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My Baseball Journey: Jared Gaynor (Full Story) · The Mound Visit

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: They were able to give me a really good scholarship
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: just because of honestly, purely because of timing. Like sometimes
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: sometimes timing is more important than anything else, Like you
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: just got to be in the right place at the
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: right time, but you also got to be persistent with
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: knocking down those doors. If I didn't go to Washington
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: or sorry, yeah, if I didn't go to Washington to
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: pitch and didn't email one hundred teams to try to
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: get in a league, in a good summer league, this
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: opportunity doesn't exist, and who knows.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: What happens after that.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of The Man Visit Podcast. My
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: name is Jared Gaynor. Normally I'm accompanied by Josh, but
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: today I'm gonna be going solo and I'm gonna walk
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: step by step through my journey as a player at
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the high school level to where i am now as
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: a coach in the private sector. And I'd love to
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: hear from you guys after this, if there was something
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: that I said that resonated with you, or maybe there's
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: something that I went through that you're currently going through.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: I'd love to be able to help you with this process,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: whether you are a player or you're a coach, So
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I'm going to jump right in and just start with
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: you know, me as a high school player. So entering
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: my freshman year of high school, I was very undersized
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: and much smaller than most of the players at that time.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: So I think my freshman year, I want to say
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I was maybe five foot four, five foot five, one
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty pounds maybe, so definitely small on the
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: smaller end for sure. Just hadn't really had a big
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: gross spurt yet at that point, and as a result,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: through slower I was, you know, sixty seven to seventy
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: miles an hour, and frankly, I actually played more outfield
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: than pitched. I think my freshman year I threw maybe
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: five innings or six innings and primarily played outfield and hit.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until my sophomore year that I really started
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: to pitch more and it really started to gravitate towards that.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: So I went to a small high school in Phoenix,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Arizona called Scotts Stale Christian Academy. Was fortunate to play
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: for a coach named Bill Swift, who played in the
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: major leagues in the eighties and nineties. He was the
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: second overall pick and I want to say the nineteen
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: eighty four draft out of the University of Maine. And
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: he was a big mentor for me, in a big
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: help for me as a player. He coached my two
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: older brothers, so I had known him for quite a while,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: and it was great to get to play for him
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: and to get to learn from him, you know, as
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: a pitcher, and to really pick his brain on some
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: of the things that he was able to do on
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: the mound. And he kept things very simple for me.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: He wasn't necessarily big on velocity or talking about it,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I should say, but he was really good with the
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: mental side and instilling confidence in your skill set and
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: making you believe or helping you believe that with the
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: right work ethic and pushing yourself that you can get
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: to places where you want to go.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: So really learned a lot from him. Really helped me a.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Lot with some of my pitches, like a lot of
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the pitches that I threw throughout my career, like my slider.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: He taught me and really stuck with me, allowed me
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: to perform really well at you know, at various levels
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: because of some of the things that he taught me.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: So throughout high school, like I said, was undersized even
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: my senior year finished at you know, I was five ten,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: five eleven, one hundred and forty five pounds through in
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the low eighties. So I wasn't you know, a flamethrower
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: by any means, But you know, I was respectable for
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: a high school pitcher, low eighties left handed, did really well,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: had a lot of success. But because I didn't take
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: school seriously, I focused only on baseball. I thought if
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I was good at baseball, that's all that would matter.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I didn't have a lot of college opportunities, and I
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: really I really limited myself because of the classroom you know,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: GPA wise, I don't remember exactly what it was, but
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: it definitely was not good enough to get to a
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: lot of schools, especially being a borderline player, being you know,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: a low.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Eighties lefty, which wasn't terrible.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Right, but it wasn't you know, I wasn't a guy
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: where I was eighty eight to ninety, you know, left
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: from the left side, throwing strikes to whar It's okay,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: no matter what, we got to find a way to
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: get this kid on campus. It was I was a
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: fringe guy for a good four year school. So the
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: fact that my grades were horrible really limited the opportunities
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and schools basically encouraged me to go to the junior
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: college route, to develop for a couple more years and
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: then see what comes of it from there. So that's
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: exactly what I did junior college basically. You know, during
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: my senior year, junior college became pretty clear that was
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: going to be the path that I was going to go.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: And now it was just a matter of choosing which
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: one I wanted to go to and which one was
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: going to give me an opportunity. And I committed super late.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: So for those of you that are stressing about committing
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: to a school, maybe you're going into your senior year
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: of high school and you're worried that you're not committed anywhere.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I didn't commit to a school till two months before
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: school started. So I graduated end of May. I want
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: to say it was like beginning of June that I
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: committed to a school. So school started in August. I
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: committed two months before it started, and you know, I
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: basically threw for three or four schools through for like
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Lendale Community College, Channel Gilbert, and then through for South
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Mountain and South Mountain was actually a school that I hadn't.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Even heard of.
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  Speaker 1: I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and I had never
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: even heard of South Mountain Community College, and so I
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: looked them up and I'm seeing.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, these they're actually a really good program.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: And my travel ball coach at the time, Theren Brackish
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: for az Pro, he recommended me to South Mountain. So
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: I went and threw for head coach Todd Easton for
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: a bullpen in there at the end of May. He
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: liked what he saw. He offered me an opportunity to
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: come on the team. And you know, I, like I said,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: I had a couple other potential opportunities with Chandler, Gilbert
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: and and Glendale Community College. So I was kind of
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: seeing which one made the most sense. And at the
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  Speaker 1: end of the day, I chose South Mountain. And that
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: was a great decision for me because it was far
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: enough away from home. Because I, you know, I lived
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: in a town called Cave Creek. This was closer to
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: South Phoenix, so I ended up having to live in
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: an apartment. So I lived in an apartment. Even though
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I wasn't at a four year school, I still kind
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: of got to live more of a university lifestyle where
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: I was living with teammates and not living at home,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: which was great for me from a maturity standpoint and
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: growing up and just really being responsible for myself in
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  Speaker 1: the classroom and on the field.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: And you know, going.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Into that fall, started playing with kids now that we're
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: from some of these bigger schools in Arizona or maybe
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: they were Division one fallbacks. We had kids that were
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: at U of A or Arizona State that were kickbacks
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: to South Mountain and I just had come from a
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  Speaker 1: tiny high school of three hundred students where I was
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the you know, the big fish in a small pond,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: where I was you know, dominating my senior year, had
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: a great year. And now I'm at a level where
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: people are either at my level or above my level.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: And now it's time to prove myself and prove that
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  Speaker 1: I can pitch at this level.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: And I had a good fall. Did did decently well.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly how well I did, but apparently
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: it was good enough to where the coaches announced me
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to be the opening day starting pitcher in the spring.
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  Speaker 1: So I started the very first game of the season.
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  Speaker 1: It was in Las Vegas. We were playing at UNLV
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  Speaker 1: Stadium against I want to say, I can't even remember
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: the school. It was one of the Nevada schools, though
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: it might have been Western Nevada, something like that solid program.
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  Speaker 1: I was nervous, like I remember specifically warming up before
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the game and in the bullpen, and like normally I
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: have great feel for my slider, I can throw that
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  Speaker 1: whenever I want, and that pitch was going nowhere near
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: where I wanted it to. And so that was when
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I knew it might be a tough day. And my
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: pitching coach was definitely giving a look of concern, and
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: I just had no feel for I was just so
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: anxious and so nervous that I just I couldn't pitch
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: like I knew how to pitch. And so I get
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: in the game, first inning, give up two runs. I
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: think it started off with an air so like I
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: didn't get things going my way. Right off the bat
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  Speaker 1: I gave I think it was a ground ball to
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: shortstop and went underneath our shortstops glove. Next batter hits
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  Speaker 1: a double off the wall, and from there it was
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: a whirlwind. I can't even remember what happened after that,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: but I do know that I gave up two runs
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: in that first inning, so like, okay, two runs, I
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: can live with that. Let's get back to worse. Go
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: back out for the second inning, Go back out. And
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: it was just a hit parade from there. They were
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: just all over me. And I ended up giving up
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  Speaker 1: five runs in the second inning, and I think I
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: maybe got one or two outs in that inning, So
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: I went like an Indian third or Indian two thirds,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: gave up seven earned runs. Guy comes in after me, dominates.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: We don't win the game, but he carries us into
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: the seventh inning and just basically basically filled my role
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: as a starting pitcher for that game. And I did
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: so bad this game that I went from being named
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: the opening day starter to immediately being moved to the bullpen.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: So I didn't even get another start. I immediately went
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: to the bullpen. And the guy that came in after me,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: he was also a freshman. He was the reliever. They
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: bumped him into the starting role.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: He was in my role.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: So the next week we're playing Chandler Gilbert and he
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: starts dominates. I don't remember how many ofthings you went
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: five or six innings, did great.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: I come in after hims.
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  Speaker 1: Now the roles were I'm coming in out of the
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: bullpen after him, and it was like the same thing
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: as the previous outing. First inning, I think I gave
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: up two runs. I go back out for a second inning,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: managed to get out of it, but I think I
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: ended up giving up three or four runs in those
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: first two innings. And I just remember leaving that game
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: and like talking to my dad and just driving home
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: and just not knowing what was going on. I hadn't
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: failed to this extreme I'm ever on a baseball field,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: you know, being at a small high school and ages
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: before that, even though I was smaller and undersize, I
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: always performed really well. And this was like the first
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: big test for me mentally, as you know, what, how
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: am I going to respond to this?
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Am I am?
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I just going to fold and cash it in as
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: a year because obviously my coaches they're not gonna have
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: confidence in me at this point, right back to back
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: outings of doing terrible, going from a starter bad. Okay,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: let's put him in the bullpen and see how he
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: does bad again. Like I'm I'm thinking, you know, every
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: every bad thoughts going through my head and I'm thinking,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: what are my coaches thinking? Are they ever going to
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: pitch me again? And you know, and then the grand
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: scheme of things. I'm looking back on it now, it's
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: like it was two outings. It was my first two
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: outings of my college career. Were they good? No, not
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: by any means, But are they worth? You know, having
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: all those negative thoughts are throwing in the towel after
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: two outings?
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Of course not.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: But that's natural, especially when you're in the moment and
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: you're emotional about it, because this means so much to
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: You've worked hard for this, and you thought you were
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: at a certain level, and now you're realizing, Okay, maybe
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: I'm not quite as good as I thought I was,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: and there needs to be, you know, a little bit
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: of an adjustment period, and I need to figure out
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: what is the next step to get better. So I
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: think I went like two weeks after that without pitching they.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: You know, just obviously at that point I wasn't going
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: to be the go to guy they were going to
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: go to. It was going to be a mop up
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: role or something. And in Arizona, for the junior colleges,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: we would play the club teams like Arizona State club
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: club team or U of a club team, those types
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: of teams. We play them like every once in a
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: while for like a midweek game, just early in the
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: season to basically get some reps in, but they counted
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: as real games. So I think it was like two
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: weeks later we played one of those teams and I
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: got to start against them, and it was literally the
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: first time I had pitched, and I want to say
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: like a week or two got the start, did well,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: didn't really mean a lot, like even though I pitched good, Like, yeah,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: it felt good. I finally had a good college outing,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: but it didn't feel the same because it wasn't against
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: you know, one of our conference teams or against a
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: regular college team, nothing against club teams. It's just it wasn't,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: you know, an official, legit college team. So confidence still was,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: you know, wavering. So it wasn't at where I wanted
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: to be, but at least was going in the right direction.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: The following week or a couple of weeks, I can't
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: remember the exact timeline. We're playing Central Arizona and Central.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: You know, for those of you that are familiar with
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: junior college baseball, you probably know Central, Like, they are
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: one of the top teams in the country year after year,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: and this was back in twenty eleven, so this was,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: you know, thirteen years ago now, and they were still
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: very good at that point. I want to say during
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: this time, they were number one in the country. And
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: maybe I'm just saying that or I'm thinking that just
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: to make this story seem a little bit bigger. I'd
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: have to look it up again, but I'm almost certain
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: that they were number one in the country during this time.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: They had a center fielder named Keenan Walker who ended
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: up going in the first round. He was a switch
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: hitting center fielder. He hit so there's a wood bat
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: league too. He hit like fifteen home runs, maybe ten
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: to fifteen home runs, and he but the big thing
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: was his speed. He stole like seventy bases that year
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: in a fifty five game season. So that was like
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: the type of players that they had was just really
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: high caliber players. And the guy that started, so I'm
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: not gonna use his name, I'm not gonna use specific
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: players names, but the guy that started after I lost
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: my starting role and came in and out of the
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: bullpen after me. He was starting this game against Central
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: and he basically was having an outing that I had
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: to start the season. He was just getting whacked all
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: over the yard. And after the first two innings we
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: had given up I want to say, five runs, So
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: it was five zero after the first two innings. Our coach, like,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: if you know South Mountains coach, he's a little intense,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: but I love him.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: He was a great coach to play for.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Todd Easton, Like, I literally remember him looking at me
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: in the out and just looked at me and said
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: something along the lines of, what do we got to lose?
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Go get warmed up, gainer. So I go down the bullpen,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: warm up. I come in in the third inning. It's
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: it's five zero at this point, so it's you know,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: there's really not a lot of pressure. I think I
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: give up like two bloop singles, and I end up
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: giving up a run in that third inning, but no walks,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: settle in like nothing was hit hard. Okay, give one run.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: At this point, it's like, Okay, I'm gonna need to
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: carry us into the back half of this game and
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: see if we can stay relatively in this. So I
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: go back out for the fourth, one, two, three inning,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Go back out for the fifth, one two three inning.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Go out for the sixth, close to one two three
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: inn maybe a base runner. I think I might give
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: him a base running either the sixth or the seventh inning.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: And then I ended up picking the guy up. It
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: was Keenan Walker. The guy was just talking about he
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: think he got a single or something off of me,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: and then I ended up picking him off. And as
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: this is happening, we are chipping away. So it went
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: from six to zero to now it's it was six
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: two six three, six ' four, And we keep chipping, chipping,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: chipping away. And I look up and and the score
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: is I want to say, eight to six in the
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: eighth inning, and I'm still pitching. Get out of a
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: jam of the eighth. They sent me back out for
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: the ninth and ninth inning. I get the leadoff guy out,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: I want to say. And then I think Walker came
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: up and he hit a single off me. They took
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: me out of the game. Our closer came in, shut
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: the door. We won eight to six. I ended up going,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I want to say, so what would that be? That
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: was six and a third innings, six and a third,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: one run. I don't think I walked anybody wasn't a
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: strikeout guy back then at all. I think I maybe
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: struck out like two guys or something, but just weak contact.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Was just changing speeds, pound on the zone and did
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: my job. I dominated, did well. We won the game
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: eight to six, beat the number one team in the country.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: And as you can imagine, from that point on, I
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: had all the confidence in the world. I had just
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: beaten the number one team in the country. So now
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: it was like, even if I had a bad outing
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: at some point, it was like, Okay, I could. I
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: had already proved myself I can pitch at this level.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: But when you don't have that, when you you know,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: when your first two outings of your college career are horrible,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: it's tough to have confidence because yeah, I can reflect
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: on dominating high school, but that was high school. This
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: is college. Now I got to prove it at this level.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: I can get guys out for that confidence to stick.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: And now I had that. Now I had that. Not
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: only did I beat a college team, but I beat
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: the best college team. So now I could build off
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: of that. And there was nothing in my mind that
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: I felt like I couldn't do. There was no team
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: in the division that I felt like I couldn't pitch
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: well against, regardless of how my next outing were, are,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: the next two outings, whatever it was. I always had
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: that frame of reference and ended up having a really
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: good season. I pitched like fifty five innings, primarily out
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: of relief. I made four or five starts that year,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: did really well beat Yavapai, who was another good team
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: in that conference. I was kind of like the first
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: guy out of the bullpen, Like if the start I got
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: in trouble, I was coming in and I was going
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: to pitch four or five innings out of the bullpen.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Every once in a while, I'd come in in a
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: late jam. I think I had like one or two saves,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: but it was mainly like those middle innings and bridging
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: the gap to more of our heart throwers and more
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: of the guys I could miss bats at the end
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: of the game. So that my freshman year sophomore year
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: comes around, I'm feeling good. I'm thinking, you know, I
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: want to go Division one. I'm gonna be, you know,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: one of the top players in the conference. You know,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I pitched fifty five innues as a freshman, had a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: three something in era, did good, and so I go
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: into the fall, I'm throwing harder. I'm like eighty six
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: to eighty eight. Remember I'm left handed too, and like
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: this was twenty twelve, so I mean, it wasn't that
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: long ago, but velocity wasn't as important. Like eighty six
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: to eighty eight would get you a lot of opportunities
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: being left handed, especially being a strike thrower. And so
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: I'm doing that having a great fall. I'm starting to
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: get interest from schools. Grand Canyon was one of the
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: top ones, which was a local school and they were
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Division two at the time, and I had that that
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: D one or bus mindset that a lot of kids
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: have in my mind. I was like, I have to
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: go D one like that, that's that is the goal.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I want to go to Arizona State.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: I want to go to U of A.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: So Grand Canyon they made me a great offers, a
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: great school. My sister went to school there, like it
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: was a good it would.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Have been a good fit.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: And I had in my head though I had to
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: be had to be Division one, so I didn't commit
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: to them. I said, I'm gonna think about it and
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: think about it. Had a couple of other schools that
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: I was looking at. But I decided I was gonna
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: wait till the spring. I thought, Okay, if I pitch
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: well in the spring, I'm gonna get more opportunities.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: And I'll be just fine.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Well the spring rolls around and it's a similar start
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: to my freshman year. I get off to a bad start.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: First game of the season. I'm pitching against the same
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: team as the last year. We played them again in
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Las Vegas to open up the season. This year, they
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: don't start me opening day. They're like, Okay, maybe he
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: can't handle opening Day, so we'll wait till game two.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: So throw Game two. Didn't do bad. I made it
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: past a second and I think I went like five
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and a third or something. But I remember giving up
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: a grand slam in the sixth inning and that like
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: ended my out. I gave up five ear and runs
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: or something. So didn't do great that game. And my
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: velocity though, started ticking down. So, like I said, I
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: was eighty six eighty eight in the fall, I'm now
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: starting to throw like eighty two to eighty four some games.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I'm getting down to like eighty two, and I have
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: no clue what is going on. Like I'm not getting video.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: So this at this point, I'm not getting a lot
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: of video. It's not like now where you pull out
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: your phone you video yourself thrown a bullpen or you
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: get video of a game. Like I wasn't getting video
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: feedback necessarily to see, okay, something mechanically changing. My pitching
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: coach didn't really know what was going on. He thought
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I was just overthrowing. I was trying to be someone
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: I wasn't that I was just overdoing it. And I
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: ended up dig getting video eventually, and my delivery had
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: just changed completely. I was getting super spinny, trying to
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: like counter rotate as much as I could, and I
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: was just spinning off and it was just nothing was
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: coming out.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: And I was walking guys.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: So historically I don't have a history of walking people
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: at that point, and then later on didn't walk people.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: But that sophomore year of college, I walked more people
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: than I had ever walked. I can't remember exactly the number,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: but it was it was literally at least double, maybe
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: even triple from a percentage standpoint, from what I was
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: my freshman year. And so now I'm not throwing hard,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: I'm walking guys, and now colleges are starting not to
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: get interested as much, and now I'm starting to think, Okay,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: maybe some of those other opportunities I should leave open
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: a little bit more. And it just came down to
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: I was putting too much pressure on myself. I had
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: that D one or bust mindset I had I have
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: to go to a power five school mindset, and it
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: affected my performance because every game weighs so heavily on
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: my performance. It was make or break if I pitched bad,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: and there was a school there, it was like, Okay,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: check that one off the list. They're not gonna want
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: me now. And I got to a point. I had
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: a really good conversation with my pitching coach and I
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: basically got to the point of, you know what, I'm
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: gonna be who I am.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to try to be someone I'm not.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to try to overthrow, because I was
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: like if looking back, like, yeah, I was trying to
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: throw hard, especially when I saw I was throwing eighty two,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, I gotta throw harder than that, So
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to throw even harder. And then I
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: throw slower and I throw more balls, so I'm like,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: you know what, I'm just gonna be myself. Whatever happens happens.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: And so I started started pitching better, started pitching better.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Pitch against Arizona West, turned through a complete game, shutout,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: feeling good again, building back up the confidence, doing well,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: starting to get a little bit more interest from teams,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: but then they would fall through. They were most of
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: them were out of state schools for the most part.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Obviously in Arizona there's only so many schools, especially at
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: the time, and so offers were coming in or out.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Offers weren't coming I shouldn't say, phone calls were coming
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: in from coaches expressing interest, but then when push came
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: to shove, there would want to be an offer. And
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: so now it's getting to April and we're getting to May,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: and I still have no clue where I'm going to school.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: So I called Grand Canyon. It's April, almost say it's April.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: I called Grand Canon, Hey, I would love to come
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: to school there. They said, well, we gave away your scholarship.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: We couldn't wait that long, like, you're welcome to come
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: walk on, but were we gave away your scholarship, so
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have to pay for your way to come
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: to school.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: And so I'm like, well, I'm not doing that.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go from getting a
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: really good scholarship. So now being a walk on, so okay,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: I'm not going there. Another school, Arizona Christian Nai School.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: They were they were calling me week after week after
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: week from from the previous summer in the fall all
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: the way until March, like they literally were calling me
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: every single week, and I kept telling them, and I
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: think I was pretty awesome. I was like, I want
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: to go Division one, I want to do this. And
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: they try to lay out everything they could do for
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: me to help me, and because they knew my goal
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: is to play pro ball, and they're like, well, you
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: know what, you know we have we believe, we have
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: the development tools and we can help you get to
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: where you need to be to get there. And I
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: just kept turn them down, turn them down, and I
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: finally as the point we're literally in May, and I'm like, okay,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I'm ready to come.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: I'll do it.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I'll go to Arizona Christian and the same thing, they
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: didn't have an offer anymore. I had to walk on.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I'm not I'm not going to walk
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: on there. I'm sorry, I'm just like pridefully, I can't
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: walk on. I'm not going to do it. So I
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: decided not to do that. So now it's the end
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: of the season. I finished, okay. I threw a lot
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: of innings that we had so many injuries that year.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: I literally was starting to two times a week some weeks.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: I ended up throwing like one hundred and ten innings
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: and we didn't even make the playoffs that year. So
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: this was in like a fifty game season through one
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: hundred and ten innings and one like nine games had
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: a four something era. Walks weren't great, strikeouts were okay,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: So it was like I was fine, My stuff was okay,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: or my numbers were okay, but they weren't screaming, Hey,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: you need to sign this kid right now.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Especially this late.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: So what I decided was I need to get into
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: as good of a summer league as I possibly can,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: because if I go to a summer league and I
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: show that I can get Division one hitters out or
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: I can do whatever, maybe there will be an opportunity.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe someone will see me at this game and I
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: can and I'll be able to get an opportunity. So
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I email every single coach or every single you know,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: email address or phone number I could get for all
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: these leagues. For the Cape Cod League, I knew that
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: was a lunch shop. I'm like, what the heck, let's
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: let's email them cape Cod League, the North Woods League,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: I think, the Jayhawk League, the California League, and the
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: West Coast League. I got one email back and it
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: was from the West Coast League, a team in the
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: West Coast League, the kids at Blue Jackets in Bremerton, Washington.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: They said, we'll offer you a ten day contract as
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the season's end for Division in baseball, like we have
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: a need for players to be in the season. We'll
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: sign you for ten days and we'll see what happens.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: So I'm like, all right, let's do it. I got
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: an opportunity. And at this point, what I'm thinking is
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: like let's just say no school comes and says, hey,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: we won't offer you a scholarship or we have a
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: good spot here.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: On the team.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: At that point, my plan was to walk on at
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Arizona State. Arizona State very good program historically, especially at
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: this time. Like I want to say twenty ten they
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: had just been to the College World Series. That was
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: my dream school. So I was like, you know, it's
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: a local school. I'm going to walk on there, and
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: you know what, worst case scenario, it doesn't work out,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I'll transferred to Arizona Christian or something like that. Even
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: if it's for no money, I'll do it. But I
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: want to give myself an opportunity to see if I
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: can make it at Arizona State if there isn't another
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: opportunity this summer.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: So that's what I said to do. I went.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: I went to Washington there for ten days. I closed
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: the first game, got to save, did well. A few
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: days or about four or five days later, I got
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: a start, did really well. Like I felt like I
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: pitched him like awesome, I'm gonna be able to stay here.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: This is gonna be great. The coaches talk to me,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: we're on day eight. I want to say, it's like
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: day seven or eight of this and they're like, Jared,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: we you know, we love you. You did awesome this week,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Like you're definitely good enough to pitch here and we
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: want you to be on this team. They're like, but
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: we've just made commitments to these other schools. For their players,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: and you know, we were hoping that maybe someone would
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: back out and when it come but like we literally
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: have a full roster, like we just there's nothing that
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: we can do. And I was like, okay, no, I
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: appreciate it. You gave me an opportunity and that's you know,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: it is what it is. Well, it comes down to
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: the last day and I don't know if a player
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: like didn't show up or something happened. I want to
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: say a player ended up not coming last second. So
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I was able to stay the whole summer.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: It was awesome.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: It got saved by the last day for me to
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: stay there. So I'm staying there. A couple of weeks
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: go by. You know, I'm pitching, pitching pretty well, doing well,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: and the pitching coach for George Mason, this is like
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the end of June, pitching coach for George Mason University
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: calls my head coach for my summer team, and I
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: think he just simply has like, do you have any
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: pictures on your team that are currently uncommitted to any schools?
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: And I happened to be the only one because obviously
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: that was kind of rare, especially in June for you
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: to not know where you're going to school. So I
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: was the only one he told him about me. He
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: recommended me. I got on a phone call right around
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: July first with Steve Hay, who was the pitching coach
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: at George Mason at the time. He was super interested
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: in me.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: They were in a.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Situation where they had a lefty pitcher who just got drafted.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Now, the draft then was in June.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: It was like June, you know, the beginning to the
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: middle of June, so they had a left to you
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: got drafted. He was a junior, and they weren't sure
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: if he was going to sign or not. He went
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: He went like the eighth to tenth round somewhere in there.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: So like they weren't fully sure whether he was going
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: to commit or not or sorry, whether he was gonna sign,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: or whether he's going to stay a school. So they
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: were kind of in a pinch and they kind of
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: needed to, you know, make some decisions on what they
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: were going to do if he did sign. So I'm
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: guessing he ended up signing around this time, around July first,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: and they had a last minute need for a picture
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: and specifically they were looking for a lefty, so I
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: ended up going on a visit to George Mason.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: I loved it. It felt good. It was the Division one.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Like I know that's not at the end of the world,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: but to me at that point, like most kids, that
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: was a big deal that it was Division I school,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: and I really liked it. They were able to give
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: me a really good scholarship just because of honestly, purely
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: because of timing. Like sometimes sometimes timing is more important
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: than anything else, Like you just got to be in
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: the right place at the right time, but you also
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: got to be persistent with knocking down those doors. If
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: I didn't go to Washington or sorry, yeah, if I
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: didn't go to Washington to pitch and didn't email one
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: hundred teams to try to up get in the league
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: in a good summer league, this opportunity doesn't exist, and
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: who knows what happens after that.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: So I go to Mason going to visit. I love it.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Things seem to be going good, and I was actually
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: reflecting somehow. I still have some emails and even still
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: have some voicemails with some of the conversations, and I
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: was listening to them not that long ago and reading
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: some of them it was still borderline whether I was
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: gonna be able to go because there were some issues
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: with some of my transcripts of going from junior college there.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: I had an enroll in a summer class, like this
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: is like getting now to like middle of July, like
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: there was like one more chance to get into a
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: summer class before school start, and I had to get
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: into it. So I got into it was like a
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: math class or something. So I'm doing that for the
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: you know, the last three weeks of summer while basically
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: doing online math classes.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: And so I was able to do that.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I was able to get to go to Mason and
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: play at George Mason for the next year, which was amazing.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: So fast fast forward now sorry some all over my
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: words to the fall now of my fresh or my
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: junior year at Mason. Now new school out a Division
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: one program.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: I'm loving it. It's great. I have a good.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Fall and it's almost like we're going all over again
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: from from South Mountain.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: So I ended up getting named the game two.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Starts, so not the Friday Friday start, but I got
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: the Saturday start.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: Didn't do well.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: I went like five innings, gave it fives just wasn't great.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: It was okay, but it wasn't great. Next week I
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: did well. Next couple of weeks actually I pitched really well.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Started to do well. And then three weeks into the
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: season or four weeks in the season, we were told
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: that we weren't going to be eligible for the playoffs
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: because it had just been made a decision that we
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: were going to be leaving the CIA, the Colonial Athletic Association.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: We were now going to be going to the Atlantic
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: ten Conference the following season, and for whatever reason, because
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: we were leaving the conference, that deemed us ineligible for
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the conference tournament. And this was like March first, Like
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: this was like we're in our season and we were
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: just told that we now are ineligible for the playoffs.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: And you know, obviously you can get at large bid,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: but being out of mid major, like you're gonna have
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: to win a lot of games to get at large,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: but you're gonna have to win at least forty games
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: and potentially even more than that. And so at first
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: we're like, yeah, let's go, let's do it. We were
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: playing pretty well. We were you know, I want to say,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: we were like fifteen games and we might have been
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: like ten and five at the time.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, let's let's go.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: And we had a bad weekend or something wet I
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: think we got swept by someone, maybe UNC Wilmington or
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: something like that, and it.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: Just deflated the culture, right.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: It was like, Okay, it's basically a long shot that
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: we're going to make the playoffs, and now players are
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: kind of starting to check out. It's just not it's
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: not the environment, the culture that you want. And I
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: was just not pitching well. It was just going along
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: with basically the rest of the team. I was just
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: not pitching well. I'd have one good outing, next week horrible,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: good outing, horrible. It was literally like every other week
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: I would pitch well and then I would take five
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: steps back after that and just get absolutely shelled and
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: do horrible. So I finished my junior year with a
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: two and nine record in a six point one year
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: ray something like that. In eighty three innings eighty eighty
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: five innings that year. So a horrible year, right, Like
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: it's it was like flashbacks the beginning of my freshman year,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: which ended up being fine, but it was just like
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: just horrible year. Is the worst year of my baseball
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: career at that point just not good. So that summer
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: I decided not to play. That was the first summer
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: I decided in my life that I wasn't going to
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: play summer ball. I was only going to train, and
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: I was also going to take an internship that I
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: needed to do for school. So I did an internship
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: and just trained. That was it. I was going to
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: take the summer off, and my coaches agreed to. And
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: I threw a lot of innians and I had thrown
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: you know, my sophomore year, I threw over one hundred innings.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Played summer ball. Like I had never taken a break really,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: so like it was definitely needed. And I needed to
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: really get stronger. I needed to gain weight, I need
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: to throw harder, I need to do all those things.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: So I committed to that, taking the summer off, in
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: just training. Come back in the fall. I have a
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: great fall, I think I in all the screams, I
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: think I only gave up one run the entire fall.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: And I wasn't really thrown harder. I actually was thrown slower.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: If anything, I was, which was weird. I was low
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: to mid eighties, but I was just I just I believed.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: In myself and I knew myself.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: So going back to my sophomore year South Mound, where
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: my coach said I was trying to be someone I wasn't.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: I was trying to be a power pitcher. I was
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: trying to be, you know, a guy that threw ninety
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: plus when that just wasn't who I was. I'm not
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: saying that I could have developed into that, knowing what
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I know now, but there is something to be said
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: for not trying to step outside of yourself and trying
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: to be bigger than what you are in that moment,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: because that's usually gonna lead to poor results, rather than
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: knowing what you do well and staying within that usually
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: allows for greater success. And that year, that's what I did.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I said, you know what I'm gonna do.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: I want to throw harder.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, I wanna throw. Am I trying to throw harder? Yeah,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to throw slow. But with that, I'm
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: not gonna step outside of my mechanics. I'm not gonna
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: try to get too big. I'm just gonna do what
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: I know how to do. I'm gonna change speeds, I'm
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: gonna throw strikes and we're gonna see what happens. And
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: it was the best year of my baseball career. First
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: weekend I started, I want to say Friday that year
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: or that weekend, and went six shoutings to open up
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: the season. It was the first start I finally had.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: That was good to start a season. Freshman year, no
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: good sophomore year, no good junior year, no good senior year.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Finally a good start, sick shoutout innings. Next week another
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: like six or seven shoutout innings. Actually, no, it was seven.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: It was against Coastal Carolina. Seven innings. I gave up
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: two runs, but they were unearned. Now I have something
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: to say about that. So I ended up giving up
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: two hundred runs because it was my fault. There was
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: a bunt down the third base line that I feeled
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: it and I threw it up the first base line.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Two runs came in a score. I got out of
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: the inning after that. Now that I'm reflecting on it,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: I feel like if a pitcher makes the year, the
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: run should still be earned because it was his fault
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: that those runs came in because of the fielding mistake.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: But anyways, we lost that game. It was a two
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: zero game. Those were literally the only two runs giving
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: up and it was because of a third inning bunt
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: play that I threw up the first base line. But
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: it's super well. Halfway through the season, I'm just I'm cruising,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: I'm dominating. I think through my first fifty innings, I
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: had an ERA of zero point five, like it was
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: literally under one through the first fifty innings of the season,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: and was just doing great, and the team was doing great.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: We were crushing it. We were winning a series after series,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and we're doing great. We're in like first, second or
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: third place something like that. We're near the top. And
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: then I ended up having like one bad outing towards
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the end of the season. It wasn't terrible, but like
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: it wasn't good by any means, and so we ended
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: up making the conference tournament, of course, with you know,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: being finished in second or third, and we did great.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: We won our conference tournament. We didn't even lose a
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: game in it, rolled right through. It went to a regional,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: the Rice Regional played against Rice, Texas, Texas A and
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: M that was the regional. Just us in three Big
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Texas schools and pitched the first game of the series
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: or the first game of the regional against Rice on
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Friday night, and that's a bitter topic to talk about.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Is a tough game that still makes me frustrated to
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: think about her to talk about. But we we ended
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: up losing seven to two, but through seven innings it
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: was one to one. So through I gave a one run.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Of the sixth inning, we were down one zero. Seventh
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: inning comes around or sorry, seventh thing is when I
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: give the run, So I got confused seventh inning and
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: gave it the run in the top of the seventh,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: down one zero, we go to the bottom the seventh,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: we tie it back up.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: It's now one to one.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: I go back out for the eighth inning, and frankly
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: got left in too long and got hit around. I
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: left the game with I think the base is loaded
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: or maybe two runners on, and all of them came
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: into score and we ended up losing.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Seven to two.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: But the portant part I left out actually was in
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: the top of the eighth we took the lead, we
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: scored a run. We were up two to one of
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the eighth inning, and at one point we were five
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: outs away. It was it was still two to one
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: with one out in the eighth inning, while I was pitching,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: and we ended up blowing it and losing seven to two,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: and then we lost the next day to A and
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: M and we're done. But it was still a great
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: season and you know, just a great last year of
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: college baseball. So now it's shifting to my goal is
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: pro ball. I want to play professional baseball. I'll do
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: whatever it takes. I felt like I had a great year.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Didn't It's real hard though, right like now we're getting
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: to pro bawl. It does matter. You gotta have vlo,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: you know, as a lefty, like you can't be a
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: low to mid eighties lefty or it's very rare, I
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: should say, especially being at a mid major.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: That made it a little bit more difficult.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: If I was at you know, an SEC school, even
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: if I was strolling low eighties, Yeah, I'm probably getting drafted.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: If I put up the numbers that I did put up.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Draft comes alone don't get picked. So now I'm thinking, Okay,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: what are my other options? And this is when I
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: started learning about independent ball. So independent ball, I knew
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: nothing about it really other than just what a couple
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: of people had told me. It's you know, some players
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: that didn't get drafted to go to it. Some players
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: that got released they go to it. So I really
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: didn't know what to expect. It didn't sound like high
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: level of baseball when I was first hearing about it,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: but I'm like, it's my only option. I got to
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: find a way to get into independent ball. So now
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: I'm going back to the emails, just like I did
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: with with summer.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Ball in college.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Now I'm email and every independent team sending them my numbers,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: my phone number references all that, and I get a
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: couple of phone calls back team from the Frontier League
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: or two teams from the Frontier League, and then it's
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: team from the American Association, Wichita wing Nuts, And they
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: had just had a pitcher, left handed starting pitcher go
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: down like two days prior, like they were in desperate
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: need for a starting pitcher, and this was like, I
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: don't know, maybe let's just call it a Wednesday. I
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: don't know exactly the day it was, but it was like, Hey,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: it's it's Wednesday. We need a pitcher, and we we
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: love what we're here, and we talked to your college coach.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: We we think we want to give you an opportunity.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Can you get down here by this weekend and pitch
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: on Monday, and I was like, yeah, let's roll, so
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: within you know, within a few days span, get out
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: to Wichita, start Monday, make my my pro debut and
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: did well, went five innings, three runs. You gave a
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: three run homer in the fourth inning, but that was it,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: and did well. Didn't do well after that though. Unfortunately
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: it kind of went downhill from there that season and
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: ended up getting released by Wichita towards the end of
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: the season, which is unfortunate because they won the championship.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: That year, but it is what it is.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Got released by them, signed with another team in American Association,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Prairie Air Hogs, who were, like I said, also in
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: that league, and actually got to start two times for them,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: and my first start with Grand Prix was against Wichita
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: and I actually did really well. Didn't get the win though,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: because we didn't scor any runs. I think the score
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: was like two to one or one to zero, something
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: like that. I pitched really well, but it is what
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: it is. The next year, I got traded that offseason
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: to Lincoln, to Lincoln Salt Dog's another team in the
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: American Association, and I did absolutely horrible, Like there's no
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: way around it. I thought I was gonna be a
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: starter just based off what I showed with Grand Prairie,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Like I made the last two starts of the season,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: did well. The start I had in Wichita was decent,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to Lincoln thinking I'm going to be
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: a starter. It made me a left handed specialist, and
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: you know, weirdly enough, I did better against righties than
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: I did against lefties.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: I just could not get lefties out. It was really weird.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: So they used me as a lefty specialist. Did not
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: go well, got released after pitching like ten innings or something,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: and I ended up just not playing the rest of
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: that season. I didn't have really any other opportunities. I
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: had a couple like in so other leagues, and I
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: just didn't really want to do it. I kind of
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: just I was kind of just burnt out that summer.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: I just decided I was not going to play that
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: summer the rest of the summer. So went home and
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: now I'm like, okay, you know, I'm not done playing baseball.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: I want to still train and figure out what I
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: got to do next. But in the meantime, like I
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: got to make some money, I got to start doing something,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and I knew coaching was probably what I wanted to
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: do when I was done playing. So I started giving
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: lessons just to kids, just anything, youth, high school, and
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: any kids I could. Started doing pitching lessons, and I
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: had a post on Craigslist that would that basically had
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: my services announce so you could call me. It was
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know why they said that was the only
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: way to do it. Then I guess that was the
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: best way.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: I say.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: I used Craigslist, That's how I would get clients. And
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: I head coach for a high school out here, cornetto
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: High School. He emails me says, hey, I saw your
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: your ad. Are you interested in being a pitching coach
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: for a high school team? And I was like, well,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I'm still playing baseball. You know I could help out
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: part time. He's like, well, I mean he's like independable.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Doesn't start till May, like our season will be done
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: by then.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: He's like, you can come.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: You can use the field to train and all that,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, sounds great. So I decided
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: to do that pitching coach. I knew nothing about this school,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: so I'm like I'm from Phoenix and I had never
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: even heard of this high school, Cornetta High School, And
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: I get there and it wasn't the best baseball team,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: I'll put it that way. But that's okay, right, Like
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: that's kind of the fun part about coaching is is
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: meeting kids where they're at and being able to help them. So,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: you know, we didn't have a good year. It wasn't
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: a good year at all. And frankly, the head coach
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: at the time like he wanted nothing to do with it. Like,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: by the second half of the season, I was basically
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: the head coach. He wouldn't show up to practice half
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the time. I was basically running the show this second
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: half of the year. So the summer comes, you know,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to like do workouts for teams during this
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: and whatnot. And so May comes of this year. So
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: this is twenty sixteen now, So when I we're in
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: May twenty sixteen and there's a Frontier try out. So
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, what teams are interesting me in
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: the Frontier. Let me I'll go to try out, they'll
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: see me, they'll want to sign me, and and we'll
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: be we'll be good to go and I'll play in
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: that league. Is that league fitted my age more? I was,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: you know, twenty four at the time, so like that
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: fitted my my age group better to the Frontier. The
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: American Association at the time was a little bit older
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: of a league. A Frontier was more for for my
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: age group.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: So I get there. I had no.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Clue that there would be five hundred plus players at
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: this thing. Like it was just a madhouse with how
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: many players were at this tryout. So then the way
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: it worked was you would throw a bullpen like in
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: the morning, and if they liked you, they would keep
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: you for it was either the next day or is later.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: It might have been later that day, actually you get
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: a pitch again, I'm pretty sure it was. It was like, yeah,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: in the morning, you would throw a bullpen. If they
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: liked it, they would stop you really quick, like they
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: could They usually could tell, like if you threw, you know,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: five pitches they were all ninety five, they're probably gonna
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: stop you and say, yeah, come throwing the scrimmage. So
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: I threw like, yeah, five ten pitches something like that.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: They they liked enough to want to see me pitch
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: against some batters, So do that throw against the Batters
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: later in the afternoon. I don't really remember how I did.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Wasn't great or wasn't amazing, I guess. And then they
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: do a draft for the league after that where each
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: team picks. I don't know how many picks they did,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: but I ended up not getting picked. So now I'm like,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: all right, now, I don't know what I'm going to do.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: But what happened there was there was a scout for
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: the Marlins at this event, or he been with the
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Reds at the time, but his name was David Espinoza.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: I played with him in Wichita two years prior, so
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: he was at the end of his career. And David
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: was I want to say, he was a first rounder
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: out of high school from South Florida and he happened
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: to be at this event as a scout, and I
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: was like, so we talked and whatnot, and he watched
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: me throw. And later that night, once I realized I
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: didn't get picked, I texted him and said, hey, you know,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: I'm looking for a place. Do you know of any
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: other teams or leagues that might be looking for players?
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: And he's like, well, there is this new league that's
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: starting up in Michigan called the USPBL United Short Professional
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Baseball League. I can give you the contact info for
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: the guy that's running it, and you can go from there.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: So he gives me the number.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: I call him.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: They decide to sign me to a contract, and so
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: I go to Michigan and I'm with a team. So
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: this is the way this league was. There's three teams,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: or at the time, there's three teams this first year,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: but you all played at the same stadium. So it's
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: kind of a unique different type of thing that they
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: were doing. So the first week though there was a
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: tryout or not a tryout, it is more like your
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: spring training. It's like for independent poll there's like a
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: week of spring training. Essentially you had to throw like
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: once or twice in front of them, and they kind
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: of make a decision on whether you're going to stay
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: on the team or make the team. So I throw
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: and I did super well, Like I remember this, Vivie like,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: oh awesome, I did great, Like I'm definitely gonna make
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: the team.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: This will be good.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing the players around me, I was like the
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: only one that had pro experience. Most of them were
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: like just out of college and like smaller colleges and like,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, yes, like I feel
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: confident that I'm going to make this team. And it
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: comes to the last day and they told me that they
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: were releasing me or that they weren't going to keep me.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: And I was like why, like just if you don't
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: mind me asking what was the issue? And they said
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: it was based off of my previous experience. So based
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: off of my numbers in Lincoln the previous year, they said,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: we didn't we don't want to keep you because your
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: numbers in Lincoln the year before you didn't pitch well.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: So I was I was like, well, why.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Did you bring me in to begin with? Then you
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: knew what my numbers were before, Like why would you
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: even bring me in? So I was I was upset
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: about it, but I was like, you know what, like
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: I can pitch in this league, Like there's like there's
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: no reason I can't pitch in this league. So I
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: call other coaches in the league or I go up
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: and talk to them, like, hey, do you have any
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: need for pitching?
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Like I can pitch.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: I convinced one of the other teams in the league
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: to let me throw a bullpen for them, and they
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: decided last minute that they were going to sign me.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: So I stayed with that team, playing in the league
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: for that year. In the next year, halfway through the
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: next year, ended up signing or sorry, getting my contract
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: purchased by a team of Atlantic Ly the York Revolution
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: did did decently well there. We actually won the Atlantic
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: League Championship, which was awesome, a great experience. So now
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: going to that off season after we won the championship,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: this is now twenty seventeen. My goal is obviously at
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: this point like go back to York if I don't
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: get signed with the team. But the goal is obviously like,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: let's try to get signed by an organization this offseason.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: So I was pushing my training this offseason pretty heavy
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: because I knew I needed to make a velocity jump.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: That was still the main thing holding me back.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: At the time.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Now I was able to touch ninety ninety one as
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: my peak, but I was mainly pitching eighty seven eighty eight,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: and like, I really need to get to that next tier,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: especially because my numbers weren't amazing. They were good in
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: the USPBL and York they were okay. I pitched well
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: early on and then kind of slipped a little bit
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: towards the end. So I was like, I need to
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: throw harder because number one, that's going to help my performance,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: and then number two is just going to be more
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: attractive to teams. So I was being very aggressive with
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: with weighted balls and some of the stuff I was
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: doing and ended up getting hurt that winner and had
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: to have surgery and have Tommy John and that kind
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: of that kind of ended my career. And it's not
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: because of the surgery. I'll dive into some of that
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: is now I'm going to transition to more of the
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: coaching talk. But I did get ahead of myself a
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: little bit going back to coaching at Coronada High School.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: So I was the assistant coach there, the pitching coach
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: there during the twenty fifteen season. So this was actually
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: before I got to Lincoln. I was the pitching coach
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: there for that season. Summer comes, I'm with Lincoln, pitch bad,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: get released, don't sign with anyone else. The rest of
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: the summer. Well, that coach for Coronado left and now
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: there's an opportunity to be the head coach. They called
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: me and said, hey, if you want the head coaching job.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: It's yours.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: You know this job because you've already been here. There's
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: been coaches, a coaching turnover, you know, like crazy here,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: like you seem to connect well with the boys and
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: you kind of understand where the state of the program
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: is right now. So it's yours if you want it.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I told them, Hey, I'm still trying to play, So
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you want someone that is still
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: trying to play that kind of has in a way
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: one foot out to be your head coach. I said,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: I would love to. I just want to be honest,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: upfront with where I'm at in my playing career. I said, no,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: that's fine, that's that's perfectly fine.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Well, we'll roll with in. Just take it one year
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: at a time. So did that.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: It was the head coach at Cornado for the twenty
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: sixteen season. Had an absolute blast. My brother got to
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: coach with me, my best friend Brendan Miller got to
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: coach with me, and it was it was a great experience.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: I you know, I really cherished those moments and I
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: really do think that that year really, you know, without
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: maybe without me even knowing it kind of propelled me
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: into my coaching career of really wanting to impact players
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: on a personal level because as a from a baseball standpoint,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: we were not good.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: We were not good.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: So it definitely wasn't for the results that that's for sure.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: It was purely about the connection with those players and
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: those kids and really building a bond with them because
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: this school that it was a lot of lower income
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: families in single parent homes and and just really kids
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: that really needed an outlet and they needed they needed
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: a place that was safe and things in a place
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: where or they could go after school and to have
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: adults that really cared for them and looked out for them,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: and it was just a really good experience. So I
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: went from from that to that summer now, so the
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen summer, after I just coached at Cornado, that
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: was when this USPBL thing happened to where I went
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: to the us PBL. That whole story that I just
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: told you, Well, during the summer, while I'm at in
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: the USPBL during the twenty sixteen season, I get a
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: phone call from my former head coach at at Scotts Sale,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Christian Bill Swift. He was now the head coach at
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Arizona Christian University. So any high school in Phoenix. He's
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: now the head coach there, he's been there for a
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: couple of years, and he calls me and says, hey,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: do you have any interest in coaching college baseball? And
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: I said, well, I'm still playing, so I don't really
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: know how that would work. And he basically said the
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: same thing the high school coach said. He's like, oh, well,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: you know, independent ball starts, you know, middle of May.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Is like, hey, if you have to leave a little
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: bit early, you can leave early.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: It's fine.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I just think you do a good job and we
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: could use you when pitching coach. So I decided, yeah,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it. So and believe it or not,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: despite Coronado being a horrible program, we didn't we didn't
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: play well, and it being a high school level versus
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: a college level. I had a really hard decision deciding
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: to leave Coronatta because I really loved being with those kids.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, I did decide
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: to leave and to go to Arizona Christian for that
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: next for that fall, the fall of twenty sixteen, and
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: it was great. I really enjoyed my time at Arizona
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Christian and started to build bonds with those kids there
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: just a little bit older, a little bit better baseball,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: and got to be there for the twenties for the
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: so it would have been in the twenty seventeen season,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: I was there as the pitching coach and also the
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: strength coach. That summer is when I went back to
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: the USPBL and then went to York for the second
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: half of the season. And now we are in the
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: off season. I'm still coaching at Arizona Christian when I
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: blow out my elbow and have to have surgery, So
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: now we're caught up.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: It's there was basically two things going on together at
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: the same time. One is a player a coach. I
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: just skipped a few things earlier. But yeah, so now
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: we're in the spring of twenty eighteen. I had just
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: had surgery. I'm coaching Arizona Christian, and I know I'm
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: not playing that season right because I had surgery in March,
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: so I know I'm out for that year. So I'm
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: thinking about what do I want to do this summer.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Do I want to coach a summer team. Do I
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: just want to rehab and focus on that and do
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: some recruiting to try to get players for Arizona Christian
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: because before I wasn't really doing any of the recruiting.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: I was kind of just the pitching coach, strength coach,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: and that was it. And then Luke Haggerty who owns
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: X two Performance, so a lot of people I know
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: Lucas he was in Arizona at the time and I
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: was working with him like he was. He was a
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: really helpful resource for me. He was my trainer as
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: a player, and he is from Ohio originally, and he
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: said that there's an opportunity to be a head coach
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: for a summer collegiate team in Limeo, Ohio, the Lima Locos,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: and so he connected me with the GM of that team.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: I ended up getting the job and went to be
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: the head coach for the Lima Locos for the twenty
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: eighteen summer. So that was what I was gonna do
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: for the summer. But then now a little side story,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: what was happening on during the spring was we had
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: a player that had transferred at the break that had
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: played at Virginia Commonwealth University. So now we're gonna we're
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: gonna make some connections here So we had this kid.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: He had played at Virginia Comonwealth University, and I don't
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: want to say that there was issues, but we wanted
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: to kind of see what his pastor was like. He
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: had been at a few schools, so I was just
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: trying to see if I could talk to, you know,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: talk to some people about him and see if I
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: get any information. So I found out he was at
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Virginia Commonwealth University. Well at the time when he played there,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: the pitching coach was Steve Hey, So Steve Hay was
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: my pitching coach at George Mason. He ended up going
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: to Virginia Commonwealth the next year after I graduated, so
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I knew Steve had coached this kid, and I just
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: wanted to get some information on him. So we're talking,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: We're catching up and obviously talking about the kid, but
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: then also just talking about, you know, personal life and
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: what I've been up to and what he's been up to.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: And he was asking me about what I wanted to
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: do next to my career, like am I wanting to
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: continue playing or you know, what are my goals? What
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: are my long term goals? And I said, yeah, I
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: want to keep playing, but I'm like, but I want
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: to be a coach when I'm done playing, and probably
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: the goal would be to be a Division one pitching coach.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: And he's like, well, Virginia Commonwealth has a one year
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: grad program to where you are a full time student,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: but you're also a full time staff member, to where
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: you know, you're the director of operations, you're helping. You
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: can't actually coach on the fields. That was the rule
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: with the nstead of l A like, I couldn't actually
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: be an on field coach, but I would be very
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: in depth.
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: With the program.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: I'd I'd still be able to be in the dugout.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: I could do things, you know, with the coaches. I
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: just couldn't instruct players specifically. He's like, but it's only
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: one year programs. So he's like, yeah, if you want
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: to keep playing, you'll be able to keep playing that
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: there's no commitment after this one year and you can
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: kind of go from there. And so I thought about it.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: I was like, you know, this could be a good opportunity.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: I can get my master's and you know, get my
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: school paid for, and also get my foot in the
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: door at division and baseball. See what that's like from
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: the coaching aspect, see if this is something I want
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: to pursue and continue to go down.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: So I decided to do it.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Went to VCU, had a good experience worked for for
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: Shan Steffler, who was the head coach at the time.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: He's not the head coach at Notre Dame. Learned a
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: ton from him, very very good head coach, and it
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: just really enjoyed my time there for the year. So
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: you know, my plan initially was, you know, I'm gonna
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: probably still play like I'm rehabbing on my own there,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: and you know, as time went on, it would be
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: started to become clear that coaching was what I needed
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: to do and that plane was probably coming to an end,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: as hard as it was to to say it or
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: to admit it. And I remember one day specifically for
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: an opportunity that came up, a potential opportunity. I was
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: actually home in Arizona for Christmas break and I got
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: I got an email from the pitching coordinator for the
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: Astros and he said, like he saw my stuff on
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Instagram or something and wanted to know if I was
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: interested in interviewing for a job or talking about a
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: job with the Astros. And that like completely threw me
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: for a loop because at this point, like pro ball
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: was nowhere on my mind from a coaching standpoint of
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: like being an affiliated ball. Like at this point, I thought,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: you know, you had to have played pro ball, you know,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: at least at the minor league level to have a chance.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: Like that wasn't even my radar.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Like just college baseball from a coaching standpoint was all
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: I really thought about.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: But obviously I was like, yeah, let's let's talk. And
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: so talks went through.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: The interview process went well, made it to you know,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: a couple of stages, and ended up not getting the job.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: But it was a great experience because I got to
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: kind of learn what type of questions are they asking
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: because there was questions that they asked that I flat
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: out didn't have an answer for, and it helped prepare
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: me for the next time I went through that process
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: of information that I am behind on that I need
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: to learn more about. So at that point I was like, okay,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: like pro ball is obviously not off the table, like
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: piece some opportunities and pro ball, and sure enough, some
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: other phone calls started to come because I was very
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: active at this time. So this time I had a
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: business called Gainer Strength and Pitching that I was doing
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: on the side where I was doing remote training with clients,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: but I was also just building content on Twitter and Instagram.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: I was I was doing just a lot of really
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: active posts and it obviously some people noticed it and
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: started to reach out to me. And around I want
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: to say, maybe it was February, the Twins reached out
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: to me and they wanted to know if I was
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: interested in interviewing for a job. And I had a
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: situation a little bit ago with another team who was
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: interested in hiring me, but they wanted me to leave
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: right away, and I was like, this was now, it's
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: the spring, and now even though I wasn't like an
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: actual the pitching coach or whatnot, my role was pretty
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: vital for the team to where if I left, I
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: was going to kind of leave them hind dry with
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of the behind the scenes stuff that needed
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: to be done. And then on top of that, I
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: also was only a couple months away from get my masters,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: and it would have been pretty messy trying to switch
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: it to online classes. It was just it was gonna
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: be a little bit of a mess as a semester
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: had already started, and I just didn't feel right leaving
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: the program in that situation, so I told him. I
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: was like, I can't leave till the season ends. So
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: that happened the team prior to that, Twins reach out
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: and I told them that upfront, like, oh, no problem,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: that's fine, Like if we get through the process to
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: where you know we're gonna bring you on, like well,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: we can wait till school's over, till the season's over,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: and we'll go from there. So I was like, wow,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: that's awesome right off the bat, like you can just
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: tell like there's some really good people here, like they understand,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: you know, the situation, and it's it was just it
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: was cool.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: So process goes on.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: I end up officially getting accepted for a job as
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: the one of the Low A pitching coaches. So the
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: Twins in their organization, they do two pitching coaches at
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: every level, so there's an opportunity for me to be
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: the second one in Low A in Cedar Rapids at
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: the time. So I ended up finishing the season at
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: VCU went to the Twins for that summer. I think
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: I joined them around June first, and coach at the
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: low A level for the rest of that season, and
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: then the following year was going to be in the
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: Dominican as the DSL pitching coach or one of them,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: because I didn't speak Spanish, so there's no chance I
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: was going to be the only pitching coach there. But
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: it was really an opportunity that was geared around learning
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Spanish as well as working with a lot of really
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: young guys to where you could really have a big impact.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: Is there at the early stages of their career that
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: really raw and there's just a lot of growth potential
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: at that age, and then just being able to learn
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: Spanish I get in the pro game, Like learning Spanish
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: is really really important, especially at the lower levels because
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: you know, honestly, more than half your players speak Spanish
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: up up until you know, through rookie ball, I would
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: say at least half, if not more, speak Spanish, so
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: it's really important that you know how to connect with
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: them and at least speak a little bit of the language.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: So I was like, yeah, this this will be a
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: good opportunity, Like long term, like is it going to
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: be hard to be out of the country and away
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: from family and my girlfriend at the time, who's now
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: my wife. Yes, but for this season, I think, I
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: think this will be this can skyrocket the rest of
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: my career and it can be really a really great experience.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: So this was going into the twenty twenty season. Now
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: we all know what happened in twenty twenty. So I
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: got down to the DR in March. I was there
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: for I think like three weeks and then had to
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: come home because of COVID. That summer, I got engaged
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: to my now wife, and I basically told the twins
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't go back to the DR, like,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to leave my wife and do long
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: distance with the marriage. They and they respected that and
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: put me in the the Florida League or not the
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: Florida League. Well it is Florida League, but that's not
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: what it's called the GCL at the times what it
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: was called those in there as the pitching One of
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: the pitching coaches in the GCL lived in Florida, was
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: there for one season and then was the low a
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: pitching coach for the next two years, which was in
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: Fort Myers. Now at this point no longer see to Rapids.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Low Ways is now in the Florida State League. Was
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: a pitching coach there for two years and absolutely loved it.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Learned so much from the Twins organization. I can't speak
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: highly enough about them, just top to bottom. The people
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: are amazing. They they really, they really have helped mold
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: me into the pitching coach and today just there's so
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: many people I could I could credit, but just like
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: off the top of my head, I'm thinking of of
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Ntt Ballenberg, Justin Willard, Zach Bow, Tommy Burgins, Bobby Hearn.
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: I love Bobby.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: We coached together in low A or not Loway and
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Rookie Ball, Carlos Shernandez, Richard Salazar. There's just there's so
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: many great people in that organization that that I learned
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: from and was very thankful for my time there. But
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: I have a young family now and it was it
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: was time to move on to the next stage. Me
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: and my wife wanted to get back to Arizona, where
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: we were from and be close to the family. We
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: were living in Florida at the time, so it was
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: just it was time to take the next step in
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: in our life and and family come before baseball and
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: and really anything else. So that was that was obviously
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: a hard decision just because I love working for the
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Twins and the people in that organization, but it was
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: the right decision for my family, and that was what
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: that was what propelled the Pitching Coach You idea was
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: to start to build this business of you know, basically
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: an online company initially to where you know, I could
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: train people remotely and start to build this business and
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: kind of.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: Build a brand online.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: And now it's it is where it is today as
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: a remote business, but also an in person business and
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: a coaching resource. And that was really the original plan
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: with Pitching Coach You was for this to be for coaches.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be a coach for coaches, was essentially
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: the idea, which is why it's called Pitching Coach You, Pitching.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: Coach University, a university for pitching coaches.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: And you know, and that's definitely a big part of
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: this this business or the business that I have, is
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: being able to impact coaches. I do zoom calls with
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: coaches all the time, do some consulting with schools and teams,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: but it's also a lot of a lot of training
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: as well, just because there's so many players that I
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: want to be able to coach, and I think there's
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: just a big opportunity to be able to help players
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: as well. So it's it's really an all encompassing business
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: now today with helping players and coaches develop into the
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: best players and coaches that they can be. So that
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: is a very unabridged version of my career from playing
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: to now coaching, and I'm loving every minute of it
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: and just so thankful for where I am today and
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: who knows where the future holds, but I have a
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: feeling it's going to involve coaching baseball players and helping
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: helping people grow into better men. So that will end
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: this segment of the podcast. This is going on a
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: long one now, but there is a couple q and
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: as that I said I would answer, so I will
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: jump into those now.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, So both.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: Questions are from Twitter, and the first one is the
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: first state is high school coaches get about ten weeks
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: with our pitchers. We have to focus on the margins
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: of development and it's more mental than physical. What would
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: be your priority of effort when the boys walked into
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: the gym in February to start preparing for March games.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: So if we're talking about ten weeks, personally, for me,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: I always go back to making sure you guys are
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: built up. So for me, it kind of starts with
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: physical because I want to make sure that they are
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: actually prepared for what they are about to do. So
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: if I have ten weeks, I first need to be
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: able to assess what have they been doing prior to this,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: like were they playing basketball and now they haven't picked
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: up a baseball in months, or were they training all
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: winter and they're basically ready to jump into their build
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: up for the season. So that's the first thing you
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: gotta do is you got to assess where are your
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: players at. Are they at square one to where you
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: need to spend the next six weeks just building them up,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: or are they already ready to start building their in
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: season workload. So that would be the main thing to assess.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: That Number two would be building out your programs for
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: those individuals. So I would essentially have you know, two
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: to three programs. One would be starting from scratch where
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: they are nowhere near ready. They need to start with
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: a four to six week build up program. Then you
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: would have your other option of guys that are already
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: built up and you can continue working into bullpen work
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: and build them up into some live vps or whatever
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: you have planned. But that would be the main thing,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: is like building out those schedules, And that's what I
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: think would be really important, making sure that the guys
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: are built up from an inning standpoint, and also making
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: sure that you're not ramping up guys too fast. The
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: next question is the last ones. I did this a
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: little lay. I just posted this earlier this afternoon, so
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: there's only two questions. If you have other ones, feel
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: free to message me. So this one is data driven
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: programming versus guessing when to go high intent and low
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: intent or medium intent, take a day off, et cetera.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: How do we ensure the athlete individually is doing what's
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: best for them in their development as opposed to just
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: signing up for a prescripted program online. So this is
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: a complex answer, and I want to make sure I
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: understand the question exactly. So data driven programming versus guessing
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: when you go high intent low intent? I mean, I
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: think like when we're talking about you know, how do
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: you decide when do I go high intent, low intent
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: or medium tent? You should have a fairly structured out
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: plan that has you built up for that right, Like,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not immediately going to go from no throwing too, Okay,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: I'm doing a high day one day, low the next day,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: medium the next day, high the next day or whatever
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: it might be. Like it should be fairly laid out,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: like what your build up is and what you're actually
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: prepared for. But like if we're assuming you're already built up,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: you've already been throwing bullpens, like two high days a
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: week is one to two high days a week is ideal.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: One to two medium days and one to two low
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: days would would generally be what you want. But if
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: you want to actually monitor, like how physically prepared you are,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: you know, you can get objective. Like some tools that
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: I like are the Armcare app. I think that's great,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: Like it gives you a score of like how physically
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: prepared you are. It can show you how fatigued your
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: arm is, how your strength is, how your range of
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: motion is. I think that is a great tool. I
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: actually use it on all high days. So if it's
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: a bullpen day or a vloa day, whatever it is,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: my guys will do that testing prior and if there's
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: a significant drop off in something or you know, something
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: is a red flag, we will adjust the throwing for
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: that day, whether it's you know, just doing less volume
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: or if we completely shut down the high day because
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: there's an alarming thing going on in their shoulder or
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: elbow or something. So I use that, like, that's one
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: of my objective tools. You know, other things you could
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: use that I guess could help with this objectivity would
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: be something like a whoop band or an aura or
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: a ring just to kind of see how your CNS
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: is and just like are you actually physically prepared that day?
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: Like how do you feel that day overall? That would
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: be you know, that would be some of my advice.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: And then but as far as like ensuring the athlete
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: is you know, basically getting an individual development plan. I
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: think like if you're not talking to a coach, if
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: you're just flat out you know, signing up for a
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: free program, like yeah, it's gonna be prescripted, right because
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: they don't know the individual. They're giving you a just
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: a plan, a basic plan layout that you can do.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: But if it's a coach that you're working with, I
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: mean ask them questions.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: That's what I would do.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: I would ask them, Okay, why why is my schedule
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: this way, Like what are we trying to accomplish? Like,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: how do we know that my arm is ready for this?
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: You know other things that we can look at, you know,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: is your velocity. So if you are built up, let's
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: just say you are built up, or you think you're
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: built up, and your velocity is plummeting, but you keep
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: throwing through, you keep going through these high days, and
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: your villa's plummeting, plumbting. There's probably some fatigue setting into
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: where we need to adjust the plan somehow. So this
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: is a very complex question that like I'm probably giving
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: you a crappy answer for, but I would just say,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: try to find ways to be objective. Armcare app is
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: a simple way to do that, just to see how
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: fatigued the arm is. But then also if you have
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: a coach who's making you a program, I would just
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: ask them questions, ask them these exact questions and see
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: what his answers are. So that is it for the questions.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: That is it for this long winded message of me
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: giving you my story. Probably some unnecessary things in there,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: but I hope that you got something out of this
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: and that you know that maybe inspired you in some way,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: or you know, maybe it's stirred up some more ideas
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: and questions that you have for yourself, but I would
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: love to hear from you guys. If you have any
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: of those thoughts, please feel free to direct message me
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: or you can email me. And until then or until
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: next week for our next episode, I'll talk to you
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: guys soon