Latest / Chasing Baseball Dreams / 36: Chris Colabello & Bobby Tewksbary | How Good Is Your Son Really?
Transcript
- CC: I don't know if it means he went to a lot of their events. I don't know if it means he's played in a lot of their tournaments. I don't know if he's played against high level competition, medium, low. Bobby Minor: Welcome back to Chasing Baseball Dreams. Today, joining me on the show are Chris Colabello and Bobby Tookesberry. Chris went from seven seasons in independent ball to hitting 321 with 15 bombs for the Toronto Blue Jays in 2015. And Bobby Actually worked with Josh Donaldson, helped tweak his swing, and was his pitcher for Josh in the 2015 home run derby. And now they've teamed to build up something that I think is really, really cool at Pelotero. And today we're going to talk about their universal rating system or URS as you may hear us refer to it today. And a question a lot of baseball parents have, how good is my son really, and what does he actually need to work on? So Chris and Bobby, welcome to the show. Bobby: Thank you for having us. We're excited to be here. Bobby Minor: All right. So CC: Thank you so much for having us. Yeah. I hope you guys can hear me alright. If my audio's a problem today, I'm sorry. Sorry. I'm usually better than this. Bobby Minor: Yeah no you're you're good. Do you have your chauffeur driving you around, Chris? CC: Right now, yeah. And that's exactly what's happening, yes. Bobby Minor: Okay. I wanna make sure you weren't in in in your Tesla self driving or anything while you're on doing the podcast. So it'd be a little scary. So yeah. So CC: Not yet. Not yet. Bobby: He's he's just working. He he's out there working for us. Bobby Minor: And I want to give a big shout out to Coach Ferber, the one and only Coach Ferber that everybody loves because he's the one that connected me to the both of you. And so I'm really excited and thankful for that connection. So all right, so Chris, let's just jump right into this. you spent seven seasons in Independent Ball before getting your opportunity. And so when a parent sees his son getting passed over, like how does he figure out whether his son needs more exposure or he still has something that he needs to improve on? CC: That's a really good question. for me personally. I I was always a kid who was undersized, who was behind in my development, right? I was a I graduated high school as a seventeen year old. So I was not a particularly good high school player. I played my first varsity game as a junior, hit zero career high school homers, zero division one offers, and played division two baseball. And I turned out playing in a pretty decent league at the end. And so I think The most important thing that I can say to young players or or parents is it's good that they're getting challenged early. Your job as a parent is to love them and support them if they love the game. And then they have every chance possible to make it to wherever they wanna go. That is the is the thing, the advice that I would give to parents. just support them and let them continue to love the game. Because that's what's gonna be most important and that's what's gonna drive their ability to get to where they wanna go. Bobby Minor: That's good. okay, I want to go back to something you just said. So you didn't play your first varsity game until you were a junior. You hit zero high school home runs. What would you say to the parent out there that's that's for lack of a better way of saying it is all pissed off because their son didn't make varsity as a freshman or didn't make varsity as a sophomore? CC: The word I would say is pump the brakes. It's just pump the brakes. It's gonna be okay. Yep. You know, like you're gonna be fine. And th the key to this whole thing is again, they have to love what they're doing. If they don't love what they're doing, it doesn't matter. Like you can be mad that your son or or daughter didn't make the varsity team, but really that decision's not up to you when it comes down to it, right? Somebody somebody either thinks that your player is capable of doing it or not. And that's ultimately what it comes down to. you know, it like you don't get to decide. like a coach. You you're not getting paid to be the coach. So i it is what it is, right? And you can be mad all you want, but use it as motivation, use it as fuel. Keep the receipts and do something about it. Bobby Minor: I love that, I love that great advice. So Bobby, my namesake. So you worked with like big league hitters, you worked with kids who are still figuring out their swings. So you have a dad that's paying for lessons. his son looks great in the cage. What should a dad look for to know whether those lessons are actually helping him hit in games and actually making him a better hitter? Bobby: That's a very layered question. one of the things that I think needs to be pointed out just at the very top is how often are kids being successful or failing simply because of who they're competing against? So if you're, you know, a nine year old but you're facing the kid who's seven and isn't challenging you with velocity, you might be succeeding because that player's just a level below you and isn't isn't even challenging you. Or you might be failing because there's a kid that's throwing gas, doesn't even need to throw strikes, can just get it near the zone and like there's just you're not fast enough because you're not old enough and strong enough to to compete against that. So there's like a a fifty thousand foot view of that where so much success and failure is just a result of who you're playing against. the bigger question is like how are we understanding process? So I get pretty deep with swing mechanics. Swing mechanics matter. I coach ten and eight U softball right now. Haven't talked to anybody about swing mechanics in two years. Cause it's not time for that. They need to worry about accuracy. They need to worry about timing. They need to worry like Coach pitches, swing decisions get introduced. So there's different components that that start stacking up to make the game more and more difficult as you move up the ranks, as you move up the levels of the game. That includes velocities, better pitch locations. So if you're going to the cage and getting lessons, like understand where are you trying to define success? Are you trying to understand, like, I just want to be better with my timing right now, or I just want to be better with accuracy, or I want to be swinging at better pitches. So really have define what you're trying to improve so that you can measure whether or not it is improving. And then are you looking at game results as he got a hit, so that's success, or he hit the ball hard, he made an out, but he hit the ball hard. Or was it a pitch on the outside corner that you hit hard at the shortstop, so you feel good that you hit it hard, but you should have hit it to right field? So there's there's a lot of different ways to understand the process of hitting. I when I start with hitters, it's always like Are you seeing the ball well is the number one question. Number two question is were you on time? Number three, did you get a good pitch to hit? The mechanical breakdowns are usually not mechanical breakdowns. They're other things causing and you're looking at a symptom, not the cause. So if you're paying for lessons and you don't know what the cause of your failure is, that's like you're you're setting yourself up for wild results because you don't understand what you're trying to even fix. Bobby Minor: Yeah, I you maybe say I I think it's crazy and there are a lot of great hitting instructors out there, but I I think it's crazy how you have some hitting instructors that have been working working with the kid for for two or three years but have never seen an in game at bat. You know? But they're you know, and I guess just, keep coming and keep the keep swiping the card. Bobby: Well, you can sit on a bucket and get excited about a hard hit ball in the cage and then you feel good. It's like a lot of you if you're trying to improve your velocity and you throw harder, the number's higher, so you got better. You can create all you can fake whatever energy you want in the cage with a kid and pretend they got better and the parent walks away feeling like the money was well spent. But the the the feedback loop is way too open between the game, the lesson, the practices. Nobody's nobody's like tracking the that feedback loop in an effective way where the the game data's flowing to the lesson, the lessons flowing back to practices and everything is connected so that you can have good visibility. That's like a huge gap in the industry right now. Bobby Minor: Yeah. Basically creating I'll call the the modern day equivalent of the five o'clock hitters. You know. Kids can rake and B P but don't do it in the game. So all right, so CC: Well, they f they forget to tell you that that hitting in a game and hitting in in practice or I th the analogy that I use, they're two different kinds of science, but the only similarity they have is that they're science. One of is seventh grade biology, the other one's advanced nuclear physics, right? So they have the same foundations, but BP doesn't translate to what happens in the game unless you actually understand the concepts and premises that you have to bring with you, which are mostly related to swing at the right pitches, beyond time, create a singular gatherer that allows you to make a million different swings, so on and so forth. And we could geek out about all that stuff if we wanted to. Bobby Minor: Yeah. Well I love it. I love it. So both of y'all just mentioned timing. Look, this is this is for both of y'all. Let's say you're you're s you're standing in line at Chick-fil-A next to a dad, start talking, he's the dad of a baseball player and he just tells you that his son's timing is off at the plate. So without seeing the kid swing or anything, both of you, what's the first thing that you're gonna tell him to look at relative to timing? CC: Depends on how much time we got in line. Bobby: I have a I have a stock line. I have a stock line for this. Can we start with I'll Bobby Minor: Okay. Bobby: start with the stock? Hitters have to be on time twice. So they have to be on time to pitch release, to seeing the ball. So that's the gather that Chris just mentioned, where you have to get in a position where you're seeing the ball. Most hitters are completely late to that. Most hitters don't move until they see the ball, especially younger players. They just they just move Bobby Minor: Yeah. Yeah. Bobby: late. So they're never in a position to to to see the ball. So on time, the first on time is to pitch release, pitch recognition, gather. Zero commitment, just prepping, prepping to see the ball and and make your next move. The second on time is contact, and that's a variable timing window. So the fastball inside, up, tight is the shortest amount of time you have. The the breaking ball that's moving away from you is adding time, down and away. It's you're creating this big diagonal gap of time. And hitters have to be able to account for that at higher levels. There's more and more stress, so that's always gonna stress you to to be try be quicker. And then As soon as you start guessing, good pitchers will play off of that and and make you look bad on the off speed. So if you're not on time to the the pitch recognition part, that's where the symptoms are go up, that's where the mechanical breakdowns happen. So you gotta do the first thing first, be on time to the first component, and then if your swing allows for it, then you can be adjustable with when the the contact part happens. Bobby Minor: What about you? CC: So I it's funny I brought this up last night, with a parent that I was talking to. There's this concept of leverage that I talk about and this it's where words get tricky and I have to be really intentional about how I say things. it's much easier to do with visual demonstrations because then your words don't necessarily have to match the actual feel or or thought. But I talk about leverage a lot, right? There's a concept within the gather where the barrel gets angled and I think every player feels a true form of leverage, right? When you're creating your angle, your barrel tip, whether it's behind your head, out in front of you, right, there's there's some some version of a of a what some people would call a caulk motion with the bat, right? Where you're getting into a position that's right before launch. A lot of players when they're young, they try to feel as leveraged as possible when they make the swing. And what happens ultimately is soon as there's a fluctuation in timing from the pitcher, They get further tipped out because it feels very balanced to get the bat tipped out more or get the bat angled more or wrap the bat around their head, right? That whatever that that concept is that you wanna think of it as. And ultimately that's what causes you to end up having to shoot your swing from different positions. And then therefore, you're traveling different pa distances and you don't really know how to err on the side of early as a hitter in terms of moving early, right? So people say get your foot down sooner. They say, you know, you gotta swing earlier, you gotta swing sooner, and it it really ends up ultimately confusing the kid. Where I start talking about this premise of leverage and like understanding how to feel deleveraged and still get a swing off that isn't necessarily your A swing, but feels like you can hit the ball whenever you want, right? And and that's kind of a more advanced way of talking about it. Bobby's is much more linear and much more clear. Mine would involve a lot of hand gestures and demonstrations, I think, in in the line of Chick-fil-A. So I'd be using straws as fake bats. Bobby Minor: Yeah. Alright, no no great answers. and I think like I just as simple as this too, I think with younger players, it a lot of times, you know, they're waiting until they see the pitch before they're even deciding if they're gonna swing or not. You know, and that's when they're making their decision bef you know, and so it's just it just kind of creates this chain reaction. So if you I wanna get in, I wanna start talking about Pelotero and and the universal rating system and all those things. Either one of you, both of you wanna give just like a you know, an elevator pitch overview of just what Pelotero is. to give people some context as we begin to dig in. Bobby: Yeah, Peltero, so from a category standpoint, we we consider ourselves a player intelligence company. So we want to understand the player, we want to be able to aggregate data. the data means something, so we try to automate that process. So when we're gathering data, we're we're learning about the player, which helps us then help that player in many different ways. So at the at the highest level, player intelligence. Chris, you want to add to that? Sorry, I'll I'll I took over hosting for a second, sorry. Bobby Minor: Chris, anything you want to add then? pfft. All right, Bobby. That's all right, go ahead. CC: Well, I Bobby, you keep going. you like like where you're headed. You good or you want me to go? Bobby: Well, yeah, I mean, so there there's a book that we as a company, there's a book called Play Bigger. And it if you're in the business world at all, there's a ki a concept of category creation and then there's like like an the really simple example is like Uber versus Taxis, where when Uber got created, it makes you feel stupid for going out and putting your hand up and saying, Hey taxi and you're like standing in the rain and like why would you ever do that if you can just press a button? Bobby Minor: Unless it's the cash cab unless it's the cash cab in New York. that's yeah. Bobby: Well, that's a yeah, that's a little different. but CC: That's right. Bobby: the the concept of creating a category, Uber created a whole new version Bobby Minor: Yeah. Bobby: and category of of transportation. Yeah. CC: Roger, yeah. Roger. Bobby: Airbnb versus hotels is another example. So that that kind of concept. Like you could go like Spotify versus buying a CD if you wanted to. Google Maps versus a paper map. There there's these like these shifts in in how we behave. So when when Pelotero like when when we were when the the ideas were percolating about what is happening in the industry, this concept of market insights, what's happening. I had been coming from an area I I had a travel ball org, we had twelve teams that the the quality of play kept getting worse and worse. The parent expectations kept getting higher and higher. The cost of game kept increasing. Expectations were getting worse. Culture was was was falling apart. Players were leaving rec leagues to join travel ball leagues. Players were leaving Legion ball to go play travel ball. there's been a lot more recently with like NAL stuff, transfer rules, shorter draft at the at the recruiting side. So like up and down the the full spectrum of the sport, whether you're like there's six U national rankings for team. It's like there's six. What are we talking about? the competition alignment's a huge problem. I would, I would hate going to the field. And winning or losing, 19 to nothing. it's just a waste of time. We're at the field for four hours. There's a kid in right field that never got a ball hit to him. We spent a bunch of money and time being here, but are we actually getting better? So there's like huge competition alignment problems, huge huge recruiting and exposure problems. high school coaches are upset. Travel ball coaches feel stuck in the model. So all of that to say is like. all of those ideas started converging into this this mindset of how do we help number one, ultimately get away from the age based model where we're we're putting kids together based on when they're born, not based on how good they are. But then who's to say how good you are. So the concept of the the universal rating, which is really the the anchor of everything we're doing with Peltero, is how do we how do we measure players objectively based on how fast they play? Where their running speed, their throwing velocity, how hard they hit the ball, how quick they move laterally, understanding how fast they move so that we can define where do they need to improve. Cause ultimately every play in baseball is just a race. Even the pitcher throwing a fastball, it's a race to the catcher. can we can I get to the ball to the catcher before he hits the ball? everything is timing based. So the ground ball, the shortstop, the the the line drive and the gap that the center field is trying to run down. It's all just how fast can you play. And you have to get bigger, you have to get stronger. there's there's a lot of components to that that we we work hard to try to capture. But ultimately, how do we put the right players on the field so that the games are aligned better, so that the games become actual development, not I wanna go win this tournament, so I'm gonna recruit the best twelve year olds. When it's like, no, that's you're just a three hundred level player. Like let's get as many three hundred level players on the field together because then they're gonna the the iron sharp our iron sharp iron sharpens iron that whole mindset of get the right players Bobby Minor: Yeah. Bobby: on the field so they can compete together. and then to do the rating we need to build, you know, the model for how to capture the data, how to standardize it, how to validate it in in a market where like pop times have become irrelevant because who knows how the catcher set up laser timings where they're getting a three foot running start. So like the data CC: Mm-hmm. Bobby: has to become trustworthy. has to be validated and then it has to have utility behind it so that the players can like we want to make it so parents feel like the current model is like getting in a cab and we're Uber. It's like, no, I have insight, I have visibility. I know I know what's good and bad. Chris likes to call us the governing body of good. Like if you know your eight year old needs to work on things, is playing in a tournament to like beat up on kids that aren't as good as you is that valuable? Use of time and resources? I just we we want to create better education and it's it's the it's player intelligence. It's we need to understand the players and we need to understand the market so that we can help each individual. CC: At the at the core of all that, right, is like let being honest with the player. Just be honest with him. And within the category of player intelligence and letting that player know where he sits in the spectrum of the sport is this concept that we kind of coined of the performance potential gap, where some players have really high speed, right? Like really high like game clocks where they can play f really fast, right? they can they can do things athletically that other kids can't, but maybe they don't they don't perform in the game as well as they should. Where other guys who are on our rating scale who you look at might not be rated quite as high athletically, but they play the game really well. So there's a gap on either side of that. the the follow up to having every player in the world rated is how do we help people identify that gap to to really truly identify where their weaknesses are and what exactly they should or could be working on at any given point in time and in the low hanging fruit sense, right? What is the lowest hanging fruit for any individual athlete? The the biggest challenge nowadays, and I'm I'm sorry we're getting really far away from elever elevator pitch territory and moving into true, right? Like just deep dive into what it is. At the root of all this is we need we need people in 2026 To not feel like they need to spend thousands of dollars to go to a private instructor for infield defense, for a speed trainer, for a hitting coach, for a pitching coach. you know, I heard you guys talk about it when you did the thing with with with Subject, right? You and Ferbs were on that. Bobby Minor: Yeah. CC: It's like we're we're getting all these guys this specialized instruction and instead of helping them just be athletes and become better critical thinkers. Cause if they don't become better critical thinkers, none Bobby Minor: Mm. CC: of this is gonna matter anyway. You can make as athletic as you want and they're not gonna be good at their sport. Period. Bobby Minor: Yeah. That's good. No, and that that was an elevator pitch. We were just on the Empire State Building, but the CC: Hmm. Bobby Minor: it at the Empire State Building taking the elevator, but it was an elevator pitch. So no worries. All right, so let's all right, so here's the I like at least a couple of times a week I get a DM from a parent complaining about perfect games, rankings, or grades, and how subjective they are, and you know, it just doesn't make any sense. So I've already mentioned your URS, your univers universal rating system. So it's a rating, not a ranking. So what does URS actually measure and where, if anywhere, does somebody's opinion come into play? Bobby: So the the way that I like to explain the rating system, very thank you for clarifying it's not a ranking system. There is zero subjectivity to the rating. Zero. It's all data, a lot of computer vision. So the we're we're measuring the five tools of the sport. So it's hit, hit for power, run, field, throw. So we're we're not inventing anything, we're just helping organize it. Baseball has the twenty eighty scale at the professional level, which is really a standard deviation of Fifty is an average major league player, sixties above average, seventy is an all-star, eighties Hall of Famer. And then it goes down the other the other side. PG has a grading system. ten down. I think on their website it goes all the way down to one, but like once you get below five, it's like it's dangerous for you to be on the field type stuff. Major League's made the the scouting scale is really only for major league baseball. And PG scale is really only for kids that are trying to play in college because it's really they're a scouting service, that's what they have on their website. so those don't apply to the whole sport. So, in golf there's a handicap system. Any golfer can get a handicap. karate's got a belt system, chess has the ELO system rating. there's there's different ways to organize stuff. USA gymnastics that has a level system that's based on safety 'cause you don't want to do skill that could ultimately like break your neck if you're not capable. So there's a progression to it. The r our rating system is zero to a thousand, where the one thousand level is the best that's ever done it. are all this Chapman's fastball, Mizerowski's fastball now, the fastest runner, the fastest bat speed. Like that's it's setting the mark. Like Usain Boltz in the hundred meter dash. any player ever, if you've thrown a ball, you can get a throwing rating. If you've run a thirty yard dash or a softball, a twenty yard dash. you have a rating for that. So it's it's really just based on how fast you do something. And ultimately each category, so the hit, hit for power, field, throw, run, you get a rating. You can very clearly see like out of these five categories, which have a bunch of subcomponents, but at a high level you can see where your deficiency is and what you need to do to get better. Each of those are there's a weighted a weighted value system, so you get an overall score. But each player is from zero to a thousand. And you know, we've been We've been testing college programs, travel programs, youth players, baseball, softball, the the the higher tier, like the D one, mid major, low major, D two, D three, like all the numbers are tracking the way they should because ultimately like it's how fast you play. That's what it all comes down to. And there's a skill level for sure, but there's like the re the showcase player that the industry's really dealing with right now, I would say. But the yeah, the rating is it's it's the five tools of the sport and and putting it on the same scale from beginner to expert. It's all on the same scale. Bobby Minor: Okay, so a quick question, then I've I have a little bit more detailed question. So just based on what you just said, so people understand, it's not a this is not age-based, it's not grade-based or Bobby: Zero age. Yep. Bobby Minor: anything. So Bobby Witt Jr. and your eighth grade son are both rated on the exact same scale. So Bobby Witt Jr. CC: Pretty close. Bobby: Correct. Bobby Minor: is say let's say he's an eight twenty-seven, I don't know what he is. Let's say he's an eight twenty-seven, and your eighth grade son might be a four hundred. Okay, well, I figured he's good. Okay. You don't have to go into each each of the five tools, but just so people understand, because they're probably thinking, well, how's that any different than perfect game where you're doing your positional VLO, your exit VLO, your 60 time? Let's talk about arm strength, from an infielder's perspective. What do you guys do differently to measure his arm strength compared to, you know, hid hitting them five grounders at short, you know, and taking their best, you know, their best VLO in their throw to first? Bobby: So Bobby Witt's an eight seventy four, just for the record. On he's he's Bobby Minor: okay. Bobby: pretty good. Like once you get up into like nine nine hundred territory, you're you're doing special stuff. Cause you gotta you gotta be really good in in multiple facets. You can't you can't be like a six hundred run and then still be a close to nine hundred. a lot of the showcase stuff and I think everybody's seen, I don't know if you the the the video of the kid who fields a ground ball at shortstop and then does like a a run and gunny, like you're not even measuring his Bobby Minor: Yeah. Yeah, it runs like halfway across the infield. Yeah. Bobby: Yeah, he sprints across the field and throws the ball. So we do arm strength, just arm strength. You just throw the ball as hard as you can. We don't care if you crow hop, pull down, whatever. Like we just need a max throwing velocity number. But we also have a standardized infielder t it's a fielder pop time. So every player starts the same exact distance away from the target. You're in a push-up position. You pop up and make a throw as quick as you can. Players do it in many different ways. We don't care what how they do it. Our only instruction is get the ball there as fast as you can. So That play is it's meant to simulate a diving play, a challenging play. So the the grade, like yeah, you can you can get all the metrics. You can go and get metrics from a lot of different places, but it's really the organization of it and how the score gets combined and the utility behind it and the validation and the standardization. So like the kid that fields the ground ball short and sprints across the field and throws, you're just doing an arm strength test. So like he wants his throwing velocity super high as a short as an infielder. Just like the kid in the outfield that sprints across the outfield and throws a ball. it it just it's not a test you like what you gotta understand what you're testing for the test to be meaningful. Otherwise it's just a data point that's just like, yeah, like the kid you watch that with your eyeballs and you go, That's not reasonable. That's not a baseball play. CC: I would add this layer I was add that I would add this layer to it too, which is I think something that fascinates me, right? I I've I've Bobby and I were at the kind of the forefront of Bobby Minor: Or we're gonna say Chris. Go ahead. CC: of this data and tech revolution thing that happened in, you know, the early twenty teens and and Bobby was, you know, customer number one to five for every piece of tech that came out. Literally like all the tech would show up in the building. And what became eerily apparent to me as we were doing this stuff is you had all these devices that were measuring all the same, some different stuff, but number one, none of this stuff was recorded on video, right? Nothing was was video validated. So that made it a problem. You didn't know if the athlete that was doing the thing was actually the athlete that was doing the thing. Second of all These devices all measured stuff a little bit differently, right? Which made it incredibly hard to say, okay, I'm gonna compare Johnny over here to Joey over there and where do they stand in the spectrum of the sport. Not that you ever wanted to compare the players to each other, but at a minimum you wanted to understand, you know, an apples to apples kind of situation. And and I would say so that's where the computer vision piece of this came in. And the third thing that again became very clear to me is that people are trying to lie about their data and manipulate their data and cheat their data. If you go on some kids' Twitter profile right now, you're gonna see that they throw a one eight two at ninety four miles an hour and they run a six one because somebody told them that that that's true and they feel compelled to put that in their Twitter profile when the reality is nobody actually cares and they know you're lying. So it's it's not that big a deal. What became more fascinating to me was one of our partner organizations sent us a video of a player, a softball player, who literally was getting laser times for their recruiting video, and they were starting a foot and a half behind the laser gate. So everybody's like, we do laser timings. I'm like, well, does that actually matter? So Bobby said this before, how do we make the data meaningful in a way that it actually matters? Everybody's been trying to validate data for so long and the key component to this was doing it with computer vision, right? Like you can't cheat our tests. Like period. They're all the same all the time. That's just the reality of it, you know, and that that was like a big talking point for us. Bobby Minor: No, that's great. that's that's really good stuff. So because that's one of the things that I hear with perfect games rankings is how can you rank players where player A lives on the lives on the East Coast and plays up and down the East Coast, player B lives in Texas and is playing in the Southwest, and player C lives in California and they stay out there and play. So they're not playing, you know, the same teams or anything. So how can you how can you objectively rank them? So like when you go to the Pelotero website, it says a seven 700 is a 700 everywhere. So if my son gets tested in Texas and another kid gets tested in Florida, how do you make sure those scores mean the same thing? And what keeps different equipment or different testing conditions from changing the result? Bobby: Yeah, we s we talk about this a lot. The standardizing the test is a huge deal. even some like things right now with like a USA bat versus a UAASA bat for exit velocity testing, like that has to be considered. If you use diamond kinetics or blast motion, they measure bat speed in a different spot of the bat. So those numbers are gonna be different. So things like that, those are just two examples that they they are accounted for. The majority of the testing that we do is it's standardized in a way where it's like you're gonna run a thirty yard dash. You've got to measure that out. We train people how to do it. But you you if you set up the cones wrong, then the test can be wrong. But that's true for any test. So there's got to be some care and consideration for, you know, you got to set up the test properly. But like a test like the fielder pop time, like we're we're standardizing a way to measure that that component of of baseball skill. There's a push up upper body strength component, there's mobility component, there's arm action component. There's some kids that have to shuffle and throw because they can't get it there. So there's a lot of things that emerge from that. because the test is standardized. So the kid in Texas and the kid in New Hampshire, they're doing the same exact test. Same distance, same conditions, same everything. So the we we try to strip out any variables that exist. So they're doing the same exact thing. And that's like, you know, a kid that's trying to play in college, if you're like a sophomore in college, you're doing the same test as kids that are on the college rosters. So you can literally you can see like I did this test, he did this test. How do I compare to that level of play that I'm Aspiring to. Bobby Minor: Okay. So alright, I'll I'll Chris let me ask you this, 'cause I mean to get you in to get you involved a little bit more in the conversation. so let's say a kid has a a really strong perfect game grade, he's an eight he's an eight point five, but his URS shows some some real gaps, and his dad wants to know which one to believe. So how would you walk him through what each evaluation is actually telling him? CC: It it no offense to the to the to the perfect game grade. I don't know what an eight and a half means on their scale. I don't know if it means he went to a lot of their events. I don't know if it means he's played in a lot of their tournaments. I don't know if he's played against high level competition, medium, low. So it's all based on some subjectivity, right? Somebody had to create that number out of thin air based on, I'm sure some validity, right? But this is part of the the issue, right? Is I I can watch a baseball game and know what good looks like, right? You can watch Watch a baseball game and know what good looks like. Bobby can watch a baseball game and know what good looks like, but we're gonna have different things that we probably favor, right, that are gonna make us like one kid a little bit more than another and so on and so forth. So that element of subjectivity is always gonna be involved in anything that has a human element to it. As it relates to Pelotero scoring, it's a standard test, man. go run. Either you run in the time that you run and that's it. That that creates your running score, right? You throw at the speed you throw at, right? You do your defensive drills like the ladder the the five ten five agility test and and the pop time test and you do those in in the times that create your score. So ultimately we measure how fast you play. Part one of this whole thing is we have to understand how fast you play the game. And it really has very little to do with how you perform against other competition. Everybody wants to account for that right away as they're going into this stuff. And that's really, really important. Don't get it twisted. We're gonna get to that, right? But before we do that, we have to understand how fast people play. Because nobody else in the world right now has any better way of doing what we've created, right? They don't have a better way of saying, we're gonna evaluate the skills that it takes to play this game in a standardized way to tell you where you sit on the spectrum. Now whether you can actually play and you have baseball IQ or not, again, we'll get to that. But it has to start foundationally with standardizing this these this testing. And that's why everybody that we're showing this to and doing it with is really leaning in and saying like, okay, we get it and this makes sense and this has to become something that that really transcends the sport. Bobby: And it's just to to build on that, PG's grade PG's grade. That's what they do. That's I'm not here to tell you it's good, bad, indifferent. It is what it is. They they they that they stand behind it, so that's their thing. How about like a youth based youth league tryout where every player is rated one through five? Like what is that? What is a what does a four mean to you versus me? Like is a kid fast? He's like, Yeah, he's a three. Like a three for Bobby Minor: Yeah. Yeah. Bobby: an eight year old, a three for a twelve year old, like what does that even mean? But that's such a common practice in youth leagues. if you go to a tryout for a travel ball team, how are you being evaluated? I d I don't know. Do you like Bobby? Do you know how they're being evaluated at a travel ball tr Bobby Minor: It Bobby: tryout? Or like even a high school tryout? Like you go to the trial, you do stuff, and then like what do I need to work on? That's one of something that people had that used it for tryouts this fall. They were like, we could provide families with feedback. Of like this is where you're at, this is where you're at, this is where our players that we took are at, and this is what you need to work on. And the parents walked away from a travel ball tryout happy that they got feedback. that that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen in the this industry. It's like you made the team, where's your money? Get cut the check. Bobby Minor: Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. So okay, so a parent could reasonably ask, like, why should I trust your number any more than anybody else's? Okay, so so what have you done to check whether like URS scores line up with how well players actually perform in games and like what what can't the scores tell us? Obviously I know like baseball CC: Well Bobby Minor: IQ and you said you'll get to that, Chris, but yeah, so why should a parent trust your number more than somebody else's? CC: First and foremost, we've created this scale off of what the best players in the world do, right? So people ask me all the time, they're how how good's your data? And I'm like, it's perfect. I I have no better way of saying it than that, because everything is being indexed against best in the world, right? So if you think about who's the best runner in the world, it's Usain Bolt, right? He runs the fastest. So he's the thousand. Who is the alpha and omega in in the category? And then you work off that, and then everything kind of works down off that, right? Right. One of the things that that we're gonna do is get a lot of this college data in and be able to say, hey, okay, now we know what that level of play looks like, right? So it's it's very, very simple to create an index that works down in the sport because zero is you've never picked up a ball before. Right. And so the numbers are classifying players. with no discrimination toward age. And if you can do that, ultimately you're just letting a person know where they sit in the spectrum of the game. Golf doesn't care how old you are when it they measure your handicap, right? When you're young before you grow, they let you hit from the forward T's and things like that. That's the only distinction in golf. But when you go play a golf match against somebody, they ask what your handicap is, and then depending on your age, the pros will tell you, okay, you belong on this T, this guy belongs on that T, and so on and so forth. So the data is perfect and it's again, it's because it's indexed against across the whole sport. That might sound that probably sounded super narcissistic. Bobby Minor: No, no, no, no, no. I really appreciate you explaining it. Bobby, share the story that it you you shared this when we when we talked last week, but the story of the softball player from well, I don't know where she was from, South Dakota, North Dakota yeah, Idaho. Share that story Bobby: Idaho. Yeah. Yep. Bobby Minor: if you don't mind. Bobby: Yeah, we actually just an article just came out about it from cause we did the interview. So, she's a she's a very good player in Idaho. She had twenty six homers in twenty nine games. She she but she lives in Idaho. I grew up in New Hampshire, Chris grew up in Massachusetts and Italy, so like when you grow up in the northern climates, you're not y there's like a perception of like, and and f they must be so good in Florida, they must be so good in Texas, they must be so good in California, Arizona, where I 'cause you're you're dealing with snow. And they're outside playing. this girl, she's a very good player, but she lives in Idaho, so she didn't know where she stood. And her rating is high seven hundreds. And I was able to pull up a college camp at an SEC softball program, and the average score of a player that attended the camp and her score, she was a hundred points higher than every the average score at that camp, the median score. And the the look on her face when she saw that, because she's she didn't there's so much doubt and so much uncertainty around where do I say she play she plays in a 4A high school, she knows that. In Idaho, she knows that she plays in travel softball, but like that's few and far between when they're playing like elite competition of like if you're trying to play in the SEC or a power four, you're not facing that competition often. How good would it be if she could be playing that competition often, like from a recruiting standpoint? Coaches want to see those players playing against that level of play because she can go t for a Idaho and hit twenty six homers in twenty nine games. That's absurd. That's an abs that's video game stuff. But she might be completely capable of playing and being successful at an SEC school because she's good enough to be there. But she just had when I when when I showed her the number and just the look on her face was so cool from like a founder's perspective of like we're building this thing and we're we're trying to make it real in the world, to see her face and just her that real it was a look of realization and I can do this. I do belong. Cause that's half the battle. And you you get in front of a room of any group of high school kids and you say, Who wants to who wants to play college baseball? Every hand goes up. Every single hand goes up. But not every hand that goes up, their their behavior doesn't reflect it. They don't understand the sacrifices it takes. They don't understand how much failure you're gonna go through. How hard the game gets as you move up. So much success at younger levels is because you're playing above your level of play. You're succeeding because you're just bigger, stronger, faster. And they they fall in love with being good. And then the game gets hard and they go, I don't know if I like this. And hey, maybe you get a driver's license. Maybe you there's other fun stuff you could be doing that's different than baseball. And you gotta be able to, you have to make sacrifices. You have to love the game. That's what Chris was talking about earlier. If you don't love the game to play at the next level, CC: And just Bobby: You might be chasing money now with NIL, but it's gonna be pretty unfulfilling. It so that d just yeah. It was a ma the the look of realization was stunning to see. It was amazing. CC: To to put a bow on this whole concept, right? If you really think about it, you you Bobby Minor: Yeah. CC: don't need to travel across a country to play against kids that are rated the same as you. If you just disregard age, right, until you get the peaks of high school players. that's when national level competition should happen in theory, which is what it was meant to be, but now it's not that. Everybody and their mother can create a team and just call it national, right? They just put right national next to their team and it's the elite triple gold McNugget with cheese team, whatever, right? It's some some name that somebody Bobby Minor: Yeah. CC: gave it. So until you get to those peaks of high school players, you don't have to pluck them to go play on a national circuit. You can take a bunch of thirteen, fourteens and fifteens that are all rated the same in your neighborhood and play meaningful games. That are important to their development at the field down the street and not go spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. There's just this wild perception in the world that you're gonna play better competition if you play travel. And really, it's it's really an epidemic at this point, right? And everybody knows it. Everybody at the big league level is talking about it. All the guys I played with are like, this is ridiculous and out of control. How do we stop it? How do we help it? How do we how do we facilitate it? I watched your your pod with Dustin Pedroia and it it it was awesome. I I I literally was thinking about I'm literally thinking about how how many guys I talk to that we all know there's a problem. Nobody's listening to us. Nobody. Bobby: Amazing. CC: Because some guy down the street is allowed to have an opinion because he started a travel ball club at facility X. And when I tell a parent, hey, your kid needs this, this, and this, as a former major leaguer with some understanding of what good looks like, and Dustin Pedroya tells them, but they go down the street and Johnny at at Joe's Hit Shack says, Man, your kid could hit third place shortstop and go to the University of Alabama the natural predisposition for a parent is to hear what they want to hear and not what they need to hear. So we have to create a system that becomes more important than my opinion or Dustin Pedroya's opinion. No offense to Dustin. I love him. I loved playing against him. It was awesome. I I right like the I got to revere those guys and what they said and that was part of why I I became one of them. But the words we're saying are not important anymore because some guy down the street has an opinion that is more likable than mine, right? And and that's where I I get a little bit confused. Bobby Minor: So, yeah, there's just so much there. Okay, you mentioned bigger, faster, stronger. So let's say a smaller 13-year-old, because I think that's a really pivotal, pivotal, pivotal age for players. So a smaller 13-year-old gets a lower score than an early an early puberty kid, okay? How should his parents use that information without treating today's physical differences as a prediction of where both players are going end up? Bobby: It's a really good question. And Chris brought up being able to play local. there's a whole host of questions a whole bunch of questions around like why are players moving up to the big field when they turn thirteen. If they like ultimately if you can't throw like seventy miles an hour, you probably shouldn't move up. Just you probably shouldn't. I'm dealing with it at the eight U softball, ten U softball. There's girls on the eight U team that that can't throw a ball from one base to another. They They can't play catch and they're on it on the field with the other kids that can play catch. And it's nothing against the player. They're just not ready to be there. There's kids at tenure that can't play catch, but they were born on a certain date, so they gotta be there. So why? And this is like getting back to the the cab versus the Uber thing. Historically, somebody's date of birth, you they yeah, we CC: 'Cause it was easy. Only because it was easy. Bobby: got we got our age brackets on the website. You just follow it and then that's what you do. But is there a better is there a better way of doing it? Like Historically have we had the ability, realistically, you can test you can do fifty athletes in an hour to get like to do a rating. You could if you have the station set up, you can this is easy testing to do to complete with a at scale. So if running a tryout in a gym and having kids field four ground balls and throw and take three swings and whatever, like to create a scale of one through five, that's not helpful. It's not you can't track that progress either. Cause like, he's a three today, but he's a four tomorrow. But like He aged up, so what does that mean? The the this the undersized 13-year-old, which was me, I was I was not a big 13-year-old. Chris was undersized. we both graduated at 17. I was I was 5'10, 165 pounds coming out of call out of high school. Chris was like 6'3, 165 pounds coming out of school. they just need time and they need to be working on the right things. If they love the game and they're working on the right things and playing against good competition, That kid playing on the big field where they hit the furthest bolt they have and it's a fly ball to shortstop. What what's the point of that? You're you're you're putting them in a position of failure. And that's it's unfair to the player. It's unfair to the the game, really. Like they're not playing it's like i moving up in a video game level and you don't know how to beat the level before it. Like you haven't earned the right to be there. You don't play fast enough. So they just like that CC: I hated baseball when I was thirteen. When we moved up to the big diamond I hated it. I was it was the fur I couldn't hit the ball out. I was in little league, I was hitting balls into the other field. Right? There's there's a real there's a real connotation to the prepubescent thirteen year olds that is it can be bad, right? I I I heard the thing about USA soccer and Bob you'll appreciate me talking about this 'cause they're they're no longer taking the most physical player. They're taking the most skilled player and we can start to identify stuff like that, right? We can take kids that have polished Bobby: I was gonna bring this up. Yeah. CC: skills that are that are that are not as physical 'cause those those players are figuring out how to solve problems and win challenges Independent of their physicality. Now it's the analogy that I use is imagine you're running the marathon and you hit all your potholes in the first ten miles of the marathon and everybody else has a smooth trip until they get to mile 16, 17. They hit all their potholes then and their speed bumps then. Now they have no idea how to handle those where the people that hit them sooner, they have smoother sailing. They know they know how to navigate that road when they get there and then they go past everybody, right? Your your success as a 13U player has never in the history of Anything been predictive of your success as a 20-something. And here we are as a society getting dumber and not acknowledging the fact that we're not accounting for all the facts that actually matter, which is what is your physicality going to look like 10 years from now? Right? And so we have to instill fun. And again, fun has to be rooted in putting people on the right field at the right time. Because if not, we don't even give them the opportunity for fun. One way or the other. Bobby said it earlier, we're creating Creating fun through this illusion of being better than the other guy. let's go to a tournament and mercy everyone. Who cares, dude? You're not doing anything productive. That is not productive for anyone. It's not productive for you or the guy on the other side the field. Because you're gonna shatter that kid and then you're gonna get shattered in a few years when the game gets hard. So you know, Bobby Minor: It's funny. No. No, that's r that's really good. I I commented on a Facebook post two days ago in a travel baseball group here in Dallas Fort Worth where i the a eleven U majors team played up but they played up in a twelve U double A tournament and same thing, they run ruled everybody. And so, they were getting blasted for for doing that. And I I only mentioned that historically if you if you play up a year, then you can play down one level. So like eleven U majors can play twelve U Triple A. if you play up two years, you can play down two levels. And but I was just saying, to me it's pointless. if you're an eleven U majors team, I don't care there's one year one year age difference, but there's probably a huge talent gap between majors and double A. You know what I mean? And like what's the point of it? I like when I was coaching the eleven U majors team, I've never played in a twelve U double A tournament. Like for what? And but anyway, what one of the moms I I think got offended. Yeah. Go ahead. CC: I wanna stop you for one second, Bobby. Everything you just said to me, you could have said the pterodactyls are flying out of the coop and it would have meant the same thing to me as everything you just said about majors and double A and triple A and and second year and first year. I d that means nothing to me. I have no connotation of what that means. I have a perception of what it could, but realistically, Bobby Minor: Yeah. Yeah. CC: how do we how do yeah, like how do we know, right? How w w does this dad have his buddy's kid on the Bobby Minor: Yeah. CC: team? Or I like I don't I don't know any of that stuff. Bobby: That's the point. Yeah. CC: Yeah. Bobby Minor: Yeah. CC: Sorry, I yeah. Bobby: Are are the eleven year olds all six foot hundred and eighty pounds playing against a bunch of twelve year olds Bobby Minor: Yeah. Bobby: who are f four foot four eighty pounds? Bobby Minor: No. And every anybody that's what I tell parents all the time. a anybody can start a team or an organization. They can call it whatever they want. They can label whatever it they want. And it doesn't mean anything. Just because it it it's a majors team doesn't mean it's a majors team. Just because it's a double A team doesn't mean it's a double A team. So all right, l I wanna spend the rest of our time talking about. So what what y'all are doing, what does it mean to the individual parent out there? How can they benefit and utilize what you're doing right now? So speak to three people. The parent out there, the coach out there, and the organizational director out there. Walk us through how they can like how they can utilize the these really incredible resources that you've created. Bobby: The example you just gave about the twelve U majors, eleven double A, whatever, that that's like the perfect analogy. I think there's a lot of FOMO right now. There's a lot of as a parent, there's a lot of doubt and you're you there's fear that you wanna you wanna get your kid on the right path, get him on the direct get him on the the the track to success and all this stuff. What ends up happening is the there's just recruiting to different age levels now because the the age groups create this false gateway or are what's the word I'm looking for? There's a there's a false stepping point based on age. So you the the twelve U team that wants to be perceived as good is gonna recruit the best twelve year olds they can. Instead of being like, hey, we're a two fifty team. We need to get a bunch of two fifty players 'cause the the team down the street is a two fifty team and we want to create good competition. It's it's a complete paradigm shift in compared to what's happening right now. So for the parent that does not currently have visibility that, they're sitting in the stands and there's the scheming of we're gonna go to this team and we're gonna go to that team and we're gonna stay. And there's all this those conversations that are happening. they go out to dinner after the game and they're plotting and trying to figure out what's next. It's all fake. It's all fake and we wanna give you we wanna give you the the light to see that it's fake. we wanna we wanna give that to the industry of there's a different reality that exists that most of the coaches know it but they feel like they have to participate in the in the system. So for the org owner, this is a way to reset the culture and at the collegiate level, college coaches aren't thrilled with the players they're getting because they're coming up through this like I didn't play so I'm gonna go to the next team or I'm gonna get recruited to there and everybody thinks they're good. High school coaches are getting squeezed out and how many coaches are quitting Coaching because they can't stand the culture that's been created around this industry. It's it's really sad. So visibility, education for the parent, tools for the coaches, for the org owners to to do something different, to participate in the next thing that's going like it used to be wrecked ball, now it's travel ball. This is the next wave. This is the next thing. It's a different way to organize the sport. It's a different thing. And it's Bobby Minor: So Bobby: it's it's like going from rec ball became less than to travel ball. So any b any player that's serious or good feels like they need to move on to the travel ball thing. Travel ball is now fake because we've got these fake age brackets. Everybody's selling something different. There's no definitions, there's no there's no visibility to what anything actually means. You're paying all this money and traveling all these places, but is the product actually getting better? Are you just playing a bunch of rec local games that cost more money? So we want to help people save time, money, energy. We want to give them visibility and feel empowered in the process. I wish you didn't have a podcast. How about that? the fact that you have a podcast that talking about all these problems is kind of the the point. It's you and Greg Olson and like the Donovan and the soccer world. Like there's so many former players and coaches that are looking around going, What the heck happened? This is not good. We're just providing a solution and a system for it. CC: I I always promised myself I always promised myself I was never gonna be the old guy yelling at the clouds and here I am, I'm I feel like I'm starting to be the old guy yelling at the clouds, right? And and again, the the the thing that gives me peace of mind is the fact that all these other guys are doing it too, right? And and they're probably being louder than me, but there's a clear problem. There's a clear pro problem, right? And and and you're seeing it manifest. And Nick Sabin, the greatest college football coach on the planet. at the collegiate level stop coaching because he's like the the they can't do this anymore, right? The kids are desensitized from changing teams, changing organizations, the the monetary aspect of it, right? We've taken the this professional game and and pushed it down, right? And it's it's now penetrating the youth levels in some capacity, right? There's some element of that which is basically the fear of of of of Telling a 12-year-old who has a non fully formed functioning brain that they're awesome. Right? I'm watching these events where they get all this gear and they give all this stuff and and the real the reality of it is as a kid you feel empowered. You feel cool when that happens. I would have loved to have been the 13-year-old kid that got chosen for the triple gold select fest, whatever, whatever, right? It would have made me feel like I was the man. The problem with making a kid feel like he's the man is they don't know how to handle it most of the time. And so now you're seeing it happen at the collegiate level. You got kids that are completely desensitized to changing teams, changing organizations, going somewhere else. You got kids going to three different schools in three years. Like what? How? That's not the meaning of sport. That's not why this was built. That's not why we created this. Every one of us that's had success at any level will tell you that the journey was the destination, right? The hard shit that we did was the meaningful stuff. That's what helped make us better men. I don't hit three twenty one in the American League if I don't go through all the stuff that I went through before that. Right? Like everything that led up to that was was the stuff that that means something to me. So big picture how what does this mean to parents? We're starting to partner with organizations and we're offering this to orgs to say, Hey, look, just go test your players, right? And we're we're we're really starting to to to kind of move the ball down field here more and more. How do we how do we get as many kids tested as possible? That's the question that that we're answering currently. So and and you know, we want everybody to have access to this. We want this to become mainstream and you know, really the standard. Bobby Minor: That's good. So listening to just everything that that y'all are doing, if I'm a if I'm a dad CC: Yeah. Bobby Minor: or a coach watching this right now, I'm thinking, how much does all of this cost? I'm probably gonna need thousands of dollars worth of equipment and gear, everything. So how how much how much am I gonna have to spend CC: Give me a cell phone. Bobby Minor: to be able to test my son or to test my team? What do I need? Bobby: Testing from an equ from an equipment standpoint, you need cones, a phone, and then some sort of device to capture ball speed. So like a pocket radar is completely fine. So you can you can get full sh I'll call it showcase data, if you even want to call it that. Every metric that kinda gets emerged from a showcase, from a phone, cones and pocket radar. So I'll I'll say the the cost of equipment is less than like one showcase entry fee 'cause you probably already have a phone. we partner with organizations. So in a perfect world you're signing up for a team, for a an event, to to to get the data captured. We don't we have a the the concept of validating the data. mom and dad can't just go out and take setup cones and and record it. That's like it it has to be through official like certified partners for ours because if we just let anybody do testing, there's no there's no way to validate the stuff, so it gets a little sketchy. I don't know if we I don't know if we make our our MSRP public on it's a monthly CC: Way less than one lesson. Yeah, yeah. Bobby: cost. it's like a couple of coffees at Starbucks. A couple couple coffees at Starbucks. it's it's the lowest cost option to do something like this that's ever existed. I'll put it that way. in a perfect world it's it's part of a service that you're already doing. So you're you would be doing it because you're choosing a Pelotero partner to to go and do whether it's a team a hitting off season hitting program or whatever that looks like. But it's it's just part of what you're doing and it's part of what you're paying to do anyway. we do have people that are asking to do like testing events. So that'll be something that maybe we set up an email list for that if people are interested. But it is the lowest cost offering if if you looked at the cost of you could get multiple years of Pelotero, multiple years for the cost of one showcase. CC: We can la right now current cost is twenty five bucks a month to have a a Bobby Minor: Right. CC: profile active with us. I don't we're I don't know why we're we're we're working on different solutions and different Bobby: That's I don't know if we're gonna put the number out there. CC: offerings throughout the market right now to to be able to provide this to everyone, Bobby Minor: Okay. Yeah. CC: right? that's that's our our current pricing, right? That's what all our partners charge their athletes right within the organization. And so the reality is like how do we again how do we do this and and help a little league and a youth league and so like just trying to piece together, you know, do they need to be yearly subs, do they need to you know it all of that is is really up for grabs right now and again because we want to do something that's incredibly impactful for the sport. It's it's way more about you know Bobby said the thing before about being the governing body of good. If anybody had told me 20 years ago or 15 years ago or 10 years ago while I was playing that I was going to run a technology company who was going to be the standard bearer of what it meant to be good in the sport I would have told you were crazy because when him and I were in the cage I I hated the tech aspects. But that's it took us 30 minutes to get ready to hit one day because he strapped me into all this stuff and he's looking It screens going, my God, look at it, look at this data. And I'm like, where does it say how to hit Chris Sale's slider up there? I don't, I don't get, I don't like, I don't, you're looking at all these charts and graphs and numbers and they don't mean anything. No, what we want to do is provide meaning to the athlete, right? Like, let's make data collection incredibly easy, let's make it the lowest cost possible, and let's make the score as meaningful as it can be. So people understand where they sit and what they need to do to get better. Bobby: See, so much of the pricing is this is a ongoing thing. We've we've called it a perpetual showcase in the past. Where it's like we we want you to test every quarter at a minimum. Like we you you need to track your progress and see how you're improving. If it's like a youth league, I would love the tryout to be a a rating test and then you organize the teams based on ratings. So there's actual utility to it. We're not just getting numbers just to get numbers just to get numbers. You know, it's we the the The first test is awesome, but the second test is even better because then you can see the trends and you can st start tracking your progress. We want we want the that visibility, we're not trying to chase a one time event. We want people to be on for ten years. We want the the eight year old to to track their journey for ten years, not a one time thing. So it's it's a different product. It's a different again, the the concept of the category. If you're into books, get the the play bigger book 'cause it's fantastic in it all. It'll make sense, but it'll be it'll help you in life anyway. But yeah, but it this needs to be accessible to the masses. It can't like the the sport is pushed into exclusivity in a lot of ways. We're trying to make it more inclusive. We're trying to localize the game. We're trying to give tools to the local coaches so they don't have to spend all the money on airfare and travel and hotels and teams are getting penalized 'cause they live too close to a tournament. They gotta pay a hotel fee 'cause they live there. It's like what a at some point the pricing gets predatory and CC: It's all an il it's an illusion. it we've created an illusion. I I dreamed about a scenario where there was like the opportunity to play more Bobby: There there isn't another option. They're just other peop they're CC: when I was a kid. I dreamed about it. AAU was available to the guys that were first rounders and and you know D one guys that were committed to to to these these schools, these illustrious schools. Like I it wasn't an option to me. And I dreamed about having more opportunity to play. Now we're so far down the path of crazy that you can play every weekend if you want. Literally you could play a tournament every weekend for a different team with a different organization. and just play like I I think you pointed it out. You pointed out there was a kid that played like 140 some odd games at age 12. Yeah. Bobby: There's a website that there's a guest player website you can go on and join any team you want anytime. There's services built around it. Bobby Minor: No, 170 games, 170 games in a 12 month period. so Bobby: I have a text message I gotta find on that. Keep going. Keep going. Bobby Minor: well find it so so okay, so here, so how can parents, coaches, org directors, where can they find out everything they need they need to know about Pelotero and then where can they follow what's going on on social? CC: Yeah, w dot pelotero dot com, that's our our marketing website, right? It tells the story about who we are. Pelotero is the Spanish word for ball player, so if you really you really sink it, Pelotero, you know, that's what all my teammates would call it. so that's our website. Pelotero app on Instagram and Twitter is where you can find us. That's kind of our Where we we we we rant a lot, Bobby and I hand tend to to to get on rants. I'm a little bit more visual and and and hand gestury than than most as you can tell. but yeah we're I we're trying to do I think, you know, we resonate so much with you the first time we were introduced to you is because the message you're conveying to the world is is right. It's right and it's so necessary, right? Like we want to educate parents better. We want to give players better opportunities. Lower the cost of the game. Right? That's it it's it's what it's meant to be sport. this game was so meaningful for me. It was the most important thing in my life for so long, right? A to the point where at times I let the game define me as an individual. But I also know that it it shaped me into the person that I am, which I think is an okay human. great mentors, great leaders, great people that were my kind of north stars that were were people that I got to learn from and and I want those opportunities for every kid. I don't want a a a ten, eleven, twelve year old to rather be an influencer than a baseball player, right? Like that's and that's a thing that's happening, right? Because strictly because of the infrastructure that we've created and this again, this the possibility of it going sideways on you at a young age where the reality is we can do better. We should do better. We have all this technology available to us and we're not doing better, right? Like we're getting dumber, it looks like. Bobby Minor: No good stuff, Chris. You didn't find it? Bobby: I didn't find I didn't f I didn't find the thing it was it was it was like an eight U softball team that played over two hundred games in one calendar year. They played like it was like fifty weeks out of the year they played in tournaments and it's like at least four games per tournament. I was like, You're playing two hundred games at eight years old. That's insanity. Bobby Minor: So I bet the coach is making bank though. So Alright. Bobby: So just a lot of money to spend. Bobby Minor: Yeah. Alright, last question. Chris. What would happen if you put your hands in your pocket CC: If I put my hands in my pocket Bobby Minor: and then try to decr try to record a video? Would you be able to do it? CC: With one of What With with one with one of them in my pocket. I'd I'd need another hand to I'm I'm actually off screen right now, you can kinda see it. No, Bobby Minor: Could you could you could you do a video with your hands in your pocket? With no hand with no hand gestures, no hand gestures. CC: I couldn't. It's I I this is the Italian me. If your if your name ends with a vowel, like the funny thing is the Sabin Sabin Bobby: You can see it. Bobby Minor: Yeah. CC: just did the the thing on ESPN and all the kids were doing like the Sabin hand gestures Bobby Minor: Yeah. Yeah. CC: and I felt like man I was like a man after my own heart. he's not even Italian. So I just no, I'd have a hard time talking without my hands. That's I get that from my dad. Bobby Minor: Well guys, really good stuff. You guys y'all are doing amazing things at Pelotero. And I know this really just scratched the surface, so hopefully the parents out there, coaches out there watching this will go go to your website and check out more and they can go from there. So really appreciate both of you stopping by and good luck to everything that you're doing. CC: catch you my man. You're like a celebrity. I feel honored to be on the pod. It's you know, we're we're you're fighting the right fight, which I I truly appreciate and and what you're doing is awesome. Bobby: you think CC: So it's really cool to to get to to be around people we align with. So it's awesome. Bobby Minor: I I appreciate it. Bobby: Yeah. And I I I I do wanna say I'm I I I'm glad you have a podcast. I said earlier I wish you didn't have a podcast. You're saying the things that need to be said. Like people need to hear what you're saying and the industry needs to be challenged to be better. So I I appreciate you, I appreciate what you're doing and CC: Thanks, Bobby. Take care. Bobby: really thank you for having us on. Bobby Minor: Good luck, guys. Bobby: Thank you.