February 5, 2025 • 18 mins
UC Baseball Head Coach Jordan Bischel previews his second season in charge of the Bearcats and sounds impressed by Mo's awesome questions.
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Podcasts of The Mo Egger Radio Show are a service of Longnecks Sports Grill.
Listen to the show live weekday afternoons 3:00 - 6:00 on ESPN1530.
Listen Live: ESPN1530.com/listen
Get more: https://linktr.ee/MoEgger
Follow on X: @MoEgger
Instagram too: @MoEgger
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From five o'clock ESPN fifteen thirty. The UC Baseball season,
year two of the Jordan Bischal regime. Jordan Bischal regime
is hard to say. Five times fast starts a week
from Friday. You will be at Duke. They'll play a
home game on the eighteenth, and then the official what
they're calling opening day will be on March fifth, hopefully
(00:21):
with better weather. Better better weather, I can't talk better
weather when the Bearcats host Toledo Year two Jordan Bischel
Bearcats had a good first season in the Big twelve.
Hopefully even better year two. The opener of the first
game is nine days away. I'm sure your mind is racing.
What's it like for you right now? Is it butterflies?
(00:42):
Is it just a lot of stuff on your to
do list? Where are you at right now?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah? I think you probably feel a little too busy
to have too many butterflies. Just a lot, a lot
to do to prep, you know, combination of trying to
make sure that last week of practices you're checking all
your boxes and crossing all your teams, but also trying
to start to get ahead on scouting or towards things
like that. So busy time. I think as we get
(01:07):
to the middle of the next week, that's when you
start having a little bit of that that first game anxiety.
And I think this is my thirteenth year as the
head coach and probably almost twenty five in college baseball
some capacity, and that that first game is always exciting,
so that doesn't change, but it's busy in the meantime.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, I would imagine, what do you like about this
year's team?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
You know, our pitching depth is where we've grown the most.
A couple of guys that were on last year's team
that gained a ton of valuable experience, handful of freshmen
that we think can help us, and then some really
quality transfers. And then when you combine those three, we
go in feeling like we have a lot more options
that can be pretty successful for us. You don't know
(01:50):
how it plays out, but obviously depth really matters, and
we've we've got a better stable there.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
You and I talked right around this time a year ago,
before your your season opener. We talked about the style
you wanted your team to play. Here's how I want
us to play, but I'm not sure if we can.
And it turned out that your team played, I think
almost exactly, at least from the offensive perspective, how you
want your guys to play. Do you have a little
bit more of a firm sense going into year two
that you know what, I know how we want to play,
(02:17):
and I have a team that can play the way
we want.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, we feel good about it, you know, just bringing
back a few key pieces on the offensive side, you know,
Christian Mitchell and Carrington Cross and Loudon Brooks, Tommy O'Connor,
Landon Veterick, those guys obviously year two and for a
guy like Christian Mitchell or Luke Sefsk even more than
that because they came west from Central Michigan, you're not
(02:41):
only does your understanding get better, but your execution gets better. Right,
You practice things for multiple years and you're going to
be better at it. So they they're pretty high level
in terms of trying to play the style we want to.
But tied to that, now you have kind of extensions
of your coaching staff in practice, right, more guys that
can teach a teammate and help them along. So I
think we feel a lot more comfortable that we're a
(03:03):
lot further along than we were at this time last
year lost some some stump with the bat and a
guy like Josh Cross that you know, when you're at
the top of the Big twelve and home runs and
rbsis and hit by pitches, you're not going to replace
that with one guy. So we got to we got
to see where some of that power comes from. But
we definitely have personnel and experience that lends itself to
(03:24):
being able to do a lot of these things.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
We talked about what you wanted to do, and look,
we were going to value getting on base. We're going
to put pressure on defenses. We're going to steal bases,
We're going to take the extra base when we can.
We're going to be aggressive, but we're not going to
be stupid. You guys did that well last year. You
you led the conference in times being hit by pitch.
And I asked this from the perspective of someone who
(03:46):
when I was a kid playing, my value to the
team was if I could get hit by the pitch,
because that was basically my only way of getting on base.
This might be a stupid question, but do you do
you practice getting hit by a pitch?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It we one per do practice that. It really has
a skill it, you know, like right now, I've got
twin seven year olds and a five year old. If
they see me winding up to chuck a ball at
them as hard as I can, their instinct is going
to tell them to get out of the way. I hope,
I hope. So that's a natural lestinct of a baseball play.
You can't just say, hey, you got to stand in there.
(04:20):
You don't have time to think about processing getting hit.
So it's a practice skill. We will use tennis balls
or softer baseballs, marve balls or incrediballs, and we will
we'll mix those into our buckets and when we throw
BP you we'll hit guys with those. So we're not
creating injury, but teaching that, changing that reaction to instead
of jumping out of the way, wearing that pitch. Now,
(04:42):
we teach a lot of technique to it too, with
turning your body so you're not exposing things like elbows
and needs. So it's actually something that's practiced probably weekly,
year round, and it is as the point of pride
for us, and you see it. It wins your ball games.
But not only does it get you on base, but
it can limit what a pitching staff can do if
you know, if you know a hitter's not going anywhere,
(05:03):
he might miss over the plate more and that gives
us more opportunities to hit two.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So getting hit by the pitch is a skill. I'm
going to use that when I talk about my bad
high school baseball career. You mentioned Josh Cross, who goes
in the sixth round of the Saint Louis Cardinals. What
is your role in a player's draft process?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
You know, I think more often than not, scuts are
really looking for our two cents on the person behind
the player. Not that they don't value our opinion on
the player, but their eyes can tell them most of
what they want or need to know there. But they
know where the people that spend a lot of time
around them on a day in and day out basis.
(05:45):
So I think what they're trying to do is sort
out who are the guys they really like, and then
they're looking to kind of get that confirmation that it's
the person they want to And with Josh it was
so easy because he came here with just an incredible latitude.
He was just excited to play every day, a great
team guy, and so that's such an easy sales pitch
because you can you can tell scouts exactly what you
(06:07):
feel and it's also exactly what they want to hear,
which made it easy. But I think that's the biggest
part is those guys have a pretty good feel of
the tools they're looking for, but they want to know
the person a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Your program has a new pitching coach, Taylor Sheriff promoted
to that role. Give us an idea of what him
his impact understaff is going to be.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, we were really fortunate last year. He came to
us in a volunteer role to start last fall and
moved to a full time role by the middle of
last year. Had a lot of a lot of positive
impact on We were an understaffed pitching staff in terms
of both experience, ability, depth, and Josh Reynolds obviously is
a huge part of that success, which is a big
part of why he landed at Tennessee who won the
(06:49):
national title last year. But no doubt Taylor had a
big role in that too. He's a young guy who
works as got off for these guys, who understands what
it takes. The biggest thing is is he relates to
our guys and he puts in the time for our guys,
and those guys are easy to follow us pitchers. So
he's just you know what had me changed drastically for him.
(07:09):
He switched eats a little bit, but ultimately his goal
last year was pitching development. His goal this year is
pitching development. I work a lot with those guys. We
heard Chris Krepline, who's a former Division three head coach
with pitching background. So we missed Josh a lot, but
it was so nice to have somebody sitting in the
office who we knew could just take a little more
on and continue to help with out.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
So I'm want to ask you a question that is
mainly for my own sort of nerdy curiosity as much
as anything, but I think it's a good question. So
I know a young man who's a catcher at the
D three level and we were talking this past summer
where his program had a coaching change, and he said,
this is the first year that I'm calling pitches, and
it never occurred to me. You know what, maybe a
(07:50):
guy like that has never called pitches with your program.
Are your staff's pitches called from the bench? Is it
a collaborative effort? Do you give the catcher card Blanche.
Do you give the picture card Blaunch?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, no, that's an awesome question. I actually call the pitches,
which is that's pretty dwn unusual. I think if you surveyed,
like the power of four conferences, I don't know if
you'd have more than three, four or five head coaches
that do. But I was a pitching coach before I
was a head coach. It's something I've done for about
twenty years now and something I have a lot of
pride and passion for, so I should do it. And again,
(08:25):
that's pretty unusual now to me. The reason we do it,
I think in a perfect world, your pitchers and catchers
are working through it. Your catchers are calling the pitchers,
the pitchers are shaking to what they're most comfortable with.
But I think you know that's what you're going to see.
At the pro level. The best vantage point right is
behind home plate, where you see how the hitter is reacting,
You see how the pitchers stuff is working. But the
(08:46):
difference to me is at the pro level, those guys
are full time baseball players. You know, they don't go
to class this morning, they don't have hours limits. They
can be held to a standard of they need to
know the other team's lineup inside and out. We can't
really hold our guys to that standard. There's limitation on
ours we can spend with guys. They've got to go
to class. And so I think the biggest difference is,
(09:07):
you know, A, I'm just more experienced. You get pros
they've done this longer. But B I just had that's
my job. I spent time in the office all day
watching video and breaking down splits and looking at some
of the analytics. And I try to share a lot
of that with our pitchers catchers so that they have
buy into what we're doing. We try to give them
chances to give us feedback. Hey, this guy's all over
(09:27):
the plate, his breaking balls flat today. Those things matter.
But ultimately I think it's just kind of the education
side is our coaching staff's just going to have done
a little more research than our players. But it's tricky
because if our catchers like Josh get the pro ball,
they're going to be expected to know how to call
a game, and so we have to make sure we're
educating them a little bit. And this is why I'm
(09:48):
calling this, this is what we're doing, so that they
can make that transition.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
So like a big league catcher is calling a game,
he's got to know the hitters. Obviously meets with his
picture collaborative effort with the pitching coach, manager, et cetera.
But you're dealing with big league scouting reports, which I've
seen they can be really voluminous. So how much time
are you spending watching another team's hitters before a three
game series just so you could call the pitches against them.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
That's probably the biggest allocation of my time. Once the
season starts. Every week, I think an average everyday player
probably gets a full hour of my attention. It's not
a tig more so, you're looking at, you know, ten
or twelve hours of prep work maybe for one opponent,
and then when you throw in and sprinkle in a
midweek game where you're playing a second opponent. Now obviously
(10:38):
beyond actually being on the field for the games, that
starts to chew into a big chunk of time. And
I'll get some help from from other guys on staffs
that may pull up some stats in terms of swinging,
mis rates, things like that. So it's a it's a
pretty major job. I try to find ways to not
over complicate it. But you gotta go pretty deep. You
gotta watch a lot of swings, you gotta do a
lot of splits, and just something we take a lot
(10:58):
of pride in.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
The baseball coach at the University of Cincinnati. U SEE
opens up the season a week from Friday with a
beginning of a three game series against Duke. You have
a recruiting class. I know coaches, regardless of sport, they
can't stand recruiting rankings, but folks who follow this sort
of stuff really like the collection of kids you signed
during the early signing period in November. When you're recruiting
(11:21):
a player, how often do you get to see him
in person?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I see him less than our assistant coaches. Most guys
I will see at some point leading up to their signing.
But there's guys that we're We're going to have to
trust our assistants with all good people in good places,
and they do a great job. But to that extent,
I would rather their evaluation carry more weight than mine,
because ultimately they're on the road more, they're comparing players more,
(11:46):
they're seeing them more. Just just because my name says
head coach doesn't mean I'm better at that part of
the job. They're spending more time on it, and they're
going to have more acumen and so what we're looking for. So,
you know, I think our goal with any of these
guys that fits a pitcher, I think we want to
see him in a game setting at least twice, if
at all possible, maybe a third time. I think for
a position guy, if you go to see him on
(12:09):
a weekend, you want to see probably the full weekend
of baseball, three four ball games. If you're seeing him
multiple weeks would be even better, so you're not catching
a whole cup hot or a cold one. But I
think that's the biggest challenge in our sport compared to
some of the other, you know, more visible sports. You
look at a basketball coach, they can get really detailed
quality film and sitting in office and really watch how
(12:31):
a guy plays. Same with a football film. You know,
you think a baseball video from a travel league off
a third basement is going to tell us how to
pick a short hop like it doesn't happen movement on
pitches that videos night. So it's a much more inexact
science because we just cannot as efficiently gather that information.
(12:52):
If we wanted to see a baseball kid play ten
or twelve games like a basketball coach might be able
to between live and video, so we would need ten
more coaches. So it's an interesting process. I think it's
why you see a lot of guys jump from that
Division two or Division three level to the D one
level and the transfer portal lake because a lot of
guys get overlooked. It's just hard to scale everybody and
(13:14):
know all these guys inside and out.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
So you know, you mentioned basketball, and you can find
recruiting lists of seventh graders and sixth graders and folks
that will say, well, this kid has a chance to
play at a D one level and at a Power
four level at what age typically with a baseball player,
can you go, you know what, that kid might have
a chance to play in a league like the Big Twelve.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
You know, that's a wonderful question because I've really tried
to get away from watching kids that are prior to
their sophomore year of high school. So maybe those guys
do pop out in seventh grade, but I'm not watching them.
They made a really really positive rule change in the
last couple of years here where we can't contact kids
(13:56):
until August first, going into their junior year, which allows
us to really keep our focus more on the second
half of high school. You know that summer after sophomore year,
that's going to be our big focus is those sophomore
is going to be junior, so that when August first hits,
we know that key list. So that's really the age
group we're watching is those those sixteen going into seventeen
(14:17):
year olds, occasionally watching them a year younger so you
can get out ahead of it a little bit. But
that helped a lot because we were going down that
rabbit hole of watching eighth graders and fourteen year olds
and saying, oh, it'll be great when he's twenty one.
I'm not here. That's a tough yeah. If you're fourteen
and throwing ninety two, it's easy to know. But so
that's helped a lot.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
I think in our sport, you had a break in
the weather earlier this week. I know, like the obvious
answer is, well, you can catch fly balls, I guess,
but what are some things that you go, you know what,
we've got to get outside because we can do this
and we can't do this indoors.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Yeah, I think every hitter will tell you that's seeing
a live pitch indoors in a batting cage versus seeing
a live pitch outdoors on a field as much different, feel,
much different depth perception, picking up the spin. So just
those live at bats are really really big, you know,
stuff that involves the outfield. There's number one of the
fly balls, but just those reads off the bat things
(15:11):
like that are really really big and quite frankly, just
playing some sort of a game setting, you know, I
think it would be foreign to most sports to have
the idea that a good chunky or preseason you can't
spend on a field that is the same regular you know,
sizes and all. You know, it's it's kind of a
crazy thought. So, you know, we inner squatted this last week,
(15:32):
probably about fifteen innings, which you know is probably not
quite enough, but it's enough to at least start to
get the speed of the game down and get back
to the field that we're playing baseball, which is helpful.
Being a northern guy, I've had years where our first
day on a baseball field was the day before the
opening day, and that's a that first fly ball and
(15:52):
it's trying to gooss. So it's been nice to get
out this last week and a halpen and get some
live type stuff in well.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
And I was going to ask, like, what's what's the cutoff?
I mean, it was great, you know, Monday we were
blessed with temperatures in the sixties. Sunday was was pretty nice.
Sun came out. We were in the fifties. But if
in the absence of that, is is there a threshold
where you go you know what, if we crossed this,
it might still be cold, but we're going outside.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah, the Green Bay, Wisconsin Native cut Off, the Cincinnati
Native cut off, and you know Tallahassee or Dallas cutoff
may all be different. But you know, it really depends
on the sun more than anything. If we get you know,
the other day it was forty two, forty three degrees,
but the sun was out with no wind. For our guys,
it's relatively pleasant. It's pretty nice if you're in Mount Pleasant, Michigan,
(16:38):
when it's forty five it's overcast with a thirty mile
an hour wind, you gotta park on. But usually if
those real fields are in the thirties, it's you know, productive.
I think once you get once you get below about
twenty five for that, For that wind chill, guys are
more worried about getting inside than actually getting something done.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
A successful first season last year under Jordan Bischel at
the University of Cincinnati, Year two gets underway a week
from Friday. The Bearcats on the road against Duke, a
home game on the eighteenth, and the official opening day
at UC will be against Toledo on March fifth. Season
tickets are on sale right now. There is no better
sports bargain in Cincinnati. Go check that out at go
(17:18):
Bearcats dot com. I appreciate the time. I appreciate you
entertaining my dumb questions. I hope we can do it
during the season. Coach, thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Those were great. You can get sick of talking about
who the three starting pitchers are over and over again.
You got in there a little bit deeper. That was fun.
Have me on any time. I loved chatting with you.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
As a baseball nerd. I have no shortage of really
nerdy dorkey questions, so I'll keep a running list and
you could answer them as the season unfolds. Thanks coach.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Well, I was an accountant before I got out of power.
When I got out of Collge. I understand the nerdy questions.
I never keep you coming.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I most definitely will Jordan Bischel, the baseball coach at
you see the Bengals continue to communicate with their plays
as well as I did in previous relationships that could
be rectified. Next to ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
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Speaker 1 (18:43):
This report is
From five o'clock ESPN fifteen thirty. The UC Baseball season,
year two of the Jordan Bischal regime. Jordan Bischal regime
is hard to say. Five times fast starts a week
from Friday. You will be at Duke. They'll play a
home game on the eighteenth, and then the official what
they're calling opening day will be on March fifth, hopefully
(00:21):
with better weather. Better better weather, I can't talk better
weather when the Bearcats host Toledo Year two Jordan Bischel
Bearcats had a good first season in the Big twelve.
Hopefully even better year two. The opener of the first
game is nine days away. I'm sure your mind is racing.
What's it like for you right now? Is it butterflies?
(00:42):
Is it just a lot of stuff on your to
do list? Where are you at right now?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah? I think you probably feel a little too busy
to have too many butterflies. Just a lot, a lot
to do to prep, you know, combination of trying to
make sure that last week of practices you're checking all
your boxes and crossing all your teams, but also trying
to start to get ahead on scouting or towards things
like that. So busy time. I think as we get
(01:07):
to the middle of the next week, that's when you
start having a little bit of that that first game anxiety.
And I think this is my thirteenth year as the
head coach and probably almost twenty five in college baseball
some capacity, and that that first game is always exciting,
so that doesn't change, but it's busy in the meantime.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, I would imagine, what do you like about this
year's team?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
You know, our pitching depth is where we've grown the most.
A couple of guys that were on last year's team
that gained a ton of valuable experience, handful of freshmen
that we think can help us, and then some really
quality transfers. And then when you combine those three, we
go in feeling like we have a lot more options
that can be pretty successful for us. You don't know
(01:50):
how it plays out, but obviously depth really matters, and
we've we've got a better stable there.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
You and I talked right around this time a year ago,
before your your season opener. We talked about the style
you wanted your team to play. Here's how I want
us to play, but I'm not sure if we can.
And it turned out that your team played, I think
almost exactly, at least from the offensive perspective, how you
want your guys to play. Do you have a little
bit more of a firm sense going into year two
that you know what, I know how we want to play,
(02:17):
and I have a team that can play the way
we want.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, we feel good about it, you know, just bringing
back a few key pieces on the offensive side, you know,
Christian Mitchell and Carrington Cross and Loudon Brooks, Tommy O'Connor,
Landon Veterick, those guys obviously year two and for a
guy like Christian Mitchell or Luke Sefsk even more than
that because they came west from Central Michigan, you're not
(02:41):
only does your understanding get better, but your execution gets better. Right,
You practice things for multiple years and you're going to
be better at it. So they they're pretty high level
in terms of trying to play the style we want to.
But tied to that, now you have kind of extensions
of your coaching staff in practice, right, more guys that
can teach a teammate and help them along. So I
think we feel a lot more comfortable that we're a
(03:03):
lot further along than we were at this time last
year lost some some stump with the bat and a
guy like Josh Cross that you know, when you're at
the top of the Big twelve and home runs and
rbsis and hit by pitches, you're not going to replace
that with one guy. So we got to we got
to see where some of that power comes from. But
we definitely have personnel and experience that lends itself to
(03:24):
being able to do a lot of these things.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
We talked about what you wanted to do, and look,
we were going to value getting on base. We're going
to put pressure on defenses. We're going to steal bases,
We're going to take the extra base when we can.
We're going to be aggressive, but we're not going to
be stupid. You guys did that well last year. You
you led the conference in times being hit by pitch.
And I asked this from the perspective of someone who
(03:46):
when I was a kid playing, my value to the
team was if I could get hit by the pitch,
because that was basically my only way of getting on base.
This might be a stupid question, but do you do
you practice getting hit by a pitch?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It we one per do practice that. It really has
a skill it, you know, like right now, I've got
twin seven year olds and a five year old. If
they see me winding up to chuck a ball at
them as hard as I can, their instinct is going
to tell them to get out of the way. I hope,
I hope. So that's a natural lestinct of a baseball play.
You can't just say, hey, you got to stand in there.
(04:20):
You don't have time to think about processing getting hit.
So it's a practice skill. We will use tennis balls
or softer baseballs, marve balls or incrediballs, and we will
we'll mix those into our buckets and when we throw
BP you we'll hit guys with those. So we're not
creating injury, but teaching that, changing that reaction to instead
of jumping out of the way, wearing that pitch. Now,
(04:42):
we teach a lot of technique to it too, with
turning your body so you're not exposing things like elbows
and needs. So it's actually something that's practiced probably weekly,
year round, and it is as the point of pride
for us, and you see it. It wins your ball games.
But not only does it get you on base, but
it can limit what a pitching staff can do if
you know, if you know a hitter's not going anywhere,
(05:03):
he might miss over the plate more and that gives
us more opportunities to hit two.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So getting hit by the pitch is a skill. I'm
going to use that when I talk about my bad
high school baseball career. You mentioned Josh Cross, who goes
in the sixth round of the Saint Louis Cardinals. What
is your role in a player's draft process?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
You know, I think more often than not, scuts are
really looking for our two cents on the person behind
the player. Not that they don't value our opinion on
the player, but their eyes can tell them most of
what they want or need to know there. But they
know where the people that spend a lot of time
around them on a day in and day out basis.
(05:45):
So I think what they're trying to do is sort
out who are the guys they really like, and then
they're looking to kind of get that confirmation that it's
the person they want to And with Josh it was
so easy because he came here with just an incredible latitude.
He was just excited to play every day, a great
team guy, and so that's such an easy sales pitch
because you can you can tell scouts exactly what you
(06:07):
feel and it's also exactly what they want to hear,
which made it easy. But I think that's the biggest
part is those guys have a pretty good feel of
the tools they're looking for, but they want to know
the person a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Your program has a new pitching coach, Taylor Sheriff promoted
to that role. Give us an idea of what him
his impact understaff is going to be.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, we were really fortunate last year. He came to
us in a volunteer role to start last fall and
moved to a full time role by the middle of
last year. Had a lot of a lot of positive
impact on We were an understaffed pitching staff in terms
of both experience, ability, depth, and Josh Reynolds obviously is
a huge part of that success, which is a big
part of why he landed at Tennessee who won the
(06:49):
national title last year. But no doubt Taylor had a
big role in that too. He's a young guy who
works as got off for these guys, who understands what
it takes. The biggest thing is is he relates to
our guys and he puts in the time for our guys,
and those guys are easy to follow us pitchers. So
he's just you know what had me changed drastically for him.
(07:09):
He switched eats a little bit, but ultimately his goal
last year was pitching development. His goal this year is
pitching development. I work a lot with those guys. We
heard Chris Krepline, who's a former Division three head coach
with pitching background. So we missed Josh a lot, but
it was so nice to have somebody sitting in the
office who we knew could just take a little more
on and continue to help with out.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
So I'm want to ask you a question that is
mainly for my own sort of nerdy curiosity as much
as anything, but I think it's a good question. So
I know a young man who's a catcher at the
D three level and we were talking this past summer
where his program had a coaching change, and he said,
this is the first year that I'm calling pitches, and
it never occurred to me. You know what, maybe a
(07:50):
guy like that has never called pitches with your program.
Are your staff's pitches called from the bench? Is it
a collaborative effort? Do you give the catcher card Blanche.
Do you give the picture card Blaunch?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, no, that's an awesome question. I actually call the pitches,
which is that's pretty dwn unusual. I think if you surveyed,
like the power of four conferences, I don't know if
you'd have more than three, four or five head coaches
that do. But I was a pitching coach before I
was a head coach. It's something I've done for about
twenty years now and something I have a lot of
pride and passion for, so I should do it. And again,
(08:25):
that's pretty unusual now to me. The reason we do it,
I think in a perfect world, your pitchers and catchers
are working through it. Your catchers are calling the pitchers,
the pitchers are shaking to what they're most comfortable with.
But I think you know that's what you're going to see.
At the pro level. The best vantage point right is
behind home plate, where you see how the hitter is reacting,
You see how the pitchers stuff is working. But the
(08:46):
difference to me is at the pro level, those guys
are full time baseball players. You know, they don't go
to class this morning, they don't have hours limits. They
can be held to a standard of they need to
know the other team's lineup inside and out. We can't
really hold our guys to that standard. There's limitation on
ours we can spend with guys. They've got to go
to class. And so I think the biggest difference is,
(09:07):
you know, A, I'm just more experienced. You get pros
they've done this longer. But B I just had that's
my job. I spent time in the office all day
watching video and breaking down splits and looking at some
of the analytics. And I try to share a lot
of that with our pitchers catchers so that they have
buy into what we're doing. We try to give them
chances to give us feedback. Hey, this guy's all over
(09:27):
the plate, his breaking balls flat today. Those things matter.
But ultimately I think it's just kind of the education
side is our coaching staff's just going to have done
a little more research than our players. But it's tricky
because if our catchers like Josh get the pro ball,
they're going to be expected to know how to call
a game, and so we have to make sure we're
educating them a little bit. And this is why I'm
(09:48):
calling this, this is what we're doing, so that they
can make that transition.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
So like a big league catcher is calling a game,
he's got to know the hitters. Obviously meets with his
picture collaborative effort with the pitching coach, manager, et cetera.
But you're dealing with big league scouting reports, which I've
seen they can be really voluminous. So how much time
are you spending watching another team's hitters before a three
game series just so you could call the pitches against them.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
That's probably the biggest allocation of my time. Once the
season starts. Every week, I think an average everyday player
probably gets a full hour of my attention. It's not
a tig more so, you're looking at, you know, ten
or twelve hours of prep work maybe for one opponent,
and then when you throw in and sprinkle in a
midweek game where you're playing a second opponent. Now obviously
(10:38):
beyond actually being on the field for the games, that
starts to chew into a big chunk of time. And
I'll get some help from from other guys on staffs
that may pull up some stats in terms of swinging,
mis rates, things like that. So it's a it's a
pretty major job. I try to find ways to not
over complicate it. But you gotta go pretty deep. You
gotta watch a lot of swings, you gotta do a
lot of splits, and just something we take a lot
(10:58):
of pride in.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
The baseball coach at the University of Cincinnati. U SEE
opens up the season a week from Friday with a
beginning of a three game series against Duke. You have
a recruiting class. I know coaches, regardless of sport, they
can't stand recruiting rankings, but folks who follow this sort
of stuff really like the collection of kids you signed
during the early signing period in November. When you're recruiting
(11:21):
a player, how often do you get to see him
in person?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I see him less than our assistant coaches. Most guys
I will see at some point leading up to their signing.
But there's guys that we're We're going to have to
trust our assistants with all good people in good places,
and they do a great job. But to that extent,
I would rather their evaluation carry more weight than mine,
because ultimately they're on the road more, they're comparing players more,
(11:46):
they're seeing them more. Just just because my name says
head coach doesn't mean I'm better at that part of
the job. They're spending more time on it, and they're
going to have more acumen and so what we're looking for. So,
you know, I think our goal with any of these
guys that fits a pitcher, I think we want to
see him in a game setting at least twice, if
at all possible, maybe a third time. I think for
a position guy, if you go to see him on
(12:09):
a weekend, you want to see probably the full weekend
of baseball, three four ball games. If you're seeing him
multiple weeks would be even better, so you're not catching
a whole cup hot or a cold one. But I
think that's the biggest challenge in our sport compared to
some of the other, you know, more visible sports. You
look at a basketball coach, they can get really detailed
quality film and sitting in office and really watch how
(12:31):
a guy plays. Same with a football film. You know,
you think a baseball video from a travel league off
a third basement is going to tell us how to
pick a short hop like it doesn't happen movement on
pitches that videos night. So it's a much more inexact
science because we just cannot as efficiently gather that information.
(12:52):
If we wanted to see a baseball kid play ten
or twelve games like a basketball coach might be able
to between live and video, so we would need ten
more coaches. So it's an interesting process. I think it's
why you see a lot of guys jump from that
Division two or Division three level to the D one
level and the transfer portal lake because a lot of
guys get overlooked. It's just hard to scale everybody and
(13:14):
know all these guys inside and out.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
So you know, you mentioned basketball, and you can find
recruiting lists of seventh graders and sixth graders and folks
that will say, well, this kid has a chance to
play at a D one level and at a Power
four level at what age typically with a baseball player,
can you go, you know what, that kid might have
a chance to play in a league like the Big Twelve.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
You know, that's a wonderful question because I've really tried
to get away from watching kids that are prior to
their sophomore year of high school. So maybe those guys
do pop out in seventh grade, but I'm not watching them.
They made a really really positive rule change in the
last couple of years here where we can't contact kids
(13:56):
until August first, going into their junior year, which allows
us to really keep our focus more on the second
half of high school. You know that summer after sophomore year,
that's going to be our big focus is those sophomore
is going to be junior, so that when August first hits,
we know that key list. So that's really the age
group we're watching is those those sixteen going into seventeen
(14:17):
year olds, occasionally watching them a year younger so you
can get out ahead of it a little bit. But
that helped a lot because we were going down that
rabbit hole of watching eighth graders and fourteen year olds
and saying, oh, it'll be great when he's twenty one.
I'm not here. That's a tough yeah. If you're fourteen
and throwing ninety two, it's easy to know. But so
that's helped a lot.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
I think in our sport, you had a break in
the weather earlier this week. I know, like the obvious
answer is, well, you can catch fly balls, I guess,
but what are some things that you go, you know what,
we've got to get outside because we can do this
and we can't do this indoors.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Yeah, I think every hitter will tell you that's seeing
a live pitch indoors in a batting cage versus seeing
a live pitch outdoors on a field as much different, feel,
much different depth perception, picking up the spin. So just
those live at bats are really really big, you know,
stuff that involves the outfield. There's number one of the
fly balls, but just those reads off the bat things
(15:11):
like that are really really big and quite frankly, just
playing some sort of a game setting, you know, I
think it would be foreign to most sports to have
the idea that a good chunky or preseason you can't
spend on a field that is the same regular you know,
sizes and all. You know, it's it's kind of a
crazy thought. So, you know, we inner squatted this last week,
(15:32):
probably about fifteen innings, which you know is probably not
quite enough, but it's enough to at least start to
get the speed of the game down and get back
to the field that we're playing baseball, which is helpful.
Being a northern guy, I've had years where our first
day on a baseball field was the day before the
opening day, and that's a that first fly ball and
(15:52):
it's trying to gooss. So it's been nice to get
out this last week and a halpen and get some
live type stuff in well.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
And I was going to ask, like, what's what's the cutoff?
I mean, it was great, you know, Monday we were
blessed with temperatures in the sixties. Sunday was was pretty nice.
Sun came out. We were in the fifties. But if
in the absence of that, is is there a threshold
where you go you know what, if we crossed this,
it might still be cold, but we're going outside.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah, the Green Bay, Wisconsin Native cut Off, the Cincinnati
Native cut off, and you know Tallahassee or Dallas cutoff
may all be different. But you know, it really depends
on the sun more than anything. If we get you know,
the other day it was forty two, forty three degrees,
but the sun was out with no wind. For our guys,
it's relatively pleasant. It's pretty nice if you're in Mount Pleasant, Michigan,
(16:38):
when it's forty five it's overcast with a thirty mile
an hour wind, you gotta park on. But usually if
those real fields are in the thirties, it's you know, productive.
I think once you get once you get below about
twenty five for that, For that wind chill, guys are
more worried about getting inside than actually getting something done.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
A successful first season last year under Jordan Bischel at
the University of Cincinnati, Year two gets underway a week
from Friday. The Bearcats on the road against Duke, a
home game on the eighteenth, and the official opening day
at UC will be against Toledo on March fifth. Season
tickets are on sale right now. There is no better
sports bargain in Cincinnati. Go check that out at go
(17:18):
Bearcats dot com. I appreciate the time. I appreciate you
entertaining my dumb questions. I hope we can do it
during the season. Coach, thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Those were great. You can get sick of talking about
who the three starting pitchers are over and over again.
You got in there a little bit deeper. That was fun.
Have me on any time. I loved chatting with you.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
As a baseball nerd. I have no shortage of really
nerdy dorkey questions, so I'll keep a running list and
you could answer them as the season unfolds. Thanks coach.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Well, I was an accountant before I got out of power.
When I got out of Collge. I understand the nerdy questions.
I never keep you coming.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I most definitely will Jordan Bischel, the baseball coach at
you see the Bengals continue to communicate with their plays
as well as I did in previous relationships that could
be rectified. Next to ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Traffic from the UC Health Traffic Center. Heart disease is
the leading cause of death in the US. If you're
at risk, trusts the experts at u SEE Health for
innovative and personalized heartcare. Expect more at ucehealth dot com.
Northbound seventy five before Hopples Street, the right lane blocked
off from a disabled vehicle. Traffic stomp and go from
(18:33):
Freeman Avenue. That's a five minute delay. Another disabled vehicle
southbound seventy five at Ezra Charles Drive that's blocking the
right center lane. I'm at Ezelic with traffic.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
This report is
Mo Egger News
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