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Jackson Hicks: From No College Offers to Professional Baseball · The Mound Visit

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: That I was kind of getting some looks from affiliated teams,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: and then one day get a call from my manager
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: while I'm eating lunch at the apartment getting ready to
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: head to the stadium, basically saying, Hey, pack your bags,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the Twins just signed you. You're going down to Fort Myers.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: All right, we're live with a very special guest today.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: I got to coach this specific person for a couple
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: of years in the Twins organization, Jackson Hicks, And he
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: has a very unique story, and I really don't want
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: to waste much time, but I want him to tell
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: it from his personal experience. But I'll just start it
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: off by saying he didn't play the traditional college baseball
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: that you think of the n't play for you know,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: an NCAA school, and didn't play junior college baseball an AI.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: It's if you look him up. I mean, actually I
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: didn't look up exactly. You know, your stats if there
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: are stats for what you were doing, but you definitely
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: aren't on Baseball Reference from a college stat standpoint. I mean,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: you really don't see anything on Baseball Reference until you
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: know you're an independent ball which we'll dive into that
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: in a little bit. But why don't we just start
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: by you starting from high school to where I want
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: to say, you were primarily a middle infielder. Correct, Yeah, yeah, perfect,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: So let's just jump in from there and to where
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: you're at now.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: All right, Yeah, it's been a quite a journey since then.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like you said, I was primarily a middle infielder,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: played shortstop third base pretty much my whole life, and
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: he was always very solid defensively, like love fielding ground
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: balls would take hundreds of groundballs my dad.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: But hitting was a different animal.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Once I got past like twelve U and they started
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: throwing curveballs and sliders and the villa started to climb.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Was a bit of a struggle, was My first two
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: years of high school was kind of up and down
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: with the varsity team, mainly as a defensive replacement, coming
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: in and playing second base latent games or getting the
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: occasional start here and there when one of the other.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: Primary middle indfielders was on the mound.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: And then junior year finally got the chance to start
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: every day is a shortstop and went and hit one
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: point fifty over the course of about two thirds of
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the season and immediately lost that job to the point
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: where I was playing shortstop and getting DHD four as
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: a junior in high school, which is a pretty humbling experience.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: Not at all, not all where you want to be.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Have some interesting look and lineup cards from those days.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: So yeah, Like even back then, though, like I always
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: dreamed of playing professional baseball and wanted to continue my
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: baseball career past high school and kind of saw the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: writing on the wall of like, hey, I'm a junior
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: in high school, I'm hitting a buck fifty.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: There's not a lot of opportunities for that at the
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: next level.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: And like I said, ID always been solid defensive, we
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: always had a pretty good arm.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: So finally convinced.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: My high school coach one summer ball game, we had
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: like nine players the classic high school summer league. I
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: was like, hey, can I get off the mound for
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: a couple of innings today? It's like, fine, well, we'll
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: we'll roll you out there. We'll see what you got
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: and went pretty well to the point where I was like, Okay,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: this was pretty good for my first time being on
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: a mount since I was thirteen years old, and this
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: is something I want to invest time and effort into.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: So I started working with a pitching coach and in
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Chapel Hill, where I'm from a couple times a month
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: and started to develop a little bit, but I was
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: still pretty much just a shortstop throwing off the mound
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: like pitching mechanics weren't great. Didn't really know what I
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: was doing in terms of offspeed pitches. I was just
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: getting up there and kind of slinging it. And by
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the end of my senior year of high school, I
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: was throwing like eighty one to eighty three top in
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: eighty four, which again not gonna elicit a ton of
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: offers from big schools, and especially like I'd grown up
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: in Chapel Hill, I was a huge UNC fan, always
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: dreamed of going there, and once I got accepted UNC,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: it was like, Okay, this is where I'm going to go.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: And it's not like I have offers to play baseball
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: anywhere else, so it wasn't really a decision whatsoever. So
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: finish high school, get to Carolina, and there'd been a
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: couple kids that I've played summer ball with in high school,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: like American Legion Ball, who had played on the club
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: baseball team at Carolina, and I wanted my baseball career
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: to keep going. I wasn't done after high school, and
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: like this seems like a great opportunity to keep playing
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: for another four years. I don't know how familiar people
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: are with club baseball, but it's an entirely student run organization,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: so we don't have any coaches. It's all like our
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: head coaches, the president that we left the year before.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Coaches usually one of the presidents or an upper classman
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: who's a pitcher. We practiced every day, but it was
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: obviously classes came first, so it was only like people
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: would come twice maybe three times a week. Practices were
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: on the turf in a real football field with a
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: kind of beat up raddy cage. We had a portable mound,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: just a wood turf mound that got left outside year round,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: so it was completely destroyed. So I'd mostly throw my
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: bullpens off of a There's like a little concrete slope
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: going up to the shed where we kept our gear,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: so I'd throw most of my bullpens off of that,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: and we'd go out and play on the weekends against
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: other club teams. So it did travel quite a bit
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: from as far north as Maryland went to Florida, played
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Florida or Florida State. Every year there were national rankings
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: of national club Baseball assays. Not a lot of people
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: know about that, but there's a World Series and national
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: rankings and like all Americans and things like that for
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: club ball two. So we'd go out and play every weekend,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: and even throughout this time where we're playing, like Carolina,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: we actually had a nice club field. We played at
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: the USA Complex and carry, but a lot of the
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: places we played at were middle school fields, the local
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: rec field and whatever city we were playing in. So
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: even then I still had dreams of playing professional baseball.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: And throughout my four years, like the stuff definitely got better.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Spent a ton of time in the weight room, a
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: ton of time just in my room watching video of
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: guys like Justin Berlander and Garrett Cole and trying to
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: figure out what they did mechanically that I didn't do,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: and asking everyone I could talk to, like, hey, how
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: do my mechanics look? And what should I be doing
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: with my back leg and stuff like that. And by
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the time I got to my senior year at a
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: start opening day down in Florida, it was at a
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: local high school field. Through all right, and get off
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: the mound after the game was done. We played doubleheader
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: every Saturday, and the high school coach was there and
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: he like comes over to the dugout and he's like, hey, man,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: do you know how hard you were thrown? Like, I
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: don't know. I didn't see that hard they were. They
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: were putting the ball in place. I could have been
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: that good. Right, It's like you were ninety to ninety
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: two all game, Like, holy cap, that's that's pretty solid.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Like I didn't know how hard I was throwing. But
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, that kind of could open some doors
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: after college. Getting over ninety was something I wanted to
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: do my whole life, and it was cool to reach
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: that goal. And then like my senior year was going
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: really well, had to start against either Central or Southern Florida.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: I always get confused and through a complete game after that,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and then third start through a no hitter against NC
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: State like okay, like things are going really well. Like
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: maybe if I ball out during club ball, I could
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: send stats or video to the nebulous scouts out there
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: that they had no contacts, but like put it on
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: the internet, see what happens. And of course that was
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: COVID year, so season completely shut down. Everything stopped, and
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: didn't get to finish the career or finish my college
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: career the way I wanted to, and figured that that
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: would probably be the end of my baseball career at
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: that point. And after college I got a job working
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: for Habitat for Humanity, did amer Corps service year, just
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: building houses in Durham, just new construction, like the classic
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: framing walls, putting it up, getting the floor system in
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: everything from start to finish with houses. But even then,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: in the back of my mind, I'm like, I want
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: to keep playing baseball. I remember vividly a conversation with
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: my parents kind of towards the end of that service
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: year where they're like, Okay, got a couple months left
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: in Habitat for Humanity, what do you want to do after?
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: And the only thing I could think of is I
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: want to try to play baseball and give that a shot.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: And throughout that whole time, I've been going to the
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: park by my house with a bucket of baseballs and
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: some plyoballs and just fucking them into the fence as
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: hard as I could for hours. Didn't know a lot
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: about arm care or like velocity development at that point,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: just go out there and like, Okay, here's my seven
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: ounce plyo. We're gonna do twenty five pulldowns with that.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Then we're gonna grab a six and then like okay,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: we're gonna move to a baseball and rip, rip, twenty
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: more pulldowns with that, and like the villa was still climbing,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: still in a pretty decent spot. And once I talk
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: to my parents, they helped me out going to a
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: place in Durham called Baseball Rebellion. They actually kind of
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: know what they're doing as opposed to, Hey, go to
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: the park and buck balls into the fence as hard
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: as you can. Had some really good coaches there, and
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: they had some contacts in independent baseball and told me
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: to just, hey, give it a shot, go out to
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: these open tryouts. I went to the Frontier League go
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: open try out in Ohio and USPBL open tryout in
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Michigan and got picked up by the Woollie Mammos Westside
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Willie Mammos in the United Professional Baseball League. Yep, roll Mammos. Yeah.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I was there for a couple of months and threw
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: really well up there. Knew that I was kind of
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: getting some looks from affiliated teams. And then one day
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: get a call from my manager while I'm eating lunch
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: at the apartment getting ready to head to the stadium,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: basically saying, hey, pack your bags. The Twins just signed you.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: You're going down to Fort Myers. And forty eight hours
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: later there I was in the Fort Myers complex and
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: president spent. Yeah, yeah, I think I met you. You
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: were you were the first person who texted me on
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: WhatsApp after I got signed, and Hey, this is Jared,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: looking forward to seeing you at the field tomorrow. And
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: I remember my text was where's the clubhouse? Like? Where
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: do I go to see? All we'd been able to
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: do is sit at the hotel room because we still
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: had the COVID restrictions. You're like just going to the
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: big building and you'll find your way.
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: A very good instruction from a coach. That's good.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and then yeah, spent the last back half
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one, then all at twenty twenty two
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: and twenty twenty three with the Twins. Good amount of
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: time with you down in Fort Myers with the muscles,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: and then and they look twenty twenty three and Cedar Rapids,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: and then up to now blew out my elbow December
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: of last year, so I've been rehabbing from Tommy John
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: all year and that takes it to the death.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what a wild ride. Like, there's so much to unpack.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: I want to try to figure out where I want
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: to start. The first thing that came to mind was
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: what I was thinking about club ball when you were
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: playing there, Like, you obviously were a very serious player
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: like this despite it being club baseball, Like you were
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: probably working harder and doing more things than some of
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: the players for the main UNC team, Right, So, like,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: what was that like being around other kids and maybe
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: were just there just to kind of have fun, you know,
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: a couple of days a week or play a couple
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: of games on the weekend. Like, did did people give
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: you a hard time? Or did Was there a lot
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: of other players that were trying to work as hard
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: as you?
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: A little bit of both.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: There were a few who were really hard workers, go
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: out and get it, take it super seriously, super competitive,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and then there were a lot of guys that were.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: It's club baseball.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: We're gonna as an excuse to Hey, We're going to
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: go down to Florida State and party in Tallahassee for
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: a weekend. We're going to go down to Gainesville and
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: party in Gainesville and not taking it super seriously. But
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: I kind of decided after high school that, like, if
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I was going to be like have this kind of
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: crazy journey and be different, like I'd have to be
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: different in everything that I did, because like my biggest
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: regret from high school is I took a weightlifting class
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: my sophomore, junior, and senior year because I mean I
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: was small, Like my sophomore year high school, I was
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: like five seven, like buck thirty buck forty, and then
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: graduated I was like sixty three one hundred and sixty
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: five pounds, maybe one hundred and seventy pounds.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: He grew a lot, Yeah, but I didn't put on
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: a lot of muscle. And I had I mean I
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: had one hundred and eighty days.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Of school times every day for three years had an
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: hour of weightlifting class, and I just wasted it, like
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: played basketball with my friends, played dodgeball with my friends,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: just kind of hung out in the weight room. Occasionally
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: would like go through the motions of like a bench
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: day or like do some stuff with the Kala machine
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: with like tricep extensions or like him, were out some
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: bicep girls, just because I was like afraid to be
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: different and afraid to be like the guy that is like, oh,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: like this guy is doing these Like you know how
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: baseball lifts are, Like they draw a lot of attention to.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's certain movements you're going if you're in a
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: public gym, it's like, what is that guy doing?
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, like you're slamming med balls, You're doing all
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: sorts of rotational stuff. And it just I just didn't
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: want to be the guy like showing up to my
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: fifth period French class sweating, and I just like I
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: was just afraid of standing out and kind of like
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: once I graduated from high school and thought that my
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: baseball career was over, kind of coming face to face
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: with the end of my baseball career at the end
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: of my dream, it's like, Okay, Like if I want
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: to do this, I have to actually go out and
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: do it and like work every day to get towards it,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: regardless of if I'm standing out or if I'm roughling
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: feathers on the club team. Because I'm shooting every single game,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: like Game seven of the World Series, and like I
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: absolutely went out and did that, and like every day
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I was at the student rec Center at six in
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: the morning when it opened until like eight thirty or
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: nine when I had to eventually go to class, and
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: I was doing the like slamming.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: The med balls.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: I was asking people to move out of my way
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: on the turf area so I could push and pull
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the sled. I was doing like heavy reverse lunches and stuff.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: And it's like I want to be different, and I'm
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: gonna take a different approach and go out there and
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: do all that I can to reach my goals. And
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: I took the same approach with being on the club team,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: like without a coach, it's hard to hold guys accountable,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: and especially with like getting a catcher, Like a lot
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: of guys just don't want to catch bullpens, especially like
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: I said, with the like going out and tucking balls
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: into the fence like one hundred pull downs. I didn't
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: really have a lot of moderation, and I'd want to
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: go out and throw like a sixty five pitch bullpen
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: where I'm like really working on my slider and I'm
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: bouncing it, and a lot of guys like, come on, man,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: like you just threw a bullpen last week, Like you
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: really need to throw another bullpen.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: It's yeah, like every three days after you pitch or
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: I don't. Yeah, but you're pitching once a week. You're
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: touching the mound and for a bullpen at least once.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I try to get off the mound like
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: three times a week.
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: And you're pushing it. You're pushing it a little bit.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: I was one hundred throwing too much. But I mean,
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: you know you saw me for.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Two years, yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, the number of
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: times that you and Richard had to stop me and
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: aj or me and Warp from throwing. Okay, that's that's
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: enough for us. It was the same way but to
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: an extreme in college, right, and that definitely rough with Feathers,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: and especially by the time I was a senior and
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: I was the president of the team and was making
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: the lineup, and like, I want to go out there
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and win every game. So I like opening night bench
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: guys who've been starters for three years because they haven't
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: been coming to practice, or like showed up late to
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: the field and got the like, what the hell, man,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: it's a club ball, Why were we taking this?
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: So seriously, and it was.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Just kind of had to put like my goals ahead
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: of like friendships that I've had, which was definitely difficult to.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: Do but worth it in the end.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: That's pretty impressive that you did that with those being
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: your friends and your peers, I mean, the same age
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: of guys in your your vention. And that's probably kind
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: of an awkward, uncomfortable situation to be in.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Oh it was.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: So I want to stay on the college aspect for
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: a second, but I do want to go back to
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: high school after this. I'm just thinking, you know, you're
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: making these velocity gains, You're working hard, Like, at any point,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: did you have a thought to actually try to walk
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: on for the main team at UNC or is that
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: not really an option? Or like what was that relationship
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: like with the main team.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: We didn't really have a much of a relationship with
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: the main team. Occasionally we'd get hand me down here,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Like when I graduated in twenty twenty, we had bats
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: from the like twenty thirteen College World Series team, which
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: is kind of six that had the Omaha logo on
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: it and stuff like that. The year before I got there,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: one of the kids got called up to be the
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: bullpen catcher of the main team, but there wasn't a
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: lot of interaction between the club team and the main team,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: and like my first year still wasn't I was still
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: basically short stout, hadn't made a lot of below gains
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: on the mound, didn't go great. Sophomore year threw really well,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: had a really good year, then end of the year,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: started having a little bit of elbow problems, and then
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: was studying abroad in France that summer, so didn't really
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: have a chance to train over the summer throw it all.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: And then junior year again had another good season, and
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: by that point I'd been playing on the team for
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: three years, was elected president of the team, was living
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: with five of my teammates, and kind of decided I'd
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: rather play another year with my friends and try to
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: have a great club season win a club national championship,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: rather than probably being best case scenario towards the end
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: of the bullpen on the barsity team and trying to
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: walk on.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: So the answers now, I never really.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Never it all reached out, and I do kind of
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: regret that because it was partially born out of the
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: fear that they'd tell me no, like you're not good enough,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: and then the dream would be shattered. So like, at
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: a certain point, though, I did have to put myself
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: out there going out to the independent league tryouts, right,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: But I wouldn't I wouldn't change my college career. I
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: had a great time with the club team, and some
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: of those guys are still my closest friends and talk
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: all the time, and it was a really fun and
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: rewarding experience and learned a lot just be on the
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: baseball field in terms of like being the president of
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the team and all the logistics and management leadership skills
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: that I got from that.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you were probably one year away.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: It sounds like from maybe really have an opportunity to
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: pitch a lot for UNC, like because you're ninety ninety
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: two your senior year. So it's like if that's one
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: year prior, maybe that changes. If you're in the low nineties,
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: maybe touching a three or four that summer, and now
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: it's okay, I got a legitimate shot at being able
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: to pitch for these guys.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So, like off speed pitches were not much to
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: speak of at that point. I mean like I was
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: very much able to just throw fastballs probably ninety five
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: percent of the time, and my ball starts and have
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of success doing that. So I had kind
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: of a loopy, breaking pitch and a splitter that occasionally
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: would be really good and then occasionally would throw it
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: forty feet in or throw it to the backstop over
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the catcher's head. Yeah. So yeah, it just wasn't nearly
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: as polished as it probably would have taken to be
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: on the varsity team at that point.
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: So I want to go back to high school for
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: a second, because you said you were like eighty three
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: eighty four?
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: Is that right?
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Or maybe I read that maybe you didn't say that,
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: but were you around low eighties your senior year?
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as far as I now, there was only one
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: time I got a gun on me, so and it
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: was tweeted out and I was tagged in it, and
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: that's the only thing I know said I was eighty
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: one to eighty three top and eighty four, So that's okay.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: I think that's probably about where I was for that whole.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: Year, right, And you pitched well from what I understand,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: like just seeing your stats and whatnot, like it seemed
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: like you pitched well yeah, you weren't thrown super.
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: Hard and you're right handed.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: But like, was there ever a thought to go to
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: a junior college or go to a smaller school or
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: was it kind of like, I'm from Chapel Hill, I
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: love UNC, Like I got accepted here, I'm just going
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: to kind of go here. And at that point, the
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: decision was kind of moving on from baseball because you
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: didn't have the baseball the baseball club.
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: You didn't know about that immediately, correct.
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Like I kind of knew about the club baseball
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: team my senior year of high school. But I kind
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: of at that point, when I was still playing I thought,
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: like playing real high school ball. I thought like, oh,
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: I wouldn't want to just play at not a high level,
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: Like if I'm going to play, I want to play
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: at a like real college baseball was kind of the thought.
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: And then once I went through a summer without playing
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: baseball for the first time in my life, I'm like, no,
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: playing baseball anyway anyway that I can.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: And as far as like juco's and community colleges.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Go, I didn't really know a lot about junior colleges
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and community colleges. I got followed on Twitter by the
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: coach of Patrick Henry Community College, and that was as
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: far as that went. That was as much as I
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: knew about community colleges at that point. And yeah, like
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: once I got accepted to Carolina, it was kind of
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: a no brainer for me. Like I said, I was
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: a huge UNC fan, had dreamed of going there since
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: I was like eight or nine years old, even living
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: in Denver before I moved out to North Carolina. I
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: always wanted to be a guitar heel, and like, he
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: can't argue with the education that UNC has, And like
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: my thought was, I'm probably as much as I want
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: to play professional baseball, the odds are so stacked against
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: me at this point that it better served me to
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: get the education that UNC has talked and come away
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: with that four year degree to set me up for
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: life after college. Then try to go somewhere else just
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: to play baseball.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: So, you know, just kind of circling back to some
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: of the things you said earlier, like specifically about the
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: weight room in high school, like didn't really take it seriously,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: and that was sounded like that was kind of a
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: regret you wish you would have taken advantage of that
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: that time and then moving forward into college, it was
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: it sounded like the switch turned on to was like,
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: you know what, I don't care if this is club baseball.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: I want to be as good as I possibly can.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do whatever it takes in my training.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna you know, I'm just gonna treat it like
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: it's like you said, Game seven of the World Series,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: every time I take them ound. And I've seen that
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: since i've known you, you know, back in twenty twenty one,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Like you've always been one of the hardest workers, if
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: not the hardest worker, that I've coached. And it just
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: seems like you just have that relentless mindset that it
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter, you know, if you pitch bad the night
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: before you pitch great, your attitude and your work ethic
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: wasn't going to waiver the next day. You were just
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: very consistent with your process. And my experience with you, like,
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: where where does that come from? Like is it just
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: like that was kind of like the way you were raised.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Is it just you you learned through some you know,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: through some challenges like high school and realizing that you
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: weren't living up to your potential, or like Where does
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: that that drive come from for you?
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I do think a lot of it comes from my parents.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: And just like we're naturally very competitive family. Like our
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: family card games get very cutthroat.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: Some like.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: My mom will probably get mad at me for saying this,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: but like there's been some very like words that you
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: would not expect to come out of my mom's mouth from.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: These happened during these card games.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: And like I've always just had this super competitive drive
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: with everything that I do, wanting to win and be
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: as good as I can. And like I always thought
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: of myself as a very hard worker, and like in
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: the mandatory baseball workouts, I was the same way. I
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: was always the hardest worker there, one of the hardest
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: workers there. I just wasn't doing the extra stuff in
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: high school, like the weight room class, Like I it
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: wasn't it wasn't like there wasn't direction. It was just
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: kind of like we went in the weight room and
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: were able to do whatever we wanted.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: There's not a lot of supervision.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: So kind of once i decided that I'm gonna treat
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: club ball and take it as seriously as I can,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: I started to take that work ethic beyond just the practices,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: the stuff I was doing with the team, and do.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: It in everything.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: And then like once I got to pro ball, having
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: that kind of chip on my shoulder from being a
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: club baseball guy and not having the kind of pedigree
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: that a lot of the guys had who like played
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: with guys who won national championships, guys who played on
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: ESPN for years that I've been watching playing in college
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: and definitely had a bit of a chip on my
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: shoulder knowing that I'm on the like I've accomplished a
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: good them out by just getting to be on the
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: same field as these guys, But now I want to
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: not just share.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: The field with them, I want to beat them.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: And like, my biggest edge is to outwork them, because
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not the most naturally gifted guy, not the most
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: athletic person you'll see. So I just figured that my
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: edge was going to be outworking them and like you said,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: being consistent day in and day out and trying to
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: improve and get better each and every day, because over
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the course of one hundred and twenty game season, that's
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of opportunities for growth.
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure you know when you first got to
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: you know, professional baseball, there's probably a little bit of
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: an intimidation factor, especially because you didn't have the college
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: route that a lot of kids had. But then I'm
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: sure shortly after when you got there, you realize every
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: one's the same, right, everyone is in the exact same spot.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: Like you are in the exact same spot as aj Labis,
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: for example, who played at LSU. You're at the exact
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: same spot as Pearsonol played a Grand Canyon or all
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: these other schools, and you're all at the same spot.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter where you were before that. That may
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: have helped you get to where you are now, but
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: at this point in time, you are all on the
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: same level playing field. And I'm sure looking back on it,
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: it's easier now to realize that. But in that moment,
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: I'm sure there was a little bit of anxiety and
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: questioning whether you belonged or not. I'm assuming just based
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: off our conversations, But you know, how do you think
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: you navigated through that? Because you know, I assume that
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: probably made you work even harder or motivated you to
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: prove yourself in a way, But like, how did you
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: put away the fear of the anxiety and allow yourself
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: just to perform like you're capable of.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was definitely difficult at first. The person that
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: always comes to mind is rocker Jake Rucker, because I'd
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: seen him play in the Little League World Series when
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: he was twelve years old on ESPN and then watched
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: him play for three years at Tennessee and like that
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: was kind of crazy to see him. And then once
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I got called up to the Muscles, my first start
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: the second batter of the game with Jason de Mingez,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: who I'd been playing with on MLB the Show all year,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: and like the scouting report that I got for him,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: it was like player comps where like Mickey Mantle.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Like guys like that. There's definitely very.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Intimidating early on, like, oh man, I have to be
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: like perfect with all my pitches. I have to, like
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: if I like miss over the heart of the plate
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: at all, I have to like hit the corners perfectly,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: and like definitely struggled with that a little bit and
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: had to Like, I definitely spent a lot of time
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: working with the Twins mental performance coaches Omar I don't know.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: If you remember him, he was really good.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Helped me a lot, kind of helping me get the perspective,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: like you said, of like we're all at the same
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: level now, and like there's a reason that I'm here,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: and like, if anything, I had to be better than
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: the other guys in independent baseball to even get this
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: opportunity because of the kind of stigma associated with a
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: guy that doesn't have any stats on Baseball Reference and
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: didn't play an inning of college baseball.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: And it really wasn't until May.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Of my first full year with the muscles that I
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: started to kind of come around a little bit. I
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: don't know if you remember. I had a absolute blow
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: up outing against Clearwater early in the week. Gave up
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: five runs and two thirds of an inning, and then
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: they came in, Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of baseball. Yeah,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: And it.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: Wasn't my only blow about it. And then came in
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: Sunday and.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: I had like tweaked my back the weight room earlier
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: that week and I just wasn't feeling good. Had horrible
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: feel for the slider that I was trying to throw
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: at the time, like was throwing it forty feet, was
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: like I had no feel for the splitter and it
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: was just nothing but fastballs and went three up three down.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Both innings that I pitched, struck out Mickey Montiac, who
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: was rehabbing and had played in the big leagues at
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: that point, former number one overall pick. And I'm like, man,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: if I can do this just with the fastball, feeling
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: terrible with no offspeed pitches and still get guys out,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: like we can do this, And then that gave me
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of confidence to start trusting my stuff more
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: and like, Okay, I don't have to be super fine.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I can just go out there and compete and not
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: have to worry about am I good enough? Can I
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: get these guys out? Like I can just go out
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: there and throw and compete for sure.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: I feel like it takes moments like that to where
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: you get you know, a former big or not former
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: he's currently in the big leagues too, but you get
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: a big league caliber type player out or someone that
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: you think is just far and above, whether it's Jason
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: and Meez or some of these other guys, and you
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: have success, and now you're able to put that in
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: the back of your mind. You're able to use that
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: later down the road when maybe you start struggling again.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: You can reflect on that and remind yourself that I
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: got that guy out when I didn't even feel my best, Like,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: surely I can get this guy out right now when
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: I'm feeling good. And you know, one of my favorite
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: guys I like to read about and follow is David Goggins.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you've read a lot of his
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: stuff or not, but he has a thing called the
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: cookie Jar that he does, and basically what it is
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: is it's a mental cookie jar of where you write
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: down all of your failures and all of your successes
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: that have come after that ways that you have overcome
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: struggles in the past. So maybe it's you didn't get
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: any offers to play college baseball, and then you turn
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: that into a positive or into a success by having
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: a really successful club baseball career. You ended up, you know,
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: not having an opportunity to get drafted by an organization
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: right away, but you turn that into a positive and
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: found success by independent ball, and then just you can
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: build on these these different scenarios in and reshow yourself
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: times where you have overcome obstacles in your life or
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: failures and have turned them into successes and have been
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: able to move on to you know, bigger and greater things,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: and the more of those that you have, the more
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: options you have to reflect on. That can kind of
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: remotivate yourself and remind yourself of, you know, really how
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: amazing you are and in a you know, to put
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: it bluntly, of just like all the successes and how
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: how good you actually are. And I think a lot
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: of baseball players need that because at some point in baseball,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: whether you're a hit or a pitcher, you're going to fail.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: Like that's just it's a game of failure regardless. You're
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: going to struggle, you're going to hit, you're going to
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: hit a roadblock at some point. And really the ones
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: that turn into really good players are the ones that
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: are able to turn that into a positive and are
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: able to use that as fuel to learn from it
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: and become a better player, which I think you have.
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: Done a phenomenal job of.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: Like whether it's even just a minor setback of having
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: a bad game, like you said, coming back later that week,
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: still not feeling your best, and you're still able to
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: have success because you're able to turn the page and
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: focus on the task at hand and use what you
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: had that day in that same vein you know, especially
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: in pro baseball and with the Twins specifically, we were
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: pretty analytical. We would share a lot of information with
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: you guys, whether it be you know, your pitch movement stuff,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: your performance stats, you know, all of you guys would
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: have specific goals that we are working towards. For some players,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: it was probably overwhelming. There's a lot of a lot
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: of different things that we were trying to work on
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: to improve for you guys. I know, for you, you're a
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: very smart guy, which is good, but sometimes I can
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: cause people to overthink things or to go down rabbit
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: holes that they don't need to be going down. Like
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: for you personally, how do you balance you know, that
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: side of things of being educated and understanding who you
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: are and what everything means from an analytical standpoint, while
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: also just pitching care free and trusting the stuff that
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: you have. Like, how does that balance out for you?
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean that's definitely a kind of a tough
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: balance to strike because, like you said, I try to
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: soak up as much information as I can. There were
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: definitely times where you were Bobby or Richard or someone
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: had to be like, hey, let's not worry too much
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: about these random squiggly lines on the kinnet tracts or
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Simmy or whatever motion capture system that we had. But
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: I think the main thing that helped me was kind
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: of separating early work and games. So like the early
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: work was the time to work on stuff. It was
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: the time to get off the get off the mound
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: and throw fix or eight changeups to try to work
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: on that pitch, or time to do a bunch of
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: drills with the three D strap or the hurdle to
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: work on my lead leg block, or do sandbag work
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: to work on my hinge. And then like once it
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: gets to game time, like once my name's called in
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the bullpen, I get off the mound to start warming up,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: just trusting all the like hours and hours of work
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: that we put in before the games, trusting that that
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: would translate, and just shifting the focus from internal like
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: feeling my mechanics or trying to feel a certain thing
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: with the ball coming out of my hand if I
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: was working on a certain pitch, and instead just focusing
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: on how aggressive can I be through a spot on
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: the catcher like pick a like his mask if I
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: was throwing a fastball, or maybe like right shoulder if
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I was throwing the change up, just thinking how aggressive
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: can I be with this pitch and doing my best
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: to just trust it and throw it with complete conviction,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: and obviously, like there were plenty of times where that
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: didn't happen completely seamlessly and got caught up a little
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: bit and the like, especially with working on the change
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: up so much last year getting into games, like I'd
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: have a lot of conviction with my fastball on slider,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: and then time would come to throw a change up
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: and it would the mental focus would shift more towards like, Okay,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: let's try to create the right movement on this pitch
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: rather than let's try to go out and execute this
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: pitch as well as I can. So I think now
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: kind of having the perspective of being away from it
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: for a year and seeing like looking back on my
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: approach and what I was doing, then I would try
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: to focus a lot less on that with the change
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: up and just focus on who cares if it's seventeen
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: phebe on this change up, I'm just going to throw
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: it with as much conviction as I can try to
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: throw it through the catcher. But yeah, the main thing
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: is just trying to flip the switch when you cross
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: that line onto the field and it goes from I'm
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: not trying to develop, I'm not trying to work on anything.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to go and get the hitter out and
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: help my team win this game.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's really hard, especially in minor league baseball,
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: because it is about development, but at the same time,
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: if you don't.
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: Pitch well, then you're probably not going to move up.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: So it's like, you can't fully tell me that it's
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: purely about development when my performance is kind of dictating
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: some of these decisions on getting called up. So and
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: I struggle with that from the coaching side of you
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: know how I would communicate that with you guys, because
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: it was a really tough balance because your change up,
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: for example, we want to to kill the vertical break
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: on it and obviously ultimately have it be you know,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: located well, but it's almost like you would execute one.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: But if it wasn't at the vertical break that we wanted,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: it was quote unquote a bad pitch or it wasn't
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: what we wanted, and it's it's tough and you can't
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: if that's the case, you can't help but be thinking
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: on the mound about Okay, is it coming off my
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: fingers just right?
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: Because I know I need to get this to five
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: VB or whatever it is.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: Then you end up, you know, sailing it or spiking it,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: and then that's not good, regardless of what the movement is.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: So I'm just reflecting that loud, just as a coach
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: of that balance of communicating what we're actually working on
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: the development side of things as well as you know,
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: building confidence and trust to where we are, you know,
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: working on execution because at the end of the day,
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: you have to be able to execute what you have.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's definitely tough too as a relader because
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: you get such limited number of pitches and like especially
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: like coming in late in a game, Say it's like
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: extra innings, there's a guy on second, and like, I
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: know I need to throw my change up to get
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: reps in games, But do I really want to throw
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: a change up in this spot and risk balancing it
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: and the guy getting the third or risk while pitching
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: a guy in when I know that I can strike
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: this guy out using solely fastball slider. So it's definitely
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: a tough balance to strike.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like you have to I don't want
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: to say predetermined, but kind of predetermined because we would
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: do that sometimes like hey, if you get to oh
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: one count right here or all oh one counts, you're
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: throwing a change up here. And sometimes you have to
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: do that when you're developing things. But I think if
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: you do that for too long of a period of time,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: that's probably not for the best. But like if a
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: kid is purely just not throwing the pitch that he
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: needs to work on, it's going to ultimate lead to
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: success down the road. Maybe you have to have an
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: intervention as far as getting the usage up, but as
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: far as you know, thinking about how it's moving and
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: all of those things, it's definitely something that you have
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: to be careful with as a coach. And it's you know,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: I always enjoy conversations with you because you're a very
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: honest person about how you're interpreting things that I'm saying,
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: or the pulse of the team of how they're interpreting
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: the way you know, we're sending our messages. And I
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: always appreciated that about you. But let's you know, I
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: don't want to take up too much of your time,
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: but let's dive in a little bit to where you're
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: at now because you know, obviously you're rehabbing from TJ.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Why don't we talk about, you know, some of the
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: things that you were doing prior to TJ, because I
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: know you were making some really good improvements. You're gaining velocity.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Like what we're you know, I'm kind of inside tracking
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: now from the injury.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: This doesn't have to do the injury, but like, what
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: do you think are like two to three things that
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: that you've done over the past few years that have
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: been really instrumental in helping your velocity. I think the
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: main thing is just like the drill work that we did,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: and like actually understanding how to use ploballs because, like
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: I said, I when I got my first set of
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: plyoballs in like twenty eighteen, when they were popping off
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: because I saw people on Instagram throwing them and I
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: had absolutely no idea what I was doing with them.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: I'd just take them and they're alm as hard as
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: I could at the wall and be like, Okay, that
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: was a good PLIODEBT with no understanding of what I
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: was supposed to be feeling or doing with them. So
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: like once I got to the twins and kind of
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: understood that the plios ideally will add velocity not by
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: throwing them hard, but by helping ingrain good patterns and
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: just helping you feel yourself moving the right way. That
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: was kind of a big aha moment of like, like
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: when I first got signed with the Twins, the main
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: focus was cleaning up the arm path and just get
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: into that ninety degree position at foot strike and not
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: having weird hitches and getting stuck with my arm straight
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: out behind me. And I was like, Oh, I can
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: feel it a lot better with a heavier ball because
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: I'm more aware of where my hand is in space.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: And then kind of took the same approach with working
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: on like my lead, like block and rotation of like
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: We're going to do some very heavily constrained drills roll
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: ins or step backs where I'm focusing solely on one
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: thing and just the the plyoball is gonna kind of
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: help me be more aware of how my body's moving
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: in space. That was probably the biggest thing that helped
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: me gain velocity throughout my time with the Twins. And
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: then just generally more structured drill work of getting off
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: the mound with you or Richard with like the three
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: d strap to help me feel my hips rotating correctly,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: or putting the hurdle in front of my left leg too,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: just as a visual queue to land and stick it
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: and pull back with the lead leg. Just stuff like
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: that to help kind of clean up mechanics and just
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: get a better unders Like I also just got a
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: better understanding of what pitching mechanics are supposed to look
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: like from working with you guys, because I'd like I
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: had Patrick Kerrn was my pitching coach in Chapel Hill.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: He played minor league baseball, was really good, but I
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: only saw him a couple times a month for maybe
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: a year, and then for four years in college, wasn't
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: working with the pitching coach and had a couple months
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: with the guys at Baseball Rebellion who were really good,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: but didn't really have enough time to work on stuff
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: because we were trying to build up for the independent
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: league tryouts. So like when I got to the Twins,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: I never really had a real pitching coach, like I'd
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: kind of just taught myself how to do stuff, and
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: the way that things felt to me were not the
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: way they looked, and like ideas that I had weren't
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: necessarily correct with how my body should be moving, and
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: I just gained a much better understanding of how I
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: should be feeling and the right way to move.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, it seems like you gained a lot
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: of awareness over the last couple of years, so like
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: just really getting in tune with who you are, like
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: you said, like the feel versus real of what you
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: thought you were doing or what you should be doing.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: That probably changed once you were able to get more
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: feedback because obviously with the Twins we had two pitching
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: coaches at every affiliate, like, there wasn't sortage of feedback.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: So I'm sure that helps gain your you know, your
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: awareness and your feel and then with the work ethic
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: that you have and the reps that you're going to
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: take seriously with that, Like it makes perfect sense why
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: you know, your development over these last three years has
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: been amazing. Let's uh, let's now move in a little
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: bit to rehabit in that process, because that's a completely
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: different animal.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: I had TJ back in twenty eighteen, ended up not
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: playing again after that, so I can't speak to that
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: part of it, but I can, you know, connect with
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: you on the rehab process and what that's like. But
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: you know, where are you currently at, Like how far
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: out are you from surgery right now?
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: I had surgery on February twenty sixth of this year,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: so almost what month were in September? Almost seven months
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: out of surgery, So deep into the throng program right now,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: building up hopefully get off the man in the next
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: two or three weeks for the first time. Started throwing
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: flat rounds a couple of weeks ago, so definitely in
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: the thick of it right now, like starting to have
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: the velo climbing back up, starting to throw with a
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: little bit more intensity, which is both fun and scary
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: at the same time. But yeah, I'm excited to get
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: back on a mound and start throwing off speed pitches again,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: but also trying not to take it too fast and
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: get ahead of myself for sure. Yeah, you got to
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: be patient, without a doubt, But like, what has been
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: the biggest challenge you think for you to this point,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: And maybe it's physical, maybe it's mental, but like, what's
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: been some of the bigger hurdles that you've had overcome
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: these first seven months. By far, the biggest challenge has
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: just been being away from the game and being away
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: from like the other guys, Like, as you know, the
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: Twins caught me the day I had surgery and so
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: I'm out in Arizona. Didn't really know anyone out here
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: other than you. And like the hardest part has been
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: watching now guys like my good friends, going through a
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: full season and watching them get to be out there
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: and play while I'm struggling with like the three pound
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: weights that you use in the early part of rehab
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: and struggling to get the range of motion back and
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: fighting to hit seventy two miles an hour on the
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: radar gun throwing and talking to them, and like the
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: just missing all the time you spend in the clubhouse
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: and the friendships that you have, and just going through
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: the ups and downs of the minor league season, the
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: stuff that you kind of cake for granted or don't appreciate.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Just like the like this is gonna sound crazy, but
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: like I miss the Randolays and four Meyers when we're
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: just sitting in there playing cards for hours, and like
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: I just missed that kind of camaraderie and being part
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: of a team.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: No, that makes perfect sense, Like that's I mean, that's
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: a large part of the professional season, just the bonds
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: you build with with your teammates. Yeah, having to watch
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: that from a farm, I'm sure is challenging, especially seeing
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: some of those guys you played with a game called
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: it the Triple A, and even some of them making
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: their big league games this year, like Zebby and and
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: and Festa, which has been really cool to see. But
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it's it's tough just to be sitting at
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: home watching that.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, obviously I'm super happy for them. It's exciting
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: for me to also, like, man, I share a clubhouse
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: with that guy last year and now he's pitching important
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: innings for the Twins and the like, maybe playoff stretch
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: for him if they can hang on to their leading
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: the wild card.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: For sure, it would have been some of the some
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: of the mental hurdles because obviously that's a huge part
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: of of TJ is like building the trust and the
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: confidence again to let the ball go. Like, I know
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: you're not out of max S effort yet, but like,
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: how have how has the throwing been From the mental
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: side of things.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: It's been easier than I thought so far. Knock on
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: wood to kind of let it go, and like you've
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: got really good rehab here. CONTI Sports Performance. They he's
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: been with the Dodgers for a long time, Like he
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: knows what he's doing. It's not his first rodeo at
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: all with TJ's So I've got a lot of trust
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: in him, knowing that he's doing everything that he can
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: to put my arm in a good spot and that
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: he wouldn't ask me to do something that my arm
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: is not capable of at a certain point in the rehab.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: And then, like the main focus has just been looking
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: at it as kind of an opportunity of like at
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: the very least, like if rehab goes perfectly and perfectly smoothly,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: it's a twelve month process, which is still three hundred
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: and sixty five days where you can work on all
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: sorts of stuff that you wouldn't be able to work
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: on in season, because like I don't have to go
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: out and worry about like, oh is my arm okay
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: to pitch today, and like, oh, I can't really try
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: to make a big mechanical change because I need to
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: feel comfortable to go out and compete on the mound today.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: So it's been nice to kind of take a step
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: back and look at what could I have done better
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: to maybe prevent the injury or at the very least,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: like help me move better and put less strain on
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: my arm and potentially throw harder. When I come back,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: and I feel like I've made a lot of gains
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: in just generally how I move, like my physical fitness
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: level overall, like able to use my hips better, and
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: just kind of taking it day by day in terms
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: of like let's try to find something to get better
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: at today, and then you stack those bricks over the
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: course of three hundred and sixty five days, you can
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: make pretty big improvements.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, one hundred pc.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: Like that that is the if you want to look
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: at it as an advantage, that is the advantage is
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: like you can purely focus on remapping whatever you need
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: to remap from a delivery standpoint and literally start from
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: scratch teach yourself how to thrower. That's what I did
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: when I came back from surgery. Like I didn't use
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: my lower half well at all, and like that was
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: purely my focus was. As I'm building up and going slow,
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: I'm going to spend all of these reps focusing on
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: doing it exactly right with my lower half because I
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: don't have to worry about going one hundred percent effort,
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: and I don't have to worry about pitching in a game,
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: So there's no reason not to sell out for folksing
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: on whatever that area is that you think you need to.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: What do you I mean, this is a tough question
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: because and you might not have the answer, but what
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: do you think are the things that possibly led to
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: your injury? Is there anything that sticks out that maybe
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: you would have done differently minus ripping the balls.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Years for hundreds of reps. Yeah, I think that's a
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: big thing. Is just overall workload management and just throwing
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: heavy balls as hard as I could probably wasn't the
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: best move because I like, I know from what my
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: surgeon told me that there had been partial tears for
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: a while, Like I don't know how long if it
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: was if I'd been pitching with it one year, two years,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: but it was kind of only a matter of time
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: before it gave out the UCL because like the one
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: that I felt it on, it was a I was
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: like warming up but like seventy five feet seventy percent
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: effort and felt it go, So it wasn't like I
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: was doing crazy stuff and that kind of says to
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: me that it was only a matter of time. And
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: if it wasn't that throat, it might have been a
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: week later, it might have been in February, or might
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: have been midway through this season, but it was probably
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: only a matter of time. And I think a lot
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: of it was that like heavy workload with bad mechanics.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Like not to say that my mechanics are anywhere near
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: perfect now, but like from when I got to the
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Twins to where they were at the end of last season,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: it was a pretty significant change in terms of arm
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: path and just using my lower body and rotating better.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: So I know I was putting a lot of strain
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: on my arm early in my career with the Twins,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: which was when and that those were my mechanics and
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: I was going to the park and throwing the as
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: hard as I correct, So yeah, I think that was
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: probably the main thing. And just I think now the
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: focus is like using my lower half a lot better,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: like you said, figuring out how to rotate the correct way,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: because I've always struggled with the idea of like rotate
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: and just spin and fly out instay, like rotating towards
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: home plate and just cleaning up the arm path even more.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: Hopefully that puts the elbow in a spot where it's
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: protected and obviously with all the strengthening of the forearm
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: and the shoulder and the muscles around the elbow to
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: protect the UCL, hopefully it'll be in a good spot
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: once I start going max effort again.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great. So you're month seven right now. You know,
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: like you said, if everything was perfectly, a year is
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: about the timeline. What is you know, what are the
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: next steps for you or what is what are you
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: looking ahead to here in these next you know a
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: few months as far as working out for teams or
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: doing some some pro days, Like what's kind of on
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: on your radar in regards to that.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's absolutely the focus is trying to get game
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: ready by February of next year and hopefully be doing
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: some pro days then and throwing for teams and ideally
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: get picked up for spring training. Worst comes to worst
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: and don't get picked up. Planning on going and playing
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: indie ball. Had some funny texts the day after I
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: had surgery because all the indie ball teams are looking
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: through the transactions pages and see Jackson Hicks released by
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: the twins, and obviously they don't know that I had
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: TJ the day before, so I got texts from four
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: or five indie ball coaches saying like, hey, just reaching out,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: Like I don't know if you're interested in playing indie ball,
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Like if you want to come pitch for us this summer.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: I'm like sitting there in my brace at the airport. Yeah,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: I think it's gonna be tough this year, but yeah, yeah,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: if you want a guy, like a vibes guy in
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: the clubhouse, do the rehal. I mean a couple months
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: from now, I'll be able to roll out and throw like
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: mid fifties. So yeah, yeah, if you're looking for that,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: I'm your guy. But otherwise maybe we'll get in touch
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: next year. So yeah, if I don't get picked up
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: by an affiliate team, plan on going back to indie
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: ball and hopefully throwing well there again and getting signed again.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: Perfect well, I'll obviously be with you all on that process.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: With us both being in Arizona, will set up some
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: stuff once you're one hundred percent and make sure you
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: get some eyes on you and see what happens. Yeah,
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to it, perfect well, Jackson exciting time. Yeah, absolutely, Well,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: I appreciate your time doing just sharing your story. I
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: learned a lot about you that that I didn't fully know,
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: and it's cool just to hear your story from high
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: school with essentially no offers, really not a huge future
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: at least it didn't seem like a huge future in
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: baseball to where you are now. I think it's very
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: inspiring for a lot of listeners. There's definitely a lot
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: of high school kids that listen to the show or
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: high school coaches that you know. I think this can
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: be used as inspiration for a lot of players and
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: you know, and I think an important note to your
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: work ethic in the way you are is like inspiration
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: motivation is great. Like they're going to hear this story
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: and they're gonna say, yeah, that sounds awesome, But now
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: they have to do what you didn't. They have to
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: put in the work to ultimately get to where they
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: want to go. So hopefully they got that message.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the big takeaway is to keep betting
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: on yourself even when like it seems crazy and your
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: club ball teammates are telling you, like why are we
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: taking this so seriously? Like, don't be afraid to be different.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: And then the other takeaway whenever I talk to high
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: school kids and like they're talking about college recruiting and stuff,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: is like I'll tell them to go somewhere where they
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: can play, because like, over my four years of college,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: I threw a couple of hundred innings and was pitching
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: every week ending games and like, yeah, they weren't televised games,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: they weren't attended by any scouts by any means, but
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: I got thousands of reps where I'm facing a batter
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: in the box and learning how to pitch. And I
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: think a lot of kids have that focus of D
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: one or bust. And if you sit on the bench
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: for three years of the D one, you're missing out
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: on a ton of opportunities for growth in game.
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: For sure.
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: Or if you have to transfer three different times.
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: Which nowadays that's usually the way it goes.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty typical now apparently.
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: Well awesome, Well thank you, Jackson. Really appreciate your time
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: and I'm looking forward to seeing you soon.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was fun.
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: Thanks Jaron,