• 23:24
  walk in my door, I don't need this money.
• 23:28
  I do this because I love this, right?
• 23:29
  If not, Rachel, I would charge what other people in our area
• 23:32
  charge, which I don't, right? I keep my stuff somewhat
• 23:35
  affordable, but at the same time of, of that, it's also I I'm at
• 23:39
  the point where in my life like I'm not here to deal with the
• 23:43
  parent, right? Like I'm here to help your kid.
• 23:46
  And I'll do that till the till the day is long and, and all
• 23:48
  that stuff. But I have absolutely, I've
• 23:51
  gotten rid of people because of the parents and it's just we're
• 23:55
  not a good fit. And so when I do an evaluation
• 23:57
  with a kid, the first thing I tell them is let's do a lesson.
• 24:00
  Let's see if we're a fit. You guys can talk about it.
• 24:03
  And I've had people said, you know what, this isn't a good fit
• 24:05
  for us and I don't take it. I don't take that personally,
• 24:07
  right? I've had people who've left me
• 24:09
  to go to other instructors. I don't take that personally.
• 24:11
  I'm like, good luck. Sometimes another set of eyes is
• 24:14
  important. It's not about me, it's about
• 24:16
  the kid. And if the parent can't
• 24:19
  understand that, then I, I don't want you around either.
• 24:21
  I can, I have AI have a 2027 who I've talked to their parents all
• 24:25
  the time. Like, listen, if you if, if
• 24:27
  you're going to continue to ride your daughter, I'm not the right
• 24:29
  person for you, right? And so, yeah, absolutely.
• 24:33
  I, I have no problem telling people don't come back.
• 24:35
  And I think, Rachel, that's where we get into that point of
• 24:37
  as you get older, people don't like you because of that, right?
• 24:40
  And I'm OK with that. Like I have a.
• 24:42
  Great family. That's very true.
• 24:43
  I have good friends. If you don't like me, I don't
• 24:45
  really care. I'm not losing sleep over it,
• 24:47
  right? Like I'm going to continue to be
• 24:49
  me and I'm going to continue to work hard for the the kids that
• 24:52
  I have, not the parents. So yeah, the answer to that is
• 24:55
  absolutely, absolutely. Good.
• 24:59
  Yeah, and I, I would agree with that as well.
• 25:01
  And I, you know, I try to explain on my nicer days, I will
• 25:04
  tell the parents to say, hey, look, you're going to be with
• 25:06
  them six days a week. I get 1/2 hour with this girl.
• 25:10
  Let me be the voice she hears because if you and I are both
• 25:12
  talking, she's going to hear you and she's not going to hear me
• 25:16
  on my normal days. With that, the parents starts
• 25:19
  coaching. I just kind of go up to him and
• 25:21
  I say, hey, you know, she doesn't need me to translate
• 25:24
  English as my first language. I speak it very well, but but if
• 25:28
  you want to go ahead and coach her, that's fine.
• 25:30
  I'll go sit on the bucket and catch for her, but I'm going to
• 25:33
  charge you just the same. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:37
  I think I love that. I think as as instructors and
• 25:40
  coaches, we have to do that. Like, you know, it's not like I
• 25:43
  said, it's not my livelihood. So I don't really, I could I
• 25:45
  tell them all the time, like I could quit tomorrow and I'm
• 25:47
  still going to be OK, right? Like this is not about me.
• 25:50
  It's just not about me. I'm trying to help your kid.
• 25:52
  You got to get out of the way of your own kid, right?
• 25:55
  And let them let them work through some things too.
• 25:57
  It's super important. So, so I want to talk about
• 26:00
  hitting because we could talk about pitching, all that stuff
• 26:02
  all day. I don't want to do that.
• 26:03
  I'm here. I want to talk about you in in
• 26:06
  your opinion, you've always been a dominant hitter.
• 26:08
  So what at every level? So what separates good hitters
• 26:12
  from elite hitters in your mind now that you've been on the
• 26:14
  baseball side of things? What are what's separating those
• 26:17
  really just good hitters to those kids, those players that
• 26:19
  are elite? I I think being a good self
• 26:23
  evaluator is definitely a huge part of it.
• 26:26
  So you have to understand the things that you need to get
• 26:29
  better at period. And they're working in
• 26:33
  professional baseball. It's a it's a corporation.
• 26:35
  There's it's a billion dollar industry, a billion dollar
• 26:38
  corporation. And there's a ton of eyeballs.
• 26:41
  All that we can come up with plans really easily.
• 26:44
  And we can see the forest for the trees because we have an
• 26:47
  abundance of data and we have an abundance of here, here's what's
• 26:50
  worked in the past, here's what hasn't worked in the past.
• 26:53
  We, we can do all of those things and it makes it
• 26:55
  relatively easy because we have so much help.
• 26:58
  If you go to the youth side of things, you don't have those
• 27:02
  luxuries that we have now. But being on this side now, you
• 27:06
  understand, really it just boils down to here's what am I good
• 27:10
  at? What do I need to improve on and
• 27:13
  then how do I get from here to here?
• 27:15
  How do I make those things that I need to improve on good enough
• 27:19
  to play? How do I cover my holes?
• 27:21
  Maybe it's it's adding one thing per year.
• 27:24
  You know, you hear about it with basketball players all the time.
• 27:27
  They'll add a certain shot to their game or they'll add a
• 27:30
  certain skill set of skills to their game.
• 27:33
  And I don't think baseball and softball are any different,
• 27:35
  especially from the hitting side.
• 27:37
  And like we talked about with me hitting the inside pitch, it was
• 27:40
  an evolution of things that had to happen because I was getting
• 27:44
  exposed at it. And so I had to learn how to
• 27:47
  react to it. And so with what separates good
• 27:50
  hitters from bad hitters, I guess number one, I think #2 is
• 27:54
  having a good learning how to reframe failure.
• 27:59
  So hitting is really, really hard and it comes with a lot of
• 28:02
  failure. And if you're not good at
• 28:04
  turning that failure into how I can improve myself, it's going
• 28:08
  to beat you down. And you're just, you're going to
• 28:10
  have so many thoughts going through your head when you're in
• 28:12
  the batter's box. So learning how to reframe
• 28:15
  failure, I think is super, super huge.
• 28:17
  Learning how to talk through it. If you listen to really good
• 28:19
  hitters talk, they're OK with telling you when they got beat,
• 28:23
  they're OK with telling you. And it's almost like a funny
• 28:25
  story that they tell in their head.
• 28:28
  And I think that's a, that's a skill that can be taught of,
• 28:33
  hey, I'm going to reframe this as something funny that happened
• 28:36
  when I screwed up versus how I let everybody down and how I
• 28:40
  failed and all the anxiety that I feel going into the box.
• 28:42
  I think those are two really big things that separate good
• 28:45
  hitters from great hitters. And then I also think the
• 28:47
  preparation, great hitters love to prepare.
• 28:51
  They love it. They love to prepare for what
• 28:53
  they're going to see. They love to prepare for the
• 28:56
  game. They love to go to work, they
• 28:58
  love to practice. I think that's a that's a huge
• 29:01
  separator. And so we have to make sure that
• 29:04
  it's fun as we as we teach them growing up that getting better
• 29:07
  is fun. Working at things that are hard
• 29:09
  is fun. And if we can teach them those
• 29:12
  skills, I think that's what really takes them over the top.
• 29:14
  Well, and isn't there also an element of, you know, it's just
• 29:17
  human nature. We like to do the things we're
• 29:19
  good at. We feel good about ourselves.
• 29:21
  We don't like to do the things we're bad at, even though that's
• 29:24
  what we need to work on because we're, I'm already good at X.
• 29:27
  I now, you know, I'm already good at hitting the outside
• 29:29
  pitch. I need to work on the inside
• 29:31
  pitch. But then I'm going to, you know,
• 29:33
  I get into that failure mentality or I get frustrated.
• 29:35
  And so I'm going to go back and work on what makes me feel good.
• 29:38
  How do you, you know, how do you get players to to think in those
• 29:42
  terms? I think it's important how we
• 29:45
  speak to them as coaches. I think if we come at them with
• 29:48
  this is what you're doing wrong, this is what we need to fix,
• 29:51
  this is fix, fix, fix. I don't think that teaches them
• 29:56
  how to hang on to what they're good at.
• 29:57
  That teaches them that they're broken.
• 30:00
  And I think what we can do that's way more impactful and
• 30:03
  way more valuable as a coach is to hey, here's what you do
• 30:07
  really well. Catch them doing it right and
• 30:10
  then capturing that moment and then having that to go back to
• 30:15
  when they're struggling and saying, hey, this is what you're
• 30:18
  really good at. I want you to keep that.
• 30:22
  But then we're going to add to that versus forget about what
• 30:26
  you're good at. Here's all the things that
• 30:27
  you're bad at and let's fix them.
• 30:29
  I don't think that's the right way to go about things.
• 30:30
  I just don't think that that's how humans think.
• 30:33
  I think we, you hit it on the head, Ken.
• 30:35
  We want to, we gravitate towards the things that we're already
• 30:38
  good at and we want to hang on to those things.
• 30:40
  So if we as a coach tell them, and you see this all the time,
• 30:44
  the keyboard warriors, someone, some other coach will post a
• 30:47
  video and then there's someone that comments all the things
• 30:50
  that's wrong with what that kid is doing.
• 30:52
  And just imagine if that was the kid reading your comment and
• 30:56
  they think they're arguing with adults.
• 30:58
  But it's like, what if the kid reads the comment?
• 30:59
  Now you're just beating down a kid who's trying to work really
• 31:03
  hard on the craft. And I just don't think that's
• 31:05
  the right way to go about things.
• 31:10
  Hey Jay, on a scale of 1 to 10, how important do you think brush
• 31:13
  contact is for pictures? It's pretty high up there Ken
• 31:17
  probably attend since it's hard to get maximum speed and or
• 31:21
  accuracy without it. Yeah I agree, but have you ever
• 31:24
  had a student who struggled to get good light brush contact?
• 31:28
  Sure, all the time, in fact. Especially when they've been
• 31:31
  taught hello elbow and are trying to throw around their
• 31:34
  hips or they're sliding their hips out of the way doing that
• 31:37
  crazy ninja move. So what do you do when you run
• 31:40
  into this situation? Keep railing on them until they
• 31:43
  get it right. I used to do that a lot, but
• 31:46
  then I learned about a product called Pitch Squeak.
• 31:48
  Ken, Pitch, Squeak. What's that?
• 31:51
  It's a cool little armband with a squeaker inside of it.
• 31:54
  Like a dog toy. Yeah, kinda.
• 31:57
  So how does it work? Well, you slip the armband onto
• 32:01
  the pitcher's forearm and you set it so the squeaker is where
• 32:04
  the brush contacts should happen.
• 32:06
  Then when the pitcher goes into release, she tries to get it to
• 32:09
  squeak like this. If she makes it happen, she got
• 32:14
  brush. If there's no sound, she knows
• 32:16
  immediately and can make a correction.
• 32:18
  Wow cool, so she gets immediate audible as well as tactile
• 32:23
  feedback. Oh, there you go again, showing
• 32:26
  off with those big and technical words again.
• 32:29
  But yeah, she can feel it and hear it.
• 32:31
  Doesn't really work. You bet it does.
• 32:34
  I use it with my students all the time and it helps them learn
• 32:37
  how to get brush contact pretty quickly if they practice with
• 32:41
  it. Sounds neat.
• 32:43
  Where can I get one? It's easy, Ken.
• 32:45
  Just e-mail support@pitchsqueak.com and
• 32:49
  Jason, the inventor of it and a Poly Girl certified pitching
• 32:53
  coach himself, will ask you how many you want and send them
• 32:57
  right out. I'll do that today.
• 32:59
  Thanks, Jay. What's that address again?
• 33:02
  You bet, Ken. It's support@pitchsqueak.com one
• 33:07
  more time for those of you who are listening,
• 33:09
  support@pitchsqueak.com and don't forget to mention in the
• 33:14
  e-mail that you heard about it right here on From the Coach's
• 33:17
  Mouth podcast and you'll receive 10% off.
• 33:24
  Catch him doing good is an important element.
• 33:26
  I sometimes forget about that. I get so caught up in trying to
• 33:29
  to fix things. But I do try to do that.
• 33:33
  Although there is a funny element to that too, is that
• 33:35
  sometimes I'll, I'll tell the kid, hey, you know, I really
• 33:38
  like the way you did you that looked really good.
• 33:40
  And then, you know, the next one, you know, it's just the
• 33:42
  next Rep is awful. And I go see, that's what I get
• 33:45
  for saying something nice to you.
• 33:46
  You're just not used to it. You know I've got to be mean.
• 33:51
  So Rachel, I want to ask you, so how did your understanding of
• 33:55
  hitting evolve from college to professional softball?
• 33:58
  And then how has it evolved or changed over the last few years
• 34:01
  now that you've been in the, you know, with the big leagues, in
• 34:03
  the big leagues? Oh, good question.
• 34:06
  From when I let's say college to professional start there.
• 34:09
  I think when I was in college I could out athlete the level to a
• 34:16
  certain extent, so I could hit, even though I knew I wasn't good
• 34:20
  at hitting an inside pitch. If someone didn't throw hard and
• 34:24
  threw it in there, I could handle it, right?
• 34:26
  Or if you something like that, when I got to professional
• 34:30
  softball, the you face especially, there was only there
• 34:35
  were six teams when I started and then it got whittled down to
• 34:37
  four teams. So you just face the same
• 34:39
  pictures over and over and over again, right?
• 34:41
  And they're all aces and they're all incredible.
• 34:43
  They're all Olympians and you're like, great, I have to face
• 34:45
  Monica Abbott two times in four days.
• 34:47
  That's great. But so, but they had information
• 34:50
  because they had history. You know, when you're in
• 34:52
  college, I might play a school once in my 4 years, but in in
• 34:56
  professional softball, you're facing the same pitcher twice in
• 35:01
  a month or four times in a month.
• 35:03
  And they, they have history against you.
• 35:05
  They know what you're good at, they know what you're not.
• 35:08
  And so I think where it got really granular was when I got
• 35:12
  to that level of understanding how someone was going to try to
• 35:16
  attack me and how I was going to try to attack them and which one
• 35:20
  was going to win that day. Because there were pitchers that
• 35:23
  were just flat out better than me if they hit their spots just
• 35:26
  flat. I could not hit Kat Osterman
• 35:28
  unless she missed over the plate.
• 35:29
  And she didn't miss over the plate very much.
• 35:32
  True. So there were things where I had
• 35:35
  to attack her much differently than someone who threw a lot of
• 35:38
  strikes. So or threw a lot of they missed
• 35:42
  a lot over the heart of the plate, I should say, because Cat
• 35:44
  threw a lot of strikes. But those types of things.
• 35:47
  Sometimes I would have to go into a game and change my
• 35:50
  approach of, hey, I'm only I'm going to wait three at bats for
• 35:53
  one pitch. And that I never had to do that
• 35:56
  in college. But I would have to do that in
• 35:59
  pro softball of I'm going to wait for Cat to throw this one
• 36:04
  pitch. And if I have to wait three at
• 36:06
  bats, if I have to strike out looking and at bats 1 and 2, I'm
• 36:09
  not going to miss it when she throws it in the 3rd at bat.
• 36:12
  And that was my only chance against her.
• 36:15
  And then there were other pitchers that I would face, like
• 36:18
  I would face Monica Abbott, who would just pepper the strike
• 36:20
  zone. But she threw, everything went
• 36:21
  up. So for her, it was like, I'm
• 36:23
  going to swing really early in the count.
• 36:25
  I'm going to swing, I'm going to be early with my timing and I'm
• 36:29
  going to just try to swing and miss over the ball.
• 36:31
  And so it was just a very different approach.
• 36:33
  So I think what pro softball taught me was how I had to
• 36:36
  change my approach based on who was pitching.
• 36:39
  And so now you take that into how I coach.
• 36:42
  And I think when I coach youth hitters, a lot of it is
• 36:46
  mechanical based. Like you got to get the path
• 36:48
  into a spot where it's going to play against various different
• 36:51
  pitches and locations. And then, but I understand now,
• 36:55
  like especially with youth kids, the importance of being on time.
• 36:59
  I think I spent a lot of time with mechanics, mechanics and I
• 37:03
  spend a lot more time on timing now.
• 37:06
  And I think that's, I think good hitters have really good timing
• 37:09
  and they understand the concept of time and the concept of space
• 37:13
  between them and the softball or them in the baseball.
• 37:15
  And that has really taken me into where I'm at as a
• 37:18
  professional coach, which is I know how to prepare now and I
• 37:21
  know how to prepare versus who's pitching.
• 37:23
  I know how to set the training environment based on who's what
• 37:26
  that pitcher is featuring that day.
• 37:28
  Because in baseball, the amount of shapes that you see is just
• 37:30
  insane. Arm angles are different.
• 37:32
  It's just the, there's just a lot more variables to account
• 37:34
  for. And then but also have this
• 37:38
  concept of how to be on time when a pitcher is trying to
• 37:42
  upset your timing. I think all of those things have
• 37:45
  kind of just led me to where I'm at.
• 37:47
  And it's funny because right when I feel like I have
• 37:50
  everything together, pitching changes and they introduce
• 37:54
  something new. And now we have to account for
• 37:56
  that because as hitters, we're reactionary, not while the
• 38:00
  pitcher is being very proactive. So it just, it keeps changing.
• 38:04
  The needle keeps moving, the goal post keeps moving, and we
• 38:07
  just keep chasing it as hitters. And sometimes we get really
• 38:10
  close to it and hitting, it's fun.
• 38:11
  And then sometimes we feel like the distance between where
• 38:15
  pitchers are AT and where we're at is is from here to the moon.
• 38:17
  Yeah. And what about adjustability at
• 38:20
  the plate? I mean, you're kind of when
• 38:22
  you're looking at mechanics to say, if we get mechanics that
• 38:25
  allow you to be a little more adjustable as the pitch comes
• 38:29
  in, you can if you've seen something that's different or
• 38:33
  something you weren't expecting or even just kind of you know,
• 38:37
  as as you're coming in, oh, the pitcher missed what she was
• 38:40
  trying to do or he was trying to do.
• 38:43
  If I can, if I can be in a position where I can adjust to
• 38:46
  it versus I'm just committed to the swing path I'm on.
• 38:49
  Does that help as well? Yeah, I think, I think being
• 38:54
  balanced and athletic helps with that.
• 38:56
  I think we can always make a better adjustment when we're in
• 39:01
  a position of balance and we're being athletic with our swing.
• 39:05
  And I also think if your path is good and you're in the zone for
• 39:08
  a really long time, that buys you a bigger timing window.
• 39:11
  So those two things are very, very important.
• 39:14
  I completely agree with you. And I also just think reps and I
• 39:18
  think what a lot of coaches, especially at the youth level
• 39:22
  miss is it's just front toss, front toss, front toss at a
• 39:26
  constant speed. And then you get, and you'll see
• 39:29
  this as you go into games, there's usually a like a bell
• 39:34
  curve of, of speed where hitters just rake.
• 39:38
  And then if it gets faster than that or it gets slower than
• 39:40
  that, they struggle mightily. And I think it's just because of
• 39:43
  the reps that they see constantly, like reaction time
• 39:47
  is always in that same bell curve as what the most common
• 39:51
  pitch speed is, which is fine. But then when they get to an
• 39:54
  elite level, you know, you have the your local teams, they go
• 39:57
  play in a national tournament and they just get blown up.
• 39:59
  They can't hit because it's too fast.
• 40:02
  Or they you have a team that maybe stays home and plays local
• 40:05
  for the weekend and they get shut out because the pitching
• 40:08
  was too slow. So I think we don't.
• 40:11
  Vary. We don't vary our timing in
• 40:13
  practice enough as hitting coaches and I've tried to
• 40:16
  really, really get better at that and giving them different
• 40:19
  looks, whether it's moving them closer to the machine and then
• 40:22
  away from it or whether it's throwing when I throw overhand,
• 40:26
  batting practice, throwing all the pitches, throwing fastballs.
• 40:29
  I don't care how crappy my curveball is, throw that, throw
• 40:31
  a slider, throw a change up, it doesn't matter.
• 40:34
  Just trying to give them different looks, and I think the
• 40:37
  more that we can ask them to be adjustable in practice, the more
• 40:42
  it's going to translate to the game.
• 40:43
  Yeah. And I think that that's one of
• 40:44
  my natural advantages or the natural advantage that my
• 40:47
  students get when I work with them on hitting, because I do a
• 40:50
  fair amount of hitting as well as my erratic throwing becomes
• 40:54
  an advantage because they can't expect the ball to be spot on or
• 40:57
  anywhere, even in the zone. They learn to hit a lot of a lot
• 41:01
  of stuff that's on the edge. Yep, Yep, that's, that's
• 41:06
  helpful. It really is.
• 41:08
  We, we talk all the time and in baseball, you know, you always
• 41:10
  need BP throwers and some, you know, coaches are very
• 41:16
  self-conscious about it. I'm not very good.
• 41:18
  It's like it's OK, I that's OK that you're not very good at it.
• 41:21
  Do it anyway because they need to see that.
• 41:23
  Rachel, I want to ask you, how do you balance data technology
• 41:27
  and feel when you're working with hitters, How do you balance
• 41:30
  all those? I don't know if I'm exceptional
• 41:34
  at it, but I'm, I'm working on it.
• 41:35
  I think the data tells the story.
• 41:37
  So the data is not going to lie to you.
• 41:39
  It's the most subjective and it's going to tell you a story.
• 41:41
  You can skew the story and sometimes that's a good thing.
• 41:45
  Sometimes that's a bad thing, depending on what you're trying
• 41:47
  to get across to a hitter. But basically the data tells you
• 41:50
  what's happening and you can't cheat that.
• 41:52
  So for example, you know, people think of data and technology and
• 41:58
  analytics as extremely complicated, complicated stuff.
• 42:02
  We have been using data for a long time.
• 42:04
  If someone is hitting 200 and someone is hitting 300, the 200
• 42:09
  hitter is not good enough. That's data.
• 42:11
  OK, that's not it might not be advanced analytics, but that is
• 42:15
  data. And that does tell a story.
• 42:17
  So for me, it's OK, that's the story.
• 42:20
  Now let's figure out the nuance to the story.
• 42:23
  Why is this hitter hitting 300 and why is this hitter hitting
• 42:26
  200? And how do we get this hitter to
• 42:28
  here? And how do we make this hitter
• 42:29
  even better? What is happening?
• 42:32
  And so that's where we can use tools that we have to explain
• 42:35
  it. Is it a timing issue?
• 42:37
  Is it a pitch selection issue? Is it a bat speed issue?
• 42:40
  Is it a mechanical issue? There's a hundred different
• 42:43
  things that it could be, but it's our job is to take what is
• 42:46
  happening and then we take the pieces of this data and
• 42:50
  technology to understand the nuance of what goes into it.
• 42:54
  And then we find what's the area of lowest hanging fruit.
• 42:57
  This is how I like to operate. What's the easiest thing that we
• 43:00
  can help you with? So if the easiest thing is, hey,
• 43:05
  you. So we had we had a play like
• 43:06
  this in AAA last year. If, if we have someone who's
• 43:09
  swinging at over 75% of the first pitches that they see and
• 43:14
  they're striking out a ton, OK, the lowest hanging fruit is
• 43:18
  maybe don't swing at every single first pitch that you see.
• 43:21
  Let's just try to not do that because now the whole league
• 43:24
  knows you swing at 75% plus of your first pitches.
• 43:29
  So just take the first pitch and let's see if you can get into a
• 43:32
  favorable count and let's see if that brings the strikeout rate
• 43:35
  down. So let's just start with that.
• 43:37
  That has nothing to do with mechanics.
• 43:38
  That's easy. That's lowest hanging fruit,
• 43:41
  right? Or let's say someone is not
• 43:44
  getting a ton of power in their swing because they just don't
• 43:47
  have enough bat speed. OK, well then let's work on
• 43:50
  that. And that's lowest hanging fruit.
• 43:52
  So to me, that's how I like to approach it is let's take all
• 43:55
  these complicated things, let's like work backwards into a very
• 44:01
  digestible piece of what is important right now that we can
• 44:05
  help you with. And if that's what we can do as
• 44:07
  a coach, let's start there. If that improves and this
• 44:11
  doesn't improve, well then we just spun our wheels and let's
• 44:13
  try something else. But at least we tried something.
• 44:16
  Yeah, it's funny with with the first pitch strike, it just
• 44:18
  reminds me of the Ted Williams story where he was notorious for
• 44:21
  not swinging at the first pitch. And so he was facing a pitcher
• 44:26
  and he figured, well, I'm going to get ahead of Ted early.
• 44:28
  I you know, Ted says he doesn't swing at him.
• 44:30
  So he goes and he throws a ball pretty much down the middle and
• 44:32
  and Williams Jackson for a home run and the pitch is, you know,
• 44:36
  yelling at him. He says hey, you said you never
• 44:38
  swing in the 1st. She said no I didn't.
• 44:40
  I said I rarely swing at the first pitch.
• 44:43
  You know, it's so this is this is full circle.
• 44:46
  You just reminded me, Ken, of my Kelly Kretchman story.
• 44:50
  And I remember this is she would take the first pitch of the game
• 44:55
  and she would do it for like we, you know, we'd play A4 game
• 44:57
  series. She'd do this for the game one
• 45:00
  and Game 2. Every first pitch she would
• 45:02
  take. And then you'd get to like game
• 45:04
  three and you'd be like, all right, Kreshman's going to take
• 45:06
  the first pitch and you'd just I wouldn't even move.
• 45:08
  I wouldn't even set up differently.
• 45:10
  Whack Homer. And you're just like, gosh, she
• 45:12
  just baited me into that. And you just realize that there
• 45:15
  are just players. They're just smarter than
• 45:17
  everybody else. And it's so funny that you say
• 45:20
  that because I remember being on the other end and being like,
• 45:23
  damn it, I completely fell for that.
• 45:28
  You know, when you're talking about, you know, like the 200
• 45:31
  hitter or, you know, let's say the youth hitter who's not even
• 45:34
  hitting their weight, they were a good hitter.
• 45:36
  And all of a sudden they hit, you know, the S word and you
• 45:40
  know, they're in that slump. And what do you, what do you do
• 45:43
  to try to get them out of it? Because a lot of times it's
• 45:45
  mental more than physical. But yeah, how do you, how do you
• 45:49
  approach that when you're working with hitters even at the
• 45:51
  professional level? I mean, it's probably a little
• 45:54
  bit different. Usually where I try to start is
• 45:57
  I look, I will pull up video of when they were really good.
• 46:01
  Let's start there and let's start to see.
• 46:03
  OK, why? And then I talked to him.
• 46:06
  What were you feeling in this moment?
• 46:08
  Why did you feel? So you were locked in, in this
• 46:10
  moment, you were unconscious. You could hit.
• 46:12
  So what was it? What was different here than
• 46:14
  here? And typically they will come to
• 46:16
  the conclusion of what it is. If you are, you create an
• 46:20
  environment where you're not going to judge them for what
• 46:22
  they say. And I think that's where a lot
• 46:24
  of coaches fail is they want the player to say something specific
• 46:29
  because they want to force their narrative on the player.
• 46:32
  It's like, no, let the player fill in the gaps and then let's
• 46:34
  try to help you. And so most of the time I'll
• 46:37
  just show them video and be like, this is what you look like
• 46:39
  when you were good. And I might have something in
• 46:42
  mind that I think, but I want to find out what it is from them
• 46:45
  first and see if they come up with an answer that I hadn't
• 46:49
  even thought of or maybe they come to the same conclusion as
• 46:52
  me. That's first where I start.
• 46:54
  The second thing is typically when people really slump hard,
• 46:57
  their timings off, and it could be for a variety of reasons.
• 47:00
  It could be because this is game 70 of 140 game season and
• 47:05
  they're just exhausted, right? They haven't had a break.
• 47:08
  It could be they went straight from fall into the winter and
• 47:14
  they played some indoor tournaments and they haven't
• 47:16
  really had a break. And now they're back in high
• 47:18
  school season and there's just, it's just never ending.
• 47:21
  It could be just that long season, mental fatigue.
• 47:24
  It could be that the level went up.
• 47:26
  But I usually try to bring them back to this.
• 47:29
  Look at when you're getting started, look at when your move
• 47:31
  is getting started and how much it's usually later, how much
• 47:36
  later it is now versus when you were really, really good and you
• 47:40
  felt like you would all the time in the world.
• 47:42
  Because a hitter that feels like they have time is a hitter that
• 47:45
  feels very confident because they feel like the ball is it's
• 47:48
  a beach ball. You hear hitters talk about
• 47:50
  those, those moments where they're in it and they just
• 47:54
  everything looks like a beach ball.
• 47:55
  And I used to tell my dad this, I feel like right now
• 47:58
  everybody's throwing me right down the middle.
• 48:00
  And my dad would say, well, they're not, they're not
• 48:03
  throwing you down the middle more than they ever have.
• 48:05
  It's just when they are that you're not missing it.
• 48:07
  So you feel like every pitch is right down the middle because
• 48:09
  that's the last pitch you see. And it's so true.
• 48:13
  Whereas when you're struggling, you get those pitches down the
• 48:15
  middle, you foul them off or you can't pull the trigger and you
• 48:19
  take them and there's something that goes off and it's usually a
• 48:23
  timing issue. And so I try to just bring
• 48:26
  hitters back to when are you getting started and is that
• 48:30
  giving you the best chance of being on time?
• 48:32
  And usually that's a good place to start.
• 48:35
  But there's a ton of other factors that go into it as well.
• 48:37
  Sometimes it is mental and sometimes it's, well, I'm just
• 48:40
  sick and tired of my dad telling me this or my mom telling me
• 48:44
  this or you know, I have at our level, it's you have agent
• 48:49
  pressure, you have your external hitting coach pressure.
• 48:53
  You have am I going to get traded?
• 48:55
  Am I going to get released? You have all these other
• 48:59
  pressures that go on. And sometimes that's the issue
• 49:02
  too. And you just kind of talked them
• 49:03
  through that. Yeah, that's, that's very true.
• 49:07
  All that. I, I want to ask you something,
• 49:09
  Rachel, because I love when you post stuff on social media, you
• 49:12
  talk a lot about the youth level and trying to help youth
• 49:14
  coaches. So what?
• 49:16
  What are some of the biggest misconceptions you see in youth
• 49:20
  hitting instruction? Oh gosh, first one and I'm so
• 49:25
  guilty of this. No, it's, it's I, I will say, I
• 49:30
  mean, I've been a youth coach for a long time.
• 49:32
  So I'm, I'm not speaking to people.
• 49:35
  I'm speaking with people because I have done all of these things
• 49:38
  #1 giving freaking feedback after every Rep, shut up after
• 49:44
  every Rep. And I have to conscious, I still
• 49:47
  have to consciously drill that into my head because I am a
• 49:50
  very, I am a high energy person. So for me to put my hands in my
• 49:54
  pockets and not say anything is really hard, especially when
• 49:57
  they do well, I think that's where we want to go as coaches
• 50:02
  is just like, I want to give them feedback.
• 50:04
  So this is this was good. Hey, you didn't really do that.
• 50:06
  And it's like, well, how much really change from one swing to
• 50:10
  the other? Probably not very much.
• 50:12
  So just shut up and give them a few reps and then ask them how
• 50:16
  they feel. Another thing is I don't think
• 50:19
  coaches use video feedback enough.
• 50:22
  And I think we tell them what we see with our eyes.
• 50:28
  And when I say video feedback, I don't mean, hey, look at this,
• 50:32
  this is what you're doing. This is what you're doing.
• 50:33
  I what I like is I've, and I've been using on form a lot lately
• 50:37
  as I set up video delay in the cage and they take a swing and
• 50:41
  they can look right at the iPad and they can see their swing
• 50:44
  playback and I don't have to say anything.
• 50:46
  And so I teach them. I educate them, hey, this is
• 50:49
  what I want. This is what it should look
• 50:52
  like. You see what it's like when it's
• 50:54
  good. Now I ask them what does it look
• 50:57
  like? And they'll tell me and they
• 50:58
  know how to go through it and they know how to navigate it.
• 51:00
  And I just educated them on that and I think that's really
• 51:02
  helped. But I think most of the time
• 51:05
  what I think coaches, the biggest thing in my opinion,
• 51:08
  what youth coaches get wrong is there's no plan.
• 51:11
  There's no semblance of a plan. Every lesson is different.
• 51:14
  We're just going to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall.
• 51:16
  I did this for years. We're just going to throw a
• 51:17
  bunch of stuff at the wall, see what sticks, have a fun thirty
• 51:21
  minutes and then pat you on the butt, send you on your way and
• 51:25
  hope you do good. And then next week there's no
• 51:27
  follow up, there's no plan, there's nothing.
• 51:30
  And So what I've started to do is give players our our players
• 51:35
  have a hitting routine. Like anybody who hits with me
• 51:38
  has a hitting routine. So they might come into the
• 51:41
  lesson just to go through their routine just so that I can help
• 51:46
  them with that. That's it, That's the lesson.
• 51:49
  It doesn't need to be this ground breaking.
• 51:51
  Let's learn something new every single time.
• 51:53
  Sometimes lessons are just about mastery and it sometimes is
• 51:56
  boring and it's just repetitive. We're going to do this again and
• 52:00
  we're going to next week. We're going to do it again and
• 52:02
  we're going to do it again and we're going to do it again until
• 52:04
  you master it because that's what's important.
• 52:07
  Doing it for 30 minutes is literally putting it.
• 52:11
  It's 0. It's a, it's a 0 effect when you
• 52:15
  leave that cage, there's nothing imprinted on your brain.
• 52:17
  That's like, that's your swing now you fixed it.
• 52:20
  Like that's not how it works. It's over time.
• 52:24
  It's diligent, repetitive stuff. So if you don't give the hitters
• 52:28
  a plan and you don't tell them what their hitting routine is
• 52:32
  and you don't give them the tools on how to own that when
• 52:34
  they're at their high school practice, you're doing them a
• 52:36
  disservice. You're just taking their money
• 52:38
  and making them feel good for 1/2 hour.
• 52:39
  And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 52:41
  Sometimes that might be the best half hour of their an entire
• 52:44
  week and there's a ton of value to that.
• 52:46
  And I take a lot of pride in that because I've given a lot of
• 52:48
  lessons to kids who are not very serious about things.
• 52:52
  And you want kids obviously that want to be great.
• 52:55
  That's those are the most fun. But then there's also kids that
• 52:57
  don't care about being great. They just want to hang out with
• 52:59
  you for 1/2 hour. That's cool too.
• 53:02
  That might be the best part of their week.
• 53:03
  And I and I, I, I'm great. I'm honored to be that the best
• 53:07
  part of their week if that's the case.
• 53:08
  So I think there's you just have to understand that.
• 53:11
  But like you have to give them a plan and you have to be OK with
• 53:15
  sticking to it and you have to be OK with doing the same damn
• 53:17
  thing week after week as a coach because we get bored too,
• 53:20
  especially when you give, I don't know how many lessons you
• 53:22
  give Jay during a week, but I, there was a time before I got
• 53:26
  hired with the Cubs where I was giving 70 lessons a week.
• 53:30
  And it's it's boring to do the same thing over and over again,
• 53:34
  but you have to realize that's what they need.
• 53:37
  And so if you'd stop looking at it from your lens and you start
• 53:40
  looking at it from the player lens, that's that to me is the
• 53:43
  best thing. I have to share a story with
• 53:45
  you, Rachel, and you'll appreciate this.
• 53:47
  My daughter is taking hitty lessons from one of your former
• 53:51
  players, Mac Dunlap. Oh nice.
• 53:54
  And so she hits with her once a week.
• 53:56
  We get in there and my daughter just just talking about her the
• 54:00
  whole time. And I'm looking over and Max
• 54:02
  smiling and laughing and I'm like, girl, I'm like, you got,
• 54:05
  I'm like, you got to stop talking so much.
• 54:07
  I'm like, I'm going to have Max going to charge me double for
• 54:09
  being your therapist too here, you know?
• 54:11
  But the point of that is like, I look over there and my
• 54:13
  daughter's happy and she's smiling and she's there and
• 54:17
  we're 11 years old, right? We don't need to be serious
• 54:19
  right now. And so for me, that hour and a
• 54:22
  half that she does, because she does defense with Mac too, you
• 54:24
  know, and I'm like that hour and a half that that kid spends with
• 54:27
  MAC1. She's got a great role model in
• 54:30
  that hitting coach. And two, she's letting things
• 54:33
  out that she might not want to tell me, you know, and I and I
• 54:36
  love that that she has that relationship with the hitting
• 54:38
  coach already. And, and, and so like you said,
• 54:41
  I think there, there is a value in that making that kid feel
• 54:43
  good for that 30 minutes or hour and a half that they're there.
• 54:46
  But I just wanted to share that story because.
• 54:48
  It's to me. I look over and I'm just smiling
• 54:51
  and I'm doing a lesson. I'm like putting my hand on my
• 54:53
  head and I'm like, hey, but you know what?
• 54:54
  She's having fun and she's there hitting.
• 54:56
  She could be at home doing nothing, right?
• 54:58
  So yeah, it's it's just I had to share that story with you.
• 55:02
  I I appreciate you sharing that, Max great.
• 55:04
  And that's she's fantastic. That's awesome.
• 55:06
  I appreciate you sharing that because that's a, that's a good,
• 55:09
  there's value in that, right? Like this.
• 55:11
  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 55:12
  I have this girl, I have this girl Lila.
• 55:14
  She's in 11 you and you know, she comes in and you know, you
• 55:18
  would think that I've known her forever because she just come in
• 55:21
  and she just chats with me and she tells me about she tried out
• 55:24
  for the School Musical or, you know, this happened.
• 55:27
  She'll tell me about her day and all of that.
• 55:29
  And it's just, you see her, she's just such a happy kid and
• 55:32
  such a friendly kid and, and she's doing really well with it.
• 55:35
  And a lot of those times I'm, you know, while she's doing
• 55:39
  that, she's putting herself into a good headspace and you see the
• 55:42
  improvement happening. And, you know, I just try to
• 55:44
  give her a little guidance here or there, but stay out of the
• 55:46
  way because, you know, she's in her happy place and she's going
• 55:49
  to learn. Yep.
• 55:51
  I love that. I love that.
• 55:54
  So I'm sure one thing that a lot of our readers, a lot of our
• 55:58
  listeners would like to know is was it a difficult transition
• 56:03
  for you to start getting into the men's game when you started
• 56:07
  teaching, you know, working in baseball?
• 56:10
  Was there resistance? Were they welcoming?
• 56:13
  How did you handle whatever was going on?
• 56:15
  And obviously, you've established yourself now, and I
• 56:18
  think that it's probably less of a problem if it was ever a
• 56:22
  problem. But you know, how did all of
• 56:24
  that go? I mean it, it definitely was a
• 56:28
  learning curve for sure and for a variety of reasons.
• 56:32
  To answer your question about were they welcoming, Yes, the to
• 56:35
  be honest, the players have been the most welcoming.
• 56:38
  I think that's always the concern with people is how are
• 56:40
  the players going to respond? The players don't care.
• 56:43
  The players just want to know if you can help them.
• 56:45
  That's it. If I can get to the show, If you
• 56:47
  can get me to the show. Exactly 100% you can be.
• 56:50
  You can help me get to the show because in in minor League
• 56:54
  Baseball too, there's there's an, an underlying understanding
• 56:59
  that you're not going to get to choose your coach anyway.
• 57:00
  So whether it's me or somebody else, you're really trusting the
• 57:04
  organization. And so if the organization puts
• 57:07
  somebody in place, it's, it's not really going to matter who
• 57:10
  it is now. It matters how well we click,
• 57:12
  how, you know, that's the part that matters for me is I've got
• 57:16
  to now build the relationship with you and I've got to get you
• 57:20
  to trust me so that when we're in the weeds together and I'm
• 57:24
  the one delivering the information, you trust what I
• 57:26
  say. So there's that.
• 57:27
  I think the initial shock in the building was just, I think it's
• 57:33
  twofold #1 the obvious am IA woman, yes.
• 57:36
  So I think there was a little bit of hesitation on how
• 57:43
  somebody could speak around me or if they could speak freely
• 57:47
  around me. Was I going to be overly
• 57:49
  emotional? Was I going in though?
• 57:51
  Just those types of things. I've actually had people curse
• 57:55
  in meetings and then turn to me and apologize for cursing in
• 57:58
  front of me. And it's like, you wouldn't do
• 58:01
  that to anybody else, but you're going to do it to me because you
• 58:05
  wouldn't curse in front of your mom or your grandma.
• 58:07
  And I understand that, you know, whatever.
• 58:08
  But so there's a little bit of that.
• 58:11
  There's also this this at times, and it's not in every room that
• 58:15
  I walk in, but at times I'll walk into a room and you realize
• 58:19
  that everyone else that walked in, we've assumed that they are
• 58:23
  competent. But for me, I have to prove that
• 58:26
  competence and that's OK. I understand that.
• 58:30
  And that's the responsibility that I take on.
• 58:32
  And that's also something that I think every young coach has to
• 58:36
  deal with. So even whether I'm a young male
• 58:40
  coach just getting into baseball or I'm a female coach just
• 58:44
  getting into baseball, I do think that that's kind of the
• 58:46
  same experience. It's just once you're a little
• 58:51
  bit older as a male and you walk into other rooms now your
• 58:54
  competence is assumed where every new room I walk into, I
• 58:57
  kind of have to break down a wall from somebody and it
• 59:01
  doesn't have it's less than it was when I got into baseball
• 59:04
  because I've been in baseball for six years now.
• 59:06
  But it's still there. And you, you know, you hear it
• 59:08
  in just little, tiny little micro things.
• 59:11
  For example, I will hear from everybody.
• 59:15
  Wow, you throw really good BP and that's an identifier that
• 59:19
  has followed me. Now, are there males that I work
• 59:22
  with where that also follows them?
• 59:23
  Yes, but you hear about it a lot less.
• 59:26
  If I it's typically this is Rachel.
• 59:29
  She's going to be our hitting coach, you know, blah, blah,
• 59:31
  blah. And she also throws the best BP
• 59:33
  you've ever seen. And it's like, OK, so there's
• 59:37
  almost like an undertone of she throws really good BP and you
• 59:41
  wouldn't expect that because she's a woman, but she throws
• 59:43
  really good BP and I understand and that's fine.
• 59:45
  And also I do throw a really good BP.
• 59:47
  So yeah, go ahead and say that and that's cool.
• 59:49
  And now everyone will feel comfortable when I throw to him.
• 59:51
  That's fine. But there is, there's just these
• 59:54
  little things that you understand that if you really,
• 59:58
  if you, if you could let them get to you, they'll get to you.
• 1:00:00
  But otherwise it's like, I don't really care.
• 1:00:02
  I just want to be able to do my job.
• 1:00:04
  I am afforded to do my job. I've been hired, I'm under
• 1:00:06
  contract to do my job. So as long as I am allowed to be
• 1:00:11
  in this space and do what I love to do.
• 1:00:13
  Whatever comes with it, you could give me a closet to change
• 1:00:16
  in and I would be OK with it. So there are little things that
• 1:00:20
  are probably a little bit tougher for me than they are for
• 1:00:23
  my my male Co workers, but not anything that I've experienced.
• 1:00:28
  And I've been very fortunate. The Cubs were very good to me
• 1:00:31
  and the Mets have been very good to me in the short time that
• 1:00:34
  I've spent working with them so far.
• 1:00:36
  Where I felt like my concerns were heard, I felt valued to the
• 1:00:42
  organization. I felt like they were really
• 1:00:45
  trying to actively make it a better environment for women
• 1:00:48
  too, and I really respect that. And so I've had a very positive
• 1:00:52
  baseball experience. I wish my experience for every
• 1:00:56
  other woman that works in baseball too.
• 1:00:57
  So I'm not, this is not, I'm not trying to complain or anything,
• 1:01:01
  I'm just being honest with you guys.
• 1:01:02
  There are these things that that do happen, but from the players,
• 1:01:06
  not really. I think transition wise as a
• 1:01:09
  hitting coach, there's a lot more variables to account for as
• 1:01:14
  a hitting coach in baseball than there are in softball, that in
• 1:01:17
  softball pretty much every ball comes out of the same slot.
• 1:01:20
  So there's not very many variations of pitch shapes that
• 1:01:25
  you can manipulate unless you have some sort of outlier, I
• 1:01:32
  don't know, trait. So for example, if you're 6 foot
• 1:01:34
  four and can stride like Monica could and could stride outside
• 1:01:39
  of the circle, that's a variable that I have to now account for
• 1:01:43
  that I've never had to account for before.
• 1:01:45
  Whereas in baseball there's no, there's No 2 white lines.
• 1:01:48
  So I can throw from way out here, and I can also throw from
• 1:01:52
  way over here and I can stride across my body.
• 1:01:56
  I can stride open. There's so many variables to
• 1:01:59
  account for so that the amount of pitch shapes that can be
• 1:02:03
  manipulated are a lot greater. So there's that.
• 1:02:06
  And then there's a lot more pitch speeds to account for in
• 1:02:10
  baseball. And I think softball could learn
• 1:02:11
  from that a little bit actually, where your fastball is a certain
• 1:02:16
  speed, your sliders a certain speed, your curveballs even
• 1:02:19
  slower, your change up somewhere in between all of those.
• 1:02:22
  And there's, you know, a five mile per hour difference in
• 1:02:25
  between all of the layers of pitches.
• 1:02:26
  That's that's a lot. Now we're looking at thousands
• 1:02:30
  of combinations of pitches that these guys can throw.
• 1:02:32
  And I think that makes it a little more difficult to prepare
• 1:02:36
  for. So that was a transition for me.
• 1:02:40
  And then just just watching from the dugout, I couldn't tell you.
• 1:02:43
  When I was in rookie ball, you'd watch somebody throw from a
• 1:02:45
  dugout and I had no idea what pitch it was.
• 1:02:48
  If it wasn't a fastball, I'm like, was that a slider?
• 1:02:50
  Was that a cutter? Was that a change up?
• 1:02:52
  Like I couldn't tell. Now I can tell and I still get
• 1:02:54
  it wrong every once in a while if a pitcher is really good, but
• 1:02:58
  cutters and change UPS look very similar from the dugout.
• 1:03:00
  But there will be times where I'm trying to figure out what
• 1:03:03
  sequence this guy's throwing. I'm like, I don't even know what
• 1:03:05
  pitch that was. So I had to learn that because
• 1:03:07
  it's just not something that I saw all, you know, over and over
• 1:03:10
  again, right? So, Rachel, we've had you on
• 1:03:14
  just about an hour here. I just, I have a question.
• 1:03:16
  I'm sure Ken might have another one or two.
• 1:03:18
  We don't want to keep you too long.
• 1:03:19
  I know you're super busy. We really appreciate you being
• 1:03:21
  on with us today. Mine is, is going to be more
• 1:03:24
  towards towards the hitting side here.
• 1:03:25
  What habits do the best hitters consistently share that you've
• 1:03:29
  seen now that you've been, you know, in the majors there?
• 1:03:33
  I think they're, they're, to me, the best hitters don't miss
• 1:03:40
  their pitch when they get it. And I think the best hitters
• 1:03:44
  build their approaches based on trying to hit the ball hard
• 1:03:49
  versus trying to not miss. So for example, if a big league
• 1:03:59
  hitter is going to get less pitches over the heart of the
• 1:04:02
  plate than your average minor league hitter, and if they do
• 1:04:07
  get something over the heart of the plate, it's going to be 100
• 1:04:09
  and 100 plus or it's going to have elite movement or
• 1:04:13
  something. But a really good to sum it up,
• 1:04:18
  I think the best hitters are the best at being committed to their
• 1:04:21
  plans and executing their plans, period.
• 1:04:24
  And the commitment aspect of it is really, really hard to teach
• 1:04:28
  because it requires it's, there's a little bit of risk and
• 1:04:31
  there's a fear of failure that goes into it.
• 1:04:33
  It's kind of like jumping without the rope and trusting
• 1:04:36
  that the net's going to be there when you when you land.
• 1:04:39
  It's I'm going to commit to this.
• 1:04:43
  If I'm if let's say I'm sitting on a first pitch change up, I'm
• 1:04:47
  not swinging unless it's a first pitch change up.
• 1:04:49
  I'm so committed to my plan that anything outside of that seems
• 1:04:52
  very foreign. I think that's what good hitters
• 1:04:54
  do really well is they just are committed to what they're trying
• 1:04:58
  to do with the plate, even if that means that they got to walk
• 1:05:02
  back to the dugout because they just watch strike three go by.
• 1:05:05
  But there's a commitment to their plan and same thing with
• 1:05:09
  it's no different. There's a runner on third base
• 1:05:11
  and less than two outs and we're in a one run ball game.
• 1:05:13
  I'm going to score the runner from third base.
• 1:05:15
  Somehow, some way, I'm going to score that runner, whether it's
• 1:05:18
  a ground ball, whether it's a SAC fly, whether I have to, but
• 1:05:21
  it doesn't matter. But I am so committed to that
• 1:05:24
  runner from third base scoring that I will do whatever it takes
• 1:05:26
  to get it done. That's what I think separates
• 1:05:29
  really, really elite hitters that end up making it to the big
• 1:05:32
  leagues from the minor leaguer that just hits when the pitching
• 1:05:37
  matchup is favorable. Where do you see, you know,
• 1:05:39
  looking at it for parents and what do they misunderstand about
• 1:05:44
  hitting development, especially at the youth level?
• 1:05:47
  What what are their expectations versus what's the reality or.
• 1:05:53
  It's such a good question, Ken. I think patience and
• 1:05:58
  understanding that these things take time there is it used to be
• 1:06:05
  in baseball that you couldn't get to the big leagues or very
• 1:06:09
  rarely you got to the big leagues before you got 2500
• 1:06:13
  minor league at bats. So or let's say 2000 minor
• 1:06:17
  league at bats, which is you get about 500 to 600 at bats a
• 1:06:20
  season. So that's at least Four Seasons
• 1:06:23
  in the minor leagues. That used to be the standard of
• 1:06:28
  that. And, and because of that, the
• 1:06:30
  gap between the big leagues and the minor leagues wasn't super
• 1:06:33
  huge. Well, now we're in an era where
• 1:06:35
  everybody gets rushed to the big leagues a little bit because
• 1:06:38
  it's more cost effective to get your younger players to the big
• 1:06:41
  leagues before you have to pay them.
• 1:06:42
  And there's there's a whole, you know, asset value and there's a
• 1:06:46
  whole other part of the game that thankfully I don't ever
• 1:06:50
  have to deal with. But the gap between the big
• 1:06:54
  leagues and the minor leagues keeps getting bigger and bigger.
• 1:06:56
  I think part of the reason is that.
• 1:06:58
  And so when it comes to what's the lesson to learn to youth
• 1:07:03
  players is that these things take time and you need at bats
• 1:07:07
  to get better. What I think people do is they
• 1:07:11
  think that the amount of training reps that you get and
• 1:07:15
  lessons and hitting classes that you take, and I want to go play
• 1:07:19
  on the best team, even though I'm not getting playing time.
• 1:07:22
  You have to get it bats to get better It there's no other.
• 1:07:26
  There's no shortcut to that. So I think I wish parents would
• 1:07:29
  understand how long it actually takes and never be fooled by
• 1:07:33
  what your kid does in 10 you and 12 you.
• 1:07:36
  And the reason I say that is the, the height differences, the
• 1:07:39
  strength differences, because everybody goes through puberty
• 1:07:42
  at different times is so different that you can really be
• 1:07:46
  fooled just because your kid is the biggest and strongest on the
• 1:07:49
  team. And you can really be fooled by
• 1:07:52
  your kid is the smallest on the team and it looks like they're
• 1:07:55
  not very good. Well, give them, give them a
• 1:07:58
  minute, give put them on a team where they're going to get a lot
• 1:08:00
  of playing time so they can get the reps in game reps are you
• 1:08:03
  cannot replicate game reps. You can't replicate it.
• 1:08:07
  You can get close and, and good coaches get really close a lot
• 1:08:11
  of the time, but you cannot fully replicate game reps.
• 1:08:15
  So don't rush that process. Give them a place where they can
• 1:08:17
  play a lot. Keep it fun for them so that
• 1:08:20
  they want to keep playing and then you're going to see it.
• 1:08:22
  I, I live, I live with a teenager right now who is a
• 1:08:27
  junior in high school and she's good now and getting recruited.
• 1:08:32
  And she just went on a college visit this past weekend and she
• 1:08:37
  was not by any stretch of the imagination, her team's best
• 1:08:41
  player up until she's probably still not her team's best
• 1:08:45
  player, but she's blossomed into a really good player.
• 1:08:48
  But she was probably and her dad coached the team for a long time
• 1:08:53
  and her grandfather coached the team for a long time.
• 1:08:54
  And she was still the 10th, 11th and 12th player on the team.
• 1:08:58
  But she loved it. They kept her working at it.
• 1:09:01
  She got her reps, She got her her at bats.
• 1:09:05
  And slowly but surely she bloomed into a really good
• 1:09:08
  player who's now good enough to play in college.
• 1:09:10
  But had she not gotten enough at bats, she would have hated it.
• 1:09:14
  She probably would have quit and she probably wouldn't have
• 1:09:17
  understood how to develop. And but her parents and her
• 1:09:20
  family were patient and allowed her to develop into this player.
• 1:09:24
  And I think understanding that the timelines are not the same
• 1:09:28
  for everybody. I think that's that's the
• 1:09:30
  problem with like the social media boom that we see is, oh, I
• 1:09:34
  got my first offer and oh, I went on my college visit and oh,
• 1:09:37
  I went to this tournament and oh, I play on this team.
• 1:09:40
  And you think that that's how it should be?
• 1:09:42
  No, no, no, that's how it should be for her.
• 1:09:44
  That's great. Good for you.
• 1:09:46
  But that's not that doesn't have to be your journey.
• 1:09:49
  There's a hundred ways to get there.
• 1:09:51
  And I wish parents just understood that they don't have
• 1:09:54
  to be at the same timeline as the kids who develop quicker.
• 1:09:59
  God bless the kids that develop quicker.
• 1:10:01
  But if you don't, there's another way to do it.
• 1:10:03
  You just have to be diligent about the work.
• 1:10:05
  Yeah. So that brings me to a couple of
• 1:10:08
  questions. Or we can just do quick takes on
• 1:10:10
  these. But one is it seems like there's
• 1:10:13
  a rush to play 150 games in the summer now, you know, and then
• 1:10:19
  there's no time left for practice.
• 1:10:21
  Yes, you need game reps, but is, is that beneficial or does they
• 1:10:24
  have to be more of a balance? And then the second part or the
• 1:10:27
  second question is playing on a lower level team, you know,
• 1:10:32
  rather than trying to play on the highest level team that'll
• 1:10:34
  accept you and sitting on the bench.
• 1:10:36
  And you've kind of answered this, but does it make sense to
• 1:10:39
  maybe play on a low level team that maybe loses more games, but
• 1:10:43
  gives you more opportunity to be on the field versus winning
• 1:10:46
  trophies that you don't really contribute to?
• 1:10:50
  And you can see my bias in that question.
• 1:10:52
  Yeah, I, I do think there's, there's both, there's funny Ken,
• 1:10:58
  there's both ends of that spectrum too.
• 1:10:59
  Because I also do think that there's teams out there that
• 1:11:02
  don't play. They just roll over and win a
• 1:11:05
  bunch of trophies and then they don't play at the level of
• 1:11:08
  competition that would actually challenge them too.
• 1:11:10
  I do think there's a lot of that too.
• 1:11:12
  And then there's I'm going to go play and ride the coattails of
• 1:11:15
  this team and their name, even though I'm the 12th player and I
• 1:11:18
  only play on Fridays and Saturdays, but never on Sundays
• 1:11:24
  just because I want the name on my jersey.
• 1:11:26
  I don't think either of those are good approaches, to be
• 1:11:30
  honest. And to answer you, the first
• 1:11:31
  part of your question can should there be more practice reps?
• 1:11:35
  Yes, I do think that kids should train more.
• 1:11:38
  I think the kids should spend a hell of a lot more time in the
• 1:11:41
  weight room than they do, to be honest.
• 1:11:43
  I think they should spend more time there.
• 1:11:46
  I think the tournament schedule has gotten frankly, frankly
• 1:11:49
  ridiculous. I, I just, I come from a, from a
• 1:11:52
  family where we didn't have a lot of money.
• 1:11:54
  So to ask us to play and travel on a Wednesday, to play in a
• 1:11:59
  tournament that starts on Thursday, even though it's in
• 1:12:02
  the summer, who's going to take me?
• 1:12:04
  My mom can't take off Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off of work.
• 1:12:07
  Like it just can't happen. So who's going to take me now?
• 1:12:10
  And then now when I go, I got to pay for my own hotel room
• 1:12:13
  because there's a certain number of hotel rooms that you have to
• 1:12:15
  have and you've just priced out a lot of these good players.
• 1:12:19
  So I think that if we could take the tournament schedule and make
• 1:12:23
  it shorter and add more training reps, I do think that that would
• 1:12:27
  be incredibly beneficial. To be honest, I think the best
• 1:12:30
  way to do it is just more 7 inning games.
• 1:12:34
  The hour, the hour 20 is like, OK, so now I played seven games
• 1:12:39
  this weekend, but every game was 4 innings versus.
• 1:12:43
  OK, so that's 20, that's 28 innings.
• 1:12:45
  What if I played 47 inning games?
• 1:12:47
  And now I got the whole. Now I'm actually preparing for
• 1:12:51
  the rhythm of a full softball game.
• 1:12:54
  I don't I don't understand when we started to get away from 7
• 1:12:57
  inning games except on Championship Sunday.
• 1:13:00
  That's to me that's a terrible way to do things.
• 1:13:02
  But I understand it. There's a lot of money to be
• 1:13:04
  made. If I can throw 150 teams in a
• 1:13:07
  tournament and I can play a billion games, I get it.
• 1:13:10
  I understand what that is and I'm not going to tell somebody
• 1:13:13
  to take money out of their pocket.
• 1:13:15
  But I don't think that's what's best for the players.
• 1:13:19
  I think that that has made a lot of people a lot of money and
• 1:13:22
  that's good for them. But I don't think that's what's
• 1:13:25
  best for the player. To your point, I think
• 1:13:28
  practicing with your team, scrimmaging with your team,
• 1:13:32
  hitting live with your team, and then going and playing four
• 1:13:36
  games on a weekend and they're all 7 innings to me sounds like
• 1:13:40
  a pretty good recipe for a development.
• 1:13:42
  Yeah, that's great. And I, I, I'm, I'm going to go
• 1:13:45
  back to the pitching side because I know you, you work
• 1:13:48
  heavily with pitchers, Jay. It's like how many pitchers now
• 1:13:51
  can't throw 7 innings? They can't do it.
• 1:13:55
  And you know, like there's no, and I, I'm not saying this is
• 1:13:59
  good either. I think I came from an era where
• 1:14:02
  you had an ace and she just threw to her arm, fell off.
• 1:14:04
  So I don't think that's good either.
• 1:14:06
  But I I do know that there's less pitchers now that can throw
• 1:14:13
  a dominant 7 inning game when they need to then there used to
• 1:14:16
  be. 100% Yep, you're absolutely correct, Rachel.
• 1:14:20
  Yeah, yeah. They throw harder now, they
• 1:14:23
  throw harder now and their stuff's better now, but it's not
• 1:14:26
  for seven innings. Yeah, that's one of the things
• 1:14:30
  that I try to, you know, talk to kids about.
• 1:14:32
  Talk to them about when they're, you know, playing all these
• 1:14:34
  travel games and playing four or five innings and maybe only
• 1:14:38
  pitching for three of them. You're going to have to get into
• 1:14:41
  that shape because your high school, your college ball,
• 1:14:43
  that's going to be 7 innings. You have to learn to be able to
• 1:14:46
  pace yourself. If you're just muscling up to
• 1:14:48
  throw hard, you're not going to be able to get through the
• 1:14:51
  entire game. You are going to tie your out.
• 1:14:53
  You're going to become a whole lot more hitable because you
• 1:14:56
  were throwing. Let's say you're throwing 60
• 1:14:58
  miles an hour in the beginning, and now you're down to 56 miles
• 1:15:02
  an hour because you're getting tired.
• 1:15:04
  You're not in that kind of shape.
• 1:15:05
  Yeah, you're going to look a whole lot more hitable to those
• 1:15:08
  hitters up there with the plate. Dude, bring, bring back the
• 1:15:11
  eight pitch inning, bring back that.
• 1:15:13
  I like that stuff. You know, that's, that's way
• 1:15:16
  more efficient, way more economic you can get, that's how
• 1:15:19
  you get through your full 7 innings without throwing your
• 1:15:21
  arm off. It's like, why are we?
• 1:15:23
  We've got to be able to to teach those skills too.
• 1:15:26
  Amen. Awesome.
• 1:15:29
  Well, thank you again today, Rachel, for spending time with
• 1:15:31
  us again. Hopefully people that are
• 1:15:33
  listening took a lot of there's so many great takeaways from
• 1:15:35
  today having you on here. So I can't thank you enough for
• 1:15:38
  being on here sharing your stories with Ken and I and the
• 1:15:41
  people that listen to our podcast.
• 1:15:42
  So thank you so much, Rachel. We wish you the the best.
• 1:15:44
  Go kill it out there in New York and and do your thing.
• 1:15:48
  Appreciate it. Thank you guys and thanks for it
• 1:15:51
  providing some insight and let me pick your brain a little bit
• 1:15:53
  as well. Appreciate it.
• 1:15:54
  Anytime. Well, I don't know if there was
• 1:15:55
  much to pick there, but more than willing to share it.
• 1:16:01
  Thanks, Rachel. Thank you.
• 1:16:03
  All right, well, that's it for us this week.
• 1:16:05
  Thanks to all of you for listening and the kind words
• 1:16:08
  you've been sharing with us. If you like what you're hearing,
• 1:16:10
  Please remember to give us a like, leave a comment and share
• 1:16:14
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• 1:16:17
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• 1:16:20
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• 1:16:23
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• 1:16:26
  people find us. On behalf of the From the
• 1:16:28
  Coach's Mouth podcast, have a great rest of your week and
• 1:16:31
  weekend.