Latest / Dugout Dish Baseball Recruiting Podcast powered by EMD Baseball / Episode 141: Interview with University of Arkansas Pitching Coach Matt Hobbs

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Episode 141: Interview with University of Arkansas Pitching Coach Matt Hobbs · Dugout Dish Baseball Recruiting Podcast powered by EMD Baseball

0:00
Speaker A: Foreign.
0:10
Speaker B: Welcome to this week's edition of Dugout Dish podcast. I'm Andy Kirakidis, joined by my wonderful co host, Keith Glassing. Keith, how we doing?
0:18
Speaker C: Great. How are you?
0:19
Speaker B: Excited. We got a, got another special guest on this week, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna kick it over you to get this thing introduced and we'll get rolling.
0:27
Speaker C: Sure. Tonight we have a very, very special guest on our podcast. First time guest. Hopefully we have him back in, you know, if we can keep this going long enough. But somebody I've known for, you know, probably seven or eight years now at this point in time, got to know him when he was first at Wake Forest and he'll kind of break down where he's been and where he's at now. And in my personal opinion, a phenomenal human being and one of the best pitching coaches in the country. But tonight we are joined by Matt Hobbs at Arkansas, the pitching coach. Matt, welcome.
0:58
Speaker A: Thanks, guys. Appreciate you guys having me on. Happy to be here.
1:03
Speaker C: Awesome. You know, the first thing that we always do on this is just ask our guests to just give a, a quick kind of rundown of how you've gotten to Arkansas and the places you've been and the places you've coached, and then we'll start asking questions and have a conversation about recruiting and baseball.
1:18
Speaker A: Yeah. So it's a long process to get to Arkansas. And, you know, I started as a division. The thing I about my career that's. I don't know if it's unique or interesting is it's been every step of the way a different level for the most part. You know, I stopped playing baseball after I was a senior in college. I was drafted by the, the Padres my junior year, the Royals my senior year, and just kind of always knew that it wasn't going to be in the cards for me to play professional baseball. I was okay. I was an okay pitcher, not a great pitcher. And by the time I was getting into, you know, what would have been my first year out, I was already 22, 23 years old, and it just really wasn't going to be, I didn't think, a viable career option. And I always liked the pursuit of you trying to get yourself better. So I figured coaching would be a move for me and, you know, bumped my head against every wall in Southern California, which is where I'm from originally, to try to find a job. When I got done at the University of Missouri and kind of just ended up emailing as many people as I could find, you know, I went through the, ran the gamut of, you know, the great programs like the UCLA's and the Cal State Fullertons and, you know, obviously no bites, nothing, nothing concrete that I could get my hands around in terms of a job. And ended up, you know, replying, getting an email reply from Chapman University, which was the only one that really replied to me. And their main question was like, which hand do you throw with and can you throw a batting practice? And I was just like, I can see where this is going though. I was given the opportunity to coach because I could throw batting practice left handed and they didn't have one of those. So that was really my first job in coaching. And I always thought it would kind of be like a high school coach. I was getting my teaching credential at the time at Chapman, so it actually worked out pretty well. I was going to become a high school teacher and try to coach in high school and just kind of like live my life that way. And then once I got into the college ranks, you know, coaching at Chapman, which was at the time they were coming off a national championship at the Division 3 level and it was one of the better Division 3 schools in the country. And I just really liked the college level. So I reached back out after my first year at Chapman, which ended up being my only year at Chapman, and tried to coach in the summer just to get some experience. I figured I, I didn't know anything about anything, but I definitely didn't know anything about actually coaching. So I needed to get my feet wet coaching. So I took a job with the Santa Barbara Foresters, which is a summer ball team that I played for. So Bill Pintard was nice enough to just like, he took me on staff as like a flyer. I didn't have a position. I was coaching. I was just kind of there. And then about halfway through that summer, the pitching, the pitching coach at the time transitioned to a different role with the team and I took over the pitching about halfway through the summer. And I don't know if we were good or not, but it went well. So I figured, all right, you know, this could be something I could do. And the division, the junior college there, Santa Barbara City College, lost their pitching coach, like middle of the summer, like it does in a lot of places. Like the guy, I think the guy just stopped coaching and went in to do something else like a lot of people do that aren't, you know, that that job isn't exactly lucrative. Right. So I end up taking the job at the junior college and moving to Santa Barbara, which as you guys know, you know, really smart to go to a place like Santa Barbara where it's cheap to live, you know, makes. It makes a lot of sense as a coach. And it's like one of the most expensive places in the country. So I take like three. I got three jobs. I'm working at it. I open a gym in the morning. I work the, the 5 o' clock am to 8 o' clock shift and then go straight up to the City College. And I was our strength coach and recruiting coordinator and pitching coach. I didn't know how to do any of the three, which is great. So I'm doing all three of these jobs, not very well. And then at night I'm giving lessons and I've got like, I'm sleeping like three hours a day just to try to like, put like pay my rent, coach baseball. And then, you know, I do that for three years, coaching in the summer with the Foresters, every summer. And then like, I don't know how this happened, but I got a break with UC San Diego and got a job there and then moved to San Diego, which is also inexpensive, you know, like as a baseball coach making like. I think I was making like eight grand a year or something, inexpensive places to live. So I take this job, I go up to Santa Barbara. I'm living in Miramesa, which is inland, inland part of San Diego, and having a great time coaching at the Division 2 level now. So I've been at a Division 3 school, a Division 2 school, and a junior college. And I was there for three or four years and then was lucky enough to get the job at the University of San Francisco. It was my first Division one job. I worked for Nino Giortano, worked with Troy Nakamura and those guys up there for. I was there for 11 months and just kind of a dumb luck end up back at the University of Missouri as the pitching coach. So at that time I'm like 28 years old, I think maybe 28, 29 years old as a pitching coach in the Big 12. I think I was the youngest pitching coach in the Big 12 at the time by like six or seven years. Again, not really knowing, I don't know, knowing what I was doing, just kind of coaching. And that was like the first taste of big time college recruiting. So you're recruiting the country, you're all over the place. You know, I'm on the west coast, recruiting the West Coast. You're in Texas, you're in, you know, the mid, the Midwest, the upper Midwest areas. I didn't have a ton of experience recruiting because I'm from the West Coast. Originally, I played at Missouri, so I had some connections just from playing there. But I didn't have, like, my handle on the area, so I had to learn the Midwest. And then from there, I was there for four years and then made what I think is probably still one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had to make in coaching was leaving my alma mater, a place I loved. Like, I, you know, I loved the University of Missouri, and it was one of the greatest places I. I thought. I thought at that point that's. I've now reached the pinnacle, and this is where I'm going to spend the rest of my coaching career. Me and my wife were really happy there. I was working. I was working for my old coach, which made it even more difficult, you know, because you're having to then step away from that job. But the opportunity at Wake Forest came open, and it was. It wasn't just a pitching opportunity, which I thought was cool. Now I was the pitching coach, but it was also, you're going to have a lot of say in this pitching lab they're building there. And that, for me was, I thought, where my career needed to go, like it needed to do. So I needed to separate myself somehow. I needed to do something different. There's plenty of good pitching coaches in the country, but I needed to do something different. I needed to open my mind. I needed to stretch out as a coach. I needed to challenge myself. And that kind of, like, that challenge was really interesting to me. And the program was not in a great. I mean, you know, they've been, okay, not great. They weren't in a really good place. They're coming off of kind of an okay, not again, an okay, not great year. And here's that challenge, too, you know, here's that challenge to be able to, you know, step in and hopefully you can make something, you know, and maybe leave it better than you found it. And it was a huge challenge at Wake, and we were dealing with admissions, we were dealing with the cost of tuition at, you know, private schools. My first time ever recruiting the Mid Atlantic and the east coast in areas I'd never recruited in my entire coaching career. I never coached in the ACC at this. At this time. I'd been in the SEC, in the Big 12, but never in the ACC. So there was a new. That whole thing was new. So that's a challenge. And then all the time in the background, we're trying to get this Pitching lab up and running. And that's, you know, between fundraising and finding what you want in the place and what you want in the lab in the first place, because many people have pitching labs out there, but this was like a real pitching lab. This was like a biomechanist on staff, a partnership with the hospital and a lot of just different layers into this thing where it became very challenging and medical staff and doctors on board and really just trying to get everybody linked up to get the thing built. And I was working for Tom Walter at Wake, who's in addition to being a wonderful human being and a great coach, he's like all time great fundraiser. So he was able to be able to really be involved in getting that. That's, you know, that whole process going. And you can kind of glean some information from him on, you know, it is more than just the X's and the O's of coaching. Sometimes while he's an unbelievable coach and has had great success, obviously, he also could probably just go be the athletic director somewhere if he wanted to. The guy's that. That versatile, which is a skill set that if you're a head coach, it's something you should have. But I got to see these different parts of this whole thing and finally get this thing running. You know, it's four. Four years in and we finally get this thing up and running, and I leave, I go to the University of Arkansas and one of this. And it wasn't a stipulation, but it was. One of the cool things about Arkansas is while it's a great program, obviously I. I would hope that the program can speak for itself a little bit in terms of, you know, what's happened here since Coach Van Horn has been here and even before him with Coach De Brian, how great a program it is. But we're also in the. We were also in the process when I'm accepting the job of building a $30 million player development center, which I'm going to have my fingers all over in terms of being able to help design it, you know, get the technology we need in there, build up, build out an even bigger pitching space than what we had at Wake. I'm not saying one's better than the other, but the opportunity to do it again and this time kind of just do it all. On the baseball side, there's no partnership with anybody here except for the Razorbacks. So that was intriguing to me also to take on that challenge and then. And then, you know, stretch yourself out and try to coach in the SEC at The highest of the highest levels at one of the best programs in the country. You know, it's. It seemed at the time, it seemed like everybody around me, everyone thought that was a pretty easy decision, but also a difficult decision because, you know, we had it going awake a little bit, and I really liked what we were doing there. And, you know, having the lab up and running was a big deal there, and I felt like it was going to really, like, improve me long term as a coach and the things that I'm interested in if I were to just stay there. But, you know, being at Arkansas afforded me an opportunity to do pretty much the same thing with different people and then also have a chance to, you know, get to Omaha, win the College World Series. Not that they don't have that awake, they certainly do, but the history of this program is just something I couldn't really. I couldn't pass it up. So, you know, I just kind of. I guess that's a long winded answer, but, you know, that's how I ended up at Arkansas.
11:46
Speaker C: No, I think it's. It's great because, you know, we've started to find that there's a decent amount of coaches out there that do listen to this podcast. And I think with a lot of the guests we've had, it puts into context what it's like to be a college coach and the path, like, not everyone's path is the same, and how difficult it can be to kind of stay in the game. Right. I mean, I spent 16 years in this business, and it was. I coached at the 1, 2 and 3 levels. I just. I didn't coach at juco, you know, but the, you know, same kind of thing. Like, I started out at West Alabama on a complete whim, living in Livingston, Alabama, Division 2 school. And I was from upstate New York, and I was like, Division 2 baseball in the South. Like, how good is this? And you walk in and we're like six in the country, and you're playing the Delta States of the World in Tampa, and Lynn and, you know, all of a sudden, Lynn won the national championship that year, and we were in the same regional. You know, Tommy Kaley was on that team and pitches in the big leagues. He's from my area, so it was cool to see. But, you know, you walk out, you're like, wow, like, there's really good baseball being played all over this place. You know, saying that I ended up at Siena with, you know, I worked as a volley for two years as the. As the second assistant, so not as Expensive as San Diego or Santa Barbara. But nevertheless it's true. Like that, that, that's, that's kind of the path in this business. And you know, if you can, you know, if you figure it out along the way, you can end up at really good places and have a lot of success, you know, kind of regardless of where you're at and the level it is. Because, you know, I, I spent 10 years vision three level you can compete. And you know, at RPI, like, yeah, I was recruiting nationally. Like I was recruiting the west coast, I was recruiting Texas and Florida. Like, you know, it's, you get that experience and it's awesome to do. Like you get to, you get a career where you can just travel the country and see a lot of cool stuff and you know, 90% of your life is spent watching, well, you know, watching baseball.
13:44
Speaker A: It's not, yeah, the path for everybody is a little bit different, but it's, and it's never usually clean and nobody looks into it. It's impossible to luck into this, to this profession and be able to stay in it. Yep. Like you could have a couple good years. Certainly. Like that's not that, that's not hard to do. It's like talking to a pitcher. Anyone can get three outs. Like anyone can get three outs one time or throw one good inning. Like that's not overly difficult, but to be good for 90 innings is tough. It's the same thing in coaching. It's like anybody can accidentally be given an opportunity to get a job. You can know somebody, you can have a friend of a friend who gets you hooked up, but as soon as you're there, you actually have to do something to keep it in advance. And it's like we tell our players, it's like you have to keep advancing, you have to keep getting better and you have to keep moving on in a positive direction towards whatever your goal is. And it's the same thing at coaching. Like I could have gotten a job at Chapman because I was a left handed pitcher and I could throw batting practice and that could have been the end of it. Right? I could have been at Chapman for five years until my arm was done and then I'd be no more used to them and I'd be moving on to doing something else. But I always thought that there was more. There's always going to be more. There's another level that either I can take it to myself or I can try to get myself better, or I can try to learn something new. And if you're not willing to do that as a coach and you're not willing to do that as an educator because ultimately that's what you are. You're an educator. You're a teacher like anybody else. You just. Your career is going to be pretty short because you get figured out. Eventually it's going to. You're going to get figured out. You either don't have good content, you don't know what you're talking about, you can't relate with people. It all. It all comes out in the wash. Right. Like, these things don't just, look, you can't luck your way into any of this. And the career path for everybody's a little bit different. And nobody who's been doing it a long time is just lucky. And they just have been lucky at places. It's not a thing. So I think that if any coaches are listening to this, it's just be ready to be humbled quickly. Like, you have to take a job that you don't think that. You might think that you, you know, I was a. I played in the Big 12 and I was just like, I thought I was probably better than coaching a Division 3 school as a BP thrower. Like, I've got all this knowledge because I played, which is total bs. But you got to be willing to be humbled immediately because you just don't walk into a big 12 sec ACC job right away and have a lot of success. They're hard enough when you've got an idea of what you're doing and you got to be willing to just kind of go through the process. And it's different now than it was when we were coming through it initially. It's different. There's. There's maybe more opportunity. There's another coach that's paid now. There's maybe some more opportunities. It's just a different. It's different for people now. It doesn't mean that, you know, the way that we did it was right or wrong. It just means that now it's different. Yep. But it doesn't. It's still the same thing. Still hold true. Eventually, if you don't know what you're doing, it's going to be pretty obvious. Your players are going to find out. The people you work for are going to find out. So if you don't, if you're not willing to keep working as a coach, this is going to be a tough profession.
17:07
Speaker C: I think the one thing before we get into it that I'll pull this thread real quickly is the ability to be humble in this business. Is, I think, to know what it is that you don't know and at least be able to recognize that. Because I have a handful of guys that are now in coaching that played for me, whether it was at Sienna or at rpi. And. And really right now I have, like, four guys in coaching at rpi. And, like, they text me and they're like, I thought, like, I know nothing about the coaching side. And it's like, you know, I'm like, I. You know, yes, I get it. But, like, you, like, this is the point where you need to start figuring out and trying to get better as a coach. Like, as a coach, if you're going to continually ask your kids to get better. Like, I always had the idea that you should get better yourself, because if you just stay the same, you're going to get passed by, you know. And I think, like, when I coached, I went down West Alabama. I was. I thought I knew everything I needed to know about baseball, and I quickly realized I knew nothing. And I, you know, quick story with someone that you coached and know, like, Chris Farish was my assistant as, you know, my first year head coach. I looked him dead in the face and was like, dude, I'm gonna mess up. Like, I. I just, like, if you think if there's something on the pitching end that you think is better or you want to do, like, just go do it. Like, we're learning on the fly here. And he was shook. It's his first job. He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, man, I've never been a head coach at the college level before. I'm going to screw things up. Like, I'm okay with that. We just have to learn from it, that's all. Like, and, you know, I think it. It freed him up knowing, like, okay, he's gonna screw this up. Like, I've never done this before. If I screw up, he's not gonna get mad at me.
18:47
Speaker B: You know what I.
18:48
Speaker C: Like, I think being able to actually recognize sometimes that, like, it's okay to not know everything in this game, like, because you don't and you're going to screw things up, and that's okay. It's, you know, like anything else. And when you're a player, like, it's learning from it and moving forward and not repeating it again. It's. As a coach, like, I screwed that one up. You know, maybe I do something different in that situation, whatever it is. But, you know, I just think that, you know, when we, you know, I do have a decent Amount of people as coaches who reach out, who listen to this and reach out. I think that it's important to at least put out there that, like, it's. Everyone's path is different. Like, being humble is. Is. Will get you a lot longer in this career path than, you know, thinking you know everything and you have the answer to everything in this game because nobody does.
19:34
Speaker A: Sure, I screw stuff up all the time. Me too.
19:38
Speaker C: Still do. All right, so we kick it off. We asked this question to everyone. How do you guys find the players that you recruit at Arkansas?
19:47
Speaker A: I think it's a mixed bag. You know, obviously you're recruiting the whole country. If you're at, you know, the University of Arkansas or any good SEC school or ACC school, you have. You have access to the country. So you need to know people in different areas. So it's got to be scouts, it's got to be high school coaches that you trust, travel coaches that you trust. Somebody in the areas where you could go find players. You got to know somebody in the areas. So you start. You start there. That's kind of like the grassroots amount of people you're going to look, you're going to a. I got X number of players that you need to come see. They're going to be at this tournament. Or I got this specific guy you should come see during the season, go see them during the high school season and things tear down from there. Usually it's like you've got your list going into every summer or spring recruiting cycle or fall recruiting cycle of here's 15 pitchers that I need to cross off or I need to find or I need to get a chance to see or I need to cross check with somebody. And you usually that thing pares itself down real quick to. There's here. There's five guys that can really help us. We got two spots that we're still recruiting for. We have five guys. And then trying to go see all those guys, and then you're basically matching them up against each other. And then you got to find out, all right, once you know, hey, these are the five, who else. What's it going to take to get this guy? What's this guy willing to do once he gets here? Does he. Is he going to be able to be acclimated to pitching out of the bullpen as a freshman? Is this guy just like coming in, wanting to start? Is this guy have stipulations for what he wants to do, or does he just want to be here and then you can start making it your list? Gets smaller. So now from your five, you're now at like three of 30 guys. You're just going to attack for two spots and then you're going to get one of them. And then from there you still got one or two spots you need to fill. You go back through the same process with 10 to 15 new guys. So I think your list always has to be fairly large in terms of like what you need. Do you need rights or lefts? Do you need shortstops? Do you need, you know, outfielders? Do you need left or right handed hitting? Do you need catching? You have to start with the needs of your team and then you go into the pockets of the country that you've been able to find success in in the past. You reach back out to those people first and then you're going to go watch games. So you're going to go watch people in the summer, you're going to go get video, you're going to try to watch as much baseball as you possibly can and then your list grows even greater. So this list, I had a 15 where I've ticked off all these boxes. I went to go see this kid and I saw this kid instead. And now it's like, oh, you know, this field's got a guy going that I want to go see. He goes see a shortstop. You end up with a right handed pitcher and your list gets bigger that way. So it's just you organically just keep growing this network of either people or by, you know, you see some guys kind of by accident. I mean, that's happened. We signed a kid this or we committed a kid this summer where I was going to see a kid that was already committed to us. And I was like, the second baseman's really good, we should probably go get him. And he ends up with us. So that happens sometimes. And then you have, you know, your junior college players where you're going to go back and forth to, you know, you recruited a JC kid from there five years ago. You're always going to go back to those places because that's a good program and you've got some familiarity with those people. And you know, you got a kid that, let's say you didn't get out of high school or couldn't get into your place or something happened where he fell a little short or ended up in junior college for some reason. You go, all right, that guy's on the list for the following year, assuming everything works out academically and they can transfer. And you know, there's a lot of hoops you have jumped through that way and then you find two or three more guys from either going to watch him play in a tournament in the fall with like a four or five team, you know, juco tournament or, you know, there's three other guys on his team that are pretty good, that could fill some needs for you. So you end up getting more people that way. And then now you have the new, the nuances of the trace reportal where you're basically like college free agency. So you're able to look and go fill holes that way, which is I think kind of a cool way to, you know, you're kind of like an active gm, I guess if it, if it makes any sense that way you're just, you're the GM of the team and you got to go find, you know, what you need, project out who's going to do what. That was a sophomore that's going to go into their junior year. Do we need to go get a rotation arm? Do we need to go get somebody that can play in the middle? Do we need to go get another, you know, do we need a backup catcher that can also play third, you know, can also play the out field? Do we need to go get a glove over a bat in this position? So I think those things get really interesting and obviously it's portal is a free for all, so you just, you're going to get whatever you can get. And that has impacted the way that we recruit nationally with high school players too. And it's happened with everybody. If you can go get a fourth year player that's got, you know, 800 at bats, if we're going to go do that, you know, and that's, I think that's recruited, that's, that's also, I don't know that it's hurt it, but it's changed junior college recruiting a little bit. You need to be like pretty sure that that kid can come in and play if you're going to bring him in. Otherwise just go get a kid from the portal. So that's changed things that way and it's made college baseball older. College baseball is now significantly older. There's a lot of things that go into that. I don't think the SEC is ever going to be a young league again because instead of playing, and I'm not saying that if you look at the history of, at least at our program, freshmen get on the field, but you'll go a lot of places and it's just like eight new Portal guys, then those guys are gone. Then Eight new portal guys and a rotation. Two guys are coming out of the transfer portal and the closers from, you know, wherever you know, other, other four year school. And you can make your roster that way too. Not saying right or wrong, it's just another way to do it. So I think that the, the recipe really is no different than it's always been. It's just a little bit different how you go get the players, your high end high school players are, are the recipe for being good for a long time. Like you need to be able to get high end high school players into your program. And high end can mean anything, whatever level you're at. There's high end players at the Division 3 level, there's high end players, the Division 2 level, high end juco players, high end, you know, Division 1 Big west teams, Division 1 SEC teams, there's high end players for every one of those levels. So being able to get the high end freshman into school, get him through the draft, then develop him and by the time he's a junior you've got hopefully a rotation piece, a middle of the order bat, a shortstop, something you can build around, you know, three, three cogs in your bullpen and two starters and three guys in your lineup that are, that are mainstays in the lineup that you build around and then you plug in pieces for the rest of the team. And a lot of those pieces can be portal pieces, a lot of those pieces can be junior college pieces, just depending on what it is that you're looking for, what you like. So I don't know if that answered how we find players, but I think it's just different. Like every program's a little bit different in terms of what they want. I mean, do you have a head coach that is going to put up with freshmen? That's a legitimate, like, that's a legitimate question these days because a lot of them, I'm not saying everybody, but there's a lot of places that are just like, well, why would we go sign 11 freshmen? Why don't we go sign four freshmen and then go get eight portal kids and a couple juco kids that are just older because older players are usually easier to deal with because you're not dealing with as many growing pains now, maybe the payoff's not as good at the end of the day. Like maybe those four, maybe the four freshmen that you didn't take, those guys go somewhere else and become like all Americans. So I think that it's, it's getting your high end high school players through the draft, getting a good, solid recruiting class of young players, being able to give them enough time that they can actually develop because nobody develops just by hitting BP and throwing bullpens. They need to play, they need to go on the field and then filling, filling around them with really good veteran players that have a track record of success at other places, whether that's junior college or a four year. So I mean, I think a lot of like some of those questions that I get asked, it's like, that's a good question. But they want to hear like, go to this tournament, this tournament, this perfect game event. But I was like, it's not that way anymore. It's not like you can just go down to Atlanta and just sit there for two months and make your roster. You have to be really aggressive in a bunch of different areas. And you can't just go to the, you know, the local high school that always produces three or four good players and just like make your roster off those guys. Either. You got to be able to dominate your state, you know, hopefully you can dominate your state. We're at the University of Arkansas, so, you know, I think we do a pretty good job in the state of Arkansas, but you got to be good around it, too. And then when you're at like a larger state school like ours, and this could be for anybody, this could be for any place. But I always felt like a larger state school, like a, you know, like the University of Arkansas or place where people grow up wanting to play at a place like this, it's important that you have good in state kids because they can control your locker room, because it means a little. It doesn't, it's not like it doesn't mean anything to the other kids, but if you grew up playing, dreaming about playing from the University of Arkansas for the University of Arkansas since the time you were 4 years old and you're finally doing it, it's going to matter to you a great deal. So for us, I also think that a part of where we would go is we're always going to try to take care of our state. And if they're good enough, the players are good enough to be here. We want them on our roster. Because I do think that a strong university from a strong baseball state like Arkansas, if we can get enough really good Arkansas kids, it controls the locker room. So there's a lot of different places you can go to answer that question, I guess. But that's kind of the way I think we attack it.
29:26
Speaker B: I think that, I think that's the perfect answer, though, because it's not. It's not straightforward. To your point, it's not. Let's go to perfect game. Let's. Let's go to Atlanta. Like, you hit on a bunch of different things that I think are important. Like, you hit on very specific criteria that you might be looking for to fill out a class. They're like, hey, we don't need a starting catcher, but we need a dude who can handle himself back there. Maybe he's a backup type and he's got some positional versatility. You're talking about having a high school kid who's comfortable coming in, being a bullpen guy early, and that's unique. Like, somebody who's willing to take on a role and like, hey, let me find a way to help you win. And then if you develop into that starter a little bit farther on, and then you talk about guys who want to be there. And oftentimes we oversimplify things for the ease of conversation. But I think to your point, you use all the resources you have available to you. You evaluate who you have in house, who's leaving, and how are you going to put together a team for you guys, the goal is Omaha and a national championship. And you need to view it through that lens. And it's not just as simple as, let me see how many good high school players I can get at the University of Arkansas. Like, that's. If you take that approach, you might end up with some good stuff. But taking advantage of junior college, take advantage of the portal that benefits you, and you have to take advantage of avenues that are going to put you guys in a situation to achieve what you want to achieve at the end of the year.
30:59
Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think you can ever look at your roster and just say, like, let's just go best available all the time. And it doesn't mean you're not trying to get good players. Everyone's trying to recruit good players. We're no different than everybody else. We're all trying to recruit good players. But if I've got, you know, three guys that we bring in that only see themselves as one thing. Like, if we bring in two catchers in a class and they both have to be the starter, there can only be one guy that's going to catch 70% of the games. That means I have a really disgruntled player that's also talented. But maybe if that guy could play, like you said, maybe that guy could play the outfield and he's just like, hey, get me on the field. What do I got to do to get on the field? And I think if you go in with that attitude, just get me on the field and it'll all work itself out. If that's the attitude of the players, then you have. You're going to want to recruit guys like that. And we want guys that have a passion for what they're doing, whether it's very passionate about playing shortstop at some point in their career, it's okay to not play it as a freshman right away. Like, if you look around the country like freshmen that play a lot in upper level Division 1 baseball, there aren't very many that play a ton. There are guys that do play, but they're just not very many that play. Like, if you go down the rosters of every team in the SEC, ACC pack, you know, Big 12, they're not just littered with freshmen. The four freshmen starting on each team, you might have one or two that start and then a couple more that play a role. And then obviously you're always going to have freshmen that pitch just because you're going to need. You have to do that for the future. You have to do that to round out your roster. You have to do that because a lot of people end up pitching. But if you're not willing as a freshman to come in and just be like, I'm going to strive for what my goal is, but I got to take what I can get to and be okay with that right away. Because I think everybody's got this unrealistic expectation of what's going to happen the first as soon as they show up. And something that's good to keep in perspective is if you think about like if a high school kid comes in, he's 18 years old, the way that college baseball is now, there's 22, 23 year olds on that team too. And if that kid had signed at a high school, he'd go to the complex and there'd be a bunch of other 18 year olds. So he'd be playing on a level playing field. Playing as a freshman's hard and the payoff for doing it is great because if you can beat out some of those kids or you can learn some of it from some guys that have been in college baseball for a long time, you're going to be a better player at the end of the day. And I think too many people come into anything and they have. It's just about what's happening right now. And they can't see the forest through the trees. They can't see, hey, in three, in two years, I'm going to be in a great spot because of this situation I'm going through right now. It's hard to do that because you think you're just going to go in and everything's just going to be like it is in high school. And you know, I hear all the time like, well, I never had trouble throwing strikes in high school. He also never threw a zone with professional umpires. You also never had to worry about the fastball that you're going to throw. Getting belted by a 22 year old guy that's going to be a first rounder. You didn't have to worry about those things. When you're facing guys that you just knew you were better than. So, of course you don't throw as many strikes as you did when you were in high school. Things have changed and it's the same thing as, you know, I thought I was going to come in there and start as a freshman at shortstop. Well, if you do, like we have an All American that's returning at that position, like, there's a lot of stuff that has to happen for you to be able to go in and have those kinds of, have that kind of success. And usually, and it's not across the board, but I'd say like 90 of the time. The guys that play a lot as freshmen or, you know, pitch a lot as freshmen or get in the lineup as freshmen or guys that have put their head down and they work and they're just better, it's obviously they should play like we had a freshman in 2021, the last time we went to Omaha, or 2022, the last time we went to Omaha named Hagen Smith and another one named Brady Tiger that are now like mainstays in our rotation. But they just made it easy. Like they didn't come in saying, I have to do this, this and this. They were like, all right, what do I have to do to pit? What are the things I have to do to pitch? And you say, okay, Brady, here are the things you have to do to pitch. Hagen, here are the things you have to do to pitch. All right, I'm going to go dominate those things. I'm going to be really good at all those things. And obviously they were talented, but they did the things that we asked them to do well and they proved they were better than everybody else. So when time came for Hagan to start opening weekend on Saturday, it was like, yeah, of course that guy should start on Saturday. And when the time came for Brady to be our closer. It was like, of course that guy should be our closer. It wasn't like we were shoving him in there because we had made some promises to him or something. We pitched them because they were ready. And the same thing with like Peyton Stovall, who was also on that team, who played as a freshman. It was like, okay, yeah, that guy is really good player. He can really hit and he can play defense. He should probably be in the lineup every day. And the best thing a freshman can do, or a young player or coming into the program or transfer for that matter, is just find out what the things are you need to do to play. Not be talented. Like everyone that goes to the school that you're at is talented enough to be there. But what are the things you need to do to play. Like you might be the most talented player on the team, you might be the best prospect at in center field, but your routes are crap. And you can't hit against left handed pitching, so you can't play. But if you go in with art, what do I need to do? I need to be the best, I need to take the best routes on fly balls and on our team and I need to find a way to be productive against left handed pitching. I don't have to belt left handed pitching right away, but I got to be able to walk, I got to be able to bunt, I got to be able to do something productive. And you'll find your way in the lineup if you think about things that way. But the way that it usually ends up happening is like you come in thinking or you turn down X number amount of money to be at the school or you, you chose this place over these places. So now they owe you something. The wrong way to look at stuff. And the guys that put their head down and work and the guys that come in with the right attitude in terms of like, all right, here are the stipulations for guys that play at the University of Arkansas or wherever. Go watch them play on tv. What do those guys do? Well, all right, they take care of the baseball, ice field, 880. A shortstop, not gonna play. You gotta take care of the baseball. You gotta be able to. That they're, you know, they're. If I'm a top, bottom guy in the lineup, they can all do these things. They have these skills. If I hit in the middle of the order, these guys have those skills that can drive the ball or whatever, whatever the skills are for the university, they're going to Play for. These guys can do those things. If they pitch, they have, you know, right handed guy in the bullpen that's gonna throw 95 and they have a right handed guy in the bullpen that's gonna spin break has a different look. So I got to do one of those. I got to be one of those guys if I'm going to pitch out of the bullpen. I got to be able to either throw really hard or just be a reliable strike thrower that has a good secondary pitch that they could put in in situations where they know they need some length or some leverage. But if you don't identify those things and you just go in with this, I'm talented, so I deserve this. X, Y and Z. You're never going to get what you want like as much as you think you are. Just because I'm better than those guys. But they might be better at baseball, they might be better players. And if you go in as a freshman or a first year player with the attitude that I'm going to go be the best player and now I can let my talent express itself, you'll have a good chance to play. I don't know where I was going with that, but I was just. Maybe I got off topic.
38:34
Speaker B: It's so spot on though, because one, yeah, Arkansas is a little bit of a different beast. Like playing in the SEC is. It's different. Like you can nitpick however you want or, you know, guys will get butthurt. You know that we're saying it, but like at the end of the day, SEC is a different level. And like Payton Stovall, like that guy played second base for you guys as a freshman because he's, he's an outlier. Like it, like to your point, like it's not normal for freshmen to be mainstays and lineups at the highest level of college baseball. He's doing something different. And if you're walking into a program, whether it's Arkansas or, you know, me and Keith went to Marist, if the expectation is that you're given something, it's going to be tough for you to handle any kind of controversy that comes your way because at some point the game's going to be a little bit too fast or you're not going to know how to work right. Like we were talking to Billy last week and he was talking about they got guys in the weight room 48 out of 52 weeks of the year. If you haven't done that before, that's a piece of the puzzle. That A lot of guys don't understand is that what do you have to do on a day to day basis? And it's not just what do you do when you put on the practice uniform, what do you do when you're going to the game? It's how are you eating, how you sleep? And like, that's a difference maker for a lot of guys and how they handle themselves. And, you know, if you're a high school player listening to this. Yeah. Like, you should, you should take that to heart, that wherever you go, whether it's Chapman University and you're trying to compete for a Division 3 national title, it's Arkansas where you're trying to win a Division 1 national title. If you walk onto campus and you think you're getting anything handed to you, those first six months are going to be tough. And if you lose those first six months because you're naive to the process, sometimes it's hard to bounce back from it. And I've watched, you know, I was at William and Mary for three good seasons. We had some really good players and we had some freshmen who those first six months were really hard on them. And it can be tough to bounce back from it because if you can't get in the mix or find a role or something significant as a freshman or even where you just feel like you're doing something productive next year, there's a whole nother crop of guys that are coming in to take your spot. And if you can't get your foot in the door as somebody you can trust midweek to get three outs in the sixth inning, or a guy that can come off the bench and be a productive pinch hitter in an outing or in any given game and you start to prove yourself that you're capable, it gets harder to climb that ladder the farther you get into your career because there's more talent coming in and wins matter. So I think it's spot on. And I'm glad that you went into that kind of detail because I think it's important for a lot of people to hear that it's not just as simple as I'm talented, I should play.
41:21
Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's amazing what happens when you can carve a rollout for yourself, whatever it is, because it's, it's the way to gain more. You have to be able to do something first. And I think a lot of people jump to the, the end of, you know, conference starter or Friday night guy or whatever, and if they don't spend a whole lot of time looking at the path that it took to get there. It's like getting a good coaching job. It's like people don't want to see the three jobs in Santa Barbara. They just, like a pitching coach at Arkansas, I want that guy's job. It's. They're hard to get. It's like roles on a team, a good team, they're hard to get. And if you can, if you like the build up to becoming something instead of just being handed something, then I think that your career is longer. You're, you know, you're more likely to be able to fight through life in the minor leagues. It's not easy there. It's not. It's like, it's harder there. And I think people lose sight of that too. Like, when you leave a place like ours, you go fight at the next level and, you know, whether it's a recruiting class or a draft, draft class, there's just more people that keep coming in that are good and are hungry. And if you lose the sight of, like, I just want to have a role that I know I'm going to be in for a little while and then if I'm good at that role, I'll expand on it. So. I've always have felt like people want the end result rather than the. They want to. Like, they don't want to do the other stuff. Like most people, and this isn't everybody, but most people don't want to do the other stuff to get to the end. Like, like Billy was saying, like the weight room, like, it's a huge separator. Sleeping, hydrating, eating, a good diet. These are separators. And when you get to the end or whether the, like when you're getting towards the top of the mountain, whatever that is for the. As an individual, whatever it is for you, the margins get real thin. Like, there's plenty of room at the base of the mountain for everybody. But, like, when you're getting towards the top, there's not a whole lot of room up there. And that's where you have to be able to use these margins. And you got to fight for these edges. Like sleeping more or being in better shape or whatever it is for you, getting a tenth of a second faster, developing a new pitch, throwing more strikes, being able to control the running game, being able to field your position better, being a better defensive player. You have to start fighting for these edges and it doesn't really matter how. What you were anymore. And if as soon as people can leave what they were and try to become who they're supposed to be. Your life gets a lot easier as an athlete.
43:58
Speaker C: Yeah, I think the one thing, like I used to say this when I was coaching that, you know, especially I became the head coach because I, we had a lot of younger guys who kind of struggled not necessarily with the idea of like what they should or shouldn't be doing, but more like to your point, like they couldn't see the big picture of why these things that I was asking them to do, what that was going to do for them when they're sophomore, junior, seniors, you know, And I used to always kind of draw the, the comparison of like, you know, when you come from high school into college, like it doesn't get easier, right? Like it doesn't get easier when you get into pro ball and when you get into pro ball, like it doesn't get easier to work your way through to get to the big leagues. Like everybody is good. So you need to start doing things that are going to separate you in order to get you that at bat that could get you into the lineup a little bit more. What are you doing defensively that's going to be able to get you in? And I think we're, we're kind of in a little bit of a weird area in baseball where there's a lot of things where it's just so hyper focused on hitting from an offensive, from a position player standpoint where like you have to be able to play defense at a high level in college to be able to be in the lineup every day. Like it's the, you can't just be a average to below average defensive player and be in the lineup every day. Like you might find yourself in there, you know, a little bit, but it's not going to be an everyday thing. Like you have, like if you're playing in college, like you have to be able to defend in order to find yourself in the lineup every day. It's just like it's, it's a non negotiable in my opinion because if we're going to give up more runs and we, you know, we're not going to score a hell of a lot because we can't defend the baseball and take care of it, then we're not going to be, we're not going to be in the spot we need to be in. And I think that, you know your point. Like a lot of people don't. I, I don't think that a lot of people really want to focus on the defensive end of things to separate themselves, to get Better, because that's like, that could be your role as a freshman. Like, hey, I'm going to go play the back third of the game at defense because I'm really good defensively. And then, you know, by the time you're a sophomore, you find yourself, you know, playing a little bit more midweek spot star, and you're still in that same role. And then by the time you're a junior, like, you might be a guy who's playing in the middle. And you know, because defensively they know, like, when the balls hit to you, we're gonna get an out 97 of the time. And that is gonna win you more games than it's gonna lose you, you know, And I think those things are, are lost on, not only like, once you get there, but in the recruiting process as well, because it's like, well, you can really hit, like, awesome. Can't feel themselves out of a wet paper bag. Like, I don't, I can't really do a lot with that as a college coach. Like, it's going to take him a lot longer to find himself in the lineup because I can't just play nine dhs. Like, we're, we're not going to win a lot of games if I'm just playing a bunch of 90hs. And we feel 8, 880, you know.
46:49
Speaker A: Because, yeah, there's, there is only one DH. So Coach Van Horn says that a lot. You know, when we're talking about positional versatility or whatever, we're talking about players, and he'll stop us sometimes as well. Have said, like, hey, this guy can really hit. This guy can really hit. This guy. Really. Hey, like, guys, I got one DH spot, so what else can they do? Like, where else can they play that part? And when we talk to, like, recruits or parents or whomever asks us questions, but. All right, Coach, what's the best way to get on the field as a freshman? Defend, like, be a good defender. Because you're always going to play those people when it matters. And then they're going to get on the field and then they're going to get confidence. And all of a sudden now they can hit if maybe offensively they were light. There's a kid named here, here named Jack Kinley. This is my 2019, so my first year. And he had been, he had like, not played a lot for two years. And I remember got the job in November. I come in and we're talking about where. Who, who's going to play where. I don't know any of These guys, I just got this job, and they keep saying, well, this guy can really, really defend. This guy can really, really defend. They could talk about Jack Kenley. Jack Kenley could always play defense. So he's always in the conversation to be in the lineup. And then it comes down to like, all right, we think we're really going to pitch on Fridays. We have the starting Isaiah Campbell, who pitches in the big league. He just got traded to the Red Sox, but it was a big leaguer with the, with the, the Mariners. But he's really good and he's gonna be our Friday guy. So we're like, all right, let's play defense on Friday nights, because we know Zay is going to be able to go out and give us seven. So Jack's gonna play on Friday nights. He's gonna start and he's gonna play. And all of a sudden, Jack gets like two hits, and then he gets another hit and then he gets on base one more time. And now Jack's a player now he's playing every day. And it started because he played defense. It didn't start because he was the best hitter on the team. And, you know, Jack goes in and ends up hitting 13 home runs and gets drafted in like the 8th round or something. So he goes and turns himself into a top 10 round draft pick. I think that's where he went. And on that same team, we had another kid named Jacob Nesbitt, who is a 245, 250 lifetime hitter at Arkansas. Probably unbelievable defensive player, one of the best third baseman I've ever seen. He fielded like 970 something, 980 at third base, and he's in the lineup every day. Started out because we were going to play defense on Friday night. So Jacob's going to play third and Jack's going to play second. And it turned into, well, let's just play defense all the time. And these guys just kept on playing. And these guys both, you know, are they big leaguers? Who knows? Probably not. You know, I think Jacob's selling insurance right now, and Jack might still be banging around an independent ball, but they both played in Omaha. They both had good college experiences. You know, Jack got a taste of professional baseball, was a draft pick, so he had an opportunity. But they got on the field as young as younger players that got on the field, and they did it through their defense. And it's the question we always come up with when we're talking about players is, all right, what else can this guy do if he can really hit. What else can you do? Because there's going to be a time when you just can't afford to put in a guy that can't play defense. And there's always going to be like these games that we play in our league, in any league, any, any league where baseball is important or it matters, which is all of them. At the end of the day, like at some level, every league is going to play important baseball games. It's going to come down to one or two plays because the margins are thin with the players. Like the University of Arkansas, our players aren't that much different. You know, we won the SEC last year. Us in Florida shared the league between us winning the league and the 11th place team. The players aren't that much different in terms of talent. Like people might think they are, but the players aren't that much different in terms of like raw talent, like their players and our players about the same. We might have a little more depth, but their players are players pretty much the same. But we feel like 980 as a team because defense is hugely important to my, to my boss. Like, Coach Van Horn's not putting you on the field if you can't play defense. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, we go, we're able to go through what we do sometimes with, maybe we're not pitching as good or maybe we're not hitting as good. But what always shows up is defense shows up every game. Like it's one of those things that travels. It's not just good at home, it goes on the road with you. It could show up in big games. And if you can defend, you got a chance. But it's, it's kind of like being a good student. Like, you think about being a good student in the high school recruiting process. And if you're a bad student, like you're a 2, 5 student, you just, you immediately cancel, like half the schools that can recruit you and you make it really difficult to get into the ones that can. And then you have to be. Now you start playing this cost benefit analysis. Is he worth it? Like, is he gonna be worth it? If we're just gonna be on. We're gonna have to have our thumb on him all the time as a, you know, as a student. So think about the same way. It's like in, when you're dealing with players, it's like, all right, how good a hitter is he? Because if he can't play defense at all, then what are we sacrificing here? Like, Then we start playing the, you know, how does this even itself out for us? And I always think about it like, I think about like recruiting kids. Like, why not be versatile and good at a lot of stuff? Why not spend your time being like well rounded player? Like if you're a pitcher and all you ever try to do is see how hard you can throw the ball and that's the only thing that's really important to you, then you're gonna have a, just a rude awakening. When you go play any level of baseball where there's good players because they stop swinging and you stop getting calls on the edges and you stop throwing to huge strike zones and the players get better. So why not try to be good at everything and work at everything instead of just like, I'm going to be one dimensional, I can really hit for power, but I can't do anything else. Well, you're probably, you know, you're not going to play baseball as long as you'd like to. And it's the same thing on the pitching side. It's like all you can do is spin a breaking ball and you can't throw your fastball for strikes or you throw 82 miles an hour and you should spend more time on maybe the velocity development in the term, then it's just about being well rounded. And that's where like defense comes in and that's where being able to be a situational offensive player comes in. You have to be a well rounded player because when it gets to the end in the big leagues, it's the same thing there too. Like you see very few guys that are just God awful defensive players out there on the field. Like they might not be the best defensive player in the big leagues, but they can play defense and they're not going to embarrass themselves over there. So I think this being a well rounded player, it should never, that's. Things like that should never really go out of fashion. And I think that like you're saying, you know, it's like, you know, everyone's spending their time on one dimension of offense. They're just trying to be like, how hard, how hard can I hit the ball? And that's not, not important either. That's important too. But can you control the back? Can you not strike out a lot? Can you be able to put a ball in play when you have to? Can you play defense? You know, can you run the bases? Like these are important things. As much as people don't want to hear that they're important because it doesn't look good on Twitter. They're important things. The same thing in pitching, like all of these things, like, being good at everything is how you tear yourself down to like, where do you pitch? If you, if there are two guys that are, all things being equal are about the same. And one could hold runners and one can't, and one can feel their position and one can't. One's probably a weekend starter and one's probably pitching, you know, in the middle of the week. If we're up or down by a lot, it could be that, it can be that, like, that gap in terms of role can be that wide if there's enough good players and they've all taken the time to be able to work on things and be good at things while this other person is just struggling to find a way to like throw it over the plate. So I think that like versatility in our game has never been more important. Like, if you really think about it, it's like, because there's so many people that are just getting as, as one dimensional, as one dimensional as they possibly can instead of getting good at the whole thing. And, and I wish that more people spent time on the things that they're going to need when they get to upper levels of baseball because it's not just college either. It's like if you go into professional baseball, you might get a few more opportunities because the winning and the losing is not as important. But at some point you get washed out of the sport. If you're not good at this stuff, it's coming for you eventually. So when you're going through the process, you might as well try to get better at, you know, the whole part of the game. And being a good baseball player is, is still really important, although most people think that. All right, well, in Arkansas just got a bunch of guys that throw really hard and, you know, a bunch of guys that are, you know, really can, I can hit the ball really hard and they just kind of throw the ball, roll the balls out there and see what happens. And that can be the perception certainly, like you could have that perception if you wanted to. But look at who ends up playing for us when it matters. Like Will McIntyre is a fifth year senior on our team right now. And if you look back at the course of his career, he's thrown a ton of really important innings for our, for our team. He started some big games. He's pitched in Omaha. He's thrown, he beat Auburn in Omaha. He struck out like nine or 10 guys. He went seven innings, this unbelievable start. He had pitched huge innings for us last year at the bullpen. Will throws like 88 to 92 miles an hour. Like, he doesn't throw 96. He doesn't have the most ungodly breaking ball on the team. He doesn't throw sidearm. He doesn't. He's not like a specialist. He's good. He's like a really, really good pitcher that's good at a lot of different stuff. He can hold runners, he can feel this position. He can throw secondary pitches when he has to, and he's tough enough to pitch when it matters. The lights aren't too bright for him. And that guy pitches when it matters for us all the time. And there's guys on our pitching staff that, you know, their average fastball velocity is 97 miles an hour, which would be good in the big leagues. But they're going to throw eight innings for us this season because they can't do anything else or they don't think it's important enough or they don't work at it enough, or when it comes down to where do they want to spend their time that they're not with us, they work on things. They're already good at that because that's more comfortable. And that's a big. That's like a huge barrier to break down as an athlete, and it's a huge barrier to break down as a coach. I think that's where you have to be very introspective in. What do you. Who are you? And then what do you need? And then how does what you need fit into who you are? And not enough people ask any of those questions. It's like, well, I throw really hard, so I'm going to really work on playing long toss because I know that I can go out there and do that better than everybody else already. So I'm going to work really hard at that to try to do it even better than everybody else does. But what you really needed was a change up. Like, you need to spend time on that, but that's not as comfortable and people don't like doing those things. And that's probably human nature. And if you can break down those barriers and break down those and build a culture in which, you know, the best player on the team is working on the stuff that he's not good at because he knows it's important to him in the long term and he could probably get away with it. Like, I think Hagan Smith is probably the best pitcher on our. One of the best pitchers on our team and one of the better pitchers in the country. And he spends a lot of time working on stuff he's not very good at. And it's not because I told him to. It's because he wants to have a long career in professional baseball after he's done with us, and he wants to figure out how to be in a position to pitch in the World Series again for us. And he knows, like, if I don't hold runners a little bit better, and if I don't have a secondary pitch that can get righties out that moves away from the barrel, I'll have a tough time doing those things that I want to do. So I'm going to work on those really hard. And our young guys see that. And so if you have a culture of this that's already. That's already taking place, where your best players are going to work on things that they suck at and they're just not good enough at that, and then that, and it all starts from the top. It's like, if I know that I'm not good at teaching sliders or whatever, and I'm not spending any time on that, and all I'm doing is passing the buck off to somebody else, like, maybe they can help them out. Like, go ask your teammate. He's got a good breaking ball. If I'm saying stuff like that to our guys, like, what are they gonna. Like, what are they. What are they really learning? So I think it's constant improvement, and it's doing stuff you suck at, and it's. And it's trying to get good at things you're not good at. And like, every area of your life, either as a coach or a player, should be spent. There should be some time spent on that. And you should always know what you're really good at, because you're going to lean on those things. But you should try to bring up your weaknesses to the point that they can at least be serviceable. They don't have to be your strength, but they've got to be usable. And that stuff's hard to do, and it's also hard to admit it. So as coaches and as, you know, hopefully, like, people that are communicating with younger players, high school players or whatever, that. That's being communicated as well. Like, it's not always just, well, you're so good at this, and you're just going to, like, you're going to go there, and it's going to be easy, and you could be pitching in Division 1 baseball right now, or you could Pitch in the major leagues right now, you might be talented enough to. And I look downstairs at our guys and I'm like, yeah, it's probably like eight or nine guys that could pitch in the big leagues right now with what they have, have the stuff, but they can't do the other stuff yet. The things that are really important, like, can you do it on back to back days? Can you do it every fifth day?
1:00:14
Speaker C: No.
1:00:14
Speaker A: Can you get through a lineup three times? Like, there's a lot of things that they need to get better at. Physical talent will take you to a. You'll. There's a threshold for entry at every level, and physical talent is usually what gets you there. Like, very rarely is. Like, the guys at Grindr get you there, but physical talent can get you there. And then once you get there, what are you? Who are you that can either keep you there or advance you past that level, whatever that level is. That level could be the big leagues. That level could be big league all star. And the more people that start looking at those things and identifying strengths and weaknesses, areas for improvement as a younger player, like, that's gold. That's so valuable. And to do that, you have to have a support system in place of people that will talk to you like that. And that's hard to do because nobody wants to hear that when they're 16, 17 years old and they're the best player. And honestly, like when they're freshmen, they don't want to hear that either here. Like, they want to hear like, well, you know, you told me I was a good pitcher in recruiting and I was like, well, yeah, you still are. But you got to get better at all these things if you want to actually do something here. And those are the conversations that you got to be willing to, you got to be ready to have. And as a player, you got to be ready to hear it. It. And you know, we tell our guys all the time, like, yeah, sure, we have open door policy. And we'll tell you what, we'll tell you what's on our mind. But before you walk through the door, you better be ready to hear what we have to say. You're not always going to like it because you might have come in thinking you're just going to do this and you're going to do that and you transferred from this school and you're going to be the Saturday starter just because you were the Saturday starter there. That's not what that means. You got a lot of things you got to be able to do to be a good player in our program. And it's not different at any other levels either. Like, yeah, University of Arkansas, good program, had a lot of success, but so have a lot of places. There's a lot of good programs out there to whatever, like, threshold of the level that they're at. You know, there's a University of Arkansas at the Division 2 level, there's a University of Arkansas at the Division 3 level. And there's a threshold for things that their players have to do, too. And I think that spending time on some of the hard stuff and some of the things that, and I'm not just saying this because I think it would make my life easier as a coach, it certainly would. But like, we want to, if we're recruiting guys that tell us they want to be big leaguers and they want to sign and play professional baseball, these are the things you need to do to be able to stay there a long time and to be able to advance and move amongst the levels instead of just, you know, throw the ball hard or hit the ball far. And there's not enough people preaching those things right now in our game, I don't think. But is there an answer to that? You know, who knows? I think that the answer ultimately is just experience. And, you know, they all, they all probably go home when they, you know, get done with that first fall and in baseball and they're telling their buddies back home, boy, this is a lot different than I thought it was going to be. And it doesn't mean bad, it just means it's hard.
1:03:21
Speaker B: Yeah, and we've had a few of those conversations with some, with some guys that are on campus this fall calling and saying like, yeah, it's a little different than I thought. And if you can make the adjustment early and you can own it and you can. God, sometimes I just need to shut up and, and just let me take this in. Let me hear what coach has to say. And then the question should be, well, what do I need to do? Tell me what I need to do. And if you're going to follow that path, those kids will figure it out. It might a little trial and error and we'll have some ups and downs, but they'll figure it out. But, you know, we, me and Keith were laughing the other day. You got 26s and 27s that are all hell bent on getting Division 1 scholarships. And, well, have you played varsity baseball yet? Let's, like, let's check that box first. And I'm sure for, I mean, I'm sure you Handle it differently with every kid. But there's certain steps you got to take before you can even start to have that conversation around being a weekend starter. Like you got to be able to do some other stuff first and being able to maybe mark out some short term goals of, hey, let me get, let me get this done, let me see if I can tighten this up. I feel like sometimes that can be a good path forward for guys. Just try to find them some successes along the road. Some like kind of easy wins to build some confidence. But I'd love to hear you talk on like how you kind of lay the groundwork for guys who are going through that.
1:04:48
Speaker A: Yeah, I think the, one of the first pieces that you have to try to get across to people is don't skip the struggle. Like don't skip that part because there's a lot of good in there too that you're going to go through some ups and downs and some bumps in the road. But I think that creating some curriculum is important. It's like teaching and there's things that you have to do to advance to grade levels. Right. You got to do this to graduate from first grade to go to second grade. You got to have these kind of test scores, third to fourth, fourth to fifth, sixth to seventh and, and so on. And it's the same thing as, as like building curriculum for pitchers. Like when you show up, you got to be able to throw your fastball in the box, you got to be able to throw stripes to your fastball. And then we have to find a secondary pitch that works for you that you can throw in. Leverage counts. So as soon as you can do those things, then you can advance to like option to pitch. You're now an option to pitch. Because you have a fastball you can throw both sides of the plate and you have a secondary pitch you can land when you have to be able to go to something that's not a fastball. So now you're an option to pitch and then you have to tier it into all right, if he's an option to pitch, does he do enough to control the running game and can he field his position in case people try to skill on him later in the game? So now you have to pass that test. So now you're gonna have to pass that test. Those things are, those things are tested throughout practice, inter squad games, bullpens, whatever. As soon as you have established this guy can throw strikes with this fastball, for the most part, he's a 60ish percent strike thrower with his fastball. And we have a secondary pitch that we can use. It's in the zone 55% of the time. He can hold runners. He can feel this position. Now he's pitching in some level, to some extent, he's pitching. So from there, then it tears up to, all right, if he adds a third pitch, like, if he can get to a third pitch, and then that secondary. The secondary pitch that was an option is now a weapon that he can get guys to swing and miss at. Then you're starting to evaluate guys. All right, now let's take. Let's. Let's tier this all up for this guy. What kind of zone percentage does he have with this fastball? What's the swing and miss rate with his heater? Where can he, like, how many quadrants of the zone can he tick between his fastball? Like, does he take the up and away, up and in, down and away, down and in, middle thirds? Can he tick these boxes with his fastball? Because now he's becoming a little bit more multiple with how he can pitch. And then you start to look at asking those same questions, all right, does he get to the. The breaking ball? Can he get to the glove side on a frequency? Can he take it beneath the zone? Does he get swings and misses inside and outside the strike zone? Does he whiff inside the box? Does he get inside the zone sec strike zone and can get swings and misses in there with it? And now that becomes a pitch that you're like, all right, now that's a pitch we can use to wipe guys out with. Now that can be a pitch. And then we can then adjust the usage rates on. We can take. All right, it was only using it 30% of the time, but we've established these benchmarks with this pitch. It's now a pitch that you can use 50% of the time. And then we can work on this third pitch while we're doing that. So now he's gone from option to pitch. He's pitching. Now he's got a role. Like, now we're in a. Now we're in a situation where this guy's got a role. Now it's, is he a bullpen guy? Is he a reliever, first guy out of the pen? Is he going to close games for us? Is he going to then transition? Can he get through a lineup twice? Now he becomes an option to start. And all those things are fleshed out throughout, you know, fall practice and inner squad games before you get to the spring. And then in the spring, sometimes those are fleshed out. All right, this guy gets an opportunity now, and now his role grows. But you're really looking at benchmarks without. With any of these pitches is you have to have some models that you are using. Like, pitch models are important. They're not the be all, end all, because the bat still tells you what guys do. Like, how does. How do things react? Our hitters reacted to the pitches that are thrown. But there's still some models that work like thresholds of velocity. Then you take from velocity. All right, if it's not velocity, what type of movement profile does this fastball have? Is it carry? Is it sync? Is it just a flat running fastball? Is it kind of hanging out in the dead zone? If it is, is the command, is the Command in zone 65% of the time or better? Because if it's in that kind of dead zone, it's going to have. The command is going to have to tick up to be a bit of. A little bit better of a pitch. So that's us. And if he doesn't have something that's super special, then you start, you know, pulling back even more. Is it a lower approach angle? Is it a lower launch? Is it a higher approach angle? Is it a horizontal? Is the horizontal approach angle wide enough that we can get some deception? So you're evaluating the fastball, and then you start evaluating the breaking ball. Right now, what breaking ball goes best with that pitch? If we're going to be able to throw that fastball between 35 and 55 of the time or greater, what fat, what breaking ball goes with that? And then what are the metrics that apply to the breaking ball that would have to go with that? How does this breaking ball fit in? You know, what we know about breaking balls have been successful in the SEC over the past five years or something like that. And then can he throw something that's similar to that? And then can he get our hitters out with it? And then after he can get our hitters out with it, can he graduate to other hitters? And then, you know, how can he get through a lineup? You know, then you're talking about second, third, fourth pitches. How do we use the usage for those pitches? So there's like a million different ways that you can grow a pitcher up. But there's always got to be some kind of curriculum in place. So, like, you got to be able to hit at these benchmarks first before you can graduate to the next levels. It's like, we can't expect anybody to do, like, advanced Algebra if they can't do arithmetic. So there's got to be, like, benchmarked right when you get there. So creating pitches, you want pitches to be usable. You want zone percentages in the 50s, you want strike percentages in the 6 in the middle 60s. You want width percentages relative to location, depending on, you know, what they are. If they're outside of the zone, you're going to want to be in the upper 40s or the upper 30s, low 40s, inside the zone. If you're in the teens, you've got a real pitch. So looking at things like that and then giving them information about, hey, these are some benchmarks that you can create with your pitches. And, you know, when you get away from, like, the robustness of, like, fielding your position, holding runners into the real, like, specific things that guys have to be able to do to be able to actually get people out, it becomes pretty clear what needs to happen on a pitch. And then once you've evaluated all these pitches against the models, you start taking it. What does it do against the barrel? So if he's got a pitch that we think is going to be good, if he's got a fastball we think has some unique qualities and characteristics, all right, how does it play in and outside of the strike zone? Where does he get his swings and misses? Where is his hard and soft contact? And then educating him on, all right, if you've got this pitch, you should maybe throw it in this location or in this area, because it's going to play better against these types of hitters. So in addition to the modeling and looking at the things that you have to be able to do, then you have an educational period where you have to teach them about what their stuff does, and hopefully that can shape who they are as a pitcher. Instead of me just telling them, you're a singer slider guy, here's why. Here's why that we think that this thing can play better together. Are you comfortable throwing these types of pitches? Are you more comfortable on this type of side of the plate or this side of the plate? They can go a million different directions. And I think it's really important to have thresholds that you're looking for, though. You can't just say, like, he's got a good fastball. There's got to be, he's got a good fastball because of X, Y and Z, or he's got a good slider. Well, if it looks good, it actually has to do stuff against the hitters, and there's got to Be a reason why it's a good slider. And that can give them. If they, if they understand, like, I've got a good slide or I have a good fastball because I launch low, my vertical approach angle is in the middle fours. I've got 18 inches of carry, which plays better because my lower launch, lower approach and I throw velocity and spin. That gives you a lot of confidence when you're on the mountain. Like, I got something pretty unique here and I know if I go here instead of here, I got a better chance because it's been fleshed out over the past however many years at coach Hobbs and the rest of them have looked at the SEC numbers and I know that I get swing and miss or soft contact in this location. So instead of like, oh, I'm facing Dylan Cruz, it's just, I got to go to this spot. I know that my pitch works up here and forget who's at the plate. I know that I can win in this spot and it makes your life a little bit easier. Now, there's always going to be stuff that you go through, but like, from a scouting perspective and in terms of getting yourself, your players ready but teaching them, hopefully you've been able to teach them the, the absolute have to dos to be able to play, and they've been able to show you that they can get into the list of people that can pitch and then they can get into the list of people that can have a role and then they can expand upon their role. I think that would be like the best way. And I don't know if that's long winded or kind of all over the place for an answer, but I mean, that would be. What I think is ideal for building pitchers is, you know, you got to give them some things that they can shoot for instead of just like, he's really good, you got to be better than him.
1:13:18
Speaker B: When you give a kid that level of information, are you doing that because you want them to be really confident? And here's what I can do and do really well so they can just turn on the compete button when it's to get on the mound or is there a developmental understanding piece that you think is really important for. From a growth perspective there? Because I, I've, I'm a data guy myself and I think sometimes the, I feel like sometimes the data can be a little bit overwhelming for younger kids. But also if they understand it, it's. It's powerful because now they have some context as to, to, oh, well, now I understand why I Get swings and misses at the top of the zone against good hitters. And it's because I do this, this and this and then that can build some confidence. But I. How do you get them to, to take that information, use it as a development tool, but then on game day, it's compete time?
1:14:19
Speaker A: Yeah, I think it can be kind of both things. I mean, what you want them to do is be armed with information when they're training. So they're armed with information when they're training. Like I do this, this and this well and you know, I can then see the results. Like I can see what I've done against hitters or I know that the history of guys that have been kind of like me have had. If you're dealing with a freshman that hasn't ever really had any success against those types of hitters before, I think that you want to arm them with information for a couple different reasons. One, it is a huge confidence builder. If, you know, like I got an outlier slider and, and I'm gonna throw this thing 60% of the time. Ain't nothing you can do about it. It's gonna give them more confidence if they know they're doing something that's unique, certainly. And the second thing, from an education perspective, this is where our game is going and it's where our game is. And it's not like you're gonna get less of it. Like there's still things you gotta be able to do. Obviously from a baseball perspective, just playing the game well. Well, like I said, hold runners, field your position, secondary pitcher, strike, locate your fastball, like, like threshold things, like things you have to do. But understanding, all right, this is the type of pitcher I am because of these pitching metrics that I, that I am able to, I'm able to show these metrics on a consistent basis. It also is like a really good tool for long term development. It gives them things that they can look for in bullpens. Like I'm not always going to be there to tell them why something is a certain way for their entire lives in baseball. But if they know and they're armed with information when they get drafted and they show up in, in rookie ball and they're throwing or whatever a ball and they're throwing on a, you know, track, man, and throwing a bullpen and all of a sudden it just looks way different than what they're used to seeing, then they might know something's wrong and this is something that they can use for, you know, their own long term development. A way for them to check in. If all of a sudden, if you're throwing with, you know, 20 inches of carry the entire time you're in college and all of a Sudd 13, there's a problem somewhere, there's something that's not working, there's something that's not right and that allows him to self correct a little bit easier. Now, I'm not saying you got to look at the machine every time you throw a pitch to make sure everything's perfect, but if over time you're seeing like significant differences in pitch metrics that have been successful for you in the past, it's going to lead you to what's wrong and then you can start going back through the process. All right, Is my lifting different? Am I not sleeping enough? Is my arm slot different? Am I standing on a different side of the rubber as I have my, as my release side wandered, you know, two inches away from my head? And it can just give you a lot of the different checkpoints. But ultimately, like when you are arming players with information and giving them their day, giving them data or giving them, you know, reports or looking, looking through a force mound or biomechanics or anything, you're trying to arm them with things that will give them confidence. It either one of two things is happening, that you're making a change, that it is working or that what they're doing is really good and here's why. But not involving them in the process. I know, you know this happens all the time, right? You got like really cool tech at your place. Not saying like your place, but like globally. Like your school's got like a track man, it's got a kin attracts, it's got a force mount, it's got whatever and the players never use it and they have no idea what it is. Like that's not good. Like your players have to be able to understand, like they don't need to know everything. Certainly, like if you want to break down a kinetrax biomechanical report after every bullpen, you're spinning your wheels, going to take you forever. And the players aren't going to understand everything unless they're like, you know, human movement majors or whatever that that degree would be in. So it's important to make sure that you're not trying to give them absolutely everything you have. But it's also important that they do have information and you're involving them in the process. I've always felt like guys are going to get better is if, if they're Active participants in their own development instead of just waiting for it to happen. And sometimes if you're just like, well if they're constantly telling, asking me is that a good pitch? Like we got problems, like they can't be doing that, that they can't be always looking back saying was that good? Was that not good? Was this, was it this? Was it? That it's important that they have some like ownership of what they're doing. And I think that technology, data and the ability for the player to self analyze what's going on is incredibly important for them to be able to be literate in it. Just because when they leave us, I always think about it this way. Like if I've done my job as a pitching coach at Arkansas or wherever I'm coaching, then my players are self sufficient enough to be able to go get drafted, be sent to whatever level, have the coordinator, the pitching coach and the manager completely forget they're there. Like they no longer know that that player is on their team. And that player, our player can still get himself better in that amount of time. Like they forgot about him for four weeks. They had no idea, they forgot he was there, they didn't pitch him, they didn't do nothing with him. And he was able to go and throw his bullpens, he was able to play catch, he was able to self analyze, he was able to do, tick the boxes of things that he would need to do to get better because he had a system in place. And I'm not, we're not perfect in that, but that's, that's definitely my goal as a pitching coach. Because once you've done that, you've created self sufficient players that are, that are deeply involved in their own development. And you'll always end up getting the best out of those guys. Whatever their best is. Their best might be single A, their best might be the big leagues. So I think that technology plays a role in that, Data plays a role in that, analytics play a role in that. It all plays a role. There is like some paralysis by analysis. If you're gonna just like have a guy that every time they throw a pitch turn around and look at the track, man. Like that's not healthy either. But looking at it over time and getting reports back and be able to compare and contrast like, well, in May my fastball was doing this and in June it's doing this like there's something going on and then we can look too. Like that gives us an opportunity to be able to sit down, have conversations with our strength Coach and you know, our academic advisor, like, is this guy just stressed out? Like, is he. Did he have four tests that week? And what are his numbers, like in the weight room? Like, or is the bar speed the same? Is he jumping what he was jumping? Is he moving the. Is he moving the same amount of weight? Is he able to like do the things he needs to do in the weight room? Is he missing reps? Like, you can start like tearing down the conversations. Is he going into the training room more often? Is what, what's going on here when we can start seeing like big changes in data and they can see it too. So I think having them involved and then making sure they're literate and they don't have to be like, they don't have to know everything that I know about technology and data. Like, that's not their job. Their job is to know what works for them. And it might be 50 things that work for them or it might be two. And that's just us being able to educate the players. Us being able to work through this process. And education for these guys never stops because there's always going to be something else that they're going to be working on and then they're going to be need to be educated about that. I was just in the bullpen today with, you know, a fourth year guy or third year guy in our program and it's like he's still getting educated on things. Like he's now doing something a little bit different. And here's the education of like how you would use this pitch in the context of your stuff and then how this pitch plays in your arsenal and then a projected usage, like we could see this pitch being. Is this a 5 to 15% pitch? Is this a 15 to 30% pitch? Like, where do you see this pitch in your arsenal? How often do you think you're going to be able to throw this thing effectively and then we can start to look at. All right, if you think it's a 30% pitch, here's what a 30% pitch means. And then they can start to get literate on. All right, well, this is what this means. I have to be able to do this with this pitch if I want to be able to get it to the level that I need to be able to throw it at if I want to throw it at, you know, and use it this often in a game situation. So I think without technology, it makes it more difficult. With technology, it makes it a little bit more seamless for the players and then hopefully like I said, when you're graduating these guys to the next level, whatever that is for them, they have some literacy.
1:22:37
Speaker C: Love it.
1:22:39
Speaker B: Love it. I want to go in a slightly different direction, a little bit less tangible, but you've hit on it in a bunch of different ways. And I think it's important for a lot of people to hear because obviously you're at Arkansas, and it doesn't matter if you're at Arkansas, if you're at Chapman, or if you're at Missouri or Wake Forest. Like, when you go see a guy play, you're usually there because the kid's pretty good, right? You're usually there for a reason. But as you know, competing in the sec, competing in day in and day out, there's some characteristics, there's some character traits that play a little bit more effectively at that level. And I'm always curious to hear what coaches. How you get to the answer of is the kid the right fit from a character perspective? And are there things that you see on the field, are there in person interactions that cue you one way or the other?
1:23:34
Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's the hardest job that we have. Like, it's not hard to see who should be playing at the University of Arkansas or Sienna or wherever you go watch a guy. It's not hard to see. They usually stand out. There's certainly diamonds in the rough all the time. But usually if you're at a game, you say, okay, those three guys can definitely play in our league, and those 15 guys can't. So that part's not hard, I don't think, in terms of identifying, like, who should be who you should be after. The part that's really hard is identifying who fits. Like, who fits from a cultural perspective, who fits in your dugout, who fits in your locker room. You know, conversations are usually the best way to figure those things out. Like, people tell you what you want to hear when you ask them about a kid most of the time because they don't want to mess it up for the kid. And the best, like, being honest is the best thing that those people could do. This happens all the time. You're just like, you hear this guy. Oh, this is, like, one of the best kids ever. You know, he's going to fit in great. And it's like, you're taking a little bit of a chance because you know this coach, and. And then, like, six months later, it didn't work out. And then you talk to the guy again. He's like, yeah, I can kind of see that coming. But at the time they didn't want to mess it up for the kid. So honesty is always really important. And I'm not saying that, like, your travel ball coach isn't going to be honest, but, like, your high school coach is usually, like, really honest. They have no reason not to be honest. And those people are usually like very, very valuable resources in terms of trying to figure out, all right, you're around this guy at school.
1:25:00
Speaker B: School.
1:25:01
Speaker A: You're around this guy when it's not going well, you're making decisions to try to win games. What's he like in those situations? And that's a box you should check. You should try to talk to the high school coach. And I'm not saying we're perfect. I'm not saying we do it every time when we can. We try to get information, like from somebody who's coaching him when the wins and losses matter. That's one way you can try to, like, dig into somebody's character. Then you're obviously going to want to do something. If you're getting really serious about these kids, you're going to want to bring them to your campus. And I think. I think some people look at it like, well, we're going to bring him to campus and try to get him to say yes. Like, when we bring a kid to campus, we're trying to figure out, is this the right person? Also, like, that's a big part of the deal is, like, how does he interact with our players? How does he interact with the coaching staff? How does he interact with people that can do nothing for him, like the waiter at the restaurant? Like, that waiter can't do anything for him, but how does he interact with that person?
1:25:57
Speaker B: Person?
1:25:58
Speaker A: That's important stuff because it's one of the things that is a huge character trait of people that, you know, that you. You would say, like, hey, that guy, That's a real dude right there. That guy's a good person. How do they interact with people that can do absolutely nothing for them? And you can see those things more, more often when you're around them more. And usually you don't find a lot of that stuff rock solid out until, you know, you've been with them for about a year or six months or eight months, but you can start to see the hit. How do they interact with the person that took their ticket at the football game? How do they interact with the, you know, the other people on the sideline if you're at the football game with the kids? Or how do they interact when you took them to the basketball game with the ushers. Like, what are the interactions? Like, how do they talk to their parents? Like, how do they talk to their siblings? How do they talk to other people's parents? Like, you can tell some. Some things, at least hints from those. From those things. And you also have to just like, is this kid putting on a front? Is this, like, underneath this all, is this a good person? And. And that part takes a little bit of a leap of faith sometimes. And time. And this isn't me making excuses for us, certainly, but at the level that we recruit at, sometimes time is not of the essence. Because you think about it, they're like, well, we slowed recruiting down by not letting these guys talk to, like, 26s and 27s, which is good. But what happens when those kids become available to talk to? Now, the first time they get a phone call, they get 15 offers, and there is no relationship building. And, you know, most kids say it's about the relationship. They're making a decision. In two months, they haven't been talking to us. How can there be a relationship? Like, the vast majority of them are not going to become eligible to be talked to and then wait eight months to make a decision. Like, that's just the way that it is now. So you have to, like, bring him on campus. You got to try to find everything you possibly can out about the kid if he's going to fit, if you're going to spend some money, scholarship money on him. That part's important, too. You certainly don't want to put money into somebody that's going to be a bad teammate and not be somebody that can ever, like, change. There are, like, kids come in that are arrogant and, you know, think they got the world figured out, and then they change.
1:28:09
Speaker C: And.
1:28:09
Speaker A: But you got to, like, see at least some hints of, like, hey, this strong character underneath it all somewhere. And sometimes it can just be, like, a conversation with their parents where you're like, yeah, these parents are, like, really good people. The kid is, like, a little bit squirrely right now, but the parents are, like, rock solid people. Eventually, this kid's gonna figure this out. It might take a little bit of time so you can start to see some hints. So when you're talking about, like, character and do they fit? And is there anything that shows up on the field? I mean, yeah, like, you. You can see, like, that guy looks like he's tough, but maybe is he tough because he's just better than everybody else. And it's easy to look tough and like, like, you know, have some like real bravado when you know that you're not, you know that those people over there can't do much to you. So the only thing you can really do from that perspective is just go try to see them in really good tournaments where there's really good teams they have to play against. And I personally, I don't. I probably fall into the minority of college coaches. I love to see them play in front of a lot of scouts because that is a level of stress that like we can't. Can't give them. Like the Jupiter tournament, that like everybody goes and says they got to babysit their kids and complains about going to. I love going to that thing. I love it because it's like 100 scouts and pressure and they think that if they don't throw strikes, they're not going to get drafted. It's like that level of pressure. You can really see what you're getting and sometimes it might be too late at that point. They might already been committed to you. But if there's always a couple kids that are at that thing that, you know, you're still talking, talking, you're still talking with, you're still on a little bit or that pop up and you can see like, did he really, like, did he handle that? Did he handle 120 scouts against the best player in the country and no one knew who he was and he was uncommitted. How do you handle that? And that's a good way to be able to see like how they're going to handle the stresses of potentially like I think of that as their version of playing in front of 12, 000 people.
1:30:02
Speaker B: I was just gonna say, I think kid handles that. It's probably a little bit easier to pitch on a Friday night night down at lsu.
1:30:08
Speaker A: Yeah.
1:30:09
Speaker B: When you're, when you're trying to take a series to win the win the sec like may not be the end all be all. But probably feel a little bit more comfortable about the kid who goes and stuffs it against really good competition in front of 120 scouts. Like, it gives you a little bit better feeling going to bed at night.
1:30:26
Speaker A: Yeah, I think that. And it's again, it's like one of those levels of pressure you don't get to create in college really until they're. They're juniors or they're draft eligible again. So I think those things, they show you some hints. It's definitely like the character part is the hardest thing to be right on because you think you're right on somebody. And you're like, this is the greatest kid ever. This guy could, like, go date my daughters. And then, like, within a year of having him on your team, you're like, this guy is not it. And you do your best to help them, certainly. Yeah. And you do everything you can to help these kids. And sometimes they want to hear it, and sometimes they don't.
1:31:00
Speaker B: You don't.
1:31:01
Speaker A: And you.
1:31:03
Speaker B: There's just.
1:31:04
Speaker A: If anyone tells you they figured out, like, here's how you recruit character, I would like to meet that person. I think. I think it's the. I think it's the hardest piece. Like, I really do. I think it's. I don't think it's impossible, but I think it's really hard. Like talent, like I said. I think that we can all kind of figure out, like, yeah, this guy's going to be good enough. This guy's not going to be good enough. And there always are. Like I said, those kids, kids that don't look like they're good enough now and end up being really good. But the character, what type of person he is when he's by himself 2,000 miles away from home. Like, I worry about that when we bring in kids from California, because I know that I did it. Like, I was a. I was from Southern California and I played at Missouri. I always worry about that. Like, what kind of person, you know, are we really getting? Because I know what I said on my recruiting trip, trip to Missouri, and I know what I did my freshman fall. Those two things did not add up. Those two things were not the same. So I always worry about that, like, coming from a far away. You know, coming from far away to go to school, and they're out by there by themselves, and they get there, they look around like, wait a second. Not only not the best player here anymore, I'm also. I don't know anybody, and nobody does the things that I do. And. And I'm from the west coast, and these guys are from Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Miami or wherever. It's just different. So you always worry about those things, and those things don't show up until it really starts. The bullets start flying in the fall, and things start getting hard. And as much as we like these guys to be able to be comfortable in their environment, sometimes it's good to see them pretty uncomfortable. So there's. There's just no. I wish there was a rhyme or reason, and I wish there was a way to just. You. You ask these 10 questions and. Or you go Watch him play and you see him, like, sprint on and off the field and that meant. And that meant something. Or you saw them high five their teammate. And like, I think those things are important. But does that true. Does that show true character? True characters? When you're like, no one's watching and you're at your lowest point, like, that's when it shows up. And you don't usually get to see that.
1:33:16
Speaker C: No, I worried about that stuff when I was at rpi too. I mean, the amount of kids we had from the west coast and Washington and, you know, California, like, when they get to campus, like, there's, you know, I think, you know, it. There was at least we always had west coast kids. So I feel like they had kind of the, you know, they would always take the younger kids under their wing to be like, hey, like, yeah, I get it. Like, you're far from home. But, like, we've all been able to do it. And, you know, and I felt like for at least in our program, like, it helped us a little bit better having, you know, a decent amount of guys from the west coast, like, not that everything was culturally the same, but like, like, okay, there's another five or six guys here that have gone through it and are going through it that I can lean on, you know, kind of as like a mini support system within our program, which I always thought was great, great for us. But the one thing too that I think you hit on is. And it's the same like, going to Jupiter. Like, I always. And I've said this before, and I think that it's important, like, everyone views, like, whether it's Jupiter or just like a PBR showcase that you're at. Like, I can't tell how many showcases I've been to, whether it's a head first show ball or pbr, perfect game, whatever. Like, you'll, like you if you're sitting in stands, like, you'll hear the parents be, like, you know, I don't know what I would do. There's so many coaches here. Like, this is a stressful situation. It's like that, like, that's why we're there, to kind of like, we want to see how you're going to react. Because you haven't been in a showcase. You haven't been in a setting where there's 2010. It could be five coaches, five, 10, 15, 20, 30 coaches sitting on your field watching you play and that, like, that's where it can really show up and kind of tell the coaches at least get you can gleam some, some, some information out of it of like, okay, when the lights are on and we have to actually do this, can this kid handle it? And you know, and, and I think in, in both regards, like, yes, he does. And I think he, you know, he's worth recruiting or you know what, hey, he got absolutely lit up. But he, you know, his, it wasn't bad. He caught some barrels. But the kid was tough and was a bulldog about it like that. Like you can, you can get a little bit more information out of that stuff. That too, you know, especially going to games. You go watch a kid and he gets absolutely shellacked, but he keeps getting up on the mound and, and trying to fill it up and doesn't quit on you. Like you can find a little bit more out about that kid than, you know. And, and same thing like you, you go watch a kid and he gets lashed around the yard and it's like, you know, we're complaining, we're throwing our stuff and we're pissed. Like, it's like, yeah, I don't know. Like, can that kid handle pitching? You know, in my program, can he handle pitching for me personally? Like, you know, so, so it starts adding a couple more questions into that. Like into, you know, what you're trying to break down when you start talking about like where you start with 15 guys and where it is like they might, they might like use. You might be able to figure out like this kid. I don't know if we would be a match personality wise with that. And I think that also kind of, you know, what you were talking about with the like, yeah, we pushed back to August 1st and I do think it's for, for some reasons it's going to be good, but everyone we talk to is like, it's going to be super hard to figure out that like that piece of. Are they going to fit into our program and are they going to be a good fit for us as a coaching staff and our coaching style with this kid in such a short, condensed period of time because we don't have that longer period of time and what that we used to have to do it. So, you know, I think it's an interesting, I think the next like two, three years are going to be super interesting from a recruiting standpoint to see like how know, individual programs work through this new rule.
1:36:52
Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it's a good point and I think people are looking at this past year as like the litmus, one of the litmus tests and it's not a good way to look at it, a lot of those kids are already committed.
1:37:02
Speaker C: Yep.
1:37:03
Speaker A: So 20, 26, same thing. I'm not saying that there's a. Certainly a larger density of uncommitted 26s, but. All right, 20, 27, there's like five or 10 kids committed in the whole class. So what happens that day when you can start calling kids kids and they're all uncommitted? Like, you're gonna build out now all of a sudden, like, let's say that, you know, you're gonna take between 15 and 18 kids in a recruiting class or between 12 and 8. Let's say 12 and 18 kids in a recruiting class is a normal number at most Division 1 schools somewhere in 12 and 18, and you have zero committed. So you're now you're going to build a class of 12 to 18 kids by the end of the fall with a bunch of kids that you don't even know.
1:37:44
Speaker C: Right.
1:37:46
Speaker A: Like, there's no way you can do that and do this well. So the real litmus test for this thing and whether or not it's going to work or not is about two years from now. And I think we'll. You'll start to see, like, are people waiting to offer kids, but. But it's like, you can't really do that because someone in your league is going to send out 20 offers and they're going to get this kid committed, and you know, it's going to work and they're going to take some chances. And I'm not saying that wouldn't be us, but I'm just saying, like, in terms of getting to know people, I didn't think it was great that, like, freshmen in high school were committing to colleges, either, or eighth graders. I didn't think that was great. Like, I don't think anybody thought that was great. And I don't know what the answer is either. Like, I don't know, like, what. What to do to make it work, but it certainly isn't, like, give these kids a month and a half to figure out where they want to go to school, because they've got 15 offers, and that school is saying, you got three weeks to figure this out, and we need to know, is that fair for the kid? Probably not, but it's going to happen. Like, that's coming. I mean, it's already happening, but, like, that's coming big time. In two years.
1:38:54
Speaker C: Yep.
1:38:55
Speaker A: When you're just. When you're seeing a bunch of coaches panicked about, I got to get this class done, and they're Not, I don't want to wait till the spring because I don't have a ton of time to go out and watch a bunch of games in the spring because I'm trying to win games for the team that I'm coaching. Coaching and honestly like it. If you really think about what did it do, it took the fall and took it away from the players on campus to a certain extent, depending on when you start your fall. Because like in 2020, and again, this is down the road, not happening. Not happening right now. But down the road, you're going to try to evaluate those kids as much as you can in the summer, but you're still going to want to see them play. And then you're going to have them on campus and then you're going to be doing official visits and then it's like you're going to have to structure the way your fall structure is going to have to change because it's going to be an official Visit weekend of 15 or however many kids you can have until you get to your number every weekend. So is that good for the kids on your campus or you're giving them less time? Like, I don't, I don't know. Again, I don't know what the answer is and I'm not complaining about it, certainly, but I'm just saying these are some, like, these are some things that have to be thought through, Will. And we're not going to know how this all plays out for a couple years, so it'll be very interesting. And like I said, I was not in favor of like 8th graders committing either. And I'm not saying I haven't committed some freshmen in the past either. I'm not saying I'm perfect, but something had to be done. They did what they thought was best. We're gonna roll with it and see how we can work inside the system. Just like we tell our players, figure out how to work inside the system and, and we'll do the best we can. But I'm interested to see what happens in a couple years when there's a very, very large density of uncommitted kids when this all breaks down. And what that first week or two weeks or three weeks or four weeks is like, with just like shotgun recruiting. And it's like, well, I've got, I just, you know, by, by 10:00 clock in the morning. This kid's got 15 offers, right? What does he know about those places other than, like, I watched him play on tv.
1:40:48
Speaker B: Twitter is going to be incredible.
1:40:51
Speaker C: Oh, Twitter's gonna be out of control.
1:40:52
Speaker B: The Twitter earth is gonna be.
1:40:53
Speaker C: And I also say, I also think like, the, the, the way that recruiting goes about, like, you're not going to sit in Atlanta on 2027s and 2028s for multiple weeks on end because, you know what I mean? Like, like what, what good is that going to do you? You know, so like, and I don't like this summer. I don't like, to your point, like, this past year wasn't a real litmus test for it because it, so that shakes up everything instantly. So now it's like, all right, like, what do we do? And with the transfer Porter and everything, with guys still having Covid years and stuff, like, you know, it mitigates that, that a little bit, you know, but it'll be, you know, it's going to be interesting moving forward to see how people handle what this, like, what it does and like, you know, does it change it for a whole hell of a lot of people. Like, I don't, you know, I don't know if it changes it. And I'm going to say Maris, because I, we played there. Like, I don't know how much this rule really affects. Affects them. Whereas, you know, the upper echelon, it might affect them and like, it might affect you guys a little bit more than it does the, the kind of the mid major division ones, you know, so it's, you know, like I said, I, I think it's gonna be super interesting to see how it shakes out.
1:42:03
Speaker A: Institutional camps become important, honestly, if you're just trying to, like, you're trying to find out a fit as a, as a player because, you know, going to camps, you can do that as you can't talk about recruiting and stuff like that, but you can go to the camps and learn as much as you can about the player, about, about the. I'm sorry, the player can learn about the coaches. But it's like not every kid is going to come to our camp, certainly. So it's like, I'm just saying it makes it difficult on. And I speak through the lens of a coach because I'm a coach. It just, it makes it like very, very difficult to figure this thing out, you know, with like, you're saying you're not going to spend time recruiting three years out, so you're not going to have as many looks at these kids as you will like that summer before they're eligible to talk to. You're going to go see them play a lot because you're going to try to figure out, all right, who do we want to be talking to? And then, you know, you're checking in on kids that have you that maybe already come to your camp that you liked, but you couldn't really talk to them about anything. You could just kind of like help them at camp. And then you're going to go check back in on those kids and you have a little bit of a relationship because they know who you are. But it'll just. Again, I'm not, like I said, I'm not saying it's good or bad. I, I'm interested to see how this thing plays out in a couple years.
1:43:10
Speaker C: Yeah, no, like, Andy and I have talked about this. Like, if you, if you're like, let's say you're an acc SEC type player there, like, like, depending on what your socioeconomic situation is, like, you can't spend money flying all over the country to go all the institutional camps that you want.
1:43:25
Speaker A: No, you know what I mean?
1:43:27
Speaker C: Like that, like, yes, that is a piece of like what you could do. But like, depending on what you're, where you're at financially as a family, like, you're not going to be able to just pick up and like, hey, I'm from Massachusetts, okay? Like, you know, you can't go to Wake in Arkansas and Miami and do you know what I mean? Like, there's only so those institutional camps that you're gon legitimately be able to go to. And it's not like those camps have, you know, it's not like Arkansas has LSU and Wake and everyone else working their camp. Like that doesn't happen. You know what I mean? You're only going to see that one. Like it's, it's going to be that school and maybe like, you know, hey, I worked weight camp when I was at RPI and same thing at Columbia. Like, it's going to be lower level coaches and schools that will be there, but it's not going to be, you know, you're literally only going to go there for more or less that, that one school.
1:44:18
Speaker A: So yeah, I'm. It'll be, it's gonna like, these things always find their way to work themselves out. They just, sometimes it just takes a little time.
1:44:26
Speaker C: Yeah, but I, you know, we're super appreciative of your time. So, you know, our last question. We always end on, you know, what advice would you give to a family and a kid going through the process right now to, to be recruited at the college level?
1:44:41
Speaker A: I think you have to be realistic about the level that you're trying to get into. You always have to have goals. Obviously everybody wants to play at what goal level is for them and you should have those goals and you should work towards those goals. And then when it comes time to, you know, do I have a bunch of options after, you know, the date they're allowed to talk to me. Do I have a bunch of options? And if the answer is no, reevaluate where you need to be looking. Maybe you are at a 78 mile an hour right hander that throws a ton of strikes and, and doesn't have a ton of projection. But it's going to play in college. There's a place for it for you. But being realistic and like, watch the games on tv, like, that would be. The thing that I'd start with is just like, turn on. If you want to play at Louisville, turn on a bunch of Louisville games and watch like, what do their players look like? Like, start there. And if you start to see, like, okay, you know, this fits for me and you think it does, then go find somebody you trust, hey, do you think I could play at Louisville? And why do you think that? What are the reasons why I should be able to play there and be, you know, find someone that's going to be honest with you. And if all those things start to add up, all right, what do I. What are those guys different than me? Like, all right, they're all stronger than me because they're older. That one is usually where you start. What do I have to do to get myself stronger to be recruitable so I can be, you know, look good to them? All their pitchers are like six, four. I'm not saying that is actually accurate for that place. But just for instance, all their pitches are 6, 4 and I'm 5, 9. All right, now I got to start thinking I got to do something different to be like, very appetized. They obviously have a type and I'm not. I don't fit in it physically, but maybe I can do something that can fit in it from a, like a stuff perspective. What do their pitchers throw? Same thing you do on the hitting side. And you start to like, start doing those types of things and like, be real honest with where you fit, where you're at, where you could potentially be at in two or three years. And then look at it from an academic standpoint. Like, where do you fit academically? If you're a 2, 5 student, then you're not going to Columbia. Like, you're not going there. So I think that you Got to be like, real honest with yourself academically. And I think a lot of that's good. A lot of that stuff needs to start. You got to make a decision that you want to do something. You want to go to college when you go to high school, as much as that sounds like, well, what are you talking about? About what you do as a freshman in high school matters, like the type of student you are matters. It's not like you just catch back up. Like you put yourself in a hole to start. Like you're just playing catch up the entire time you're in high school to be like even eligible to play in college. So you need to start with a plan when you're 12, 13 years old. Like, I want to go to college and these are the type of colleges I'd like to go to. And then, all right, as an ad, I want to be an athlete, and here's the sports I want to play play, and here's the sport I'm gonna think I'm gonna be the best at. And then you start evaluating yourself against those, against those types of places and like, where do I fit now? What do I have to do to be able to achieve these things? And then like, if you really want to go to that, there's five schools. Let's say you got five schools you really like and with all within drivability, the drivable distance, or you have your family has means to travel, go just ask the coaches, hey, I think Hagen Smith, like the best pitcher in the world.
1:47:57
Speaker C: World.
1:47:57
Speaker A: Let's say they think that. What was he like when he was a sophomore in high school? Like, what was he like? Was he like me? Was he just a slam dunk superstar from the start? Coaches will appreciate that question. What were the guys that are really good for you? Like, when they're my age and it doesn't. You don't have to get into recruiting with them at the. You can just talk to them like, all right, here's the things that those guys did when they were your age or close to it. And this is why we were interested in them. So, I mean, that's a lot, a lot to do. But if you really want to play this thing at the highest level and you want to find a good fit, like, it's just as hard as being like, good enough to be recruited. Is this process too. Like, none of it's easy because 2% of the players that play in college are just no brainers. Like total no brainers for everybody. Everybody's like, yeah, that guy's good enough to play at all these places. Most of them. It's like, that guy's a fit for us, but he's not a fit for us. Or we're not even recruiting that guy and you guys gave him a scholarship. It's just like, there's more of that than there is like, the total slam dunk, no brainer kid. That is just like, all right, that's obvious. And that kid usually signs anyway. So if you really want to do this thing at a really high level. And a high level by what I mean by a high level is find a thing. It, like, that's high level for me and the high level for you. That could be like Stony Brook or it could be Wake Forest. Like, both great places, really good institutions, good baseball. One's in the acc, one isn't. So, like, you can look at. Right, well, what do the players do at this place versus this place? And not that one's better than the other. It's just. They're just different in terms of what they'll recruit. So I think honesty is like the most important thing with yourself. And then finding people that are either in your immediate family or that you trust, like family that will be honest with you and not, like, be a jerk to you, but honest, like, this person will be honest with me. And then you have to be ready to hear what they have to say, because they might tell you, Johnny, everyone that pitches at Lou, again, I'm not saying this is the way that it is. Everyone that pitches at Louisville, six, four, they throw 97 miles an hour. You're five foot nine and you throw 86 miles an hour. An hour, you're probably not going to be one of the guys that they recruit. So here's what you would have to do to get into the range of people they might be interested in. And you have to be okay hearing that stuff. And it's. And it's going to seem like a ton of hard work, because it really is. And then you have to go find out, like, is this place I've dreamed about playing my whole life, one of these five schools that I just dreamed about, do I even really like it? Because once you get there, you have to, like, enjoy being there. Like, if they want to pitch at Arkansas and they come to a camp and they're like, coach Hobbs is a lunatic. I really don't like him, but I really want to go to Arkansas, so I should just go there. That's crazy. That's absolutely crazy because I'm the person you'd spend 99% of your time with. If you're a pitcher and if you don't like me as a person, like you really don't like me, why would you want to come play for me? And the same thing on my side is like, if I really don't like the person, why would I want to recruit him? Like, I want to coach people I like being around. And it's the same thing for the players, like they got to want to be around us. So the evaluation process, when we're talking about like going to an institutional camp, if you can afford it and make sense for you financially, that's big. Part of that is finding out like, does is this place a fit for me? Because you got to like be able to wake up someplace and have just, just this is what's going to happen when you're a freshman. You're going to go out and an inner squad game, you're going to strike out four times and you're going to pitch in an inter squad game and you're going to hit two guys and give up a three run home run and you're going to wake up the next day and you're going to be really in a bad spot and thinking you'll never play baseball again. This is what people do. It's hard and there's a lot of challenges and if you wake up in a place where like, you know what, what? This is challenging. But I really like those coaches and I like where I go to school. Those people get through that, set that, that challenge way better than if you wake up and be like, not only did I give up this home run, but Coach Hobbs is a jerk and I hate Fayetteville. Those people don't usually make it and it's usually just because they're like, Arkansas recruited me, that's where I should go or wherever, whatever school, instead of doing the hard work, like the pro, going through the process, they're skipping the struggle. They're just going to go to the prettiest girl, but they're skipping the struggle of like, maybe I should like actually figure out if this is a place I want to try to go to. Because the last thing you want to do is end up at a place that you hate and you're just there because of the baseball. And at some point, you know what, like, the baseball's not going to be going good and it's going to be really hard to pull yourself out of a hole if you don't like being there. So I think the advice I'd give is when people say, do your homework about the places that are recruiting you or that you want to go to. It doesn't mean, like the average innings pitch that the freshmen have or the average at bats the freshman players get. It means, like, go actually, like, investigate. But people, people, because those are the people that are going to be there assuming everything is equal and the player, the coaches stay and like, those are the people you're going to be around a lot. That's part of your homework. It's not just like, how many guys did they get drafted last year? I'm not saying that's not a factor. It is, but if you're going to become one of those guys that got drafted last year, you actually probably had to enjoy being there so you could work hard enough. It's tough to play for people you don't like. Like, and it's tough to coach people you don't like. That's just. That's. That is. That is a fact. And that's human nature. And if you do your homework and you go through the process and you're. And you're smart about it and you evaluate it on the academic, social, and physical side of what you have to do to play baseball or any sport at the college level, and you come up with like, hey, these are the three places that really fit for me. They really want to recruit me, and they're all offering me relatively the same amount of money. Then you've done your homework, you're going to make a great decision, and you're going to like where you play, and that's going to give you a chance to develop as a player and a person and come out of this thing knowing you made a good decision. So I guess that would be the advice I'd give them.
1:54:22
Speaker C: That's great. A friend of ours, actually, he stole it from his boss, but he would. He used to always say, like, if they're not happy standing in the center of campus, they're not going to be happy standing in shortstop either. And there's.
1:54:33
Speaker A: It's true.
1:54:33
Speaker C: A lot of truth in that, definitely. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to sit here and talk baseball with us. It was awesome.
1:54:45
Speaker A: Yeah. I appreciate you all having me, you know, and anyone who's listening to this thing, like, there's. If you have any questions specifically for me, there's definitely ways to find me and I'm happy to answer them. But I always enjoy conversations about whether it's recruiting or coaching or, you know, anything about the process of doing this thing at the level that we all want to do it.
1:55:04
Speaker B: I.
1:55:04
Speaker A: That they're always enjoyable conversations. So I, I appreciate you guys taking the time to talk to me.
1:55:09
Speaker B: Oh, can't thank you enough, Matt. Really appreciate it, man. We'll be, we'll be following the Razorbacks this spring. All right. We'll hopefully we'll catch up with you again soon. Hope you have. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Hope you have a wonderful holiday. And if we don't talk to you, best of luck this spring and can't thank you enough.
1:55:27
Speaker A: Wonderful, guys. Thank you very much. Appreciate y'. All.
1:55:29
Speaker B: Thanks, man. Appreciate it.
1:55:30
Speaker A: Bye.
1:55:31
Speaker B: Out.
1:55:31
Speaker A: Bye.
1:55:34
Speaker B: Well, thank you, everybody for joining. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @EMD baseball. Check us out on the interwebs@www.emdb.com. and for those of you who have been listening, go ahead and check out the new online academy we launched. It's wonderful. You'll learn a ton of.
1:55:58
Speaker A: A lot.
1:55:58
Speaker B: Of information similar to what Coach Hobb distilled to us earlier today. Deep dive on a lot of things that are really important in the college baseball recruiting process. But until next week, thank you.
1:56:22
Speaker A: Sam.