Latest / The Layback Podcast / FPG's Player Panel from the Wake Forest PD Seminar (Ep. 94)

Transcript

FPG's Player Panel from the Wake Forest PD Seminar (Ep. 94) · The Layback Podcast

0:00
What's up everyone, welcome back to the Lay Back podcast.
0:03
Nobody joining us today? Well, not really.
0:06
I'm here solo at a remote location.
0:09
If you're joining me via video, I am down at an Airbnb around
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Sarasota, FL, down here for the holidays visiting some in laws.
0:18
But today's episode going to be a little bit different.
0:22
It is going to be a recording of our recent player panel and
0:29
presentation at the Wake Forest Player Development Seminar.
0:32
This was our fourth year attending third year presenting
0:36
there. And this year we took a
0:40
completely new approach. We decided to flip the typical
0:44
presentation seminar convention thing kind of on its head where
0:50
every time you go to one of these things, it's coaches or
0:53
professionals in the industry, clinicians in the industry
0:56
telling you how to talk to your players, your athletes, your
0:58
patients, whoever. We took a different approach.
1:02
We took players that are a part of our Flexpro Grip family,
1:06
Aiden May, Dawson Nets, Josh Hedge, Cut and Blake
1:10
Morningstar, SO3 Pros and one college stud to join us in
1:16
talking about how data information and really the
1:20
storytelling behind that data information can better be
1:25
implemented in a manner that players actually can listen to
1:32
and apply and in a way where it means something to them.
1:38
So all of our questions and our discussion topics empowered the
1:42
players to take the leadership position and be able to turn
1:47
around and tell the coaches what they need, what they want, and
1:51
really how they want to be approached or included in these
1:57
topics or included in these discussions.
2:00
We certainly think this is a valuable topic for anyone.
2:04
There's definitely a Flexpro Grip kind of flavor to it,
2:11
especially early on because as I said, all these guys are a part
2:15
of the crew. They've been utilizing Flexpro
2:17
Grip for a while. They all took on Flexstro Grip
2:20
for different reasons, and we kind of get into that when it
2:23
comes to data and trusting who is guiding you in the
2:28
development process. So definitely stay tuned for an
2:32
awesome episode. I do encourage everyone actually
2:35
to hop over to YouTube for this one.
2:37
You can totally listen to it, but I do think the audio
2:40
quality, just the way we recorded it, came through a
2:43
little bit better on YouTube than it might on Spotify, Apple,
2:47
or however you consume your podcast.
2:49
Nonetheless, thanks for tuning in.
2:52
As always, we appreciate it. Enjoy your holiday season and as
2:56
always, thanks for laying back with us.
2:58
All right, everyone, thank you for showing up right and early.
3:03
I've been joking with these guys.
3:04
If you're going to do with the owls at night, you have to start
3:06
with the Eagles in the morning. So this is the crew that's ready
3:10
to RIP and get better. At least for me, the way I'm
3:14
going to feel good about myself is you guys are the ones that
3:16
really want to get better. And I'm going to use that to
3:18
stroke my own egos this morning and hopefully help these guys
3:22
feel a little bit better about getting up early and help on the
3:26
saddle today. But I'm Adam Morrow, I'm Co
3:30
founder of Foxfield Grit, my Co founder is over there.
3:33
That's Darrell. We've been at this together, I
3:36
guess really since 2018 and we we really started on this
3:42
journey to figure out why UCLS tear was never to create a
3:45
device was just try to figure out why UCLS tear.
3:49
And after spending a little bit of time in the process, we felt
3:52
like we had a pretty good idea of how we could do something
3:55
about it and ultimately decrease injury risk and put these guys
3:58
in a better position to ultimately accomplish their
4:00
dreams. Now, why we're here today, or
4:04
why we are actually doing this presentation rather.
4:07
Is. Probably going to seem a little
4:10
bit different from what you guys are used to when you come to
4:14
these kind of seminars, conventions, whatever.
4:17
Every single time you step into one of these, and it was one
4:21
example yesterday, and it's not bad, but you hear from coaches,
4:24
professionals, clinicians, whoever on how you should be
4:28
talking to your players, how you should be presenting that
4:30
information to the players. Well, now we're going to flip
4:33
that on its head and we actually have players to tell you what's
4:36
valuable to them, how they perceive that information, how
4:40
they want to be approached with it and how you can take truly
4:45
actionable things back to your teens, clubs, what have you to
4:51
maybe have a more productive conversation or a more fluid
4:55
introduction to data, information and storytelling to
5:00
ultimately get your crew closer to what you're trying to
5:04
accomplish. So who we have on the planet
5:06
today, I'm soon to kick this off to these guys and actually let
5:11
them do the talking and the lion's share of what we're going
5:13
over today. But we have ML or MILB, free
5:18
agent Josh hedge gun. He also works at Driveline.
5:21
We have Dawson Nets just finished his rookie campaign
5:23
with the Cubs. Blake Morningstar, Wake Forest
5:27
junior, hoping to see his name get called here this coming
5:31
spring after winning national championship.
5:33
Ready play. That's what that's what we got
5:35
to do first. Yeah.
5:36
Accomplish things in order. And Aiden May, he just finished
5:39
his rookie campaigning with the Marlins.
5:42
So the colleges on these guys. John Popkins, D3 grinder from
5:47
Josh Hedgeco with a little bit of Indy ball experience as well.
5:50
So obviously we love him the most because that's that's
5:54
probably closer to most of us in this room.
5:56
Those who couldn't hack it, but he just figured it out along the
5:59
way. Dawson Nets went to University
6:02
of Arizona was a free agent sign out of Arizona after his fifth
6:06
year and serving as a grad assistant on the staff.
6:08
So definitely unique approach into baseball.
6:11
Blaze still has entire future ahead of him.
6:13
So we're we're just going to rely on him to be the bright
6:17
eyed, bushy tailed, really good Talos baseball player and just
6:21
talked about his learning experiences along the way and
6:24
aiding his hot Doral a little bit.
6:26
Maybe he beat the beat the normal college transfer portal
6:31
route to maybe we'll say he paved the way for the current
6:36
path in the normal college athlete.
6:38
But he he finished out his college fall at Oregon State
6:41
before being a competitive balance pick to the Marlins.
6:44
So that is ultimately why we're gathered here how we came
6:49
together. All these guys one way or
6:52
another brought flex from rib into their own development,
6:57
whether it was forced by a coach or it was under their own
7:01
accord. And that's really we're going to
7:03
kick where we are going to kick things off for these guys to go
7:07
into what this means to them, why the data and information is
7:11
important. And we'll just have the panel
7:14
discussion from there. So I don't know.
7:16
I guess we'll, we'll start with Josh, seeing how Josh is the one
7:20
that actually brought it on for a medical need.
7:23
He he had Tommy John back in 2023, correct.
7:28
So with this, there's no point in me telling a story.
7:30
I'm going to take it over again for ultimately why he brought
7:33
Flex bro Griffin. And then we'll just take it down
7:35
the line. What's up everybody?
7:39
Yeah, as Adam did mention, I am a free agent.
7:41
So if you know any scales, please let me.
7:44
Yeah, with in 2023 I had Tommy John and I think my journey with
7:50
Flex program kind of started. I was actually just talking to
7:52
to Dossie about this is it's it's kind of working backwards
7:56
from this question of like what is the demand that's going to be
7:59
placed on me when I'm in a game and how do I best prepare myself
8:03
for that demand And with Flex program.
8:07
I think the the big thing for me was especially coming off Tommy
8:10
John. I had an FDS tear my elbow as
8:13
well is making sure that my elbow was fully adequately
8:16
prepared for the demand asked me placing out of any game.
8:19
I'm a big believer in physical preparation.
8:22
I'm a big believer in in workload management.
8:24
I see Casey Mulholland in the back of the room looking forward
8:26
to his presentation tomorrow. But like these are tools in our
8:30
tool belt that we can use to like to make sure that an
8:33
athlete is like has the capacity to handle the demand that we're
8:36
going to placing on them. So I think that's like a very
8:39
important thing to work backwards from rather than
8:42
starting with your perception of like what the right thing to do
8:44
is, say that work backwards from like what the athlete is
8:47
actually going to be doing in the game.
8:49
But ever since then I've been using flex program, I've noticed
8:51
a massive increase in strength in my forearm strength, strength
8:55
in my forearm muscles. So not like continue to have it
8:57
as part of my routine even now that I'm healthy.
8:59
But yeah, I'll pass it along. I'll keep the train roll.
9:03
Yeah, so I got introduced to Flex Pro actually last year here
9:07
and I played five years at the University of Arizona, didn't
9:10
have the level of success that I wanted and just signed.
9:15
I mean, I was a bookie this year at 25 years old and I didn't
9:19
figure out a lot of things until I was a coach and stopped
9:23
playing. So I was I was starting to go
9:26
down the rabbit hole. One side stopped playing and,
9:29
and started by my graduate assisted career and started to
9:34
figure out some things like, OK, you know what, like all these
9:37
things that, that I'm learning and, and then the people that
9:40
I'm fortunate enough to be around, like, all right, let's
9:43
let's start to put some of these things into play and started to
9:46
focus on workload management, moving better, using force
9:49
plates and like understanding more about myself, the physical
9:53
constraints that I have and using that and leveraging it in
9:56
a way where I can get the most out of myself.
9:59
And got to the point where I started throwing really hard and
10:02
I was like, wow, it's, it's really this easy.
10:05
I'm just kidding. It wasn't easy.
10:07
But putting a lot of these things I was learning into play
10:11
and figuring out, wow. Like if I have a targeted
10:13
approach and I do my research and understand like what I'm
10:15
doing and, and, and how to use it, like I can actually get more
10:19
out of myself. And met, met Adam here last year
10:24
and, and, and figured out like, OK, the stuff that I've done and
10:28
the research I've done, isometrics like there is nothing
10:31
better for your elbow right now than Flexprobrix.
10:34
And understand, OK, I've, I've had elbow issues in the past.
10:36
Like this is something I need to integrate into my, into my work
10:41
every day. And was something that allowed
10:44
me to throw pain free this year for the first time ever.
10:47
And I threw 70 innings for the first time in six years.
10:50
So I think that was that was a big part of that something that
10:53
really helped me in my dream. So Adam kind of hit on it a
10:59
little bit as he was introducing us all, but my journey with Flex
11:04
Bros, you know, from start to finish has been about as
11:07
important as you can, to be honest.
11:10
Coach Muscara, my pitching coach for my freshman and sophomore
11:13
year, basically this kind of forced in upon us.
11:16
Like he believed that he had a really good relationship with
11:20
with Adam and he thought that it was it was something that was
11:23
going to keep us healthy, keep us on the field.
11:25
It was something that he prioritized really over over
11:28
everything else in our development.
11:30
So it was forced upon us on my freshman year.
11:34
I believe that was the first year we first started using Flex
11:37
program and ever since then I've been using it.
11:41
I've been healthy, my forearm has gotten stronger, my spin
11:45
rates on my on my fastball online breaking pitches like
11:49
everything is going up, everything's increased and I
11:52
feel healthier than ever. So it's it's pretty much my
11:56
story. I've I've had a lot of time now
12:02
with Flex Pro, I think I get introduced to it about. 2 1/2
12:06
Three. Three years ago by my coach
12:09
right here in the front who you know, that that's one of the
12:12
most important things is you have a coach that you trust.
12:14
No one that's college or pro or wherever you got a coach that
12:17
you trust. And so I got introduced to it
12:18
through and the biggest thing was like, I, I never had a
12:23
problem on the field. I always had fantastic stuff and
12:25
I, I got results, but I've had, you know, numerous injuries at
12:28
this point. And so the best way to, you
12:31
know, the best available, the best ability is availability.
12:33
You can't be on the field. If you can't, you know, produce,
12:37
then there's there's no point in any of the training that you're
12:38
doing. And I think the Flexpro does
12:41
this in a way that's unconventional.
12:43
I think that everyone gets bogged out with like, you know,
12:46
they have to do something because everybody else is doing
12:49
it. And in training differently with
12:52
Flexpro, you know, it's the same ideas of a lot of, you know,
12:54
forearm strength, but it's taken into a level that is so
12:57
specified. And so I just correct that.
13:02
You just can't deny it. And the results can speak for
13:04
themselves. Obviously these guys have had
13:06
examples of all of that and I've had a lot of anecdotes with that
13:10
as well. But Flexpro so far has just, you
13:12
know, been fantastic. It's everything that I've asked
13:14
for and probably more. Got a lot lot to say about it.
13:20
Well, thanks guys for the really solid intros.
13:22
Also, if you couldn't tell, these mics aren't for you.
13:24
This is for us trying to record on an iPad.
13:26
So do you feel free to make fun of us or moving these little
13:29
mini mics around? But one question coming off of
13:33
that and we'll we'll use hedge cave here as probably the closer
13:38
seeing how he likely is the closest relationship with data
13:42
of anyone in here given his side job with Driveline.
13:45
I guess primary at the moment. Remember, free agent here,
13:47
anybody. But maybe we'll kick it off with
13:53
Aiden back to you and maybe they'll send it down the line.
13:57
What has the data enabled you to do?
14:01
Obviously, that's why a lot of these people are here.
14:03
How do we apply the information that we're actually getting?
14:05
I'd love to hear that you guys are feeling great coming off of
14:09
Flex Pro. Blaze did mention what he's seen
14:12
when metrically advanced, like how Flex Pro is helping him
14:15
eventually on the field. But whether it's data coming
14:18
from the device and actually having that in hand rather than
14:22
having to go elsewhere, lying someone else for the data, do
14:26
you feel empowered by that? Is it useful for you to have it?
14:30
I'd love for you to just kind of take that away.
14:33
I mean, I'm, I'm a big believer that any information is right
14:38
when it's, you know, critically applied.
14:40
Obviously information can go wrong very quickly, but the more
14:43
information available, the more things you have to make a
14:47
decision on something. And in the game as complex as
14:49
baseball, there's so many different things that you have
14:53
to think about on a daily basis. And so with that, you know, with
14:57
throwing comes the risk of hurting yourself.
15:01
And so if you have information on, hey, this is pushing me in
15:04
the right direction to protect myself better, that's going to
15:07
give you Peace of Mind. That's going to give you a more
15:10
confident approach to your training.
15:12
You can train harder with better results if you're less fatigued
15:16
or if you sound general higher base over and specifically on,
15:22
you know, the data side when it comes to health, like I was
15:25
saying, is is is incredibly applicable because I feel like
15:29
that's such a space in baseball. That's so, you know, wishy wash.
15:34
A lot of different coaches have different things that they like
15:36
to say about health, but no one really knows.
15:38
And this is the first at least elbow, you know, device that
15:43
I've seen with objective data and results that you can track
15:46
and you can progress through and really get a, a state of like,
15:50
where am I at? You know, And, and the best part
15:52
is, is once you get those thresholds and you can start
15:55
doing fun training where it's, you know, spin, right training
15:58
or it's, you know, I guess RFD is spin, but you're trying to
16:02
apply force as fast as possible. You're getting into different
16:05
training. It's not just health focus,
16:07
right? The health is the base, but
16:09
after that and you start to do fun things and to start to be
16:12
open to more interpretation of the data.
16:14
They've done obviously a lot of great studies in fraudulent and
16:17
with other programs that they're learning and constantly
16:19
improving. And so when you get this updated
16:21
data and you get this infrastructure more where it's
16:24
tailored towards all right, what's the, what's the best way
16:26
I can stay healthy and what's the best way I could progress
16:29
and update myself as an athlete is just fantastic.
16:36
So I think kind of going back to to Neeson and Ezra's
16:40
presentation yesterday, like I believe that the player does
16:43
drive their career. At the end of the day, a lot of
16:46
the decisions come down to the player, especially as you start
16:49
to mature and start to, you know, move through orgs or, you
16:53
know, later in your college career, whatever it may be, I
16:55
believe the player does drive the development.
16:58
So like if, if reflects, for example, like if my strength on
17:04
a day that I do is down and I'm, I'm pulling like a 170 and I for
17:09
someone that throws 97 miles an hour, they need to be around
17:12
220. Like whatever, like whatever
17:15
that looks like. I would like to know that.
17:17
And I think that's super necessary in development,
17:20
especially in something like Flexboro, because again,
17:23
settling that's the best ability is availability.
17:25
And if I can't stay on the field, if I can't stay healthy
17:28
and I'm not able to be up there for my teammate, something to be
17:31
able to, to help my team win. So whatever that looks like, I
17:35
think it's important to to have that information and to kind of
17:40
to sift through it and see, you know, what is what's important?
17:44
What, what do I need to really focus on here?
17:47
And then just kind of, you know, have a good team without you.
17:49
Like I have specific programming that comes directly from Adam.
17:53
So things like that are are super beneficial.
17:59
I'm in the group where I think having as much information as
18:02
you possibly can is the most important thing possible.
18:05
I think it's just being able to have the wisdom to differentiate
18:08
like, OK, what is what is a KPI? What is something that's
18:11
actually going to be beneficial that I can use?
18:15
But this, this is what helped me to bridge the gap for like, OK,
18:19
I know how to play the game at a high level, but my my output in
18:23
the game is not at the level that my brain is AT.
18:26
And it's like, OK, that's, that's, that's the beauty of
18:29
baseball. It's like, OK, we can, we can
18:31
sharpen and clean up as much as you want off the field, but we
18:34
still have to play a game at the end of the day.
18:36
And I felt like I had the gamesmanship down, but it's like
18:38
I, I had so much in the tank that I wanted to focus on to
18:43
sharpen that off the field ability and doing a lot of
18:46
research in that isometrics and, and understand like, OK, how am
18:50
I going to apply this to my arm here?
18:52
I'm not going to apply this to like the S&C side.
18:54
And how do I match up all the peaks in the valleys with, with
18:57
my workload and throwing throughout the weekend?
19:00
Getting all of this information has helped me to, to craft a
19:04
routine that's been super helpful.
19:05
I mean, I was a guy in college where I was like the first one
19:08
there, last guy there just beat my head against the law thinking
19:11
like if I'm there doing work every day, like I'm going to be
19:14
the best guy. And that wasn't the case.
19:16
And now I've turned to the guy that's like there for two hours,
19:20
super specific routine. And then I go home and I'm
19:22
playing video games the rest of the day and I'm not even
19:24
thinking about it, right. So having this information has
19:28
helped me to sift through things and be a little bit more
19:30
efficient with with what I'm doing and with with Flexpro
19:34
specifically. Like it allowed me to implement
19:37
the isometric work that I was starting to do research on and
19:40
do it in the most targeted specific way possible that I
19:43
knew was going to help me and in the different structures in my
19:46
elbow that I was having an issue with.
19:47
Oh yeah. In my career.
19:51
I'm going to I'm going to slightly disagree or like buck
19:54
the trend a little bit here. I do think obviously like as
19:57
someone who loves information and data like that, it's.
20:00
Important to have as much of that as possible, but I do think
20:04
like it's very easy to go down rabbit holes and I think like
20:07
the role of the coach is kind of the guy who curates that
20:11
information appropriately for the player.
20:14
The way I like to think about it is things should be really,
20:16
really complex on the back end in terms of like what you're
20:19
looking into, like what's feeding into your models, if you
20:22
have models or your reports. But like the on the front end,
20:25
things should be as simple as possible.
20:27
Like when I'm on the mound, I don't want to be thinking, OK,
20:29
what's this guy's chase rate in two strike counts against this?
20:33
I, I want to know what pitch I'm throwing and where I'm throwing
20:35
it and throwing a full conviction.
20:38
So I think being able to curate that information on the coach
20:41
side to the players is really important.
20:44
And then I've I'm also a big believer that like the primary
20:48
role of data. From a coach perspective.
20:50
Is giving your players transparency in how you're
20:53
evaluating them And so whether that like whatever's important
20:57
to you as a coach, whatever's important to your program, like
21:00
your players should know where they're like the the big three
21:03
that I go to is where they are like where they stand, where
21:06
they've been basically and how much they've already improved or
21:09
or gotten worse and then where they're going.
21:11
So I think like using data to frame those three things is
21:16
like, it is in my opinion, like the way you do it.
21:20
There's a in 2021, I was like, I barely broke camp with the Mets
21:27
organization, was like back into the roster.
21:29
And I was like a little bit confused.
21:30
And I was like, I had a good spring.
21:32
I was getting guys out and the farm director called me and he
21:35
was basically like, yeah, you, you know, you're getting out,
21:37
but we just don't project you to be a big league pitcher with the
21:40
current velocity you're throwing.
21:41
So over the next few months, I need you to prove to me that
21:44
you're going to like become a big league projectile pitcher.
21:47
We're evaluating you as someone who's not currently a big league
21:50
prospect and I really appreciate that conversation.
21:53
It probably wasn't very easy for him to like have that tough
21:56
conversation with me tells tell for him to tell me that he
21:58
thinks I suck physically, which I probably did.
22:02
But it allowed me to frame my training for the rest of the
22:04
season so that I could like, like I, I knew how I was being
22:09
evaluated and I knew what I needed to do to be evaluated
22:11
better. So I think that's kind of the
22:13
role of of data from my perspective.
22:16
Yeah. This is probably going to be
22:20
more of a quick hitter on this next one because I'm going to
22:23
guess also based on some of our internal conversations, you guys
22:28
feel similarly when data potentially presents a risk for
22:34
a shortcoming. Is that something you want to
22:36
know or do you want to be handled with kid gloves through
22:39
that? Any anybody want to take that
22:42
away from the jump? Well, I think the most important
22:45
thing in order to get player buy in is that you're not keeping
22:49
them off the field. Like if if you if you're
22:52
evaluating players and then whatever you just determine from
22:55
that player is like keeping them off the field, they're not going
22:57
to be bought in at all. This kind of goes back to what I
22:59
was saying is like, like for example, if they're a flex
23:02
program and they have like a really low like finger strike
23:04
score, you're like, Oh no, you can't pitch.
23:06
They're never going to use flex program again.
23:08
It's how do we now train the capacity to keep you on the
23:12
field and keep you fully prepared for what you're about
23:14
to be doing? I think that's the way you
23:16
prevent players from giving up on, on, on like what you're
23:20
trying to accomplish. You have to.
23:21
It has to be framed in the way of keeping them on the field.
23:25
Moving to that point too, kind of like I touched on, you need
23:28
to have trust both ways and I think if you're not transparent
23:31
with everything, you won't build that trust and that's not just
23:34
about health, but that's about you're developing your players
23:37
and you're developing their confidence.
23:39
Even if you don't cultivate that trust, then when you come to
23:42
them with something serious, they're not going to you know,
23:45
think anything of it. It's they're just going to
23:47
think, oh, he's, he's stopping me from from throwing.
23:50
And so a lot of it has to build off of the relationship between
23:53
the player and the cutters. And like Josh said, like, you
23:57
know, if, if you get somebody to use something and all of a
24:01
sudden the the reason that they can't play the game they love is
24:04
that thing. Although something just takes
24:06
away the the whole ability to to converse about why it's
24:09
beneficial. But trust is the most important.
24:17
You guys good on that one. Yeah, cool.
24:19
All right. Now we'll, we'll probably move
24:23
on a little bit to maybe bucking the system as Hedge has said
24:26
earlier, where we might have some things that get, I don't
24:30
know if I want to say controversial, but maybe some
24:32
topics that are unique for you guys to hear as coaches,
24:37
clinicians, people in charge. So this is the way that we
24:42
framed it and went through our discussion.
24:44
But at this point everything is a choice whether in pro ball
24:48
college, ball college, Granted the the timelines a little bit
24:52
tougher, but at this point if you don't like something you can
24:54
transfer or leave. And it's weird to say, but it is
24:58
that true. Prove all you guys basically
25:01
have autonomy over your own careers.
25:03
Yes, other people decide whether you're in the lineup or not, but
25:08
you can't be forced into doing anything.
25:11
So given that everything is a choice, but the people in power
25:15
coaches likely have a decision that they want you to make.
25:21
What do you need from a coach to understand that decision making
25:27
process or get succumbed to the buy in that they want you to
25:33
have? Dawson, you want to start with
25:37
this song? I think it's the, it's the
25:42
coach's job to relay like the, the information on the criteria
25:46
that you're being evaluated on. And then backing that up with
25:48
like, why and understanding, like what results have been,
25:54
have like what, what, what results players in the past have
25:57
been able to get from that. Because I don't want to just
26:01
take someone's word for it that they know something like I, I
26:03
think your coach should generally know more than you,
26:05
right? Like I, I don't, I don't think
26:06
there is a specific moment where your coach play, Oh, like, I
26:09
don't know, like, and, and if, if that does happen, they need
26:13
to figure out a way to learn more information to help the
26:15
player feel like they have their best interests in mind.
26:19
But just going back to the original questions site, OK.
26:23
How do I? Use what they're evaluating me
26:26
on to work on the, the, the things that they want me to get
26:31
better at in the game that I'm being evaluated on.
26:34
Because if you can build that trust and educate your players
26:37
on what this is, it's just going to help you out.
26:39
Like I know in my case specifically, like I, I didn't
26:43
understand lunch, but once I did, I was in lockstep with our
26:47
whole staff and understanding like, OK, this is what you want.
26:49
I understand where you're coming from.
26:51
I know this works. Like help educate me so that I
26:53
can help you because I want to do those things and, and I, and
26:56
I know that it works and I and I trust you guys a lot with it.
26:59
So. I would say the one thing that I
27:03
kind of disagree with is when a coach doesn't know something
27:07
like I think that's OK. I think especially when you're
27:09
having really complex topics, talks with your players, it's OK
27:14
to not know something, right? And, and one of the most
27:16
important things is even if your players might not know
27:18
something, they generally know kind of when you're blowing
27:21
smoke up their ass, you know, sorry.
27:23
But so it's very important for me when I'm having a talk with
27:27
my coaches that like, you know, they might say, like, I don't
27:31
know something and then we can progress through that because
27:33
then when I know they tell me something, I know that they're
27:36
coming at it with a real basis behind his right.
27:38
I know that they're not just, you know, throwing an answer out
27:41
there just to throw into something.
27:43
So I think that's important for me is to hear that that feedback
27:46
from a coach. I will say I actually slightly
27:50
disagree with your disagreement. I think obviously you want
27:55
someone to say I don't know rather than make up some
27:57
bullshit and say it to you. I think saying I don't know is
28:01
completely unacceptable from a coach.
28:03
If it's if an athlete is asking, why are we doing?
28:05
This. If you're, if an athlete is ever
28:08
asking you, why do we do this as a as a program?
28:10
Why am I doing this drill? Why am I doing this?
28:12
I don't know. I think that's completely
28:14
unacceptable. And I also think that if you're
28:17
always saying, I don't know, on the more complicated questions,
28:20
at some point you just need to learn more things like, I don't
28:23
know, maybe that's, well, like you, you as an authority figure
28:27
should be, should know things that are tangential to the, the,
28:31
the coaching process, whether that's, you know, obviously you
28:34
don't have to be an expert in physics, but like physics and
28:36
anatomy and like these things play a role in pitching.
28:39
And so like, you don't have to be an expert, but knowing the
28:42
people to go to and get answers to the questions.
28:44
And then whatever you are actually implementing with your
28:47
athletes, having a solid, having a reason and not just, you know,
28:51
I don't know, like I don't think that's acceptable personally.
28:53
And just just to add to that, I mean, I've had arguments in the
28:56
past of like, OK, like when you're throwing on the mat, you
28:59
need to have this this shin angle.
29:00
It's like, well, are you just saying that because you know
29:04
something like, or are you saying that because you're
29:06
coming from a place of, OK, we've done your range of motion
29:08
screen, we know you lack the adequate IR to get into a proper
29:11
hinge position. OK, I trust you because you told
29:14
me this is how we're going to, we're going to coach and go
29:17
about this. But if you're just like, well,
29:18
no, it seems like everyone just has a good chin angle.
29:20
Well, it's like, I can't trust you and that doesn't make any
29:23
sense. So how can I?
29:24
How can I go off to that? I've had.
29:28
Conversations on the with coaches where they they've been
29:34
honest and upfront and they've told me that they don't know
29:37
something. And then shortly thereafter
29:39
they've told me that they would find out.
29:41
And I think it's important as a coach, especially at like a
29:45
university or in an org or something like that.
29:48
Like I don't think you have to have everything figured out.
29:51
Like in general, yes, I believe as a coach you should, you
29:54
should be smarter than than your players.
29:56
But I mean, at the end of the day, baseball's a complicated
30:00
game. There's a lot of stuff that goes
30:01
into like the anatomy and the physics and ball play and so
30:06
many different rabbles that go down.
30:08
But I don't think you have to have everything figured out as a
30:11
coach. But I think you need to have a
30:13
team around you and people that you can rely on where you know
30:19
they have to figure it out. Like as a coach, you don't have
30:21
to be an expert on flex program, but I think it's important to
30:24
have Adam in your back pocket where it's like, OK, Adam's an
30:27
expert on this and and you can kind of revert to him, things
30:31
like that. I, I will say I, I completely
30:34
agree with Josh's point on the real work.
30:36
If you're doing a drill, you need to have a purpose behind
30:38
it. I was more so talking about
30:39
maybe a pitch design thing or maybe a specific like when we're
30:44
talking about some way to transfer a specific skill like
30:47
in the realm of pitching. But if you're doing a drill, you
30:50
should have a complete and utter full purpose behind that drill.
30:54
There should never be a wasted drill or a random drill that's
30:57
just thrown in there. So I I completely agree with
30:59
that point. I want to keep going down this
31:03
route actually. And one of the notes that we can
31:06
even see as a group when we were prepping for this is the global
31:10
understanding versus local application.
31:13
So now breaking that down, or at least what that phrase means to
31:16
me and I'll, I'll turn it back over to our panelists here, but
31:23
we have players that are more or less expected to operate with
31:27
blinders on. They're given a drill sheet,
31:29
they're given a player development plan, and they're
31:32
just told me to be the go do this, go off on your way.
31:36
Track it. Put a radar gun up.
31:38
All these things, but I'm going to be your number one objective
31:41
measurement fan. So I've got no issue with the
31:44
tracking. But I think as people in a
31:50
leadership position, in this position of guidance, the onus
31:54
is on us to continue to have that global approach or that
31:58
complete curiosity to drive you guides or do kind of the
32:03
thinking for you in a sense. Josh, going back to what you
32:06
said earlier, knowing that everything should be simple on
32:10
the player side in complex on the back end.
32:14
So Josh, I know this is something you were passionate
32:17
about when we were going over this.
32:19
I'm curious if you have anything else here on this global
32:22
understanding concept. Well, I do think it all kind of
32:26
relates back to this, like the idea of a player knowing what
32:29
how they're being evaluated. And I also think it's important
32:32
to recognize that like as a coach, like if you have a guy
32:36
who's never going to play for your college or your, your club,
32:40
like he's a twenty grade prospect in pro ball or like
32:42
he's, you know, back into the roster guy, like knowing that
32:46
you can like you're almost failing him if you're just
32:50
giving him the same type of, of program as another guy that like
32:55
is better or like is going to play like that's a guy you need
32:58
to be taking like bigger risks with.
33:00
And like, they should be informed risks, right.
33:02
But like, no, I'm like, hey, man, like this is like, we're
33:05
going to like maybe put you through a more comprehensive
33:08
Vevo program. We're going to like, try to drop
33:09
your arms out. Like some guys mentioned
33:10
yesterday. We're going to like do some,
33:12
we're going to take some risks with you because otherwise
33:15
you're just never going to play baseball.
33:17
Like you will never play for our team.
33:19
And it's like, OK, like maybe the risk is that you get hurt.
33:23
Maybe the risk is that you get worse at baseball.
33:26
But like, if the alternative is that you are just not good
33:29
enough as you currently are, I think it's important that the
33:31
coaches express that to you and express their plan for changing
33:35
that. Yeah, that's what I've got.
33:40
Yeah, I think having a global understanding of like each
33:43
athlete specifically super important.
33:46
And just as an example, like when when we do player plan
33:48
meetings and the information were were presented and saying,
33:51
OK, what are your force play jumps look like in the weight
33:54
room? What does your biomech data look
33:56
like on the field? What are your track main reports
33:58
look like? What are your what are your
33:59
range of motion spools look like?
34:00
Where are you inadequate? Where do we feel like your
34:04
proper ranges have been when you're operating at your best
34:07
and your average fastball below is the highest?
34:09
And like how do we keep you in those ranges and where do we
34:12
kind of project you out to be? So I think having that global
34:15
understanding for us is super helpful because I would get
34:17
specific with these are the ranges that you operate in and
34:20
this is where you're the best at.
34:21
Let's try to keep you there with all of the knowledge that we
34:24
have around this. Now we can start to like pull
34:27
out specific things to help you as an athlete stay kind of with
34:31
those with those blinders on. I think, I think a big piece of
34:39
it too. And to touch on what Josh said,
34:41
you know, great players can make people probably a great coach.
34:45
I think really what makes you a great coach is updating and
34:50
helping the lower tier level players, right?
34:53
And so it's the best way to get through to the most amount of
34:56
people. And a lot of, you know,
34:58
organizations I've talked to Dawson about this, is that they
35:00
fall in love with a certain thing or they get really hung up
35:04
on something. And so when you talk about like
35:05
globalization, you talk about really specified training.
35:08
It's really important that you mean it, right?
35:10
If we talk about we're getting specified and we're getting
35:13
specific feedback to every player, but it's all just the
35:15
same cookie cutter stuff, then that's not very global, right?
35:18
That's not very applicable to anybody.
35:21
If it's, you know, applicable to everybody, then it's not
35:23
applicable to anybody. That's a bad generalization.
35:27
But you understand the point of you want to have a specified
35:32
program, but you want it to be truly tailored to each plan that
35:36
may manifest in different ways, but you want to mean the things
35:38
that you say, and you want to have a real intent behind.
35:43
Them like you want to keep cooking on that sure you good.
35:45
Yeah, I got. I got something I think kind of
35:49
as awesome hit on with like the the individual meetings, like
35:52
all of the all of the beneficial individual, like one on ones
35:55
that I've been in have involved kind of like a like a data dump
36:00
at the beginning of the meetings.
36:02
And like, they really discuss like, like this year, for
36:05
example, like I had AI had a really in depth conversation
36:08
with Nissan about my location strategies and where my expected
36:11
whip zones are, where the, the shape on my pitches is going to
36:15
play best pre 2K and then 2K and and so on and so forth.
36:21
And I just think like when, when you're making decisions,
36:25
especially about a player's career, like everything needs to
36:28
be informed. It really does.
36:30
And I think I think to some point the cooker stuff is OK,
36:34
like for high school coaches and whatnot, Like there's some truth
36:36
behind some of that stuff that, you know, has worked in the
36:39
past. But as you start to, to, to grow
36:42
and, and develop, like, I think everything needs to be
36:44
individualized really like from an SNC standpoint, from a
36:48
throwing program standpoint, like, you know, no individual is
36:52
like another. And I think it's important to
36:54
keep that in mind that really as a coach, just gain an
36:58
understanding of who your athlete is, you know, maybe what
37:02
they've been through, what they've dealt with, who they are
37:04
as a competitor. I think all these kind of
37:07
factors should make an impact in in your decision making.
37:11
Like I'm going to take that point and we'll try to peel back
37:15
some of the layers on it. So you bring out this concept of
37:18
individualization and I guess further going down that path,
37:23
the higher up we get now I would say from my side of serving in
37:29
that. Coach role or.
37:30
Being in a programming position, sometimes that can get difficult
37:35
and then you're left just back to that problem we discussed
37:39
earlier of I'm trying to make everything look different.
37:42
And then a player says, well, why am I doing this?
37:44
And if my answer is, well, just because I don't want you doing
37:47
the same thing as everybody else because on this recruiting trip
37:51
or whatever, we preach individualization.
37:55
So. What?
37:57
Now I'm going to kick back to you guys.
38:00
Do you think individualization truly needs to be Josh has his
38:05
own drill set, Dawson has his own drill set, Blake Aiden and
38:08
so on and so forth. Or it's more the intentions or
38:12
the drivers BI behind the movement.
38:15
So whether it's VDT in the weight room, whether it's
38:18
individualized strength targets on something like Flex Pro grip,
38:22
different workload units depending on your role in the
38:25
staff, the thrilling program or the overall development like
38:29
look similarly, but the the nuance details are what's
38:35
individualized. I'm curious if you guys have
38:38
feedback on that or even I guess your own experiences.
38:42
I think that the misconception is the, you know, specified
38:45
doesn't mean different, right? And so something that might work
38:49
to Dawson might work for me. But we're like Blake said, we're
38:51
completely different athletes. If we move in different ways, we
38:54
have different limitations. We have different, you know,
38:56
mobility traits or different strength traits that leads to
38:59
the way that we can all throw the baseball.
39:01
And something that might work incredibly well for him might
39:05
not work so well for me. And so specified doesn't mean
39:07
different. Specified means targeted,
39:10
correct analysis of what a player does good and what he
39:14
does bad and the best ways to improve women bad.
39:17
And so I think that, you know, the best ways that you can do
39:19
that is with structured feedback from, you know, devices.
39:23
If you don't have a device, everybody's got a radar gun.
39:26
So everybody knows how you know to accomplish the past and so
39:29
making making a task at the base level as easy as possible of
39:34
everyone needs to pro harder. Now let's figure out how I can
39:37
make this individual from work right.
39:40
And there's a lot of different ways to do that, but I think
39:42
that that's the misconception is specified doesn't mean different
39:45
means tailored to that person. Going off that a little bit, so
39:51
for those who were at JP's talk yesterday, I thought he brought
39:54
up a really good point that so like actually the batted ball
40:00
profile. So his point is basically that
40:02
the batted ball profile of most elite hitters is actually pretty
40:05
similar in terms of like lemon ground balls, whole side air
40:09
like damage in the air, right? But the individual movement
40:12
solutions to get them to that batted ball profile are
40:15
different. And so like, I think it's
40:16
important to draw the distinction between like
40:18
individualized in terms of. In terms of like outcome, like
40:23
we want all Pinterest to have high stuff and like throw
40:25
strikes, right? Like the outcomes are the same.
40:28
How we necessarily get them there is going to be different
40:30
and how how they move to get themselves there is very, very
40:33
different. And but even going further than
40:36
that, I'm actually going to take a little bit of an anti
40:37
individualization take at driveline.
40:40
We've kind of noticed that there's like this, you know, the
40:42
bell curve meme or whatever. And so we've noticed that like
40:46
with very, very young athletes and honestly with like MLB guys,
40:51
they don't actually need that complicated of trading.
40:54
And so the very, very young guys are just young training age.
40:57
The MLB guys are guys who a lot of times I've always have relied
41:02
on talent more so than like physical long term, physical
41:04
development or long term play development.
41:06
And so those guys can actually get make a lot of gains with
41:09
very, very simple, like, I wouldn't say cookie cutter, but
41:12
like very, very simple programming.
41:15
Obviously you have the guys in the middle, like guys who have a
41:17
really high training age, guys who have, you know, spent six
41:20
years in the minor leagues. They haven't broke through.
41:22
Like those are way more difficult cases to crack.
41:25
But I actually don't think you need, and this is probably a
41:27
dynamic that exists on a lot of different college teams as well,
41:30
is that you have guys who are completely under trained guys
41:33
who are just really talented, but never really have trained.
41:35
And then you have guys in the middle and honestly those, those
41:38
out those outer buckets probably don't need the craziest, most
41:42
individualized programs ever simply because they were going
41:46
to make a lot of gains just with the.
41:47
Densities of of of different directions.
41:49
Any of that. Yeah, I think it's it's based on
41:56
what you're trying to do. Like I think normative ranges
41:58
can be a bad thing if you're trying to apply them to
42:01
everybody. For instance, I know you guys
42:04
saw some of the videos of like the training that we do, you got
42:07
the University of Arizona and how specific it can get.
42:10
And just like a peek into what my offseason looks like.
42:14
So when I'm throwing at school and I'm working in the lab, like
42:18
there's specific moves that I'm working on, like my initial on
42:21
weight or my sit going down into my into my move.
42:24
And it's like these things we can put a number on and
42:28
objectively track like I'm, I'm getting certain Med ball drills
42:32
or or or Plio ball drills from, from John in a way where it's
42:36
like we can go on the force play mound and test these things and
42:39
verify that they're working and actually targeting the specific
42:42
thing that I'm working on for my throat.
42:44
So I think we can get very individualized with that.
42:48
And it's only going to help because like we know for that
42:51
for that athlete, OK, like your average fastball below is the
42:54
highest when you're putting this much Z force on your front leg
42:57
and your and your graph is the smoothest going into it.
43:00
So it's like if we can maximize that and we can see that which
43:03
we can like, I want to be as individualized as possible to
43:07
maximize that because we've, we've got guys that throw from
43:10
here. We've got guys that that, that
43:12
throw from here. And it's like they can all unite
43:15
around the fact that like, OK, we don't want to walk guys, OK,
43:18
we want to strike out guys. Because the more you move up in,
43:21
in higher levels, those things don't just get better.
43:23
So it's, it's understanding, OK, what are the normative ranges
43:27
for guys that we need to operate in, but also like we can track
43:29
and figure out what individualized things are going
43:32
to make them better specifically for who they are and
43:34
understanding that. I don't think individualized
43:41
needs to be complex necessarily like with with our teaching
43:46
staff this year, like a lot of us do, very similar long toss
43:50
constraints are very similar, like mountain Plio drills, like
43:53
there's a lot of similarities within some of the the drill
43:57
work and stuff that we do. And I think just a lot of that
44:00
comes back to what the data says.
44:02
And I think that's why, again, like I'm jump to feedback is so
44:04
important because like you have to have a, you have to have a
44:08
basis for these things. You have to have a deep
44:11
understanding of these things and you have to be able to relay
44:13
it in simple ways to the players.
44:17
And one quick point on that, and that's I agree completely with
44:21
what Dawson is saying. The hard part is, is so many
44:24
places don't have access to a force plate mountain.
44:26
So many places don't have access to these higher level training
44:29
tools. And so it's like, all right,
44:30
well, if we don't have access to, you know, the most advanced
44:33
data to give me comprehensive objective results, what do I do
44:36
then? And I think you trust kind of
44:39
the player's ability to manage their own body, right?
44:42
They've spent their whole life in their body and they've spent
44:45
their whole life aligning their body to be able to throw a
44:48
baseball. And so trusting their ability of
44:51
giving them a task and then kind of saying like their body's
44:53
going to figure it out, right? I think we don't give enough
44:56
credit to people of being able to figure out movement solutions
45:00
to to a problem. And so if you give a guy a
45:02
problem of you need to throw harder, the best way to do that
45:05
is is kind of just expand to throw harder, right?
45:07
It sounds dumb. You need to throw harder, throw
45:09
harder. And so when you don't have
45:12
these, these are really incredibly high objective data
45:14
points. Gather as much objective data as
45:16
you can with the limiting factors that you have, and then
45:18
after that, trust your players and trust yourself to implement
45:22
the right ways to attack that. Aidan, what an incredible segue.
45:27
Thank you so much for that because this is a topic we
45:30
haven't gone into yet and I'm very excited for it.
45:33
This is probably one that in this Wawa land that we live in
45:39
during seminars is very easy to talk about.
45:41
We heard about it yesterday and by all means I'm a major
45:45
supporter of this, but it's very difficult in application.
45:49
We all want collaboration in the development process.
45:53
We all want players to have a say.
45:56
But when we get to the field, you guys need wins or you lose
46:01
your job. It is that simple.
46:04
So if a player approaches you or you approach a player and they
46:08
say, well, I know to throw 94 miles an hour, I need this
46:12
degree of hip shoulder separation at front foot strike
46:15
and I need this horizontal abduction angle with my throwing
46:19
shoulder as I'm coming up in the lay back.
46:21
And all these different really specific pieces that maybe they
46:25
learned in facility life or just from consuming information
46:28
online. And maybe they throw the piss
46:30
out of the ball, but they don't get results in game.
46:33
And ultimately to advance or to win, you need us.
46:39
So players, we recognize that we have to earn the right to have a
46:47
say in the development process. How do you guys think now you
46:52
can earn that right and maybe give some feedback to them on
46:56
this? Start with this.
47:04
So I, I first met John, who you guys heard speak yesterday in
47:10
my, in my fifth year. And we, we have been working
47:14
through some things that I was not doing at a high level.
47:18
And it got to the point where I didn't throw for a good chunk of
47:23
the season because I just like objectively was not throwing
47:26
well. I was walking a lot of guys not
47:27
getting a lot of outs, not at least right now, anyone ear a
47:30
through the roof. And it was like, it just, it got
47:34
to a point where I sat down with our staff and I was like, Hey,
47:40
I, I understand that I'm a fifth year.
47:43
Like I'm, I'm turning 24th the end of the year.
47:45
Like this is, this is something that's, that's hard for me, but
47:51
I understand like what it looks like and I believe in what you
47:54
guys are doing. Like, let's sit down and figure
47:56
this out. I don't care if I don't throw
47:58
for the rest of the year. Like I want to go play summer
48:01
ball and try and get signed. And I want to figure out like,
48:04
how do I become the best version of myself?
48:06
Ego aside. And I know that's hard for a lot
48:09
of people, especially in the last year to go and do.
48:11
But I trusted them so much because of that, that, that
48:17
coaching style that they revealed to me and showed me and
48:21
helped me to understand and, and, and believe in because they
48:24
presented the information to me that I knew was working.
48:27
They, they backed it up and they opened up their door for me to
48:31
be able to walk in and cultivate that relationship in a way where
48:34
I could go in and say something like that.
48:36
Even though it wasn't easy. And we ended up figuring it out,
48:39
ended up throwing a lot towards the end of the year and was like
48:42
our main guy out of the pen. But that wouldn't have happened
48:44
if they didn't build that trust with me and show me like this
48:47
what we're going to do and have that open door and work through
48:50
things with me because I didn't understand.
48:52
I'm sure there were some things they didn't understand, but we
48:54
had that open dialogue where we were able to just kind of talk
48:58
through things and figure it out and then ultimately create a
49:00
course of action that allowed me to get back on the map and
49:03
finish the year at a high level. Just have a quick point.
49:09
And it's that I think a lot of people underestimate how much
49:13
players want to know and want to learn.
49:15
You get into a lot of the needs of, of, of the data and, and,
49:19
and you know the numbers and you think, oh, they're baseball
49:22
players, like they're, they're dumb, like they don't care about
49:24
this. But I think obviously this panel
49:26
is representation of that, that we're all kind of nerds at the
49:29
end of the day, right? We play this game because we
49:31
love it, but also because, you know, there's something
49:33
intangible about that. And a lot of that has to do with
49:35
the numbers, some objective results and objective feedback.
49:39
And even players that don't necessarily want to dive in a
49:42
bunch, they still like the feedback.
49:44
They still like the numbers and the adrenal families.
49:50
I have a couple more things. One is I think it's very
49:54
important for our coach to not only recognize like what an
49:56
athlete needs to get better at, but like also what they're
49:58
currently good at. I think that's something that a
50:00
lot of people I've seen historically.
50:03
He's like, oh, like you need to work on this, you need to work
50:05
on this, you need to work on this.
50:06
And then you lose sight of the thing that you're actually good
50:08
at. And like, I think the Wake
50:10
Forest guys brought up a good point yesterday of like, all
50:12
right, maybe we can gain. You gain 2 miles an hour in the
50:15
mocap a lot. But now you're like crazy over
50:16
the top slot drops here. Your shape's flattened out.
50:19
Like you're not nearly as effective as you were before.
50:21
And that kind of brings me to my other point, which is this idea
50:24
like the XY problem, which the, I think the way it's framed is
50:28
actually like people, people have a proxy for what they're
50:32
actually trying to accomplish. And then they solve for the
50:34
proxy rather than what they're actually trying to accomplish.
50:37
A very basic example of this is like my friend and I were at
50:41
like a baseball game or whatever and he knew so on the team and
50:44
wherever he's like, we had to go pick up tickets and he's like,
50:47
Oh, I think we have to go to like this special employee pick
50:49
up window. And so we went off to will call
50:52
and we just go, do you know where the employee pickup window
50:55
is? Well, our question is not where
50:57
is the employee pickup window. Our question is how do we pick
51:00
up these tickets? And we could have just got those
51:01
tickets for will call, but we basically asked the wrong
51:04
question. We what we thought was a proxy
51:07
for solving the original problem.
51:08
And so I think this happens a lot in baseball, whether that's
51:12
you're solving for velocity, OK, great.
51:14
But now your, you know, your arm slot, you know, drops or
51:17
whatever, your shape gets worse. I'm a submarine guy myself.
51:20
So if I applies for velocity, my arm would be up here, but I
51:24
wouldn't be, I would be substantially less effective and
51:27
I wouldn't be able to get out as as well as I had in my my
51:29
career. Not always very well, but the
51:32
the key is like it's, it's and I coach the students a lot with
51:37
like our, our we want first pitch strike percentage or we
51:39
want zone. I think like an easy example
51:41
would be like zone percentage, OK, but higher zone percentage
51:45
does not always equal like better results on the mount
51:49
either, right? Like an O2 count, You don't want
51:50
me throwing fastballs down the middle.
51:52
And so knowing that like it's, it's OK to have proxies or
51:56
heuristics for like what you think will lead to success.
51:59
But I think it's important to keep the the actual thing you're
52:02
trying to solve for in mind, rather than like only chasing
52:06
the proxy or only chasing the the the measure that you're
52:09
talking about. We get on, you get on that
52:18
piece. Cool.
52:20
OK, so this is kind of been brought up a couple times
52:26
loosely, but I want to revisit it.
52:29
We talked about having to ration our plans or team pillars or
52:33
things or things of that nature. Pillars were talked about
52:37
yesterday. I think it was the Ole Miss crew
52:40
talked about on the team votes on their pillars.
52:44
Aiden, I know this is one of the things you were passionate about
52:46
when we were setting this up is the objectivity surrounding
52:51
pillars and what those actually mean.
52:54
Because now this this goes right back to collaboration in
52:58
development, right? You don't know what to do if
53:01
your pillar is be a good teammates.
53:04
Like, let's face it, these guys could be the worst people on the
53:07
planet and if they pitch as well as they can, they're going to be
53:11
in the show. It does not matter how they
53:14
treat people at the end of the day.
53:16
Yes, I'm not saying be an asshole, be be rakers, but if
53:20
that is your pillar, how do you know as a player what to
53:25
actually get better at? So now guys, what do you think
53:30
is valuable in setting those pillars with your organization,
53:35
with your coach so you truly can have that collaborative
53:38
development and you know what to.
53:41
Work on, I think it's just laying out like what what you
53:51
value and then ultimately like educating the players on like
53:55
why that's the case and why you put that forward.
54:00
One thing we were really big on this year was just like
54:02
understanding what specifically like you did at a high level and
54:07
then sticking to that and like having communication with it.
54:10
So on the pitching side specifically, like here's here's
54:15
an example. When I was, when I was high,
54:17
like I would, I would get off the mound and after an outing,
54:21
our coach would, would walk up to be like, hey, like you didn't
54:25
throw your sweeper at the usage that we were looking for.
54:28
Like it's, it's grading out as your best pitch and this is very
54:33
effective. But like you did, you only used
54:35
it 25% of the time in the game. And it's like understanding
54:39
that, OK, we've created a pillar of, of communication and he's
54:43
laid out the goals that he wants me to have.
54:45
Like I'm already on the same page.
54:47
So when when I hop off the mound and we have that, that dialogue
54:51
back and forth, like I know exactly what his expectations
54:55
were. And when he says he's like,
54:56
yeah, you know what? You're right.
54:56
Like that was an expectation we laid.
54:59
And then just just going back to that, to that more broad
55:01
question, like how do we instill pillars like this to where now
55:05
we can approach players and like understand, like, OK, we've
55:07
we've we've already gone over this.
55:09
I know what you value. I know what we value as an as an
55:12
org. And like, how do we continue to
55:14
like circle back to these things and understand like what you're
55:16
looking for and like me buying into Beth?
55:25
Everybody did not mess on cool all right, going back to
55:30
something we were starting to address earlier, but we probably
55:34
didn't tie the bow on it so we're going to try to do it now.
55:36
We talked all about the problem of stating when you don't know
55:41
something. We, I think as an industry we,
55:46
we accepted that for a long time of saying, well that's OK, I'm
55:50
going to find out which is great, right.
55:52
We should always have this pursuit of knowledge.
55:54
You guys are expected to always pursue greatness on our side.
55:58
We should be expected to pursue the knowledge to help provide
56:01
that vehicle or the road map to get you to greatness.
56:06
So if somebody is going to say they will find something out,
56:10
what do you guys want to see as players as evidence that we are
56:14
actually doing our job to support it?
56:22
I mean, I think going back to Josh's original point, like if
56:24
you're always saying, I don't know, it's just like that,
56:26
that's just not been done. I think every once in a while
56:29
when you when you say it, it's fine if you have a dialogue
56:32
moving, but you need to to earn that right a little bit from the
56:37
player of being able to say, I don't know.
56:39
And this happens at pro ball a lot of like we're dealing with
56:41
incredibly complex topics. We're going through a lot of
56:44
different things. There's a ton of movie parts.
56:46
And if I'm constantly just hearing like, I don't know what
56:50
to do, I don't know how to develop.
56:51
I don't know how to get to the big lease, then that's not
56:53
helping me. That's not helping the team
56:55
because there's no, there's no Rd. either way.
56:59
And so I think developing a system where it's like I can get
57:04
objective feedback consistently, I can get numbers, you know,
57:08
after game reports, after bullpen reports, just whatever,
57:11
where I can continually develop is incredibly important.
57:15
I don't know with that there was really nothing, you know,
57:18
nuanced in there, but. Yeah.
57:23
I mean, I think ultimately it comes back to like just not
57:25
asking the same question, like saying, I don't know the same
57:27
question twice. I also think it's important to
57:30
recognize like. When we do have data.
57:33
Not just assuming that that tells the whole story as well.
57:36
I think one of the most important parts of working with
57:39
data and models is understanding the drawbacks and the blind
57:44
spots of the data and the models that we're using.
57:47
And I mean, I think it's as simple as that.
57:52
You, you, you have to understand where the where the the thing
57:55
fails in order to use it appropriately rather than just
57:58
using it as like the end all be all like this.
58:01
This is what this this model says, or this is what this this
58:04
metric says. I liked what what Hedge just
58:09
said there about like as a player, you don't want to hear.
58:12
I don't know. It's why it's still the same
58:13
question, buddy, from the, from the player side of things.
58:16
Like I really just want to see, see the needle moving in the
58:20
direction of the question. And I, I just want to see the
58:23
coach, you know, like if, if I'm going to appreciate the honesty
58:26
of the coach saying that he doesn't know, but he's going to
58:29
find out, then I think as the player, it's, it's fair to, you
58:33
know, expect him to, to actually be trying to find out.
58:44
We are nearing the end here, so I'm going to make a couple
58:47
closing remarks and then pass it off to these guys for closing
58:50
remarks. While super appreciative to
58:54
Dolls participation so far and if of course y'all tuning in
58:58
this morning, but we we had this talk today again, just
59:04
reentering everything about making data, information and
59:09
storytelling available for these guys in an actionable manner.
59:15
Not just giving you a report for the sake of giving you a report,
59:19
but giving you the tools you need and the way you need it to
59:23
be as good as you can be. That said, if there's one thing
59:28
that I can take away, just summarizing everything you guys
59:32
made available to me in this conversation is that first and
59:38
foremost, you want that data and information available to you.
59:44
Then from there we can figure out the best way to communicate
59:49
the data, tell the story right to the road and the the story
59:57
for that. For me, or where this becomes
59:59
super impactful is I'm not a PhD in MDA biomechanist or anything
1:00:07
like that. Neither is my partner down.
1:00:10
We created Flexpro Grip off of publicly available information
1:00:15
from all the research that's been done for the past 30-40
1:00:19
years going back to Frank Job surgery on Tommy John way back
1:00:24
when. The only reason we got to this
1:00:28
point was because of the pursuit of knowledge.
1:00:31
Given available information, how much easier would that have been
1:00:36
for us if someone had a road map or someone could assist us along
1:00:40
the way with how that story needs to be told or how we could
1:00:44
link those things together? But much like Dawson went
1:00:48
through in his development, he had all the information
1:00:51
available to him. It was just about piercing it
1:00:54
together. Or Hedge could being so unique
1:00:57
as a submariner that he needed to lead the way the second he
1:01:01
stepped foot on college. So he's been able to lead his
1:01:05
own development. He's LED from the front because
1:01:08
he's been forced to Blake and he's been at the same school for
1:01:13
three years. It's weird to say he's had three
1:01:15
different pitching leadership proofs to work through, so he's
1:01:20
had to both earn the trust of those coaches every step of the
1:01:24
way and they've had to earn the trust of him.
1:01:26
Aiden's been, what, 4 different locations in the past five years
1:01:31
between 2D ones of JUCO and now the Marlins.
1:01:35
So constantly in new environments, but leaning back
1:01:39
on an individual that you trust in compos who you've been with
1:01:43
for the ages. So guys, that's that's kind of
1:01:47
my wrap up in the sense that at a minimum, let's make all the
1:01:53
information available. People or all of us here have
1:01:59
the same goal. We want to be successful, we
1:02:01
want to win, we want to make it to the big leagues.
1:02:03
If we at least make information available, that's an amazing
1:02:07
step one. Step 2 is working together to
1:02:10
create that road map, whether it's hurt, injury prevention or
1:02:14
it's to getting out and eventually win a game.
1:02:16
So that's it for me. I'm going to pass it over to
1:02:18
these guys to see if they have any closing of ours.
1:02:23
We're good. All right, cool.
1:02:25
So then to wrap things up, I'm guessing there's still some
1:02:29
muffins, bananas and croissants and stuff available.
1:02:33
Definitely grab them because we can't take them in the
1:02:35
auditorium. But thank you for joining us
1:02:36
this morning.