Latest / The Layback Podcast / Wake Forest Player Development Seminar Review with Gavin Keipp-Stroud (Ep. 43)

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Wake Forest Player Development Seminar Review with Gavin Keipp-Stroud (Ep. 43) · The Layback Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey everyone, welcome back to the Lay Back podcast.
• 0:02
  You're getting a double dose of Flexpro grip today.
• 0:05
  Joining us is director of operations, Gavin Kipe Stroud.
• 0:09
  He's out in LA right now celebrating the holidays with
• 0:12
  his family. I could give Gavin's bio or I
• 0:16
  could just pass it over to him. So Gavin hit hit us with your
• 0:18
  bio real quick. Yep, I'm Gavin.
• 0:21
  I was in college at 2:00 and I was training with Adam and and
• 0:27
  his dad Darrell at their facility down in New Orleans.
• 0:30
  Stuck around for a few years how to UCL tear and as Flexpro group
• 0:36
  developed I hung around long enough to be on board and here I
• 0:40
  am today as a member of the team.
• 0:42
  Perfect. I'll I'll take that short and
• 0:44
  sweet and we have Gavin on today to actually discuss our little
• 0:49
  review of the 2024 Wake Forest Player Development Seminar.
• 0:54
  Gavin and I would like to consider ourselves veterans.
• 0:58
  We have now attended 3 fortunate enough to speak at two of them
• 1:02
  in 2022, I guess it was Gavin and I made our debut in the
• 1:07
  audience. Attending that conference opened
• 1:09
  a lot of doors for us. We're really thankful that we
• 1:12
  took the chance on it a few years ago because it has
• 1:16
  afforded us a lot of opportunities.
• 1:18
  So looking forward to talking about this year's seminar, just
• 1:21
  giving some thoughts on it. So Gavin, maybe before we even
• 1:25
  get into these presenters, I'd love just to hear your
• 1:30
  experience over the three years, how you feel about the
• 1:32
  conference, little things you picked up along the way or just
• 1:35
  talking about the environment. Yeah, totally.
• 1:38
  I think 20/22 it was. You hit me up and said, have you
• 1:43
  heard of this thing? I said no.
• 1:46
  We decided it would be worth us checking out.
• 1:48
  I think we went down, I think pick me up from the airport
• 1:51
  actually. And then we, we drove down, we
• 1:53
  went to Dioli's of course, and then did the seminar.
• 1:57
  And I think every year since then we've we've gone and we've
• 2:01
  gained something from almost every speaker.
• 2:04
  And it's something we always look forward to, or at least I
• 2:07
  look forward to every year. A good place to learn a lot of
• 2:10
  smart baseball minds and always find something interesting out
• 2:14
  of it every single year. Right.
• 2:16
  And the connections are awesome. I think the Wake Forest crew
• 2:19
  does a really good job of putting everyone on the same
• 2:23
  playing field. Yes, you can say those things
• 2:26
  about the other conferences where people are accessible,
• 2:29
  everybody's on the floor, but I really feel like at Wake Forest
• 2:34
  it is a meeting of the minds where everyone is willing to
• 2:37
  share an opinion of fact, to study or just talk shop.
• 2:42
  Yeah, absolutely. And I think that you hit on a
• 2:45
  good point. I think one of the best things
• 2:47
  about it is everyone is sort of there to learn.
• 2:50
  And I think everybody is really open to connecting with each
• 2:53
  other, sharing their their point of views, sharing their
• 2:56
  expertise. And it's something that creates
• 2:59
  a great, great environment for people who can nerd out about
• 3:03
  baseball. Definitely.
• 3:05
  So shout out this year Sean Fisher and Chris Lewis for
• 3:08
  putting it on and then historically Mike Mcferrin.
• 3:12
  It's been awesome for us to be a part of and we're really
• 3:14
  appreciative of you guys for giving us this chance.
• 3:18
  With that I I think we can get into it.
• 3:21
  For. Sure.
• 3:22
  All right. Well, we plan to go in order,
• 3:26
  but we're actually going to start off with Ben Barudi, who
• 3:29
  is the Associate Vice President for Strategic Sports
• 3:32
  Partnerships with Abilene Christian.
• 3:35
  He was formerly with the Texas Rangers.
• 3:37
  The reason we are starting with Ben is we unfortunately missed
• 3:41
  his presentation. We, we had some internal affairs
• 3:44
  to discuss and we would feel badly not highlighting his role
• 3:50
  in what he played. I'm actually really upset we
• 3:53
  missed his speech. We we just had some stuff to
• 3:55
  take care of, but it sounds pretty cool what what he gets
• 3:59
  into. He's a leadership guy, developed
• 4:02
  programs and most notable thing I'm seeing here in his bio is he
• 4:08
  spearheaded the revolutionary Rangers U player pathway, which
• 4:13
  sounds like a kind of a mental skills, mental well-being,
• 4:18
  organizational development, leadership development type
• 4:21
  program for Abilene Christian as well as the Rangers.
• 4:25
  Yeah, I'm looking forward to watching his when they send out
• 4:28
  the recording. I I think I heard, I heard some
• 4:30
  good stuff from guys who did see his presentation about just
• 4:34
  things being applicable to being a leader and leading in your
• 4:39
  organization. That can kind of be helpful,
• 4:42
  obviously in baseball, but really outside of baseball and
• 4:46
  business anywhere, just general leadership and organizational
• 4:50
  skills that I think are always useful.
• 4:52
  And I'm I'm looking forward to watching his his recording once
• 4:56
  they send that over. Definitely, So we don't butcher
• 4:58
  it too much. I think we'll move on.
• 5:00
  Just use this as our apology to Ben for missing out on it.
• 5:04
  And I agree with you, I'm very much looking forward to seeing
• 5:07
  the recording. But let's hop back to the
• 5:10
  beginning. So we're all started.
• 5:12
  Casey Mulholland, friend of the program, friend of Flex Pro
• 5:15
  Grip. Kick things off.
• 5:17
  Gavin. Sadly you were not in yet due to
• 5:19
  your delay in from MSY, but you made it.
• 5:24
  I guess of all people to miss missing Casey speak and missing
• 5:28
  us speak was totally OK because you hear us talk enough, whether
• 5:31
  it's on Zoom calls or just on the phone every single freaking
• 5:37
  day. I'll take some of Casey and feel
• 5:40
  free to ask questions. Interrupt along the way.
• 5:43
  Casey's presentation, as I'm sure you could guess, was about
• 5:46
  workload management. I think he did a really good job
• 5:50
  creating a call to action for inspiring the industry to
• 5:55
  examine workload management for what it is.
• 5:57
  It should be keeping guys on the field, not preventing guys from
• 6:01
  playing. That's always an awesome take
• 6:03
  away message from Casey. It's not what we're seeing with
• 6:05
  the NBA and load management and missing guys play games.
• 6:09
  He highlighted one of his go to guys, a true believer in what
• 6:14
  Casey does in the Kinetic Pro system in Nick Martinez, who has
• 6:18
  been really known well for his ability to throw in multiple
• 6:22
  roles in pro baseball, start relief, open, close.
• 6:26
  And Casey's vision is to create that ability for everyone, have
• 6:33
  that preparedness and throwing fitness so anybody can go out
• 6:38
  and throw in any role on any given day and know that the
• 6:42
  individual can be confident in their arm that they are going to
• 6:45
  hold up. Yeah, for sure.
• 6:47
  I mean, I was definitely bummed to miss Casey.
• 6:49
  I always enjoy hearing him speak and just even talking to him
• 6:52
  because he's a bright guy and I I like what he does.
• 6:55
  So definitely bummed this that one.
• 6:58
  And he did all this in a very digestible manner.
• 7:01
  I think he mapped out some different ways people can track
• 7:04
  workload, not entirely reliant on a sleeve or the most advanced
• 7:10
  technology. He talked about what he does
• 7:12
  with a radar gun and just a tracking sheet, whether it's
• 7:16
  Notepad or Excel or Google Sheet, anybody can track
• 7:21
  workload and make workload management a part of what they
• 7:24
  do. And then of course, Casey got
• 7:27
  multiple shout outs for what he's doing for the Wake Forest
• 7:30
  staff. So I thought that was awesome,
• 7:32
  not not just hearing what Casey said, but hearing what or how
• 7:37
  his systems are being used by the Wake Forest program.
• 7:40
  So next on our list, Gavin is US, who of course you missed.
• 7:44
  This is going to be a funky one to talk about, but I'm happy to
• 7:48
  share that I thought Darrell and I presented pretty well.
• 7:52
  I felt good about it. It's, it's weird to talk about
• 7:55
  ourselves in this manner, but our mission or the title of our
• 7:59
  presentation was to go from Tommy John to Tommy Who and we
• 8:03
  offered hot takes and facts about the elbow, arm care and
• 8:07
  UCL. So throughout the whole
• 8:09
  presentation, we labeled what was a fact, what was hot take,
• 8:14
  and all of our takes were from the research as well.
• 8:18
  It's not like we just pick these things out of thin air.
• 8:21
  They were all founded in research or founded in study,
• 8:25
  whether it was our cohort or our data set within Flexpro Grip or
• 8:30
  things that we could pull from studies that we find very
• 8:33
  interesting or potentially plausible.
• 8:36
  With our mission being to kind of spread this education and
• 8:40
  showing people what we've learned along the way with
• 8:44
  Flexpro Grip, how to reduce the risk of UCL tears, how to keep
• 8:48
  people healthy. We, we tried to make everything
• 8:51
  we did as accessible as possible.
• 8:53
  And I know we talked about this stuff a lot, whether it's our
• 8:58
  difficulties with selling or the struggles to talk about what we
• 9:03
  do specifically. I I think we we towed that line
• 9:07
  pretty well in what we know Flexbro RIP can provide for the
• 9:11
  industry without telling people. Buy this now or you're screwed.
• 9:16
  Yeah. And I, I mean, I missed the
• 9:18
  first probably half. I walked in towards the tail end
• 9:21
  of you guys presenting. But obviously I'm very familiar
• 9:24
  with the presentation. We've been over a number of
• 9:26
  times before we actually went to Wake, but I thought, I thought
• 9:29
  this one was kind of a fun one. And it, it was a a bit different
• 9:32
  than kind of some of the the presentations we've done in the
• 9:36
  past at different places. Because I I thought this one was
• 9:41
  kind of a more of a quick hitter on different things and a
• 9:44
  different style than we normally do, which I thought was super
• 9:48
  fun. I agree this this one had me
• 9:53
  walking away feeling so much more joy.
• 9:56
  I felt like we actually did something entertaining.
• 9:59
  Not that presenting on UCL tears needs to only be entertaining,
• 10:04
  but I often feel like when we present, it turns into a bit of
• 10:07
  a lecture or a more like college class setting.
• 10:11
  Exactly. Yeah, this, this felt more
• 10:14
  engaging. I don't know if it's because I
• 10:16
  took so much pride in building slides in Canva rather than
• 10:20
  using PowerPoint, but I I do think that that was part of my
• 10:25
  mission. My personal mission with this
• 10:28
  was to create something more engaging or more accessible
• 10:31
  rather than making it feel like APHD level conversation.
• 10:36
  Yeah, exactly. So that probably can close the
• 10:40
  book on ourselves. We talk about ourselves enough.
• 10:43
  At least I feel like we do. Who's we can talk about the
• 10:47
  others. The next group to talk about is
• 10:50
  the Wake Forest cruise pitching coach Corey Mouskara, Sean
• 10:54
  Fisher and Chris Lewis. I really enjoyed them.
• 10:58
  I, I enjoyed them last year as well.
• 11:00
  I think they do a great job of presenting in general, which as
• 11:04
  we've discussed is certainly a skill in its own right.
• 11:08
  I enjoy their their kind of their case study style that they
• 11:11
  do. They talk about one or two
• 11:13
  players that they've developed or I know the past two years
• 11:17
  it's been guys that they brought in from the transfer portal.
• 11:19
  So they talk about how they break down where the guy's at,
• 11:23
  what he's done in the past and how they improve it.
• 11:26
  And then they share the results with us.
• 11:27
  And I think one, it's kind of just a fun thing to see.
• 11:30
  It's sort of like taking your creative player in a video game
• 11:34
  and upgrading the guy is sort of what they're doing in real life,
• 11:38
  which is is cool and fun to see. And then I think the way that
• 11:42
  they present really gives you sort of a sneak peek into the
• 11:46
  way their organization runs. So you can kind of see what
• 11:50
  Corey's thinking in terms of from a pitching coach
• 11:54
  standpoint, and then you can see Chris working on the data side
• 11:57
  and then Sean kind of ties together the two and you really
• 12:00
  get to see why Wake is who they are and how well they work
• 12:04
  together. I think that was stated
• 12:06
  perfectly. I do always enjoy the Wake crew.
• 12:09
  They were certainly one of my favorites again this year.
• 12:12
  But what I'm going to do now is open up my notebook and talk
• 12:16
  about some of the things that I wrote down.
• 12:18
  Casey, apologies, I did not take any notes during your
• 12:21
  presentation and nothing to do with your content.
• 12:24
  Had everything to do with us presenting immediately after you
• 12:27
  and me wanting to focus on what was coming next, not jotting
• 12:31
  everything down South. The wait guys is where I
• 12:35
  actually started my note taking. I, I should preface a lot of
• 12:39
  these things that I'm going to say are very personal takeaways
• 12:42
  or things that I thought could help me or help us in our
• 12:45
  career. So I'm not saying these are the
• 12:47
  single most valuable things that every single person needs to
• 12:50
  take away from each of these presentations, but one of the
• 12:54
  ones that I thought was really cool that I had never thought of
• 12:57
  before. We, we've heard so much about
• 12:59
  planes of rotation in the past with guys throwing motions and I
• 13:04
  never thought of this, but an easy way to look at the plane of
• 13:07
  rotation if you don't have biomechanical setups is to video
• 13:13
  from behind in circle the ball at release as well as circle the
• 13:19
  highest point of the glove in that motion.
• 13:22
  I thought that was a really valuable slide and I, I don't
• 13:26
  know why I never thought of that or put two and two together.
• 13:29
  So shout out those guys for making planes of rotation so
• 13:32
  accessible. Yeah, I thought that was really
• 13:35
  cool and I that was one of the big takeaways for me.
• 13:38
  And I actually the next like few days, every time I saw somebody
• 13:42
  throw a baseball, that's that's what I was looking at.
• 13:44
  Just trying to not even with video, just trying to just
• 13:47
  trying to see it. Whether it was on video, are you
• 13:49
  going back to your kids, your team?
• 13:52
  I'm sure that will be pretty valuable.
• 13:55
  You get the kids rotating on playing your 11 you team.
• 13:58
  Yeah, exactly. Another another one I wrote down
• 14:02
  from the chase Burns breakdown was elevated back foot and drill
• 14:06
  work forces ankle E version. It's just not something I had
• 14:09
  ever thought of. They they focus so much on the
• 14:13
  feet and ankles. When they talked about Chase and
• 14:16
  what they were trying to tackle with his own development, Again,
• 14:20
  just not something I've thought about that elevating the back
• 14:23
  foot will force that ankle or that foot to roll over the way
• 14:26
  that they want it to. And then loved this one from
• 14:30
  Moose. If time to the plate is long,
• 14:33
  where can you make it up? And his answer was withholds and
• 14:37
  pick times. So he is he meaning Moose is
• 14:41
  incredibly passionate about guys being quick to home plate.
• 14:45
  Chase Burns, unbelievable pitcher obviously is relatively
• 14:50
  slow to home plate. But what he could do or what
• 14:54
  they could take advantage of is he's an extremely good athlete.
• 14:58
  So he can mix up his hold times and not mess with his own rhythm
• 15:02
  and he could really fire that thing over to first base
• 15:05
  rapidly, quick turn, get rid of it quickly.
• 15:08
  I thought that was an awesome take away that there can be some
• 15:13
  give and take with what you're passionate about as a coach or
• 15:16
  what means a lot to you. For me, I thought that was a
• 15:19
  really cool one because that was hold times are always something
• 15:22
  I've been interested in. And when I was a hitter, I I
• 15:26
  would the way I stole bases was based off of guys if they had
• 15:29
  the same hold time, classic UCLA kind of approach.
• 15:34
  That was my take. And then when I started pitching
• 15:36
  full time later in life, that was something I was always very
• 15:40
  aware of his varying hold times and even coming side and just
• 15:44
  holding for a long time if I knew a guy was a good runner,
• 15:46
  because that always kind of shut me down if I was running, if a
• 15:49
  guy would just come sit and hold forever, you kind of get stiff
• 15:52
  in the ground a little bit. Big time.
• 15:54
  I feel you on that. I, I love that because if I ever
• 15:57
  coach again, that's something that can easily be implemented.
• 16:02
  And then my last, I guess, I have two more takeaways.
• 16:06
  Similar one to the glove stuff we talked about earlier is using
• 16:10
  the glove for a reference point for where you're aiming or where
• 16:14
  your target is and accepting that that can change pitch to
• 16:18
  pitch, whether you're trying to throw a sweeper, whether you're
• 16:21
  trying to throw a curveball, fastball, something arm side,
• 16:24
  something glove side is using your glove as a potential
• 16:28
  target. I know they talked about that
• 16:30
  with Blake Morningstar. So that that's just one of those
• 16:34
  pitcher specific kind of things that I think can be valuable.
• 16:38
  And then my last one was a take away for us.
• 16:40
  Speaking of Blake Morningstar, yes, we work with Wake Forest.
• 16:44
  Without getting too deep into his pitch profiles, some of the
• 16:48
  things they were saying with the pitches they were adding had me
• 16:51
  thinking how we can tailor his Flex Pro grips work to
• 16:58
  specifically help him out. We haven't talked to him yet
• 17:02
  with it being winter break, but I briefly talked with Sean on
• 17:06
  Friday night saying that I had some ideas of what we could do
• 17:10
  with Flex Pro to help out Blake with what they're chasing down,
• 17:13
  and that just has me excited. Yeah, I'm sure we'll have lots
• 17:16
  of discussions surrounding that and that'll be fun to kind of
• 17:19
  get in the lab and dig in on that.
• 17:21
  Yeah. So I, I guess for those of you
• 17:23
  who don't know, this is this is where Flexpro Grip kind of, I
• 17:27
  don't want to say completely transfers from from a science to
• 17:30
  an art, but this is where the art gets involved.
• 17:33
  If we are in the pitch design space, we have moved beyond
• 17:38
  injury prevention per SE going into more the performance realm.
• 17:45
  We can tailor what we're doing on Flexpro grip to support the
• 17:49
  pitches that were after. So if it's more middle fingers,
• 17:53
  supinated bias actions, more index finger pronated bias
• 17:57
  actions, messing with our hold times, hold times on the device
• 18:01
  that is not the Chase Burns hold times or rapid force production
• 18:06
  there. There's a lot that we can do
• 18:07
  with the device to support what we're chasing in pitch
• 18:11
  development. So next on the list, Gavin, is
• 18:13
  the college panel. So our college panel included
• 18:18
  some big name guys. It was Corey Muscara from Wake
• 18:22
  Forest, Matt Hobbs, the pitching coach at Arkansas, Kevin Vance
• 18:27
  and Jimmy Bellinger. So we we had some big guys with
• 18:31
  Arizona and Clemson on there as well.
• 18:34
  And this was hosted by Sean Fisher.
• 18:36
  He he was our MC for this panel. Anything you want to start with
• 18:41
  or you want me to just start going through the notes?
• 18:44
  You can go through the notes. I mean, I'll, I'll say I, I
• 18:47
  enjoyed hearing from all four of those guys and it was cool to
• 18:51
  obviously guys who are successful and at a high level
• 18:53
  hearing how they sort of approach things differently and
• 18:57
  think about the game and think about their Staffs differently.
• 19:01
  And then there's, there's some overlap in their approaches as
• 19:03
  well. I thought that was cool.
• 19:05
  But you can you can head off with the notes.
• 19:07
  OK, this was a simple one. And just to start things off to
• 19:14
  always expect 64% strike. If you're below 64% strike,
• 19:18
  you're not throwing enough. If you're throwing above 64%
• 19:22
  strike, my take on that was you might even be in the zone too
• 19:27
  much and you can start to expand a little bit.
• 19:29
  Maybe you're getting a little too predictable if that number
• 19:32
  is starting to get above 70, but that was the golden percentage,
• 19:38
  I guess coming out of Clemson. Yeah, I think, I mean, that's
• 19:41
  super cool. I think always pitches out, you
• 19:44
  know, always trying to throw strikes.
• 19:45
  And I think that was even something for me that I think at
• 19:49
  some point I struggled with was I was always decent with command
• 19:55
  and I I tried to throw a ton of strikes.
• 19:57
  But as you said it sometimes, especially with with my breaking
• 20:01
  stuff, I would sort of expand the zone and get guys to chase
• 20:04
  and not just be not get guys where they're just in there
• 20:07
  ready to swing on every pitch because you don't throw anything
• 20:09
  out of the zone. So.
• 20:11
  Right. Yeah.
• 20:12
  And I don't think there's a ton of like crazy in depth knowledge
• 20:17
  that it takes to break down that 64%.
• 20:20
  I, I just wrote it down. I thought it was a good
• 20:22
  reminder. Now the next couple of points I
• 20:25
  thought were super interesting, and this came from Arizona
• 20:29
  specifically was one, the book that I wrote down that I'm going
• 20:33
  to look into called Alter Ego Effect.
• 20:35
  And then the point that I loved was having an alter ego always
• 20:42
  helps with analysis or review because you disassociate from
• 20:47
  the performance. So you can kind of sit back and
• 20:50
  treat your review of your own performance as if it's somebody
• 20:55
  else, enabling you to be more critical, more positive.
• 21:00
  It's always weird reviewing your own performance.
• 21:03
  So if you can separate or this was the message that if you have
• 21:07
  an alter ego when you pitch or when you perform, it makes it
• 21:11
  easier for you to analyze how you did.
• 21:15
  I think anyone who's who's played sports sort of has a
• 21:19
  different mindset or a different personality that they turn on
• 21:22
  when they play the sport. But I did think that from Kevin
• 21:26
  was a super cool take away to use it, use the alter ego off
• 21:31
  the field as well. Because like you said, you can
• 21:33
  kind of separate and then it allows you to not not take, not
• 21:36
  even not take things personally and then also be able to really
• 21:40
  analyze it from the standpoint of just trying to improve it
• 21:45
  rather than like removing your feelings from the performance,
• 21:48
  good or bad. Yeah.
• 21:51
  Awesome, I love that that that might have been my single
• 21:53
  biggest take away from the college panel.
• 21:56
  I really like that and it's something that I'll take with me
• 21:59
  and it makes me even more excited to get into that alter
• 22:02
  ego effect book. So shout out Kevin, I guess on
• 22:06
  that. I I think that's cool that the
• 22:07
  Arizona guys are looking into that stuff.
• 22:10
  Then simple one kind of calls back to what we talked about
• 22:15
  with Chase Burns in the Wake Forest discussion earlier.
• 22:19
  Your fifth pitch is your holds in tempo.
• 22:22
  I love that good thought. Totally.
• 22:24
  And I'm one of the things I think Moose said was we talked
• 22:28
  about guys having good stuff, good pitches, whatever.
• 22:32
  And it really doesn't take anything to be good at holding.
• 22:36
  You know, if you can stand on the mountain, come set, you can
• 22:39
  be good to hold it. And then I think this one might
• 22:43
  have been from Hobbes over at Arkansas, but I wrote down a
• 22:48
  paraphrase of his quote that hard questions begin with
• 22:52
  shallow answers, but with more practice it will lead to deeper
• 22:57
  thinking. Was that when he's when he was
• 22:59
  talking about his mound visits? I think so, yeah.
• 23:02
  Oh no, you know what? I think that was actually on the
• 23:06
  pro pitching panel was the mound visit things which we can hit on
• 23:09
  later because I remember that. So probably similar concept, I
• 23:12
  think very similar concept. This must have been when they
• 23:15
  were discussing development plans, I think.
• 23:18
  I think Coach Sheehan over at Army had asked a question about
• 23:22
  like building trust. What if you believe in something
• 23:26
  and you think it's right, but your player might not?
• 23:29
  And I think this was Hobbes's answer to that.
• 23:32
  And you just have to accept that these things can take time.
• 23:35
  You need, you need guys to be introspective.
• 23:39
  So I maybe that goes back to what Vance was saying about the
• 23:43
  alter ego stuff. One of my takeaways from from
• 23:47
  Hobbes as he talked about, he doesn't call any pitches and he
• 23:50
  kind of forces it upon the the pitcher and catcher to sort of
• 23:54
  figure it out, which I think is super cool approach to kind of
• 24:00
  one develop the chemistry with your staff and your catchers,
• 24:04
  but then also kind of forces the guys.
• 24:07
  One of his points was forces the guys to take ownership of what
• 24:11
  they're doing and really be accountable for the game and
• 24:15
  have that game be theirs. When as a player, I think I
• 24:18
  would have loved that, yes. I've, I've always been a big
• 24:22
  proponent of the catcher should call the game or the pitcher
• 24:25
  should be in charge of what they want to throw and the onus
• 24:29
  should be on the coach to empower those individuals to do
• 24:32
  that. So the education or the scouting
• 24:36
  comes from the coach. I don't expect the catcher to
• 24:39
  handle all of that. And you can make adjustments
• 24:42
  along the way, but the catcher is the one that is up there that
• 24:45
  can see what the pitcher is doing or can read the hitter.
• 24:49
  It's one thing to be watching a game from the dugout, but to be
• 24:52
  experiencing it from behind home plate I think is a whole
• 24:57
  different world. And that's that's why I'm so
• 25:00
  passionate about catchers calling games.
• 25:03
  The next thing I have written on here is about infrasternal
• 25:06
  angles. So we'll leave that for when we
• 25:08
  get to Rick Franz Blau, the Clemson strength coach.
• 25:13
  But I I do have just another couple points on here, one of
• 25:17
  which is exactly what you just said, actually, so we can skip
• 25:21
  it over giving the power to catchers to call pitches
• 25:23
  requires education with an exclamation point.
• 25:27
  So I guess good job for the whole crew up there and to you
• 25:33
  for that take away. And then my last one is you have
• 25:37
  to be really transparent when messing with someone's career.
• 25:42
  Yeah. And I don't know who sparked
• 25:45
  that on the panel, but I feel that was one of the things that
• 25:49
  overlapped with all four of the coaches is they they all agreed
• 25:53
  on that point. And I think is is a valuable
• 25:57
  thing to to think about for anyone who's working with
• 26:00
  players either as their on field coach or just a trainer.
• 26:04
  Like careers are sort of short and it takes a lot of trust for
• 26:09
  the player to put into whoever the coach is to really buy into
• 26:13
  what they're doing. And the more transparent you
• 26:16
  are, I think the more buying you get.
• 26:18
  But and then from a coaching standpoint, I think it is always
• 26:21
  important to to kind of remember it's not just like you're doing
• 26:26
  your day-to-day and this is another guy that you're working
• 26:28
  with and you're just moving along.
• 26:29
  This is somebody's career that you are impacting.
• 26:33
  I, I think you nailed that and like you said, I'm not sure who
• 26:37
  exactly spearheaded it. I think Coach Ian again from
• 26:40
  Army asked some really good questions that definitely
• 26:45
  switched the focus of the panel to this more personal connection
• 26:50
  and long term career development.
• 26:53
  So I, I think Coach Ian's mind was really in the right place
• 26:57
  with what he was trying to get out of the panel.
• 27:00
  Yeah. So that concludes Friday.
• 27:02
  From there, the Flexpro Grip crew went to go get some Indian
• 27:07
  food and then hit up Incendiary for the social afterwards, which
• 27:11
  was a great night. I, I really enjoyed it.
• 27:14
  Awesome stuff. We can leave our conversations
• 27:17
  at Incendiary and we can pick back up the next morning.
• 27:22
  Saturday morning with Chuck Wolf.
• 27:24
  The Flexpro Grip crew powered by what was it, the Bagel Stop
• 27:28
  bagel shop? I forget exactly.
• 27:30
  Something like that Bagel station, that's what it is.
• 27:33
  Bagel Station, That's right, that place was solid.
• 27:35
  So we've already been fueled up by the oldies and Bagel Station,
• 27:39
  so some big time Winston Salem staples.
• 27:42
  But we got Saturday morning kicking it off with long time
• 27:47
  Florida based performance coach Chuck Wolf.
• 27:50
  I thought this was some pretty interesting concepts that I
• 27:54
  haven't spent a lot of time in myself, specifically with
• 27:58
  fascial training. It's not a field I know a lot
• 28:01
  about. Yeah, I mean, one thing from him
• 28:04
  that was for sure I thought was interesting and enjoyed him
• 28:09
  hitting on was he talked about a lot of the work he does starting
• 28:13
  with people's feet. And I, I've always felt not that
• 28:17
  I have much knowledge of it, but I always felt like that was sort
• 28:20
  of a a missing link in training that nobody ever really works on
• 28:24
  or talks about or thinks about is foot strength.
• 28:28
  There's the thing I have called the toe spacer that I still
• 28:31
  wear. But I always tried to do like
• 28:33
  some little like toe exercises or like strengthening your feet.
• 28:37
  But he obviously went to a much higher level and really
• 28:40
  discussed his work and how he works with guys.
• 28:43
  And then later on in the over at the field, we kind of got to see
• 28:48
  him work with Chase a little bit and implement some of the things
• 28:52
  that he talked about in his speech, which I thought was cool
• 28:54
  to see. Yeah, I I thought his stuff with
• 28:58
  the feet was definitely the most interesting part of this whole
• 29:02
  presentation. And one of the things that I
• 29:04
  love about it. It's not an area that I feel is
• 29:09
  super prevalent in our world. So every everything felt new.
• 29:14
  Everything that he was saying. I know he had so much to cover,
• 29:18
  but really I would have been completely on board if he spent
• 29:22
  his whole presentation talking about foot function and how it
• 29:25
  affects everything else up the chain.
• 29:28
  Couple other things to highlight that he talked about, I guess
• 29:32
  were how to properly correct posture and how we should
• 29:36
  position our shoulders and the beacon of life with our belly
• 29:40
  button, the light shining out of our belly button.
• 29:42
  Those were just some kind of notable things I wrote down how
• 29:46
  to reach with the scap, so like getting full range of motion
• 29:51
  when we actually reach rather than just using our arm, trying
• 29:54
  to think about using our full body.
• 29:56
  And then talked about the triangle for grounding of the
• 30:00
  foot. So Speaking of the foot, like
• 30:03
  having one point in our heel and then the ball below our big toe
• 30:08
  and the ball below our pinky toe.
• 30:10
  Having those three set into the ground is true foot grounding,
• 30:15
  improves foot stability and then function as well.
• 30:19
  So if you struggle with that, that's where we need to take on
• 30:23
  assessment. I thought those were big time
• 30:25
  things. Then we had that kind of like
• 30:27
  rotational toe touch squat mobilization thing I wrote down
• 30:32
  and later in the day I was in the back of the room standing
• 30:35
  up, like trying to do some different mobilization.
• 30:38
  But those are my big ones. He talked a little bit about
• 30:42
  tight hip adductors leading to early launch with the foot.
• 30:47
  I wrote that down with a question mark just as something
• 30:49
  to explore a little bit more on my end when it comes to actual
• 30:52
  throwing mechanics. You good on Chuck.
• 30:56
  Yep. Cool.
• 30:57
  Yeah. So Chuck again based out of
• 30:59
  Florida, I thought he had some very interesting stuff.
• 31:02
  I think he has some things that are certainly worth exploring
• 31:05
  because he is going about training in the world that I
• 31:10
  think most of baseball is not at this point.
• 31:13
  He has his own kind of silo that I I find very interesting
• 31:18
  whenever anybody is doing something like that.
• 31:20
  So our next guy is Rick Franz Blau.
• 31:24
  I apologize, Rick, if I'm pronouncing your name wrong.
• 31:27
  Rick is the high performance coach or strength and
• 31:30
  conditioning coach over at Clemson and the main purpose of
• 31:34
  his presentation was talking about infrasternal angles.
• 31:38
  Yeah, if you want to hit, hit off with him.
• 31:40
  And I know you've certainly done more infrasern or angle research
• 31:44
  and work than I have for sure. We, we started a little bit with
• 31:48
  an anatomy lesson, which I appreciated greatly, that Rick
• 31:53
  just flashed up on the screen the different concepts he was
• 31:57
  going to be talking about. And I think that's awesome.
• 32:00
  Anytime you're getting into a world that has somewhat of its
• 32:04
  own language or higher level terms, introduce the audience
• 32:09
  upfront to these things to give them some level of comfort.
• 32:13
  I thought that was an awesome presentation skill that Rick
• 32:17
  used there because it made everything he discussed way more
• 32:21
  digestible. Talking about pelvic inlet and
• 32:24
  outlet, new tated and counter, new tated sacrums, what the
• 32:29
  infrasternal angle actually is or where our sternum is, the rib
• 32:34
  cage positioning. I thought he did an excellent
• 32:36
  job right there up front. I don't.
• 32:39
  I don't know if you want to comment on that at all.
• 32:41
  Yeah, I thought he did a good job with that.
• 32:42
  And I also think he had the the little half skeleton that he
• 32:46
  used for a couple examples, which for me just to to your
• 32:49
  point, concepts that I've never heard of before.
• 32:53
  But then to have him be able to actually physically show it I
• 32:57
  think was super helpful for digestion of his presentation.
• 33:01
  Yes, definitely. I, I thought he did a very good
• 33:04
  job with the visuals. And another thing you talked
• 33:08
  about, which was something I never heard of before, was the
• 33:10
  root of misentry, the center of mass.
• 33:14
  We have under our rib cage kind of all of our organs floating
• 33:18
  the middle of our body and how the movement of the middle of
• 33:21
  our body can potentially affect our overall movement or the way
• 33:26
  that we express force. I thought this was a very
• 33:29
  interesting concept. Again, something that I have no
• 33:32
  experience with. I've heard of infrasternal
• 33:34
  angles, but when we started talking about the movement of
• 33:37
  our internal organs, that was that was a little bit out there
• 33:41
  for me, but it was cool again to see somebody's life research get
• 33:46
  presented. To your point, I think it's
• 33:48
  always cool to see someone either take an approach or talk
• 33:53
  about something that you have no knowledge of whatsoever because
• 33:57
  of something brand new. And you really feel like you can
• 34:00
  get a feel for somebody else's perspective and hear something
• 34:03
  that could potentially change the way you think about
• 34:05
  something. And I think particularly with
• 34:07
  that, with his, his discussion of the, the guts and the
• 34:12
  movement there, I thought even from a non scientific
• 34:15
  standpoint, just like as a feel, I thought that was pretty cool.
• 34:19
  A cool thing to kind of give guys who may be struggling
• 34:23
  transferring force or transferring their energy, just
• 34:26
  as a, as a feel to, to think about your, you know, your
• 34:30
  intestines moving over. I think it could potentially
• 34:33
  help some guys. Yes, And I think bringing this
• 34:36
  back into focus, one of my bigger takeaways that I think is
• 34:41
  digestible. Not to throw the pun in there of
• 34:45
  talking about digestion after talking about guts, but thinking
• 34:50
  about the way different body types move and comparing it to
• 34:54
  like a skateboard ramp. I thought that was a very
• 34:57
  valuable visual of the long, slow sloped or gradually sloped
• 35:03
  half pipe versus like a really tight U.
• 35:06
  And thinking about what would be called narrow infrasternal angle
• 35:10
  guys. Or I guess for the population
• 35:13
  that isn't familiar with this, and I apologize, Rick or anybody
• 35:17
  else if this is kind of butchering the concept, but more
• 35:21
  skinnier guys or thinner guys kind of tend to fall in that
• 35:27
  really tight U shape. They're more up and down with
• 35:30
  how they produce force versus the gradual force producers.
• 35:36
  Are the wider types the guys that I wrote down later?
• 35:40
  Wider ISA's or bulkier guys tend to have a longer propulsion
• 35:47
  window. Yeah, I thought that was well, I
• 35:49
  always think it's cool when people talk about different body
• 35:52
  types and how it affects movement in general.
• 35:55
  Obviously I love it being applied to pitching, but I think
• 35:58
  we've had, we've had a couple guys over the years in different
• 36:02
  phase hit that at the bridge seminar, which I always find
• 36:06
  interesting because of course, you know, 6-9 skinny guys going
• 36:11
  to move different than a tank of a 5-10 strong guy.
• 36:16
  So I think that's that's always cool and interesting to to hear
• 36:19
  people's different approaches and different, different
• 36:22
  perspectives on that. And Speaking of the different
• 36:25
  perspectives, I could have spent some more time trying to
• 36:27
  understand the double peak on the force plate and like when
• 36:32
  we're hitting versus one of the center of mass is actually
• 36:34
  stopping. I thought that was a cool
• 36:36
  concept. I'd be interested if Rick has
• 36:39
  more research on that or publicly, publicly available
• 36:43
  information. And then another thing right at
• 36:45
  the end that I actually wanted to talk to him about, but he
• 36:50
  said something where he thinks we as an industry might be
• 36:54
  spending way too much time at high outputs.
• 36:58
  And I wrote down something that he started to hit on, which was
• 37:03
  when should we explore which levels of output, like learning
• 37:07
  how to move versus actually just loading guys and going balls the
• 37:12
  wall all out on training and understanding that everywhere on
• 37:17
  that spectrum can kind of be impactful.
• 37:20
  But I, I would have just liked to know more from him when we
• 37:24
  should implement those different levels of intensity and which
• 37:28
  athletes should be experimenting with those different levels of
• 37:31
  intensity. That I think mostly sums up what
• 37:36
  Rick went into, other than like the hyper specific notes I wrote
• 37:39
  down, which I think I would not do justice for because it was me
• 37:45
  trying to understand all of the sacral positions and pelvic
• 37:50
  tilts. And yeah, that's probably too
• 37:52
  much for me to try to express over this podcast with no
• 37:56
  knowledge. But next on the list then is
• 37:59
  Eric Neeson. Eric Neeson is the director of
• 38:02
  pitching for the Houston Astros. Do you want me again to kick off
• 38:06
  with notes or do you have anything that you want to start?
• 38:10
  Hit notes from. OK.
• 38:12
  I think Eric did a really good job in general just stating how
• 38:17
  he looks at pictures. And one of the things that I
• 38:21
  wrote down was vertical release angles specifically and the
• 38:28
  movement that we can expect out of the hand with different
• 38:32
  vertical release angles and how that can be impactful or what we
• 38:36
  can look for in a pitcher where outliers may present guys from
• 38:40
  very high vertical release angles with a sinker that then
• 38:45
  looks like it's shooting straight down.
• 38:47
  Or a guy with a lower vertical release angle but has a carry
• 38:51
  fastball, so it looks like it's shooting straight up.
• 38:53
  So I know some of that is vertical approach angle, some of
• 38:56
  it is vertical release. So actually looking at release
• 39:00
  versus that approach, I find that stuff interesting when we
• 39:03
  are actually getting into pitch metrics or trackable data points
• 39:08
  and how that impacts hitter decisions.
• 39:11
  Yeah, no doubt. I thought, I thought he did a
• 39:13
  good job of expressing that concept and I know it's a
• 39:16
  concept that we have sort of discussed in the past with
• 39:20
  different guys and different pitch profiles.
• 39:22
  So it was cool to hear. And then I think 2 of the
• 39:27
  biggest takeaways from his entire presentation, I'm going
• 39:30
  to hit you with them back-to-back.
• 39:32
  This one I absolutely loved consider all pitch movement in
• 39:36
  3D batter handedness, pitcher side slot pitch type, etcetera,
• 39:42
  etcetera, etcetera. But rather than thinking about
• 39:45
  it as just like a right to laughter and up to down, what is
• 39:49
  actually happening through space?
• 39:52
  Yeah. And then the next one that I
• 39:55
  thought was awesome was small changes early in the motion
• 39:59
  result in massive changes late in the motion, thinking about
• 40:03
  the butterfly effect. So the earlier in a setup or in
• 40:08
  the motion that you make a change, you're likely going to
• 40:11
  see a greater change down the line.
• 40:13
  I thought that was a good concept to keep in mind as a
• 40:16
  coach, that. Just changing foot orientation
• 40:20
  on the rubber or leg lift mechanics, those things can
• 40:25
  express themselves later down the line in the height of
• 40:27
  release or something like that. Yeah.
• 40:31
  And then I'm looking at my notes here.
• 40:33
  I don't think it's anything crazy that stands out.
• 40:36
  Of course my handwriting kind of sucks, so I'm fighting that
• 40:39
  battle as well. I thought another good coaching
• 40:43
  note was the finish leaves clues of the start.
• 40:47
  I remember that as well. I thought that was was pretty
• 40:49
  cool too. And then bound position and
• 40:52
  stride direction impact arm path to the plate, which again these
• 40:58
  are these are like specific coaching things.
• 41:01
  I don't think this is stuff that is directly impacting what we
• 41:04
  are doing with Flex Pro Grip and truthfully that's why I don't
• 41:08
  have more notes from Eric is a lot of it was very pitching
• 41:13
  specific rather than a ton of things that I felt like I could
• 41:18
  take and apply to what we're doing right now.
• 41:21
  Yeah, sure. But we we then hear from Eric
• 41:24
  again later in the day on the pro coaches panel, next on the
• 41:29
  list after a brief lunch, trying to think, trying to think where
• 41:33
  we hit up that day. I.
• 41:35
  Think we have barbecue in at the field?
• 41:38
  That's right. We went over the field, ran some
• 41:40
  routes out on the field, got our movement in, smashed some
• 41:43
  barbecue, and John Jones finally got to see the pitching lab
• 41:47
  after a couple years. Yeah, and you're right.
• 41:49
  That's where that's where we saw Chuck working with Jace.
• 41:53
  So next on the list was head coach of Maryland Matt Swope,
• 41:57
  discussing motor preferences. Yeah, I thought he was.
• 42:00
  He was super interesting and I think it was cool to kind of
• 42:03
  hear this seminar tends to get dominated by pitching guys and
• 42:07
  you could tell he was more of an offensive minded guy.
• 42:11
  So it was cool to hear hear his perspective on things and how
• 42:15
  his how he runs his program. Certainly, and I'm reviewing my
• 42:20
  notes. Of course, this is something
• 42:21
  that I probably could have spent more time doing ahead of time,
• 42:24
  but everything I have is very specific to what he goes through
• 42:28
  with Motor Preferences. We had Bob Keller come on
• 42:32
  previously to discuss what he's doing with Motor Preferences.
• 42:36
  I am by no means an expert, but I will do my best to explain the
• 42:40
  concept of motor preferences and what Coach Swope in his crew is
• 42:47
  doing over at Maryland. Then with the greater motor
• 42:50
  preferences movement. From what I understand with
• 42:53
  motor preferences, is their goal or their perspective is
• 42:58
  everybody moves their own way and everybody has a preferred
• 43:02
  way to move that I'm 100% on board with.
• 43:05
  There's no sense putting every single individual in one bucket
• 43:10
  in fixing them to one style of movement.
• 43:13
  So their approach is to assess individuals, to give coaches or
• 43:19
  give players feedback on how they move, so then programs or
• 43:25
  mechanics in a sense can be tailored to what these
• 43:30
  individuals feel most comfortable doing.
• 43:33
  Yeah, I I thought that was a cool take away because I think
• 43:36
  often times there are, there are things that maybe work for a lot
• 43:39
  of people. So you think that's the
• 43:41
  approach. And then guys sort of get, I
• 43:44
  don't want to say cookie cutter, but they they start forcing a
• 43:47
  certain approach on all players. But then to Matt's point, the
• 43:51
  guy doesn't move that way, and you're trying to force him to
• 43:54
  move in a way that's completely unnatural.
• 43:58
  It won't work. It's not going to work for the
• 44:00
  guy, It's not going to make sense, It's not going to feel
• 44:02
  right. And I think he did a good job of
• 44:04
  just breaking down sort of the way his staff.
• 44:07
  They try to try to, as quickly as possible, get a feel for what
• 44:11
  type of mover a player is and then use that in whatever
• 44:16
  they're doing, whether it's swing mechanics or pitching or
• 44:19
  anything. Else yes, in very similarly to
• 44:23
  Rick, a lot of these notes are very specific notes to help me
• 44:28
  better understand. So I don't want to butcher what
• 44:31
  the motive preference guys are doing, but I thought the
• 44:36
  juxtaposition to have all in one day Chuck Wolf, Rick the flat
• 44:42
  wow, struggling with the name. Sorry, Rick.
• 44:44
  Rick, Franz Blau and Coach Swope was cool because all of these
• 44:50
  things were super interconnected and also different.
• 44:54
  It was like a Venn diagram, like there was so much overlap, but
• 44:58
  also very different terminology or very different approaches to
• 45:03
  me, with the same goal, which is assess individuals, figure out
• 45:08
  their own biases or the ways that they prefer to move, and
• 45:11
  then creating programs to support the individual.
• 45:15
  It's cool that you just hit. I didn't really think about
• 45:17
  that, but the three guys all having, you know, sort of
• 45:21
  connected themes, I, I did think was really cool.
• 45:24
  And I think all three of those guys at some point in their
• 45:27
  presentation had something that I had never thought about before
• 45:32
  at all. So it was fun to for even for us
• 45:34
  to just like have discussions afterwards about completely new
• 45:38
  thing and try to take their perspective and then think about
• 45:42
  what we do and how we think about things.
• 45:44
  I thought that was fun and thought provoking.
• 45:47
  No doubt, and again with fear of butchering anything that those
• 45:51
  guys are doing, I think it is safest for me to move on or for
• 45:55
  us to move on and highlight the next speakers, which was the
• 45:59
  Arizona baseball coaching staff, highlighted by coach Kevin
• 46:04
  Vance, the pitching coach and John Deruined.
• 46:08
  John, I apologize if I butchered your name.
• 46:10
  I thought you were a very intelligent speaker so by no
• 46:14
  means take my pronunciation of your last name as any indication
• 46:19
  on how you performed. I'll kick us off with the first
• 46:24
  chicken scratch. No, I have on here when it comes
• 46:27
  to programming, start with movement capabilities when
• 46:30
  developing plans, then shift to skill based movement.
• 46:35
  From there, develop programs, shift to Arsenal design and
• 46:40
  eventually optimize pitch usage. So me breaking this down or
• 46:44
  summarizing it, what I understood this as is figure out
• 46:48
  who the individual is first, calling back to those three guys
• 46:51
  that we had just discussed, figure out how they move outside
• 46:55
  of baseball. Just figure out how they move
• 46:57
  first. Then let's shift it to skill
• 47:00
  based movement. So how do they move on the
• 47:02
  mound? Or if you're hitting coach, how
• 47:04
  do you move with the bat in your hand?
• 47:07
  Then we developed the programming.
• 47:09
  What are the drill sets that are most important for this
• 47:13
  individual? What's proper dosage?
• 47:16
  What do we need? Whether it's weighted balls,
• 47:18
  long toss, whatever implement or constraint to help this
• 47:22
  individual improve. Then we eventually shift to
• 47:26
  designing the arsenal, so how they are or what pitches they're
• 47:30
  actually throwing. And then from there, we optimize
• 47:33
  that arsenal so we pick and choose what we're attacking with
• 47:37
  and when. Yeah, OK.
• 47:39
  I think you did a great job of summarizing that.
• 47:42
  One of the things I, I know the Arizona crew, they did sort of a
• 47:47
  similar thing to Wake with the breakdown of their, a few of
• 47:51
  their pictures and kind of using them as case studies.
• 47:53
  So as I said with Blake, I enjoyed, I enjoyed that as well.
• 47:57
  And then one of the cool things I liked from Kevin is he talked
• 48:00
  a lot about his Med ball drills that he likes to do with the
• 48:04
  pitchers. And I know that's something we
• 48:05
  used to do a lot. And I always think Med balls are
• 48:08
  a great tool just to work on mechanics and field things.
• 48:12
  So it was fun to see his Yeah, I know you had some videos of his
• 48:16
  guys, but to hear him talk about and show some of the stuff he
• 48:20
  does was enjoyable for me. I think that's a great point to
• 48:24
  bring up. I I said plyos and different
• 48:26
  drills, but that's not to say that the only way to get better
• 48:30
  at throwing is by throwing. Yes, throwing helps a lot.
• 48:34
  Med balls are great. We saw a lot of water bag
• 48:37
  drills. We saw a lot of PVC pipe drills.
• 48:39
  There are other implements that people can use to improve their
• 48:43
  skill. Yeah.
• 48:45
  For sure. And as always, I agree with you.
• 48:48
  I love seeing individual athlete case studies.
• 48:51
  Major shout out to the D3 guy they brought in.
• 48:54
  I'm always excited to see the little guy win.
• 48:59
  So love that. Love that they've got AD Three
• 49:01
  guy now out at Big Arizona on Scully.
• 49:06
  Big time, big time win for the boys, all the little guys out
• 49:09
  there. Yeah, I, I like that as well.
• 49:12
  And I if I remember correctly, I think he had a pretty solid
• 49:15
  year. Yeah, well, he, he was a stud at
• 49:18
  the D3 and then when they so he's new, we we got to see his
• 49:22
  development throughout the fall and he made some really large V
• 49:26
  low jumps and it looked like he didn't get touched very much
• 49:30
  based on his fall statistics. And if I remember correctly, he
• 49:35
  had three or three pitches for sure that he just threw a ton of
• 49:40
  strikes with. So for him, their main focus was
• 49:44
  developing more force in what he was doing.
• 49:48
  And they believe that the body transformation or the force
• 49:52
  development is what was going to help him throw harder.
• 49:55
  So it's not like he needed to go on AV low program and just do a
• 49:58
  bunch of pull downs or see how hard he could make every single
• 50:02
  throw. They tried to take a more
• 50:04
  holistic approach to velocity development.
• 50:07
  And good for them for leveraging the tech that they have, the
• 50:10
  force plate data and the different things that they can
• 50:13
  use or have at their disposal. And they were able to take a
• 50:16
  very solid Division Three pitcher and now make him a
• 50:20
  weapon for what they're going to be doing.
• 50:22
  And I want to say the PAC 12, but I don't even know anymore
• 50:26
  with baseball or college sport divisions.
• 50:29
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 50:30
  And then I, I do have one other major note here.
• 50:33
  I, I feel a little badly saying it.
• 50:35
  I didn't take as extensive notes for the Arizona staff because I
• 50:39
  felt like a lot of what they said really echoed what we heard
• 50:44
  from Wake Forest on day one. Yeah.
• 50:47
  But another one I have is about execution based bullpens or
• 50:52
  practice design is set up an execution based pen that means
• 50:57
  something to you track and turn it into a competition.
• 51:00
  I thought the phrasing of that means something to you was very
• 51:05
  powerful from the Arizona guys because they recognize that what
• 51:11
  is most important to them might not be most important to
• 51:15
  somebody else or to somebody else's development or to another
• 51:18
  staff. And they recognize how much they
• 51:22
  gain from doing these execution based pens or this competition
• 51:27
  where guys are getting up and they're celebrating and it
• 51:30
  really feels like a game. But every time they do it, they
• 51:34
  are doing it focused on what they care most about.
• 51:38
  Then it encourages other coaches or other programs that when they
• 51:43
  do these types of bullpens, don't do it based on what
• 51:46
  Arizona does. Do it based on what you care
• 51:49
  about. I thought that was a very
• 51:51
  strong, powerful message. Yeah, I did as well.
• 51:54
  And I also, I also like the concept of the competition pens
• 51:59
  as they called it. I know Kevin said he might have
• 52:01
  two guys throwing at once, kind of lets them get 75% through
• 52:05
  their bullpen and then shouts out where they're both at in
• 52:09
  terms of whatever they're tracking that day, where they
• 52:11
  are percentage wise or whatever it might be.
• 52:14
  And that kind of turns both the guys on to to start competing
• 52:17
  with each other through the end of their pen, which I think is a
• 52:20
  a really cool idea. For sure.
• 52:22
  Another thing that I want to call out, talking about these
• 52:26
  Arizona guys, it made me think back to the college coaching
• 52:30
  panel. So I guess we're a little out of
• 52:32
  order here. I do think it's important to
• 52:34
  highlight how much, starting with the pain was talked about.
• 52:38
  Whenever we're working with the pitcher when it comes to
• 52:41
  performance or when it comes to rehab, we always want to
• 52:46
  understand what a pitcher is going through, what they're
• 52:48
  experiencing. And I thought that was another
• 52:52
  very prevalent theme for Arizona's crew as well as the
• 52:56
  other coaches or speakers that we heard from, is changes are
• 53:01
  made because we either see low hanging fruit to help an athlete
• 53:04
  get better or somebody's hurt and we need to do something
• 53:08
  different. And it was kind of nice.
• 53:11
  I thought that it was binary, that changes aren't just being
• 53:15
  made Willy nilly. Changes are being made for guys
• 53:19
  with a specific purpose, and it's generally to help them get
• 53:22
  healthy or help them get better. And there's no sense making a
• 53:26
  change if you can't map out how it's going to help them get
• 53:29
  better or how it's going to help them feel better.
• 53:33
  Yeah, I mean pain and performance was the theme I
• 53:37
  heard tossed around a lot. And I do think that is a great
• 53:40
  point to think about. As you like you said, it's
• 53:42
  either guys having pain so we need to address something or
• 53:46
  there's better performance to be had.
• 53:48
  So that's what we're addressing. Yep.
• 53:50
  And with that, Are you ready to move on, to tread?
• 53:53
  Yep. OK, so the tread presentation I
• 53:57
  think was extremely well done. If you don't know what Tread is
• 54:03
  where we live in a world of Internet and Twitter
• 54:07
  consumption, I feel like I'm pretty locked in on what's going
• 54:11
  on at tread and I interact with a lot of their coaches or ex
• 54:16
  coaches. So I I feel like I I hear about
• 54:19
  their training environment. So I'll call out some of the
• 54:22
  things that I thought were powerful or maybe some thoughts
• 54:25
  that I had jogged in my mind. A couple of good quotes I wrote
• 54:30
  down right away. I thought this point was
• 54:32
  stressed early on. Time is the currency of
• 54:35
  performance. I I think that's good to keep in
• 54:37
  mind. Everything that we are striving
• 54:38
  for in this game does take time. So we're paying for it in a way,
• 54:42
  and just thinking about opportunity cost with every
• 54:45
  single thing we do is important in the career of an athlete.
• 54:51
  Yeah, for sure the. Next one I have chicken scratch
• 54:54
  again, so I hopefully I don't stumble over this, but
• 54:58
  programming should stand in the middle of data and athlete
• 55:02
  perception. I thought that was a good visual
• 55:04
  of whenever we program, we need to take into account what an
• 55:08
  athlete likes, what they don't like, how they feel, as well as
• 55:14
  from the other side. What has been proven to get
• 55:16
  these guys better? What metrics are we going to
• 55:19
  change with this exercise or what are we actually trying to
• 55:22
  tackle? And understanding that there's a
• 55:24
  little bit of give and take there.
• 55:26
  And that to me is the art of proper programming.
• 55:30
  Because you need athlete buy in. But if you have athlete buy in
• 55:34
  for shit program, the athletes not going to get better.
• 55:37
  And then no matter how good the athlete feels in the moment,
• 55:40
  they're going to be pissed because they didn't get better
• 55:43
  On the other side. You could give them the most
• 55:45
  unbelievable programming ever written, but if the athlete
• 55:48
  doesn't enjoy it or doesn't have fun, they're not going to get
• 55:51
  better because you won't have the buy in.
• 55:53
  So if you have the mix of the two is kind of that Goldilocks
• 55:57
  zone where you're actually going to see improvements and you're
• 56:01
  going to have long term athlete buy in.
• 56:05
  Yeah, for sure. I think that was super well
• 56:07
  stated on it. Thank you.
• 56:09
  Another thing we have here that I liked a lot, it was probably a
• 56:13
  quote or a paraphrase that knowledge is the prerequisite to
• 56:16
  innovation. I think those were my biggest
• 56:21
  kind of theme takeaways from Tread.
• 56:23
  I'll I'll continue to shout out my notes and then just tell me
• 56:26
  to shut up if you have any point along the way where you want to
• 56:30
  interject. Thinking about what is truly
• 56:33
  controllable in pitching data. I thought this was a valuable
• 56:36
  piece in a game versus a pen or in a facility, what is really
• 56:42
  controllable? Can you control whether the
• 56:44
  hitter swings or strike percentage or in zone, out of
• 56:49
  zone? Like, I don't know.
• 56:50
  You do have an umpire. You do have a tracking system.
• 56:53
  There's only so much that you can really control.
• 56:56
  So you might as well focus on those things without tech.
• 57:01
  You must create creative assessments.
• 57:04
  You have to figure out a way and you have to figure out a way to
• 57:07
  track because objectivity is ultimately going to be our
• 57:12
  measure of whether we are improving or declining in
• 57:16
  whatever it is. We do find a way to create
• 57:19
  ongoing education. And then I had a thought hit me
• 57:23
  while we were watching drill after drill after drill in these
• 57:26
  different constraints. I'm interested to hear your
• 57:28
  thought. Do you think there is ever a
• 57:30
  point in doing drill work with hitters?
• 57:33
  Do you mean like? As in as a pitcher.
• 57:36
  Yeah, that, that's what I, that's what I thought you were
• 57:38
  asking, I think. I think yes, it can be because
• 57:44
  you know, you get, you can get immediate feedback on something
• 57:47
  you might be changing from the hitter.
• 57:50
  I think it's always tough as soon as you get a hitter in
• 57:53
  there, guys just start getting competitive.
• 57:56
  So you're, you're trying to compete.
• 57:58
  So I think it can be tough to stay within the drill rather
• 58:02
  than just go back to what's comfortable because you you feel
• 58:04
  like you're just going to try to compete with the guy and get him
• 58:07
  out. But yes, I could see, I could
• 58:09
  certainly see some applications where a hitter in the box could
• 58:12
  be useful. My thought on this was to keep
• 58:16
  the drill a drill, but kind of bridge the gap to performance is
• 58:22
  not have a guy do something at 60 feet, 6 inches, but even just
• 58:27
  having a hitter stand in there or something at a short box
• 58:31
  distance or something. Because how many times have we
• 58:35
  seen guys go from facility All American to getting back on a
• 58:39
  field and just nothing transfers.
• 58:42
  And I don't know if that's like an indoor comfort thing to then
• 58:46
  having the uniform on again or what.
• 58:48
  I I don't know what the breakdown there is, but I would
• 58:52
  think having the exposure to hitters is valuable from a
• 58:59
  performance standpoint. Yeah, I would agree.
• 59:03
  Other notes I have is it is OK to over exaggerate corrections
• 59:08
  and then a question that I had as a take away is can we create
• 59:13
  an Olympian type model for long term planning?
• 59:17
  Because Tread said with what they do, their goal or how they
• 59:22
  Orient their systems is trying to create two year models or
• 59:26
  four year models. So would they're not constantly
• 59:29
  chasing the next one mile per hour game that an athlete needs
• 59:33
  in four weeks, but figuring out how they can do it in 100 weeks
• 59:38
  and how much better they can get with that long term dedication.
• 59:43
  Yeah, I thought that was cool as well.
• 59:45
  I I think it's always in player development will be the struggle
• 59:50
  with time being the currency and being able to make the most
• 59:54
  gains. If you are able to take a long
• 59:56
  term approach. And I think that also goes into
• 59:58
  buy in which they talked about a bit.
• 1:00:00
  If you can get your guys to trust you, then they're they're
• 1:00:04
  they're willing to jump on and be a part of this long term plan
• 1:00:07
  rather than they want to come in to a facility or come into place
• 1:00:11
  or whatever for a month and gain 10 miles an hour.
• 1:00:15
  Yes. Well, with that we have the pro
• 1:00:17
  panel. Are you good to move on?
• 1:00:19
  Yeah. Sweet.
• 1:00:21
  All right. On the pro panel, we we had some
• 1:00:24
  awesome guys. We had Eric Neeson again from
• 1:00:27
  the Astros, Derek Johnson from the Reds, Caleb Cotham from the
• 1:00:31
  Phillies and Matt Blake from the Yankees.
• 1:00:34
  And Moose was our MC. Do you want to kick this off?
• 1:00:38
  Yeah, sure. I mean, I, I think there was
• 1:00:42
  some cool discussions that got got brought up with this group
• 1:00:46
  and I think they were all pretty friendly with each other.
• 1:00:49
  So they were, they kind of shared some views, but then they
• 1:00:53
  were also, I, I enjoyed some of their riffing that they did with
• 1:00:56
  each other and just to see their thoughts on the fly.
• 1:01:00
  Some of the things that I enjoyed from that were a few of
• 1:01:03
  the sort of mental approaches that they talked about
• 1:01:06
  different, different guys on their Staffs, how they how they
• 1:01:10
  need to approach them differently based on who they
• 1:01:12
  are and and the way they work. There was also some discussion
• 1:01:16
  of bullpen management, which I enjoyed as well.
• 1:01:18
  Yes, All right, I'll kick it off with my notes now.
• 1:01:21
  Same thing. Feel free to butt in at any
• 1:01:25
  point, so I'll leave a brief pause after each note.
• 1:01:28
  First one, empower the individual to recognize or lean
• 1:01:32
  into their strengths in competition, which I think is a
• 1:01:36
  good theme for everything that we talked about previously,
• 1:01:40
  trying to figure out where weaknesses are or where can we
• 1:01:43
  improve. But when it comes time to
• 1:01:45
  compete, do what you're good at. Yeah, and I think one of the
• 1:01:49
  terms that was tossed around a few different times was finding
• 1:01:52
  your superpower and using your superpower.
• 1:01:55
  Guys who are really good at one thing, but use that dive into
• 1:01:59
  that when you're in a game. Yes, especially relievers.
• 1:02:03
  Who are throwing in such short stents, you don't need to rely
• 1:02:07
  on your B or C stuff. And I think Matt Blake talked
• 1:02:11
  about that with Michael King. Michael King had this approach
• 1:02:14
  where he thought he really wanted to get to the 6th inning
• 1:02:17
  or the third time through the order.
• 1:02:19
  And if he was going to do that, he wanted to throw his like
• 1:02:23
  second tier stuff the first time through the lineup and he
• 1:02:26
  thought he could get away with it, but ended up giving up a
• 1:02:29
  moon ball to show Hey Otani and got touched up pretty good in
• 1:02:34
  the first inning. So even for starters, I I do
• 1:02:37
  think it's important you need to execute what you are good at.
• 1:02:41
  Anything beyond that is a plus. But if you're not willing to
• 1:02:46
  compete with what you're good at, are you even giving your
• 1:02:49
  best effort? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:53
  An interesting message I heard, I think this was from Caleb
• 1:02:57
  Cotham because we were talking about Zach Wheeler with the
• 1:03:00
  Phillies, is to use A2 seam to keep the four seam in check.
• 1:03:05
  Zach Wheeler, obviously one of the best arms in all the
• 1:03:08
  baseball, can throw both the two seam and four seam.
• 1:03:11
  But I believe this concept was brought up to help pitchers
• 1:03:15
  understand if they're 4 seam or if their go to fastball is
• 1:03:21
  moving the way it should. So using the other pitch just to
• 1:03:25
  make sure the go to fastball is being executed properly.
• 1:03:31
  Yeah. And I, I did think that was
• 1:03:33
  interesting. And I think specifically he
• 1:03:34
  talked about Zach, we were throwing whatever he throws 5
• 1:03:37
  different fastballs or something crazy, which is kind of fun to
• 1:03:40
  hear him talk about how that's how that developed and how he
• 1:03:44
  uses it now. And then this next one was from
• 1:03:47
  DJ. I love the concept of effective
• 1:03:51
  velocity from Perry Husband. This came up in the discussion
• 1:03:55
  and DJ said effective velocity is a way to confirm what you
• 1:04:00
  saw. I believe the idea was if you
• 1:04:04
  think a guy is out in front, if you think a guy is like early on
• 1:04:08
  that heater for whatever reason or on time for the heater and
• 1:04:12
  you throw the correct effective velocity pitch.
• 1:04:16
  So if you throw the tunnel breaking ball off of that and
• 1:04:19
  the guy is still lunging or still out front or on time,
• 1:04:23
  you've confirmed the hypothesis that you had.
• 1:04:27
  So if you can utilize effective velocity, you can effectively
• 1:04:32
  confirm whatever thought you had on what the hitter process was.
• 1:04:37
  I, I thought that was a cool spin on effective velocity.
• 1:04:40
  It's not not a way that I thought about it previously.
• 1:04:44
  This was a great one, I thought, and this was from Caleb Kotham
• 1:04:48
  as well. In game, spend more time with
• 1:04:51
  your catcher than your pitcher, because pitchers lie.
• 1:04:53
  Yeah. And I thought, I thought that
• 1:04:55
  was sort of it touched on a bit of what Matt Hobbs talked about
• 1:05:00
  on the on the college panel, just kind of really diving into
• 1:05:05
  your catchers and relying on the catchers to support the pitching
• 1:05:09
  staff and kind of help you make decisions as a coach and work
• 1:05:13
  through a game. And then my note here was is
• 1:05:17
  there a way to prevent the lies? Do you have any thoughts?
• 1:05:21
  I think he talked a bit about asking those questions and this
• 1:05:25
  goes to where he talked about his approach to mountainous.
• 1:05:29
  It's is, I think the more you can get get your guys to trust
• 1:05:33
  you really be bought in and know that you have their best
• 1:05:37
  interests in mind, the more vulnerable they're going to be
• 1:05:40
  willing to be. And then this right where he
• 1:05:43
  talked about kind of asking specific questions rather than
• 1:05:46
  how do you feel on a mound visit?
• 1:05:47
  Because every pitcher ever is going to say, I feel great, keep
• 1:05:51
  going. And that's where we talked about
• 1:05:53
  lying. But then he he discussed a bit
• 1:05:55
  of his approach of asking different questions to get the
• 1:05:59
  pitchers to give him more in depth answers.
• 1:06:03
  And that question specifically was, what are you saying to
• 1:06:07
  yourself? Yeah, which I, I thought was an
• 1:06:10
  interesting way to go about it because that then puts the onus
• 1:06:14
  on you, the pitcher, to think about yourself.
• 1:06:18
  Talk, what are you going through?
• 1:06:20
  Are you confident? Are you struggling?
• 1:06:23
  Are you negative? Are you positive?
• 1:06:25
  I think that is a very creative way to get what you want out of
• 1:06:32
  a mountain visit. Figure out if this dude is
• 1:06:35
  locked in, is he confident or is he actively shitting down his
• 1:06:39
  leg. Yeah.
• 1:06:41
  And I and I think that gives us sort of an insight into his
• 1:06:46
  coaching style, which I think is a good one, which is he wants to
• 1:06:50
  get his guys to give him feedback and give views, whether
• 1:06:53
  it's the catcher or the pitcher, but to get what they're feeling
• 1:06:56
  so that he can make decisions or get their view on even their own
• 1:07:00
  development plan or their recap of a game so that they can make
• 1:07:04
  it this cohesive unit as they work together.
• 1:07:07
  So Speaking of working together, being honest and the pitcher
• 1:07:12
  being able to articulate what's going on, DJ called out an
• 1:07:17
  interaction he had with Rhett Louder when Rhett got called up
• 1:07:20
  to the show. And what I have on here is call
• 1:07:24
  out when you don't have it, and when you don't have it, don't
• 1:07:29
  reach for it. The message or where this came
• 1:07:33
  from was DJ said Rhett Louder was preparing for a start.
• 1:07:37
  He went up to DJ and said like, hey, like, I got my B stuff at
• 1:07:42
  best today. I'm just not feeling great.
• 1:07:45
  Like, stuff's not really sharp, but I'm going to battle.
• 1:07:48
  I'm going to give you the best I have.
• 1:07:50
  And he said Rhett went out that day and threw like 5 innings,
• 1:07:54
  might have given up a run and maybe a hit or two, but he put
• 1:08:00
  his team in a position to still win the ball game.
• 1:08:04
  Rhett didn't go out and try to chase down his A stuff because
• 1:08:09
  he recognized that that wasn't him on that day.
• 1:08:13
  He might not have had the superpower to call back on what
• 1:08:17
  we said earlier that he normally has, and he recognized that he
• 1:08:21
  needed to play a different game. I thought that was very mature
• 1:08:26
  move by Louder and a very powerful discussion point from
• 1:08:30
  DJ. Yeah.
• 1:08:31
  And I think one of the things DJ said is that Brett said to him
• 1:08:35
  today, I'm just going to take the game gives me, which I think
• 1:08:38
  was a great way to approach it to everything you just said is
• 1:08:43
  kind of just letting the game happen and and not trying to,
• 1:08:46
  you know, if you don't have your best fastball and on some days
• 1:08:49
  maybe you can overpower guys not trying to go out and do that,
• 1:08:52
  you know, you don't have it. Yeah, I, I just, I really love
• 1:08:55
  that discussion. I could have, I could have
• 1:08:58
  really gone for Rhett to be there and to hear his take on
• 1:09:02
  the situation, but evidently from Friday night, Rhett's not a
• 1:09:07
  big presentation guy. Yeah, that's what I was going to
• 1:09:09
  say is he wouldn't have wanted to.
• 1:09:11
  Talk. Anyway, yeah, yeah, Moose called
• 1:09:13
  him out and he was not too keen on that.
• 1:09:17
  Next on the list. I started smiling.
• 1:09:19
  Kind of threw me off a little bit because it's what we talked
• 1:09:22
  about earlier with Matt Blake talking about Michael King.
• 1:09:25
  Is the quote first time through Make them deal with you.
• 1:09:29
  We talked about this concept. I I don't know if we need to
• 1:09:33
  beat it anymore into submission, but I do think that's just
• 1:09:37
  important for pitchers to remember, important for coaches
• 1:09:40
  to remember. There's no sense playing for the
• 1:09:42
  future if the future is not controllable.
• 1:09:46
  You need to get through the now. For sure.
• 1:09:48
  And I think, I do think that is just so interesting approach and
• 1:09:53
  kind of I think as especially as a starter, you're always trying
• 1:09:56
  to make you get, you can get ahead of yourself easily and
• 1:10:00
  start thinking about, oh, I want to be pitching in the 6th, 7th,
• 1:10:03
  8th inning. But if you come out flat and get
• 1:10:06
  rocked the first two, you're not probably not going to be still
• 1:10:09
  in there in the eighth. Who cares about conserving the
• 1:10:12
  curveball if you don't have a chance to throw the curveball?
• 1:10:17
  Yeah. And then the last major quote I
• 1:10:20
  have on here that I thought was another really good one is pay
• 1:10:25
  attention to reliever adrenaline dumps.
• 1:10:28
  This was the bullpen management piece that you were talking
• 1:10:31
  about earlier is even if a guy doesn't go in the game, throws
• 1:10:36
  can still be extremely stressful in the pen.
• 1:10:39
  Like if a guy is gearing up for a two out, two on match up in
• 1:10:44
  the bottom of an inning and we extend the leash on the starter
• 1:10:49
  to get that guy, the reliever still had to get himself up to
• 1:10:53
  enter in that situation and bringing him back to start the
• 1:10:57
  next inning might not be the right move.
• 1:11:00
  I really enjoyed that and that's something I found very
• 1:11:03
  interesting is the two aspects of that is 1, you know, letting
• 1:11:08
  the I think often times you can go, oh, let the let the starter,
• 1:11:11
  let let him start this inning, see how it goes.
• 1:11:13
  And then next thing you know, you got two guys on your
• 1:11:16
  bringing a reliever in a more stressful situation.
• 1:11:19
  Your starter feels like he didn't have as good of a day as
• 1:11:22
  he really did because he he ended in on a bad note rather
• 1:11:25
  than if you just ended his day. I think 1 of, I think it might
• 1:11:28
  have been DJ, but one of the guys said, yeah, I'd rather end
• 1:11:32
  a guy's day too early then leave him in too long, which I thought
• 1:11:35
  was a really cool concept. And then I also found it
• 1:11:38
  interesting. It's something that I really
• 1:11:41
  don't think about and I don't think a lot of people think
• 1:11:43
  about. But when you're warming up, you
• 1:11:46
  are throwing. So having guys be up for three
• 1:11:49
  innings straight or something over the course of, especially a
• 1:11:52
  Major League season, that's a lot of work that a guy's doing,
• 1:11:57
  even if it's not necessarily in the game.
• 1:11:59
  Valuable point, Very valuable point.
• 1:12:02
  And another note I have here, which is probably significantly
• 1:12:05
  less important to everyone else out there, but I I have always
• 1:12:09
  been curious about it. When I coach, I hate walking.
• 1:12:14
  I hate moving slow. When I've done mound visits, I
• 1:12:17
  have jogged out to the mound. There are a couple situations
• 1:12:21
  where I have walked because that is what baseball says you should
• 1:12:25
  do to slow the game down and give more time to the pitcher.
• 1:12:30
  Who's to really say what's best there?
• 1:12:32
  Like why walk if that's not who you are or if that's not what
• 1:12:36
  the pitcher needs? I'd love to hear what you think
• 1:12:39
  on this because I could fully assume if you were coaching you
• 1:12:42
  are taking very slow strolls out to the rubber.
• 1:12:46
  Yeah, no doubt. And I think I think the concept
• 1:12:49
  of the coaches talked about the energy you bring to the mound on
• 1:12:54
  a mound visit, I think is was was very interesting and I think
• 1:12:59
  is important. You know, if you if you come out
• 1:13:01
  there and you you look like you're stressed out, you're
• 1:13:04
  probably going to rub that off on your pitcher and he's going
• 1:13:07
  to be a little worried. But whether it's whether it's
• 1:13:09
  you, the high energy guy who comes out and is just super
• 1:13:13
  positive, I think that's great if that's who you are.
• 1:13:17
  Or more of my approach would be come out slow and calm and just
• 1:13:22
  kind of calm everything down. That's great if that's who you
• 1:13:25
  are. But I think whatever it is, is
• 1:13:28
  coming out there and bringing something positive to the
• 1:13:31
  pitcher and not coming out adding stress to an already
• 1:13:34
  stressful situation. Well stated.
• 1:13:37
  I think you rounded that out well.
• 1:13:39
  And I have continued to rack my brain about this is trying to
• 1:13:43
  play the game. But I I do think it would be
• 1:13:46
  stressful if all of a sudden I started taking a very slow,
• 1:13:49
  methodical walk out there. I would fully imagine that
• 1:13:53
  pitcher being like, what the hell did I just do?
• 1:13:56
  I am in for it. And if I jog out there, I like
• 1:13:59
  to think I would get more time. That was the other thing was
• 1:14:01
  like, oh, like if I'm playing the time game, if I walk, the
• 1:14:04
  umpire is using the time that I walk in like his internal count.
• 1:14:09
  So if I get out there quick, I might get more out of this.
• 1:14:12
  I don't know. That's just where my head went.
• 1:14:15
  I I need to coach in more high level games to see how that
• 1:14:17
  plays out and track it. But that concludes Saturday.
• 1:14:21
  Then we booked it to get to Mojito, get a table and eat at
• 1:14:25
  the single best restaurant in Winston Salem, NC.
• 1:14:29
  That was great. That place is the best thing.
• 1:14:32
  Is that a three timer for us now I believe?
• 1:14:35
  At least, yeah, maybe. Maybe a fourth, I don't know,
• 1:14:39
  but definitely. Three, I'm recommending it to
• 1:14:42
  everybody. And we, we saw a couple of our
• 1:14:44
  staples. I think every single time we've
• 1:14:46
  ever been to Mojito, we've seen Desi Driskell there.
• 1:14:50
  Yeah. Yeah, and Sean Fisher every
• 1:14:53
  single time. But I guess we missed a couple
• 1:14:56
  of our staples. No, No Jack Berry this year.
• 1:14:58
  Sadly. No Brandon Golden there.
• 1:15:00
  No, Robin Lund, Yeah, missed out on some of our go to guys.
• 1:15:05
  Some of the regular guys. Yeah, they were.
• 1:15:07
  They were there in spirit. Our Sunday after a bagel station
• 1:15:13
  fueled morning, we went back there again.
• 1:15:15
  Yes, started with possibly my favorite presentation of the
• 1:15:21
  weekend in Joey Mylet. I would agree.
• 1:15:24
  I think obviously we love Joey, so I was excited to hear him
• 1:15:28
  speak and he's a super smart guy.
• 1:15:30
  So I was amped up for his morning presentation.
• 1:15:34
  But I thought he did a fantastic job.
• 1:15:37
  As we talked about a bit our presentation skills, I thought
• 1:15:41
  he just his presentation style was great.
• 1:15:44
  And then it was, it was super interesting.
• 1:15:45
  He kind of, he talked about the development of the Orioles
• 1:15:48
  pitching lab and approaches people might take to creating
• 1:15:52
  their pitching lab. And I one of the things that I
• 1:15:56
  thought was super cool is when I think of a pitching lab, I think
• 1:15:58
  of Wake or somebody else who has the resources to just check it
• 1:16:04
  out and make it perfect. But I think one of the cool
• 1:16:06
  things he talked about is you can still make a pitching lab
• 1:16:10
  really with any budget as simple as an iPhone camera and a radar
• 1:16:13
  gun and that call that your pitching lab or anything in
• 1:16:16
  between there. But I think one of the points he
• 1:16:19
  hit on was making it really, really thinking about what it is
• 1:16:23
  you're looking to get out of your lab and setting up the lab
• 1:16:27
  to be successful. That was my big take away from
• 1:16:30
  that is you can you can kind of do it with any budget and make
• 1:16:34
  sure that what you're doing is going to be effective for your
• 1:16:38
  program or your facility or whatever it is.
• 1:16:41
  Big time. Couple things that we might have
• 1:16:43
  buried the lead on. Joey Milett is a bio mechanist
• 1:16:47
  for the Baltimore Orioles who formerly studied at Wake Forest.
• 1:16:51
  He got his graduate degree while at Wake Forest, studied under
• 1:16:55
  doctor Kristen Nicholson and was a college baseball player as
• 1:16:59
  well. So Joey enters this space with a
• 1:17:02
  really unique perspective. He is both super nerd and big
• 1:17:06
  time baseball fan. So it's it's this perfect combo.
• 1:17:10
  But a lot of Joey's presentation gave me a similar vibe in the
• 1:17:17
  theme to what Jake McKinley talked about years ago with
• 1:17:22
  Nevada in doing an audit, in creating the system that works
• 1:17:27
  for you. I think you did a really good
• 1:17:29
  job highlighting that. But an early take away from Joey
• 1:17:33
  was, before getting tech, define your reason for it.
• 1:17:38
  Don't you do it because it's cool or everybody else is doing
• 1:17:43
  it? Yeah.
• 1:17:43
  Peer pressure and cigarettes and all of that stuff.
• 1:17:47
  But that's that's what a really strong theme was.
• 1:17:50
  Every decision you make, you should have reasoning for.
• 1:17:55
  And I love that process with Joey with everything you mapped
• 1:17:59
  out, whether it's buying a better iPhone with a stronger
• 1:18:05
  camera or better capture rate, or getting the single greatest
• 1:18:10
  markered or markerless system you can in your $1 million lab.
• 1:18:17
  Like there's so many different ways you can go about creating
• 1:18:20
  your system, but the system has to be meaningful, actionable to
• 1:18:26
  you and important things I have on here always running through a
• 1:18:32
  cost benefit analysis with whatever it is you do.
• 1:18:36
  And then another one, is there a lesser version that checks
• 1:18:41
  enough boxes? The fact that Joey, a high level
• 1:18:45
  biomechanist, said this I think might be one of the more
• 1:18:49
  important things of the entire presentation because the Orioles
• 1:18:54
  are going to go all out and whatever they do with capture,
• 1:18:57
  they are dealing with multi $1,000,000 assets in their
• 1:19:01
  players. So why would they ever skip a
• 1:19:04
  step or take the lesser action? But if Joey is saying that there
• 1:19:10
  is potentially a lesser version that checks enough boxes that
• 1:19:15
  that means to me that if something is capable, it's good
• 1:19:21
  enough, do it. Use it.
• 1:19:23
  You don't need the highest level of tech just to say you have it.
• 1:19:27
  Yeah. For sure, again, you said it can
• 1:19:30
  build your own mocap with a camera.
• 1:19:33
  And if you have Python or Python knowledge.
• 1:19:36
  So there's a lot of coding available, I guess that we can
• 1:19:40
  use. I mean, Python's free.
• 1:19:41
  I have it on my laptop. I know you have it on yours.
• 1:19:44
  We both experimented a little bit and our own education
• 1:19:48
  processes, but that's something I now want to dig into to see
• 1:19:52
  how people have built their own biomech labs with free coding
• 1:19:57
  software. That's so cool.
• 1:19:59
  Yeah, super cool. I thought that was cool as well.
• 1:20:01
  Another massive take away Value the process the same for every.
• 1:20:06
  Athlete, yeah, which I, I think I think kind of goes back to now
• 1:20:11
  even a, a biomechanist thinking about it, it goes back to what
• 1:20:14
  we talked about with the coaches realizing you have an impact on
• 1:20:18
  this guy's career. And I know Joey talked about if
• 1:20:21
  he or any of his team comes in and you you know, you don't
• 1:20:24
  really care about the the mocap session or care about explaining
• 1:20:29
  the data to the player, then the players also not going to give
• 1:20:32
  you his best and you're not going to get anything out of it.
• 1:20:35
  Whereas if on the other hand, if Joey comes in and he's all about
• 1:20:39
  it, gives his very best to any player, whether it's their
• 1:20:42
  number one guy or their lowest guy, the player is going to give
• 1:20:46
  back his best. And then they they've created
• 1:20:48
  something that's really productive and the players
• 1:20:51
  bought in and they get a lot out of the lab or the session that
• 1:20:55
  they're doing. I would like to think that Ben's
• 1:20:58
  presentation, Ben Barudi would have highlighted that kind of
• 1:21:02
  concept that the leadership and the connections go well beyond
• 1:21:07
  coaching and extending all parts of an organization or all parts
• 1:21:12
  of a program. And that's true culture.
• 1:21:14
  So shout out to Joey for that. I I thought that was awesome.
• 1:21:18
  And then a powerful quote he ended with was help and support
• 1:21:22
  are not ours to keep. A lot of the things we're
• 1:21:25
  talking about here. Yes, we might be fanboying for
• 1:21:28
  Joey a little bit because I like to think he's a friend of ours
• 1:21:31
  and he, he really does seem like a great guy.
• 1:21:34
  But I think the work he does really means a lot to him and
• 1:21:37
  he's thankful for the support he's got along the way.
• 1:21:40
  And he, like, I think everybody who has presented, and I know we
• 1:21:45
  still have one more to go through, but they're all trying
• 1:21:48
  to make this game a better place.
• 1:21:49
  And I thought that was evident in Joey's presentation.
• 1:21:53
  So the last and final presentation for us to discuss
• 1:21:57
  is the Minnesota Twins analyst Chad Raines and Nihar Mascara.
• 1:22:02
  I know Nihar was a wake guy. I don't know if Chad was as
• 1:22:05
  well. I don't think so, but I'm not
• 1:22:08
  sure. Regardless, I I thought there
• 1:22:10
  was some great points that these guys had and this is not to take
• 1:22:15
  a single thing away from Chad. I thought Nihar was an awesome
• 1:22:18
  presenter, super engaging, great presence up there.
• 1:22:22
  I I I really enjoyed listening to him.
• 1:22:25
  Yeah, I did as well. And I I also got the same
• 1:22:28
  impression I got with both of those guys that I did with
• 1:22:32
  Joey's. They really care about what
• 1:22:35
  they're doing and really enjoy their work and care about
• 1:22:39
  helping players. So getting into it, my first
• 1:22:42
  point that I have on here is define your North Star, which I
• 1:22:46
  thought was ironic with them being the Minnesota Twins just
• 1:22:50
  labeling it as North Star. But define the North Star and
• 1:22:54
  make that prevalent in every single thing that you do in
• 1:22:58
  specifically from an organizational standpoint.
• 1:23:00
  So I think that's a valuable take away for any individual
• 1:23:03
  working on something, just keeping your values upfront or
• 1:23:07
  your goals upfront. But when you start working with
• 1:23:11
  more and more parties that seem like they could possibly be
• 1:23:14
  divided into different silos, IE and MLB org, if everybody is
• 1:23:20
  operating with the same North Star or the same values, it
• 1:23:24
  becomes a lot easier to ensure that culture stays strong or
• 1:23:29
  that everybody's working towards the same goals.
• 1:23:32
  Yeah, no doubt. Another valuable piece here that
• 1:23:34
  I've loved introduce players to all resources.
• 1:23:39
  This leads to personal connections.
• 1:23:41
  I think that's part of what Joey was talking about with the help
• 1:23:45
  and support are not ours to keep and ensuring that you value the
• 1:23:50
  process the same for every single player.
• 1:23:52
  So the coaches and the staff should feel the same as the
• 1:23:56
  players. Like, we're all in this
• 1:23:58
  together. We're all trying to help and
• 1:23:59
  support because let's face it, everybody who's in an org wants
• 1:24:03
  to win a World Series, no matter their position or their level.
• 1:24:07
  Yeah, for sure. And I, I think this was a theme
• 1:24:10
  that we've talked about and kind of was presented in different
• 1:24:13
  ways in different guys speeches, but creating that, you know,
• 1:24:18
  that the, the, the group environment and together
• 1:24:22
  trusting each other to move towards a goal, I think they hit
• 1:24:25
  on a bit as well. I would like to say this is
• 1:24:27
  something that we try to do a lot with Flex Pro Grip,
• 1:24:31
  introducing players or clients we have to other players and
• 1:24:36
  clients or connecting parents that are going through similar
• 1:24:39
  situations or all of us managing different athletes are managing
• 1:24:45
  athletes together because we all have different insights or
• 1:24:49
  different thoughts. Like not too long ago you you
• 1:24:52
  were talking about one of the high school guys you work with
• 1:24:54
  who's been stagnant for a little bit.
• 1:24:56
  He's training really hard, but he hasn't necessarily improved
• 1:24:59
  and that's fine. It maybe it's just time to get
• 1:25:02
  creative and mix up programming. Or for example, there's guys
• 1:25:06
  that I talked to a lot that are out in California that yeah, I
• 1:25:10
  might be like running their programming per SE, but I'm not
• 1:25:15
  as accessible to them. So it makes way more sense for
• 1:25:18
  you to have that contact when you're in farther W time zones
• 1:25:23
  and you can be more available and have more interaction,
• 1:25:28
  whereas I'm just kind of like doing it from afar.
• 1:25:31
  So I think the Twins guys nailed that personal connection piece
• 1:25:35
  and it really I think levels the playing field in the best way
• 1:25:38
  possible, making it feel like everybody's on the same team.
• 1:25:41
  Another important take away, like we talked so much about
• 1:25:44
  improvement throughout the entire weekend, but just because
• 1:25:47
  you nailed the process doesn't guarantee results.
• 1:25:50
  Yeah. And I think that's something
• 1:25:52
  that that is important to remember, but I think is also
• 1:25:55
  just a reality of player development, which was the theme
• 1:25:58
  of the seminar. But you can have the smartest
• 1:26:01
  guys and and go about things the right way and still might not.
• 1:26:05
  You might not get the intended. Result Silverline.
• 1:26:08
  You know, even if you don't get the intended result, this is one
• 1:26:12
  that I try to keep at the forefront of my own mind.
• 1:26:15
  If something didn't work out, it means we can just rule out that
• 1:26:19
  process and we don't need to give it any mind anymore.
• 1:26:23
  So even though we might not have succeeded, we at least narrowed
• 1:26:27
  our focus that we can throw that concept completely out the
• 1:26:30
  window and never need to think about it again.
• 1:26:33
  Yeah, for. Sure.
• 1:26:34
  So there's, there's positives that can be taken from these
• 1:26:37
  failures, not to call the process of failure.
• 1:26:39
  Sorry, Philly. Yeah, trust the process.
• 1:26:44
  Another note I have here is just because you understand something
• 1:26:47
  doesn't mean the player does. I would say that's probably a
• 1:26:50
  theme that bringing up the discussion of our presentation
• 1:26:54
  again of kind of shifting it from a high level textbook style
• 1:26:59
  presentation to a more engaging environment.
• 1:27:04
  Yeah, we we knew what we were talking about with valgus stress
• 1:27:08
  on the elbow or Newton meters of torque, but that doesn't mean
• 1:27:11
  much to most people in the audience to meet them at their
• 1:27:15
  level. Make sure that the person who is
• 1:27:17
  receiving the information actually understands what you're
• 1:27:20
  talking about. Yeah, for sure.
• 1:27:23
  And obviously that helps if they understand for them to be able
• 1:27:27
  to implement something that even goes back to our discussion of
• 1:27:31
  buy in. If they think you're just
• 1:27:33
  talking way above their head and they don't get it, you know it
• 1:27:36
  doesn't matter to them. If you can get them to grasp the
• 1:27:39
  concept of what you're trying to do, they're more likely, I
• 1:27:42
  think, to dive in with you. Big time.
• 1:27:45
  Which actually leads to the last note I have here, which is if
• 1:27:49
  players can't say exactly what they need to improve on, I
• 1:27:54
  failed or the organization failed.
• 1:27:57
  The player or the individual you're working with should be
• 1:28:01
  able to recite their development plan, and I would prefer them to
• 1:28:05
  do it in their own words. Not just say exactly what's on
• 1:28:09
  some piece of paper, but the player or the athlete needs to
• 1:28:15
  be able to have a real true understanding of the process
• 1:28:20
  that they are going through. Yeah, which I thought was cool.
• 1:28:23
  I think one of the Twins guys, I don't remember which one, but
• 1:28:26
  challenge the audience if they knew any Twins players and they
• 1:28:29
  saw them over the offseason to ask them exactly what their
• 1:28:32
  player development plan was and then report back to them if they
• 1:28:36
  any of the players couldn't say what it was.
• 1:28:40
  I have Nihar's e-mail written down so I will be sure to do
• 1:28:43
  that if I run into any twins guys.
• 1:28:45
  Not sure if I will but I will be sure to hit him up.
• 1:28:49
  Yeah. Well, that does it for our
• 1:28:52
  entire list of presentations. So Gavin, any closing thoughts
• 1:28:57
  on this? I don't know.
• 1:28:58
  I'm just going to leave that open to you.
• 1:29:00
  Yeah, not another great year, I would say at the seminar and I
• 1:29:05
  really enjoyed it. And I think should be evident
• 1:29:07
  from our discussion here, I think both of us got a lot out
• 1:29:11
  of it and it always I think the best thing, it's sparks
• 1:29:15
  conversation and discussion for us for the next month or two
• 1:29:18
  following the seminar. So I think that's always great.
• 1:29:21
  Definitely, yeah. We'll, we'll have our own
• 1:29:24
  takeaways. We'll figure out what we can
• 1:29:26
  apply to our processes here at Flexpro Grip.
• 1:29:29
  Maybe a tough on the spot question.
• 1:29:32
  It's A2 parter and you can answer whichever one first.
• 1:29:35
  I'm sure one of these is tougher than the other.
• 1:29:37
  I would love to know what you would like to see at a future
• 1:29:42
  Wake Forest player development seminar.
• 1:29:44
  And then if you were tasked with presenting, I would love to know
• 1:29:48
  what you think you would present on.
• 1:29:51
  I think so your your first question, what I would like to
• 1:29:56
  see. I love any anything that anyone
• 1:30:02
  is discussing, the more that they implement case studies, I
• 1:30:06
  enjoy that because it makes whatever they're talking about
• 1:30:09
  real. I think something that I maybe
• 1:30:12
  would like to see in future years would be if they could get
• 1:30:16
  a player to either participate in a presentation or for them to
• 1:30:20
  present their perspective on player development, either a
• 1:30:24
  current or even a past player, I think would be great.
• 1:30:28
  Because we hear, we hear always from the coaching perspective or
• 1:30:32
  the doctor's perspective or something.
• 1:30:34
  And I, I don't think we ever hear a ton of the guys who are
• 1:30:37
  actually doing the work or not to say not the work, but the
• 1:30:41
  players were actually being affected by this player
• 1:30:44
  development. So I think that would be great.
• 1:30:46
  I think what I would like to present on if I were presenting
• 1:30:52
  would be probably in the realm of business organization or
• 1:30:58
  business implementation within a team.
• 1:31:01
  I think that would be something, something I, you know, I think
• 1:31:04
  about a lot and I'm passionate about is creating efficiencies
• 1:31:08
  within our own team. So I think that would be
• 1:31:12
  something I could present on and would like doing.
• 1:31:14
  Yeah, I, I think that would be a really great presentation is
• 1:31:19
  kind of having that front office type perspective and how it
• 1:31:24
  impacts player development or team culture and overall
• 1:31:27
  success. So maybe you get to work on that
• 1:31:30
  and you can pitch that to Sean and Chris for next year.
• 1:31:33
  Yeah, you'll, you'll never know if you don't try.
• 1:31:35
  Maybe that'll be your side project.
• 1:31:38
  Yeah, well, I'm curious to hear yours.
• 1:31:40
  What's yours that you'd like to see?
• 1:31:42
  I'd love to hear that. Yeah, I, I was about to say, I,
• 1:31:45
  I don't know. I just present on flex program
• 1:31:47
  again. Yeah, OK.
• 1:31:50
  I, I will give you a couple, a couple that I think about now.
• 1:31:54
  Now I'm stuck on the answer you gave.
• 1:31:58
  And I just want to echo that and say like, oh, I'd love to see
• 1:32:01
  someone present on like business organization leadership and how
• 1:32:05
  it impacts an org. I really want to see the agency
• 1:32:10
  discussion. Well done.
• 1:32:11
  I know that was a theme from a couple years ago.
• 1:32:15
  I would like that to be revisited to figure out how
• 1:32:20
  player development can impact contract negotiations and how I
• 1:32:27
  guess the changes that individuals make actually can
• 1:32:30
  lead to potential career altering earnings.
• 1:32:35
  Something something of that nature, I think.
• 1:32:38
  That would be super cool. Sorry to cut you off.
• 1:32:41
  I think that I, I would be interested in hearing that for
• 1:32:44
  sure. And I also think just from our
• 1:32:46
  discussions with agencies, we've seen some agencies kind of take
• 1:32:50
  the approach of being in on player development themselves.
• 1:32:55
  And I I would like to kind of hear about the landscape from
• 1:32:59
  the agents perspective of how much of the player development
• 1:33:03
  they are actually investing in and trying to implement.
• 1:33:09
  Another one that I think would be neat to see is a guy like
• 1:33:14
  Lance Brozdowski, another friend of the program who does
• 1:33:18
  breakdowns kind of from afar. He has connections to these
• 1:33:21
  different organizations, but I do find that position
• 1:33:25
  interesting when he is making very educated guesses on why
• 1:33:32
  guys might have made changes or how changes are going to impact
• 1:33:36
  results. So more like on the fly or in
• 1:33:40
  season type player development discussions like how do we
• 1:33:44
  manage an in season mistake or an in season blunder or Lol and
• 1:33:51
  make adjustments as a coach or staff?
• 1:33:53
  Because a lot of our discussions that we have now are about
• 1:33:57
  building these massive systems to ensure long term success or
• 1:34:02
  not ensure, but I guess build the potential for greater long
• 1:34:07
  term success, not making like Band-Aid type fixes to try to
• 1:34:13
  win a game the next weekend. I do think that's a valuable
• 1:34:16
  discussion for player development because we we've
• 1:34:20
  taken this kind of like shift from short term, just win the
• 1:34:25
  game to now long term be as good as you can be for as long as you
• 1:34:29
  can be. I think we might need to come
• 1:34:31
  back to the middle a little bit and address these quick fixes
• 1:34:36
  and acknowledge that they are important and they are real.
• 1:34:40
  Yeah. And then another thing, maybe a
• 1:34:43
  pipe dream to speak on one day, is I want to figure out how to
• 1:34:49
  objectively measure communication.
• 1:34:52
  It's something I've been passionate about for a long
• 1:34:54
  time. We talked about what we care
• 1:34:56
  about and little things that we try to inject into Flex Pro
• 1:34:59
  Grip. I'm very passionate about
• 1:35:02
  communication, presentation, and the ability for an audience to
• 1:35:07
  capture a message and then even restate it.
• 1:35:11
  So figuring out different ways to assess that I think would be
• 1:35:15
  extremely valuable and scale that across an organization.
• 1:35:19
  So maybe 5 to 10 years from now, I would love to present on that
• 1:35:23
  concept. OK.
• 1:35:25
  That would be awesome if you figure that one out.
• 1:35:27
  Would be a good one. Working on it.
• 1:35:30
  Google Sheets is sorry. Google Forms is helping me
• 1:35:33
  slowly but surely, but I think I need to get back with a team to
• 1:35:37
  to really execute that well. Presentations went for a while
• 1:35:40
  today. I really appreciate you hopping
• 1:35:42
  on with me and Congrats on making your Lay Back podcast
• 1:35:45
  debut. Sweet.
• 1:35:46
  Thanks Adam, I've enjoyed it. Any parting words?
• 1:35:49
  For our listeners, no. I'm.
• 1:35:52
  Good, I think my my big take away from the seminar this year.
• 1:35:55
  I think can be implemented in whatever you do, which is giving
• 1:35:59
  giving your best on whatever it is and creating buy in with
• 1:36:03
  whoever your group is is impactful.
• 1:36:07
  Great. I love it.
• 1:36:08
  Again, Gavin, thanks a ton. Looking forward to calling you
• 1:36:12
  later or tomorrow just to figure out what's next on our own
• 1:36:16
  agenda. But thanks for making time for
• 1:36:18
  this. And to everyone else out there,
• 1:36:20
  thanks for laying back with us.