In this episode of Keep Klimbing, former MLB pitcher Brett Graves dives into a crucial stage in a young athlete’s journey — the transition from high school baseball into summer ball. Whether you're stepping into a new team, navigating different competition levels, or figuring out how to stand out, Brett shares key insights and tips to help players adjust, grow, and keep climbing toward their goals.
⚾ Real talk. Honest advice. No shortcuts.
🧢 Brought to you by Youth Baseball Midwest
📅 Set your reminder and tune in at 5 PM CST!
#KeepKlimbing #BrettGraves #YBMcast #YouthBaseballMidwest #SummerBaseball #HighSchoolBaseball #PlayerDevelopment #BaseballTips #BaseballJourney #BaseballAdvice
SUBSCRIBE, LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE
Check out our sponsor's pages!
Powered by Game 7 Baseball: https://www.game7baseball.com
Get all your Gear at Prime Sports Midwest https://www.primesportsmw.com
Follow Youth Baseball Midwest
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youthbaseballmidwest
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YouthBaseballMidwest
X/Twitter: Youth Baseball Midwest (@YBM_cast) / X (twitter.com)
Website: https://www.youthbaseballmidwest.com
Follow Prep Baseball Report Missouri
Instagram and X/Twitter: @pbrmissouri and @pbr_mouler
Website: https://www.prepbaseballreport.com/missouri
⚾ Real talk. Honest advice. No shortcuts.
🧢 Brought to you by Youth Baseball Midwest
📅 Set your reminder and tune in at 5 PM CST!
#KeepKlimbing #BrettGraves #YBMcast #YouthBaseballMidwest #SummerBaseball #HighSchoolBaseball #PlayerDevelopment #BaseballTips #BaseballJourney #BaseballAdvice
SUBSCRIBE, LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE
Check out our sponsor's pages!
Powered by Game 7 Baseball: https://www.game7baseball.com
Get all your Gear at Prime Sports Midwest https://www.primesportsmw.com
Follow Youth Baseball Midwest
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youthbaseballmidwest
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YouthBaseballMidwest
X/Twitter: Youth Baseball Midwest (@YBM_cast) / X (twitter.com)
Website: https://www.youthbaseballmidwest.com
Follow Prep Baseball Report Missouri
Instagram and X/Twitter: @pbrmissouri and @pbr_mouler
Website: https://www.prepbaseballreport.com/missouri
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Yes, what's going on everybody? Welcome back, Thank you for
checking out this episode of the Key Bombing Podcast. We're
back in the studio today. We've got a really good topic,
relevant topic. It's June tenth, and all of the high
school baseball is officially wrapped up after this past week.
Spring baseball leagues are done. All of the players are
(00:27):
transit to Illinois.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
They got one more week in state championship's crossover.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
We don't talk about them that much.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
No, you're right, now, you're correct.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
No, we still got some baseball going on. But really,
the relevant the relevant topic for everybody really, whether you're
continuing to play right now or not, is this like
transition from spring games spring ball to summer baseball, right,
And a few quick things you guys, obviously, you know
most of the listeners for this are going to be
living it, so I don't have to explain it to you.
(00:56):
But transitioning from a spring schedule that involves school, that
involves you know, studying, that involves daily practice schedules and
a different dynamic of like game schedules. Right, Like like
a lot of these schools around here anyways have been
playing conference games on Tuesday and Wednesdays, you know, non
(01:17):
conference opponents are tournaments on you know, Thursday, Friday, Saturdays,
you know, and juggling that schedule, and then you know,
as these spring seasons wind down, we're gonna transition into
this summer schedule that that doesn't include school. Way more
free time, way more way more travel, like way more
travel if your team is going to play out of
town tournaments and going to different places, and and really
(01:38):
really even for the teams that are playing more locally,
I'd argue that it's more travel too, because you're not
just driving back and forth to school every day and
playing at like your local conference teams or area opponents.
Right Like you're you're driving to Bridgeton, You're driving to
you know, Warrant, and you're driving to these different places.
You know, So a little bit more travel included, which
I think is you know, can't be overlooked.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, you sleep better in your own bed.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah yeah, I mean there's there's a lot of recovery
elements that that go into just traveling to play a
baseball game. And it sounds weird, but you you you
fly on a plane one day and have to pitch
the next day, and you'll learn real quick, Houly cow,
I just sat on my butt all day and I
feel terrible, you know. So it's true. You're driving a car,
you know, six hours you get there, you're sleeping hotel,
(02:20):
and you gotta pop out and pitch at ten am
the next morning. Yeah, yeah, you know it. You know.
So a lot of different dynamics getting into this summer schedule,
you know, and and and right now, I would say
a lot of people are getting into it, about to
get into it. Our league starts next Monday, you know,
for premiere, and so some players kind of find themselves
(02:41):
in this weird in between transition time if they're you know,
school kind of got kicked out of the playoffs a
little bit earlier. Maybe there's summer tournaments, schedules, leagues, whatever
starts later. You kind of have this weird in between
time where you know you're you're coming off a plan,
maybe getting a quick quick breather, know, giving your arm
or quick breather. Maybe you're kind of you know, ramping
(03:03):
down a little bit of some of your volume and
intensity because you have time to before it really ramps
back up like for the summer, you know, but transitioning
into this summer schedule. I think is is is a
unique thing from from you know, person to person, player
to player, team to team. Uh, you know what some
of your thoughts or opinions on that summer schedule for
guys and going into it.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I always look at this, you know, I for one,
you know, just coming from the state championships, you see
a lot of kids that are affected by being a senior.
You know, didn't quite get where they wanted to be,
They did this, whatnot. So you're dealing I think with
(03:43):
that mental let down a little bit. Do you jump
right in restarting that you know, what am I playing for?
In that respect? I think there could be. I think
that's an interesting thing. And I never really thought about
that too much. And then I think, you know, like
you said, you come back from that, and then you
(04:03):
have some of these kids I've seen throwing you know,
forty five to fifty five innings of baseball in the spring.
Where's your arm at at that point? And so you
have this mental maybe exhaustion a little bit, and you know,
how does that so, how does that really affect you
(04:24):
going into that and how do you reset yourself in
that mindset? I think it's an interesting thing.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah. Absolutely, there's so many different dynamics to consider, you know,
in that and you know, for a pitcher versus a
position player, you know, it can look and feel very different.
You know. I always talk about like hitter it training
being being much more like a big marathon throughout the year,
and I look at pitching training. Maybe it has marathon
(04:51):
elements for sure, but it's like a week by week
kind of feels like a sprint, you know what I mean,
because you're only out there so often. You're typically pitching
like one or two days a week, you know, if
you're if you're starting and going multiple innings. Uh, it
very much so feels like a sprint where like I
got one day to not only execute, but just like
I deplete my energy systems, you know, and then I
kind of recover and and you know, ramp back up
(05:13):
throughout the week and then I do it again, you know.
So it feels like a bunch of you know, sprints
inside of a big marathon of a season. You know.
So there's different things to consider for sure, from a
from a physicality standpoint, body performance recovery standpoint, you know.
But but but I want to focus, you know, because
I know better about I want to focus a little
(05:33):
bit more specifically on the pitchers in this dynamic, this
conversation right now, that that you know, there's a lot
of different things to consider within that, and I think, uh,
you know, summer ball, summer ball in in high school
and college should be very uh supplemental. And what I
mean by that it should be uh something that really
(05:56):
enhances your development, your exposure you as a person and
a baseball player. You have so much more time throughout
the summer because school's not in that, you know, summer
ball for high school players. You know, if that's if
that's all you're doing is just like only filling the
(06:17):
competitive reps bucket of your overall like progression. And we'll
talk a little bit more about that in a second,
but that that competitive reps bucket, if you will, with
inside of this big like I think about it like
a pie chart, you know, like that there's so many
different things you know, competitive reps. You know, uh, you know,
skill training, performance training, sleep, recovery, hydration, nutrition, all of
(06:39):
these things that go into you know, you improving as
a as a baseball player. And you know, if if
all we're gonna do during the summer is just fill
up that competitive reps bucket. I think we're really missing
the boat on all the other things that we can do.
And I think, you know, the challenge during the spring
is with so many other extracurriculars in your schedule and
(07:00):
activities that you have to do and perform with school
being in, it's a lot harder to find the time
to do all of those things. For younger players at
a high level, you know, at a good level. Well,
now that you got all this time throughout the summer,
you could really critically be looking at it on how
to improve on a lot of those different areas. And
if all we're doing is overflowing the competitive reps bucket,
(07:22):
I think we're missing the point, you know. You know,
I think there's definitely people in circumstances where, you know,
we need to work on more game applied concepts to
to get better as a as a player, meaning that
should be the bigger focus, you know, And then there's
also certain people dynamic circumstances where maybe less and controlling
(07:42):
that competitive reps bucket and filling some more of these
other buckets ultimately gets you to where you want to
go faster.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Let me ask you this then, Okay, you got this,
this kid, you got say, coming out of one of
maybe the smaller schools, and uh, he's coming in. He's
been hitting, he's been the workhorse on the mound. Okay,
he comes to he's doing this here the last do
(08:14):
you know, maybe his last five outings. Have you seen
a velocity loss? Have you seen these things? Where's the
I think the fatigue factor could be the biggest issue
when you're transitioning into that looking at how do you
compete in the summer? Where are those things at.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
In that respect? Yeah, that's perfect. So let's talk about
a workload in that balance in the big picture of
everything very specifically right now that that workload element that
you're talking about is probably the number one thing I
would say that needs to be considered for players on
how do I go about this transition time and then
even furthermore, how do I go about this entire summer
(08:52):
based off of that that at the end of the day,
You know, we tell players all the time that you know,
if you've thrown the most amount of innings on this
entire spring, you know, then your summer should probably be
adjusted because of that. You know, and vice versa. If
you didn't get a whole lot of innings in the spring,
we probably needs well mornings during the summer and just
balancing that, you know, I think in general, you're always
(09:12):
looking to hopefully increase that inning or workload amount year
over year, right by thirty ish percent, you know, And
and that can be kind of argued upon for sure.
There's a lot of things that maybe go into that,
how you're feeling, how much you've grown, you know, how
you how your arm is performed, you know, because you know,
we've talked in previous episodes about like that decline in
(09:34):
performance being one of the first red flags for injury purposes,
and I think that needs to be you know, discussed
and paid attention to throughout that that that that's very
real one of the biggest red flags before an injury comes.
You know, maybe even a month beforehand would be like
a performance decline. So if your velocity is starting to
taper off, you know, you could say argue that that
(09:56):
you're at a higher risk of injury because of that,
you know, but that overall workload amount that that definitely
is probably the number one thing from transitioning to spring
this summer that really needs to get considered that, Yeah,
if you're those guys that dang near through sixty innings
for your spring high school season, that's a lot of innings.
That's that's a lot of volume within the series in
a very window, especially if all you threw the entire
(10:21):
last year was only seventy five innings, you know, because
you threw you know, thirty five and thirty five in
your in your you know spring, thirty five in your spring,
and thirty five in your summer, right, so.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
How do you and and you know, I think those
are interesting things when you look at the factors of
a high school coach compared to a summer coach, you
have two different mindsets, don't you, as far as what
what are you trying to accomplish?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
One's very winning on the field focused and one's probably
much more development focused. While it probably depends in the
you know, team or circumstance that you're in that that
those things probably get valued a little bit differently from
from place to place, but definitely much more development focused.
I think during the summer, you know you you would
(11:08):
typically say, especially for some of the teams, they probably
feel like they have more pitching depth they feel like
they've got to get more of the pitchers in because
they pay to play for the team, or you know
what I mean that that like they're not just going
to keep running the same guys out there. We're in
the spring season because you feel the pressure to win
certain games that that does happen. You know, that will happen,
you know, And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
(11:30):
I think it just needs to be considered I think
as the player or parent or family or summer coach
or you know, those things that that you know kind
of come after that spring that that you know, you know,
you talk about a college player for for example, you
know that that summer schedule for a college player, if
we're doing anything to jeopardize how you show back up
(11:51):
on campus, you know, and I would even say that
like for a for a high school kid too, if
we do anything to jeopardize what what what where you're at,
you know, come the next time that you're really going
to be evaluated or you know, need need to put
a good foot forward to make a good first impression
(12:12):
your first fall semester on a college campus, or if
it's March first the next year for a high school kid,
if we do anything during that summer time frame to
jeopardize that, especially during during very specific years for these players,
meaning like after a college commitment has already been made,
you know, like would really alter your approach on this.
(12:34):
You know, because if you're sixteen and you're need to
go out and like showcase really well in front of
a lot of college coaches this summer, you know, maybe
that looks a little bit different than a seventeen year
old kid who's already committed, And maybe that looks a
little bit different for a fourteen year old kid that
that really just isn't at that evaluation stage of his
career yet. That you know, that that piece of it
(12:56):
really really can alter to like what what you're overall
like approaches for this summer. It needs to be considered
I think, you know, on an individual basis.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, you know, because I think the drive to win.
You know, you go through this spring you're setting up
and you know, coming off that and you watch a
lot of these teams and these kids that are pitching.
You know, you you see it at the state championships.
You get a couple ings, he brings him back the
next day and because they're trying to win a state championship,
(13:29):
and you understand that from a coach. I don't think
it's a terrible thing like you said or anything, but
you understand how does how do you understand or where's
the communication level? Does does it? Is there much within
that coach? I mean, you know, you can't tell a
high school coach you shouldn't pitch that guy. Yeah, you
(13:52):
know so I think that becomes a level of trust
and whatnot and relationship building between all parties involved.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, some some some trust elements there. I
think also when the individual meaning the player or the
parent has a issue maybe with the usage, that it's
handled really professionally and appropriately, because I've seen it very
miss mishandled for sure and sure and on the coach's
side too, like to be fair.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I agree that I understand because they.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Want sure and I mean, no coach, no coach goes
into it thinking like I don't care about that kid,
I'm gonna throw them and I'm gonna win this game.
You know, like that's not it. They they they're looking
for ways and angles to to accomplish the bigger picture
team goal. And and you know, I'm gonna say this too,
that like the biggest percentage of the time, I'm not
gonna put a number to it, but the biggest percentage
(14:46):
of the time too. That that where I think some
of the fault can be is that, you know, give
an example, like a player is like not really feeling
that good one week, you know, but he really wants
to win. He knows his entire teams relyant on them
to win too. That you know, when the coach comes
up and says, hey, how you feeling today, how's your
own feeling today? I'm good, I can give you three innings,
you know. Like that, a lot of that onus falls
(15:09):
on the player too to be very truthful, open, honest,
and you know, not just telling the coach what he
wants to hear, but even when you have a problem
or a negative thing. And that's such a learned skill
that sports gives us a really good insight into because
at some point you're gonna be a big boy at
a job someday, or you know, have to have a
hard conversation with a family member or something like that
(15:30):
where you're going to have to have a hard conversation
and deliver some information that you know, they're not really
going to want to hear, and how you go about
handling that in a very respectful, professional manner, and you
getting to do that as a sixteen year old high
school pitcher, and that being some of your first tastes
of that, like what a great life lesson life's skill.
You know that that has to and us as parents
should be really encouraging these players to get out of
(15:53):
the uncomfortability that you get, over the uncomfortability that that
presents them. That like, look, the reality is is that
like you know, you you you you need to be
open and honest and upfront with your coach. And even
if he's not gonna like what you have to hear
to him, you need to be equipped to tell him
in a way that's like, look, I'd love to be
out there for you, and and you know, I just
(16:14):
am not entirely sure how much Marm's got to give
you right now. I'm you know, barking here there, you know,
after this outing or after that outing, and and as
open and as transparent and as out front as you
can be with all that, because if it comes down
to it, there's always more emotion involved if it comes
down to it, where hey, you know, you know, it's
the fifth ending of the game, and hey, can you
(16:35):
throw the seventh? It's like, now catch, I can't And
it seems like it comes out of nowhere, and it's
like what the heck? You know? Then then you know,
feathers get ruffled a little bit and it's like, well
what you know that that you feel blindsided by it?
You know ultimately you know, so so you know, I've
seen that. I've seen that more times than not. To
be honest with you, when there are like situations where
there's some overuse or or or frequency, you know, the
(16:58):
player says something about it after the fact, other parents
have something to say about it or whatever. You know,
a lot of it can can be trickled all the
way back to like, well how are those communications on
a day to day, week to week basis, Just to
be open, honest and transparent of that all that, you know.
So that's something that I think as a whole we
can encourage younger players to do better because we have
(17:20):
to recognize that adults, those are very uncomfortable conversations even
for us to have to each other, you know, adult
to adult that like you throw a you know, older experienced,
you know, winning high school program or coach or environment
with a young player who already just doesn't have the
same sort of emotional intelligence yet to deliver a you know,
(17:42):
potentially upsetting like message their coach like it can be
a hard conversation to have, you know. And so yeah,
I mean that's something that that's something that I see
kind of often.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
I wonder sometimes too, if some of these kids, you know,
just start feeling well, you know, you may not be
like just physically you've had to stay up your studying
a little bit more, and you get physically fatigued, you know,
and it's not necessarily a lot of pain, or maybe
it's just.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I'm tired, marm's tired, coach.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Can I skip a start? Yeah, you know, I'll swing
it whatnot. And I think those are things sometimes maybe
a kid doesn't want to do because he doesn't know
how everybody's going to react to that way. Sure, I'm
not saying that you have to or whatnot, but hey,
I'll give you three I said, I'm not feeling as
(18:33):
strong as I mean, I don't feel.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Good in that equation too. I think players got to
be really in tune with their body. They got to
be in tune with their programs. They got to have
a good support system around them to figure out and
sift through what tired feels like, you know, and some
on some sort of scale there too, because like, at
what percentage of being tired do I tell the coach?
(18:56):
Which is you know, your your perception, I agree versus whatever?
Could be very different, right, I think the biggest thing
for big picture like injury risk mitigation. And I tell
guys this all the time. I got told this in
professional baseball, and I love the analogy, like, don't turn
a two week problem into a two month problem. You
know that that you know the difference between being tired
(19:18):
and being in pain, you know, or having some fatigue
and being in pain, And at what level of that
fatigue does it now start to become an issue? And
should I say something? You know that if the conversation
is ongoing and open and transparent, that you know, you
kind of should be able to tell a little bit
(19:39):
further in advance, like when that I should skip a
start timeframe comes to it. Shouldn't just be a blindsided
like the night before the game, like, hey, I don't
know if I could pitch tomorrow because you blindside a
coach with something like that, and there's going to be
some frustration for sure, because now he's you know, he's
probably got his whole week, maybe the next two kind
of scripted out in his head, a little bit of
how he'd like it to unfold. That you pull a
rug out from under him a little bit, and now
(20:00):
you're scramble mode. And and you know that affects like
all kinds of confidence and conviction and team culture and
environment and you know what I mean. So and that challenging.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
I think it's you know, people say, oh, look at
what Michael Jordan did. Yeah, but that was the NBA Finals.
He's in that. You know this guy's Yeah. Those are
professional baseball players that are playing because they get paid
a lot of money. They're you know, standings are tight
this and they still do that.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
They'll skip a start with guys say, hey, he's a
little bit We don't want to push this. So you
know what, every team gets to go to districts and
start fresh again. Your record in that moment, Yeah, seating wise,
you may maybe drop one here there, but okay, fine,
in the end, if you're that good, people are gonna
know it is what it is. I think we can
(20:50):
we can reset some of those things that way.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Yeah, for sure, you know. And and if you found
yourself in that kind of circumstance this spring and now
you're kind of and to transition to summer ball, I
think that's really got to be on the forefront of
your mind, because what will happen is you'll take I mean,
I don't know, you'll take three five, seven days off
and you'll start to kind of feel brand new again.
(21:13):
You know that you can kind of trick yourself a
little bit and then it, you know, wam hits you again,
like July fifteenth. You know, just kind of taking this
big picture view of what this entire year looks like
or even what the next couple of years looks like
for you that you know, at the end of the day,
it's kind of what you should always be doing. But
the reality is is that there's just like ebbs and
flows of how the seasons go and how the season
(21:35):
you know, like how long you play, you know, and
how many innings you through and then you know how
your arm was feeling through all that that you kind
of lay out these ideas or these plans or these
you know, you know this this journey or this route
you know with the player, but you have to be
ready and willing to adapt, like you know, month by
month or week by week even and enroll with some
(21:56):
of those punches because you just never know what's like
around the corner for you and ultimately keeping that like
long term view in in in sight. But but certainly
there's like individual goals, you know, micro goals within a
within a game or a starter or a week or
or things that that you know, players have set in
their heart that they want to go do and you
and you try to, you know, help them navigate that
(22:17):
as best as possible, you know. But but you know,
in that big picture, you know, inside of this topic
of like transitioning to summer ball, those are all things
that you absolutely got to consider. So if you know,
if you're that player and found yourself in that type
of dynamic, you know, your summer should look different than
if everything was kosher you know throughout the spring, right,
it should look very different. And if if you're rolling
(22:40):
out there just kind of status quo, like continuing to
go with whatever you're trying to throw seven eatings, Yeah, yeah,
that like, you know, something's going to give. Most likely
something's going to give, and and maybe it's just diminished performance,
you know, And that's that's not what we want either,
you know, and and and you know it's on the
flip side too. On the flip side, let's talk a
minute about the player who found themselves not throwing enough
(23:01):
inning was a spring. You didn't throw enough in things
a spring for whatever reason. It could have been because
you had it early on injury. It could have been
because you had, you know, juniors and seniors ahead of you.
It could have been because you know, you had a
lot of good players at your position on your team.
You know that you didn't necessarily fill up that competitive
reps bucket for development purposes in the spring. What you
(23:22):
should have been doing in the spring is filling up
the other buckets. As soon as you recognize that you
weren't filling that bucket, you should have been putting your
energy into the other buckets, because that's what's going to
help you kind of stay on track. Because now coming
this summer, you're going to want to really fill up
that competitive reps bucket. We're just going to have less
time and headspace for the other ones. And that's just
how this works. There's only a fixed amount of time.
(23:44):
You know, there's only a fixed amount of time. So
you know, during the during the spring, if you found
yourself doing that, you know you should probably try be
trying to put yourself in an environment where you get
the most amount of competitive reps while balancing the other things.
I never think it's a good thing you to be
just you know, you can't blinders on yeah, on one thing,
(24:05):
because this is such a big like piece to this puzzle,
you know, multiple puzzle pieces that that you know, they
all work hand in hand. They all work to supplement
support each other for the ultimate goal, you know, and
for you to achieve kind of success on the field
and the you know, desired opportunity that you want to
come next from it, if there is one, you know.
So so those are all the things that a player
(24:26):
during that time frame should really be considering and why
Like it's so case by case for each player and
picture and even then set out a plan in two
weeks from now, it might change, you know, it might
change based off of you know, a ton of different
things physically, mentally, emotionally, what about family stuff kind of
comes up. You know, like you got to take a
couple of weeks off of baseball because something happens within
(24:47):
your family, or you got to go take care of
some family business. You know, like like there's there's just
life that goes on around this that that has to
you know, that has to have us be ready, willing
and able to kind of roll with some of these
punches to.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
That transition piece. You know, you're you're setting those things.
I liked what you said there. You know, you have
the kid that didn't get the reps, you have the
kid that did and whatnot. How do you set that
in motion? You know, what is a number?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Is?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Is there a number? Is there something you're looking at
in that? For I guess you're gonna you know, you're
starting into March, right middle of March, and if you're
a high school good high school player, you're playing through
the mid August maybe or even into July definitely, right yep.
(25:37):
So that's a pretty good period of time that you
can stretch out that that pitching. So what are you
looking at as far as innings so the kid can
kind of understand that thought process?
Speaker 1 (25:48):
That's a great question. You know, that thought process is
all so relative that you know, it's got to build
from week to week to month to month to start
to start to to year to year. Right, So, like
if you get all the way up to fifty plus
innings in a spring, and you'd never thrown more than
fifteen in a spring, which which happens a lot, Yeah,
(26:09):
because like you were, you were a decent pitcher on
a pretty good team as a junior that now that
had a lot of seniors that now a lot of
those guys graduate, and now you're one of the you know,
top starters for your team and you're going you know,
four or five plus innings every single time. You're going
to accreue a lot more innings throughout that time frame.
So you know, you can look at it as like
(26:31):
just that spring schedule and I think that'd be good,
and you look at it as like the entire year
annual calendar compared to the previous year, that it's all
like a it's all a balance of that workload. Right. So,
like give you an example, if you threw fifteen in
the spring, whatever it was, but like a lower number.
If you throw fifteen in the spring and then you
threw you know, forty in the summer, right, So we're
(26:55):
at fifty five fifty five innings there, right, and then
the next year you roll out and you throw, you know,
forty eight innings. You know, we can build on it
as long as everything's in check, as long as you're
feeling good, as long as your performance metrics are still there,
as long as you know you're healthy and you know,
checking all the boxes that you know, we can add
(27:16):
for sure a total inning workload, you know, from year
to year. You know, But if you went from fifty five,
I would say, like, you know, we start getting up
around like seventy five basically every inning north of fifty five,
you should just really be in tune with how you feel,
what's going on right, right, Like, as long as we
feel good, we can keep, like, you know, building on those.
So if I roll out and I throw fifty in
(27:37):
a spring, you know, I probably only got twenty five
to thirty five to give in the summer, you know,
And I think that like that annual workload number and amount,
you know, Yes, mostly the younger players, they don't really know,
you know, they don't really know. I wouldn't have been
able to tell you when I was that age. My
dad might have. You know, yeah, I probably wouldn't have
been you were looking at that way. You know, I
(27:57):
was taking a ball and going down pitching and having
a great time and and and and you know, and
we were winning games. You know, so I wasn't thinking
about any of that. And I and I, but I
also think that like this day and age, like we're
way more equipped and prepared to have some of those
conversations with a lot of the resources and and I
mean even just like the stats that you can go
find about high school baseball online these days, it's just
(28:18):
like way more robust than it ever was, you know,
so there's a lot more information being tracked like that,
like game changer didn't exist, you know, like I had
no idea and less unless like I went back and looked, dude,
like the score books or something throughout the summer stuff
or my dad kept track of it. You know, I
wasn't keeping track of how many innings I through during
the summer. You know. But but but but that's what
should happen. So like after you get done with the
spring season, basically after every season that you have, and
(28:43):
the way I'd probably look at it is like spring season,
summer season, like training season often right right, and and
after every season that you have, you should probably be
sitting down and and having a good like self assessment
process where you're where you're maybe seeing where you're at
relative to your kind petition. You're seeing like what's your
workload and how your body feels and all that, and
(29:03):
like prepare you know, self assessing how the previous you know,
training calendar or like calendar went for you, and then
prepping for the calendar ahead, you know, and then you
get that on the summer, the same sort of thing,
you know, self assessing how the summer and then probably
how the entire year went there too, you know, but
then evaluating, well, what do I need to get better at,
you know, to align with my goals, my big picture goals.
(29:24):
What should I be focusing on this summer? Sorry, this offseason? Yeah?
You know. So, so after every single big, big like
calendar chunk that that that you finish or kind of
get to the finish line on, you know, that that
like self assessment process kind of starts over again. And
to be honest with you, you know, we talk about
it a lot, and we put out some content about
it too, Like even even after each game. You know,
(29:46):
a player should probably be having a pretty good self
assessment process, you know, and and thought process on on
how that went from a performance standpoint too. And you
can continue to do that in like a in like
a you know, micro sense where it's like game to game,
but then a macro sense of how it goes from
season to season.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Because so how many because how many kids really understand,
you know, how they pitched in the early spring compared
to the late summer. You know, they're gonna look at
it I did fine, Yeah, yeah, you don't have analytics
things like that.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Definition Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I think, like the the coaches,
a lot of that onus falls on the coaches, right,
like how we're defining success for these players, yeah, you know,
and how we're helping them define success because because they
start to have their own idea of a definition of success,
and and you know, too often it's like how hard
(30:35):
did I throw? And how many strikeouts did I have?
You know, like and and while those things are are
great and we do love you know what I mean
that like, it misses. It misses some big, critical process
oriented goals that we should have to to get to
those outcome driven goals. You know that you know the
the dynamic of that self assessment process. I think the
(30:57):
I think the best players that I've been around have
a very critical and intentional self assessment process that they
really understand where they're at, where they want to go,
and what they need to do to get there, you know.
And and it starts to come very black and white.
You eliminate a lot of the gray area, and that
(31:18):
starts to become very black and white, as it should be,
because if you're in that gray area, you don't know.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
I think I always say, people say, well, how you doing.
I guess, I'm all right. Well, if you're guessing you
don't know, I'm wrong for sure. And that's where you
fall into mistakes. And I think the pattern of you
know you're coming I think everybody's goal. You have these
goals in high school baseball, you know, especially if you're
making varsity, you know, want to win the conference, win districts,
(31:47):
you know, and then see where we go from there.
But after you transition out of that, how do you
set do you do you set that in motion with
with kids prior to their start, especially kids that you're
working with. And I understand not everybody is like this,
but I think maybe we should start thinking about that.
How do you set that so if you know, maybe
you got a chance to be a starter. You know,
(32:09):
here's a goal. We will see when it comes out.
But then do we have a pattern by which once
we get past high school baseball, here's our goals and
this is how we're going to approach the summer?
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah? Yeah, you know the I think at all it
starts with like really big picture goals. Yeah too real quick,
I'm sorry. It starts with really big picture goals, and
I think you know that self assessment process from like
a very big macro view. It's like these big picture
(32:42):
goals of like what do you want out of all this?
You know, is it a college opportunity? Is it you
know winning? Is it like a competitive type of goal
winning state when in a tournament went in something? And
those big picture goals really like kind of set the
course of direction of like what we do on a
day to day basis, and it should I think you
should have like big picture goals and then you should
(33:03):
you know, do un the lead down to like, well,
you know, have to achieve this goal before I get
to that goal. Thing you know, like, if your goal
is to be a major league baseball player, where you
better figure out to be a pretty good high schoolayer first, right,
like so so very good high sure, And and you
ask most people and and that's what they'll say, you know, like, so,
well I want to go play in college, So well,
how are you going to do that? You know? And
I think what you do is you set goals and
(33:23):
you keep asking yourself how you want to do that,
and you're going to get all the way to the
bottom of this like pyramid where it's going to be
very black and white. You're going to ask yourself how
so many times that it's going to come all the
way down to like, well, okay, then tomorrow I need
to do this, yeah, to take one step towards that
big pero. Right, And that's where it starts to get
starts to become much more clear to you. You know.
(33:43):
So in this in this context of like transitioning simper ball,
do the exact same thing, right you You're looking at
how the spring went. You're evaluating how it went on
the field, how it went from a health standpoint, how
I went from a performance standpoint. And when I say performance,
I mean more of like performance metrics, right, Like you've
got on metrics, You've got performance metrics, and you got
you know, like how you feel health health, and you
(34:05):
know standpoint. You know, so you're you're evaluating how that went.
You've got this big picture goal in mind, Well what
do I need to do this summer, you know to
accomplish that big picture goal? Okay, well then what do
I need to do right now on June tenth to
accomplish that goal? You know, and you keep just kind
of making these small, little stairstep goals that eventually lead
you to your big picture goals, you know, So that
(34:27):
that's the best way to go about. And I think
there's so many different circumstances that we could talk about
hypotheticals that you know, this player's dealing with that, and
that player's dealing with this. That that That's why my
answer is, you know, a little bit blanket right now
of saying like it's a very individual like, you know,
because there's so many different scenarios that like create twists
and turns of that overall like development trajectory that we
(34:50):
have to recognize where we're at, recognize where we want
to go, and then build a plan to help kind
of stair step our way to get there. That from
a thirty thousand point of view, that's what it looks like,
you know, that's what it looks like.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
I like that part of it because I think to me,
when you when you watch all these kids go through
this whole high school season and the mindset and whatnot.
As I said before, sometimes you know, some of these
kids are coming out of this and there's a letdown
process and I think something you can probably try and
(35:23):
get back into and going. And that's where if you're
not focused or you don't have the intent, I think
that's where injuries happen a lot.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely, if you're not dialed into those
details and you find yourself kind of just going with
the flow or doing what everybody else is doing just
because that's what you see them doing. Yeah, more often
than not, you're probably gonna find yourself in a situation
where you like, how did I wind up your kind
of kind of mentality? You know, and uh, and you
(35:53):
know we put something out about this on Twitter today
or X I should say, uh, you.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Know, just just like formally no on his Twitter.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah. Formerly, that's right, that you know, the the concept is, uh,
the concept was in that content was about like you know,
the the talking about like UCL injuries, talking about Tommy
John surgeries and talking about you know, like you don't
really think it's gonna happen to you until it happens
to you, right, like, like there's very few people that
go through this, and they're like, oh, well, you know,
(36:23):
and and and you know, I knew it was coming. Yeah,
I knew it was coming, right like like yeah, and
and andrues be told, if you pitched long enough, it
probably is, you know. But and especially like in this
day and age where injuries are becoming so so much
more prevalent, so much more talked about. The surgeries are
getting so much better, and different forms of surgeries like
(36:44):
a brace versus a full reconstruction and all these different things,
right that you know that the point of the content
was that like you kind of have to be taking
this approach where you know that this is a percentage
chance that could happen, and you should be trying to
do everything that you could, like not become a statistic
you know, like not become part of the statistic statistics,
(37:05):
you know, and and and unfortunately, yeah, I think too
many people uh don't think about it until they're in
it that they're like, man, then you start to have
some type of like, you know, regret. Maybe that's like
I should have done this different, I should have done
that different. That you know the concept of like the
pain of discipline over the pain of regret, you know,
like choosing the pain of to be disciplined and take
(37:27):
that intentional approach on a day to day basis that
takes way more focus and energy and you know, intentional
thoughts and programs and plans and whatever. That all of
that discipline, you know, is far less. The pain of
that is far less than the pain of your regret
that you didn't do some of those things on down
(37:47):
the road. That yeah, I mean we all know it.
Like how many people do do you know? Or have
talked to It's like, oh, well, you know, yeah it
was pretty good, but then I got hurt and I
never really like got to do anything else after that.
That that that's the unfortunate like reality of our game
is that you know, not just injuries derailing careers from
a performance standpoint and never getting back to that peak performance,
(38:09):
which a big, big percentage of people who do that
you know, do everything right afterwards and don't get to
the same performance metrics that was going to get them
a certain opportunity that they were hopeful it would. That's
that's a conversation with statistic like a loan. But but
just this year fact say you did, but the timing
of that injury being so critical that it totally changes
(38:31):
the course of where what you were going to do potentially,
you know, like with with your career that you know,
during a very critical recruiting or scouting year for you
you know, like an injury, an injury for a college
junior that might get drafted in the sixth round. You know,
two games left of the season is absolutely catastrophic for
(38:53):
that guy's career, you know, because now he's coming back
for another year, he's trying to he's only probably one
more year of eligibility. That the clock's now really ticking
for that person. Just to get back to a performance level.
It was much less being out that long and being
able to go back out and still compete at a
high enough clip, which is not talked about enough, like
(39:15):
just time spent on the shelf, even if you are
a really good baseball player, like I mean think about it,
if you'd played golf all summer, versus didn't play golf
all summer, and you try to go out and play
in a tournament September, like you're gonna play well better
after a playing all years, you know what I mean? Like,
that's just the reality. So all of that time missed
during very critical times of this journey can completely derail,
(39:39):
you know, some of the goals or dreams like players have,
you know, So taking that intentional approach, taking an intentional
approach to your summer this year, during this like transition time,
making the most of the time that you have ultimately
just for every single day to be trying to take
one step forward towards your big picture goals. I think
(39:59):
is the big.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Point here, you know absolutely, because you know I always
look at the objective. I know we don't think of
this word a lot, but there everybody should.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Have an objective. What is that?
Speaker 2 (40:16):
As you said, you know, some people think MLB, you know,
or you think in college? What what level of college?
Because everything that objective sets every initiative, in everything, every
step you do, what is an initiative. If you lose
the initiative, you're never going to reach your goal and
so all those things set in motion that piece that's
(40:39):
right here. Because to be an m I like what
you said. To be an MLB player, you better be.
You know, there's some guys put up video game numbers
and they're they're not even playing Division one baseball because
of the way that that's how difficult all these things
have become so objectifying where you're going to be able
(41:01):
to set so you know from this time you start,
I know what we're doing in high school. I know
where my position is. In high school. You've had that
conversation with the coach. Are you willing to go have
that conversation with the coach to say, coach, where are
my shot? Where am I at in your thought process?
Where it is? Be honest and know you're and be
(41:22):
be willing to have that conversation, and coach look at
you and go, well, I don't think we're going to
do much unless an injury or whatnot. This when I'm thinking, okay, fantastic,
set your mind. Are we mature enough to have those conversations?
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Run away from that conversation. It's an intimidating conversation to have,
and at sixteen, I know it's naturally, it's natural too.
We just kind of avoid things that make us feel
bad and gravitate towards things that make us feel good.
And I guess just human instinct. And and it's a
very special, uncommon trait for you to like constantly be
(42:01):
looking for things that make you feel uncomfortable. And I
don't mean to say like you're constantly looking for it,
but you're just afraid to take those things, you know,
head on. That that that's where a lot of the
separator like details and factors can be. You know, talk
about talk about all the all the changes going on
in college baseball right now, and how how much harder
now from here on out, at least in the short
(42:22):
short future because it'll change against certain but how much
harder now it's become to be a college baseball player
with the roster cuts and especially from the highest levels
like on down that that, like the dynamic has totally
changed and should really change a lot of the thoughts
(42:44):
and and you know, goals for players. And unfortunately that's
going to be a very reactionary maybe a tough lesson
to learn, like situation for a lot of people. You know,
you know, I've already been talking with some players that
being like, man, you know, like you played great, you
did what you could. It's just like kind of the
circumstances that we're in right now that you're comparing it
to the circumstances you're familiar with from like three and
(43:05):
five years ago or whatever. We like whenever you set
out for this journey, that the circumstances that we find
ourselves in now are just completely different. Like the criteria
has just changed. It's not you you did great, you know,
then you you think that because you did great, you
should get this type of opportunity. Well, now that the
opportunity has all been shuffled around, like how you fit
into that deck like also also has got and shuffled around.
(43:27):
That's hard. That's hard to deal with, you know, emotionally,
you know. So so you know, and I don't even
really know my point there. I kind of wanted to
get that off my chest because there's been a lot
of conversations we've been having that that it's hard. It's
hard to deal with as a player, you know. So
so you kind of you kind of reshuffle that deck,
reframe your mind, you know. But at the end of
(43:47):
the day, none of that changes anything, and the goal
still has just got to be well, what do I
need to do today to take one step towards that
big picture goal? And and you know, unfortunately that that's
one of the punches we have to be ready to
to to you know, roll with these days. And it's
not all just about like what you can see in
front of your face. There's like a lot of things
(44:09):
out play that are you know, bigger and you have
no control over external factors that we have to also
be you know, ready and willing to roll with some
of those punches too, you know. So so there's a
lot of there's a lot of things that like we've
got to we've got to be like equipped to handle
you know, physically, mentally, emotionally throughout this game. That that
(44:29):
ultimately it's on us as as coaches to help, you know,
provide some of the information, like be a resource for players,
you know, tell tell them things that they may not
necessarily be thinking about. That's you know, ahead on the
mountain for them, you know. And then and then also
just how to you know, deal with some of these
day to day things as well.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Absolutely, man, I love that.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, you know this this timeframe for
people is is definitely it can be a fluid one.
You know. I think my my biggest piece of advice
in transitioning throughout summer ball is, you know, into summer
summer time frame is have a really good assessment process
of how, you know, self assessment process of how this
(45:11):
past spring has went for you, where you wound up
from a you know, physical standpoint, health standpoint, and you
know performance standpoint. You know, and what you need to
do based off of what your big pictures goals are,
what you need to do in this short little time
frame and throughout this entire summer time frame, and build
(45:32):
a plan on how you plan to get there by
just continuing to ask yourself how you know, well I
want to accomplish this, well, how are you going to
do that? Okay, well then I need to accomplish this, well,
how am I going to do that? You know, how
am I going to do that? Well? How am I
going to do that? It's going to get you all
the way down to what do I need to do
today to take that next step towards that big picture
goal of my career, and it'll start to get really
(45:54):
black ed. There you go, man, all right, well, thank
you guys for checking out this this episode. If you
guys like it, drop us a light comment subscribe button.
We really appreciate you guys checking out these episodes. If
you guys got any thoughts or questions that come from
this content, feel free to give us a show. We'd
love to talk with you and we'll see you guys
(46:14):
next time.
Yes, what's going on everybody? Welcome back, Thank you for
checking out this episode of the Key Bombing Podcast. We're
back in the studio today. We've got a really good topic,
relevant topic. It's June tenth, and all of the high
school baseball is officially wrapped up after this past week.
Spring baseball leagues are done. All of the players are
(00:27):
transit to Illinois.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
They got one more week in state championship's crossover.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
We don't talk about them that much.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
No, you're right, now, you're correct.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
No, we still got some baseball going on. But really,
the relevant the relevant topic for everybody really, whether you're
continuing to play right now or not, is this like
transition from spring games spring ball to summer baseball, right,
And a few quick things you guys, obviously, you know
most of the listeners for this are going to be
living it, so I don't have to explain it to you.
(00:56):
But transitioning from a spring schedule that involves school, that
involves you know, studying, that involves daily practice schedules and
a different dynamic of like game schedules. Right, Like like
a lot of these schools around here anyways have been
playing conference games on Tuesday and Wednesdays, you know, non
(01:17):
conference opponents are tournaments on you know, Thursday, Friday, Saturdays,
you know, and juggling that schedule, and then you know,
as these spring seasons wind down, we're gonna transition into
this summer schedule that that doesn't include school. Way more
free time, way more way more travel, like way more
travel if your team is going to play out of
town tournaments and going to different places, and and really
(01:38):
really even for the teams that are playing more locally,
I'd argue that it's more travel too, because you're not
just driving back and forth to school every day and
playing at like your local conference teams or area opponents.
Right Like you're you're driving to Bridgeton, You're driving to
you know, Warrant, and you're driving to these different places.
You know, So a little bit more travel included, which
I think is you know, can't be overlooked.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, you sleep better in your own bed.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah yeah, I mean there's there's a lot of recovery
elements that that go into just traveling to play a
baseball game. And it sounds weird, but you you you
fly on a plane one day and have to pitch
the next day, and you'll learn real quick, Houly cow,
I just sat on my butt all day and I
feel terrible, you know. So it's true. You're driving a car,
you know, six hours you get there, you're sleeping hotel,
(02:20):
and you gotta pop out and pitch at ten am
the next morning. Yeah, yeah, you know it. You know.
So a lot of different dynamics getting into this summer schedule,
you know, and and and right now, I would say
a lot of people are getting into it, about to
get into it. Our league starts next Monday, you know,
for premiere, and so some players kind of find themselves
(02:41):
in this weird in between transition time if they're you know,
school kind of got kicked out of the playoffs a
little bit earlier. Maybe there's summer tournaments, schedules, leagues, whatever
starts later. You kind of have this weird in between
time where you know you're you're coming off a plan,
maybe getting a quick quick breather, know, giving your arm
or quick breather. Maybe you're kind of you know, ramping
(03:03):
down a little bit of some of your volume and
intensity because you have time to before it really ramps
back up like for the summer, you know, but transitioning
into this summer schedule. I think is is is a
unique thing from from you know, person to person, player
to player, team to team. Uh, you know what some
of your thoughts or opinions on that summer schedule for
guys and going into it.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I always look at this, you know, I for one,
you know, just coming from the state championships, you see
a lot of kids that are affected by being a senior.
You know, didn't quite get where they wanted to be,
They did this, whatnot. So you're dealing I think with
(03:43):
that mental let down a little bit. Do you jump
right in restarting that you know, what am I playing for?
In that respect? I think there could be. I think
that's an interesting thing. And I never really thought about
that too much. And then I think, you know, like
you said, you come back from that, and then you
(04:03):
have some of these kids I've seen throwing you know,
forty five to fifty five innings of baseball in the spring.
Where's your arm at at that point? And so you
have this mental maybe exhaustion a little bit, and you know,
how does that so, how does that really affect you
(04:24):
going into that and how do you reset yourself in
that mindset? I think it's an interesting thing.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah. Absolutely, there's so many different dynamics to consider, you know,
in that and you know, for a pitcher versus a
position player, you know, it can look and feel very different.
You know. I always talk about like hitter it training
being being much more like a big marathon throughout the year,
and I look at pitching training. Maybe it has marathon
(04:51):
elements for sure, but it's like a week by week
kind of feels like a sprint, you know what I mean,
because you're only out there so often. You're typically pitching
like one or two days a week, you know, if
you're if you're starting and going multiple innings. Uh, it
very much so feels like a sprint where like I
got one day to not only execute, but just like
I deplete my energy systems, you know, and then I
kind of recover and and you know, ramp back up
(05:13):
throughout the week and then I do it again, you know.
So it feels like a bunch of you know, sprints
inside of a big marathon of a season. You know.
So there's different things to consider for sure, from a
from a physicality standpoint, body performance recovery standpoint, you know.
But but but I want to focus, you know, because
I know better about I want to focus a little
(05:33):
bit more specifically on the pitchers in this dynamic, this
conversation right now, that that you know, there's a lot
of different things to consider within that, and I think, uh,
you know, summer ball, summer ball in in high school
and college should be very uh supplemental. And what I
mean by that it should be uh something that really
(05:56):
enhances your development, your exposure you as a person and
a baseball player. You have so much more time throughout
the summer because school's not in that, you know, summer
ball for high school players. You know, if that's if
that's all you're doing is just like only filling the
(06:17):
competitive reps bucket of your overall like progression. And we'll
talk a little bit more about that in a second,
but that that competitive reps bucket, if you will, with
inside of this big like I think about it like
a pie chart, you know, like that there's so many
different things you know, competitive reps. You know, uh, you know,
skill training, performance training, sleep, recovery, hydration, nutrition, all of
(06:39):
these things that go into you know, you improving as
a as a baseball player. And you know, if if
all we're gonna do during the summer is just fill
up that competitive reps bucket. I think we're really missing
the boat on all the other things that we can do.
And I think, you know, the challenge during the spring
is with so many other extracurriculars in your schedule and
(07:00):
activities that you have to do and perform with school
being in, it's a lot harder to find the time
to do all of those things. For younger players at
a high level, you know, at a good level. Well,
now that you got all this time throughout the summer,
you could really critically be looking at it on how
to improve on a lot of those different areas. And
if all we're doing is overflowing the competitive reps bucket,
(07:22):
I think we're missing the point, you know. You know,
I think there's definitely people in circumstances where, you know,
we need to work on more game applied concepts to
to get better as a as a player, meaning that
should be the bigger focus, you know, And then there's
also certain people dynamic circumstances where maybe less and controlling
(07:42):
that competitive reps bucket and filling some more of these
other buckets ultimately gets you to where you want to
go faster.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Let me ask you this then, Okay, you got this,
this kid, you got say, coming out of one of
maybe the smaller schools, and uh, he's coming in. He's
been hitting, he's been the workhorse on the mound. Okay,
he comes to he's doing this here the last do
(08:14):
you know, maybe his last five outings. Have you seen
a velocity loss? Have you seen these things? Where's the
I think the fatigue factor could be the biggest issue
when you're transitioning into that looking at how do you
compete in the summer? Where are those things at.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
In that respect? Yeah, that's perfect. So let's talk about
a workload in that balance in the big picture of
everything very specifically right now that that workload element that
you're talking about is probably the number one thing I
would say that needs to be considered for players on
how do I go about this transition time and then
even furthermore, how do I go about this entire summer
(08:52):
based off of that that at the end of the day,
You know, we tell players all the time that you know,
if you've thrown the most amount of innings on this
entire spring, you know, then your summer should probably be
adjusted because of that. You know, and vice versa. If
you didn't get a whole lot of innings in the spring,
we probably needs well mornings during the summer and just
balancing that, you know, I think in general, you're always
(09:12):
looking to hopefully increase that inning or workload amount year
over year, right by thirty ish percent, you know, And
and that can be kind of argued upon for sure.
There's a lot of things that maybe go into that,
how you're feeling, how much you've grown, you know, how
you how your arm is performed, you know, because you know,
we've talked in previous episodes about like that decline in
(09:34):
performance being one of the first red flags for injury purposes,
and I think that needs to be you know, discussed
and paid attention to throughout that that that that's very
real one of the biggest red flags before an injury comes.
You know, maybe even a month beforehand would be like
a performance decline. So if your velocity is starting to
taper off, you know, you could say argue that that
(09:56):
you're at a higher risk of injury because of that,
you know, but that overall workload amount that that definitely
is probably the number one thing from transitioning to spring
this summer that really needs to get considered that, Yeah,
if you're those guys that dang near through sixty innings
for your spring high school season, that's a lot of innings.
That's that's a lot of volume within the series in
a very window, especially if all you threw the entire
(10:21):
last year was only seventy five innings, you know, because
you threw you know, thirty five and thirty five in
your in your you know spring, thirty five in your spring,
and thirty five in your summer, right, so.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
How do you and and you know, I think those
are interesting things when you look at the factors of
a high school coach compared to a summer coach, you
have two different mindsets, don't you, as far as what
what are you trying to accomplish?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
One's very winning on the field focused and one's probably
much more development focused. While it probably depends in the
you know, team or circumstance that you're in that that
those things probably get valued a little bit differently from
from place to place, but definitely much more development focused.
I think during the summer, you know you you would
(11:08):
typically say, especially for some of the teams, they probably
feel like they have more pitching depth they feel like
they've got to get more of the pitchers in because
they pay to play for the team, or you know
what I mean that that like they're not just going
to keep running the same guys out there. We're in
the spring season because you feel the pressure to win
certain games that that does happen. You know, that will happen,
you know, And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
(11:30):
I think it just needs to be considered I think
as the player or parent or family or summer coach
or you know, those things that that you know kind
of come after that spring that that you know, you know,
you talk about a college player for for example, you
know that that summer schedule for a college player, if
we're doing anything to jeopardize how you show back up
(11:51):
on campus, you know, and I would even say that
like for a for a high school kid too, if
we do anything to jeopardize what what what where you're at,
you know, come the next time that you're really going
to be evaluated or you know, need need to put
a good foot forward to make a good first impression
(12:12):
your first fall semester on a college campus, or if
it's March first the next year for a high school kid,
if we do anything during that summer time frame to
jeopardize that, especially during during very specific years for these players,
meaning like after a college commitment has already been made,
you know, like would really alter your approach on this.
(12:34):
You know, because if you're sixteen and you're need to
go out and like showcase really well in front of
a lot of college coaches this summer, you know, maybe
that looks a little bit different than a seventeen year
old kid who's already committed, And maybe that looks a
little bit different for a fourteen year old kid that
that really just isn't at that evaluation stage of his
career yet. That you know, that that piece of it
(12:56):
really really can alter to like what what you're overall
like approaches for this summer. It needs to be considered
I think, you know, on an individual basis.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, you know, because I think the drive to win.
You know, you go through this spring you're setting up
and you know, coming off that and you watch a
lot of these teams and these kids that are pitching.
You know, you you see it at the state championships.
You get a couple ings, he brings him back the
next day and because they're trying to win a state championship,
(13:29):
and you understand that from a coach. I don't think
it's a terrible thing like you said or anything, but
you understand how does how do you understand or where's
the communication level? Does does it? Is there much within
that coach? I mean, you know, you can't tell a
high school coach you shouldn't pitch that guy. Yeah, you
(13:52):
know so I think that becomes a level of trust
and whatnot and relationship building between all parties involved.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, some some some trust elements there. I
think also when the individual meaning the player or the
parent has a issue maybe with the usage, that it's
handled really professionally and appropriately, because I've seen it very
miss mishandled for sure and sure and on the coach's
side too, like to be fair.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I agree that I understand because they.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Want sure and I mean, no coach, no coach goes
into it thinking like I don't care about that kid,
I'm gonna throw them and I'm gonna win this game.
You know, like that's not it. They they they're looking
for ways and angles to to accomplish the bigger picture
team goal. And and you know, I'm gonna say this too,
that like the biggest percentage of the time, I'm not
gonna put a number to it, but the biggest percentage
(14:46):
of the time too. That that where I think some
of the fault can be is that, you know, give
an example, like a player is like not really feeling
that good one week, you know, but he really wants
to win. He knows his entire teams relyant on them
to win too. That you know, when the coach comes
up and says, hey, how you feeling today, how's your
own feeling today? I'm good, I can give you three innings,
you know. Like that, a lot of that onus falls
(15:09):
on the player too to be very truthful, open, honest,
and you know, not just telling the coach what he
wants to hear, but even when you have a problem
or a negative thing. And that's such a learned skill
that sports gives us a really good insight into because
at some point you're gonna be a big boy at
a job someday, or you know, have to have a
hard conversation with a family member or something like that
(15:30):
where you're going to have to have a hard conversation
and deliver some information that you know, they're not really
going to want to hear, and how you go about
handling that in a very respectful, professional manner, and you
getting to do that as a sixteen year old high
school pitcher, and that being some of your first tastes
of that, like what a great life lesson life's skill.
You know that that has to and us as parents
should be really encouraging these players to get out of
(15:53):
the uncomfortability that you get, over the uncomfortability that that
presents them. That like, look, the reality is is that
like you know, you you you you need to be
open and honest and upfront with your coach. And even
if he's not gonna like what you have to hear
to him, you need to be equipped to tell him
in a way that's like, look, I'd love to be
out there for you, and and you know, I just
(16:14):
am not entirely sure how much Marm's got to give
you right now. I'm you know, barking here there, you know,
after this outing or after that outing, and and as
open and as transparent and as out front as you
can be with all that, because if it comes down
to it, there's always more emotion involved if it comes
down to it, where hey, you know, you know, it's
the fifth ending of the game, and hey, can you
(16:35):
throw the seventh? It's like, now catch, I can't And
it seems like it comes out of nowhere, and it's
like what the heck? You know? Then then you know,
feathers get ruffled a little bit and it's like, well
what you know that that you feel blindsided by it?
You know ultimately you know, so so you know, I've
seen that. I've seen that more times than not. To
be honest with you, when there are like situations where
there's some overuse or or or frequency, you know, the
(16:58):
player says something about it after the fact, other parents
have something to say about it or whatever. You know,
a lot of it can can be trickled all the
way back to like, well how are those communications on
a day to day, week to week basis, Just to
be open, honest and transparent of that all that, you know.
So that's something that I think as a whole we
can encourage younger players to do better because we have
(17:20):
to recognize that adults, those are very uncomfortable conversations even
for us to have to each other, you know, adult
to adult that like you throw a you know, older experienced,
you know, winning high school program or coach or environment
with a young player who already just doesn't have the
same sort of emotional intelligence yet to deliver a you know,
(17:42):
potentially upsetting like message their coach like it can be
a hard conversation to have, you know. And so yeah,
I mean that's something that that's something that I see
kind of often.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
I wonder sometimes too, if some of these kids, you know,
just start feeling well, you know, you may not be
like just physically you've had to stay up your studying
a little bit more, and you get physically fatigued, you know,
and it's not necessarily a lot of pain, or maybe
it's just.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I'm tired, marm's tired, coach.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Can I skip a start? Yeah, you know, I'll swing
it whatnot. And I think those are things sometimes maybe
a kid doesn't want to do because he doesn't know
how everybody's going to react to that way. Sure, I'm
not saying that you have to or whatnot, but hey,
I'll give you three I said, I'm not feeling as
(18:33):
strong as I mean, I don't feel.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Good in that equation too. I think players got to
be really in tune with their body. They got to
be in tune with their programs. They got to have
a good support system around them to figure out and
sift through what tired feels like, you know, and some
on some sort of scale there too, because like, at
what percentage of being tired do I tell the coach?
(18:56):
Which is you know, your your perception, I agree versus whatever?
Could be very different, right, I think the biggest thing
for big picture like injury risk mitigation. And I tell
guys this all the time. I got told this in
professional baseball, and I love the analogy, like, don't turn
a two week problem into a two month problem. You
know that that you know the difference between being tired
(19:18):
and being in pain, you know, or having some fatigue
and being in pain, And at what level of that
fatigue does it now start to become an issue? And
should I say something? You know that if the conversation
is ongoing and open and transparent, that you know, you
kind of should be able to tell a little bit
(19:39):
further in advance, like when that I should skip a
start timeframe comes to it. Shouldn't just be a blindsided
like the night before the game, like, hey, I don't
know if I could pitch tomorrow because you blindside a
coach with something like that, and there's going to be
some frustration for sure, because now he's you know, he's
probably got his whole week, maybe the next two kind
of scripted out in his head, a little bit of
how he'd like it to unfold. That you pull a
rug out from under him a little bit, and now
(20:00):
you're scramble mode. And and you know that affects like
all kinds of confidence and conviction and team culture and
environment and you know what I mean. So and that challenging.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
I think it's you know, people say, oh, look at
what Michael Jordan did. Yeah, but that was the NBA Finals.
He's in that. You know this guy's Yeah. Those are
professional baseball players that are playing because they get paid
a lot of money. They're you know, standings are tight
this and they still do that.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
They'll skip a start with guys say, hey, he's a
little bit We don't want to push this. So you
know what, every team gets to go to districts and
start fresh again. Your record in that moment, Yeah, seating wise,
you may maybe drop one here there, but okay, fine,
in the end, if you're that good, people are gonna
know it is what it is. I think we can
(20:50):
we can reset some of those things that way.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Yeah, for sure, you know. And and if you found
yourself in that kind of circumstance this spring and now
you're kind of and to transition to summer ball, I
think that's really got to be on the forefront of
your mind, because what will happen is you'll take I mean,
I don't know, you'll take three five, seven days off
and you'll start to kind of feel brand new again.
(21:13):
You know that you can kind of trick yourself a
little bit and then it, you know, wam hits you again,
like July fifteenth. You know, just kind of taking this
big picture view of what this entire year looks like
or even what the next couple of years looks like
for you that you know, at the end of the day,
it's kind of what you should always be doing. But
the reality is is that there's just like ebbs and
flows of how the seasons go and how the season
(21:35):
you know, like how long you play, you know, and
how many innings you through and then you know how
your arm was feeling through all that that you kind
of lay out these ideas or these plans or these
you know, you know this this journey or this route
you know with the player, but you have to be
ready and willing to adapt, like you know, month by
month or week by week even and enroll with some
(21:56):
of those punches because you just never know what's like
around the corner for you and ultimately keeping that like
long term view in in in sight. But but certainly
there's like individual goals, you know, micro goals within a
within a game or a starter or a week or
or things that that you know, players have set in
their heart that they want to go do and you
and you try to, you know, help them navigate that
(22:17):
as best as possible, you know. But but you know,
in that big picture, you know, inside of this topic
of like transitioning to summer ball, those are all things
that you absolutely got to consider. So if you know,
if you're that player and found yourself in that type
of dynamic, you know, your summer should look different than
if everything was kosher you know throughout the spring, right,
it should look very different. And if if you're rolling
(22:40):
out there just kind of status quo, like continuing to
go with whatever you're trying to throw seven eatings, Yeah, yeah,
that like, you know, something's going to give. Most likely
something's going to give, and and maybe it's just diminished performance,
you know, And that's that's not what we want either,
you know, and and and you know it's on the
flip side too. On the flip side, let's talk a
minute about the player who found themselves not throwing enough
(23:01):
inning was a spring. You didn't throw enough in things
a spring for whatever reason. It could have been because
you had it early on injury. It could have been
because you had, you know, juniors and seniors ahead of you.
It could have been because you know, you had a
lot of good players at your position on your team.
You know that you didn't necessarily fill up that competitive
reps bucket for development purposes in the spring. What you
(23:22):
should have been doing in the spring is filling up
the other buckets. As soon as you recognize that you
weren't filling that bucket, you should have been putting your
energy into the other buckets, because that's what's going to
help you kind of stay on track. Because now coming
this summer, you're going to want to really fill up
that competitive reps bucket. We're just going to have less
time and headspace for the other ones. And that's just
how this works. There's only a fixed amount of time.
(23:44):
You know, there's only a fixed amount of time. So
you know, during the during the spring, if you found
yourself doing that, you know you should probably try be
trying to put yourself in an environment where you get
the most amount of competitive reps while balancing the other things.
I never think it's a good thing you to be
just you know, you can't blinders on yeah, on one thing,
(24:05):
because this is such a big like piece to this puzzle,
you know, multiple puzzle pieces that that you know, they
all work hand in hand. They all work to supplement
support each other for the ultimate goal, you know, and
for you to achieve kind of success on the field
and the you know, desired opportunity that you want to
come next from it, if there is one, you know.
So so those are all the things that a player
(24:26):
during that time frame should really be considering and why
Like it's so case by case for each player and
picture and even then set out a plan in two
weeks from now, it might change, you know, it might
change based off of you know, a ton of different
things physically, mentally, emotionally, what about family stuff kind of
comes up. You know, like you got to take a
couple of weeks off of baseball because something happens within
(24:47):
your family, or you got to go take care of
some family business. You know, like like there's there's just
life that goes on around this that that has to
you know, that has to have us be ready, willing
and able to kind of roll with some of these
punches to.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
That transition piece. You know, you're you're setting those things.
I liked what you said there. You know, you have
the kid that didn't get the reps, you have the
kid that did and whatnot. How do you set that
in motion? You know, what is a number?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Is?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Is there a number? Is there something you're looking at
in that? For I guess you're gonna you know, you're
starting into March, right middle of March, and if you're
a high school good high school player, you're playing through
the mid August maybe or even into July definitely, right yep.
(25:37):
So that's a pretty good period of time that you
can stretch out that that pitching. So what are you
looking at as far as innings so the kid can
kind of understand that thought process?
Speaker 1 (25:48):
That's a great question. You know, that thought process is
all so relative that you know, it's got to build
from week to week to month to month to start
to start to to year to year. Right, So, like
if you get all the way up to fifty plus
innings in a spring, and you'd never thrown more than
fifteen in a spring, which which happens a lot, Yeah,
(26:09):
because like you were, you were a decent pitcher on
a pretty good team as a junior that now that
had a lot of seniors that now a lot of
those guys graduate, and now you're one of the you know,
top starters for your team and you're going you know,
four or five plus innings every single time. You're going
to accreue a lot more innings throughout that time frame.
So you know, you can look at it as like
(26:31):
just that spring schedule and I think that'd be good,
and you look at it as like the entire year
annual calendar compared to the previous year, that it's all
like a it's all a balance of that workload. Right. So,
like give you an example, if you threw fifteen in
the spring, whatever it was, but like a lower number.
If you throw fifteen in the spring and then you
threw you know, forty in the summer, right, So we're
(26:55):
at fifty five fifty five innings there, right, and then
the next year you roll out and you throw, you know,
forty eight innings. You know, we can build on it
as long as everything's in check, as long as you're
feeling good, as long as your performance metrics are still there,
as long as you know you're healthy and you know,
checking all the boxes that you know, we can add
(27:16):
for sure a total inning workload, you know, from year
to year. You know, But if you went from fifty five,
I would say, like, you know, we start getting up
around like seventy five basically every inning north of fifty five,
you should just really be in tune with how you feel,
what's going on right, right, Like, as long as we
feel good, we can keep, like, you know, building on those.
So if I roll out and I throw fifty in
(27:37):
a spring, you know, I probably only got twenty five
to thirty five to give in the summer, you know,
And I think that like that annual workload number and amount,
you know, Yes, mostly the younger players, they don't really know,
you know, they don't really know. I wouldn't have been
able to tell you when I was that age. My
dad might have. You know, yeah, I probably wouldn't have
been you were looking at that way. You know, I
(27:57):
was taking a ball and going down pitching and having
a great time and and and and you know, and
we were winning games. You know, so I wasn't thinking
about any of that. And I and I, but I
also think that like this day and age, like we're
way more equipped and prepared to have some of those
conversations with a lot of the resources and and I
mean even just like the stats that you can go
find about high school baseball online these days, it's just
(28:18):
like way more robust than it ever was, you know,
so there's a lot more information being tracked like that,
like game changer didn't exist, you know, like I had
no idea and less unless like I went back and looked, dude,
like the score books or something throughout the summer stuff
or my dad kept track of it. You know, I
wasn't keeping track of how many innings I through during
the summer. You know. But but but but that's what
should happen. So like after you get done with the
spring season, basically after every season that you have, and
(28:43):
the way I'd probably look at it is like spring season,
summer season, like training season often right right, and and
after every season that you have, you should probably be
sitting down and and having a good like self assessment
process where you're where you're maybe seeing where you're at
relative to your kind petition. You're seeing like what's your
workload and how your body feels and all that, and
(29:03):
like prepare you know, self assessing how the previous you know,
training calendar or like calendar went for you, and then
prepping for the calendar ahead, you know, and then you
get that on the summer, the same sort of thing,
you know, self assessing how the summer and then probably
how the entire year went there too, you know, but
then evaluating, well, what do I need to get better at,
you know, to align with my goals, my big picture goals.
(29:24):
What should I be focusing on this summer? Sorry, this offseason? Yeah?
You know. So, so after every single big, big like
calendar chunk that that that you finish or kind of
get to the finish line on, you know, that that
like self assessment process kind of starts over again. And
to be honest with you, you know, we talk about
it a lot, and we put out some content about
it too, Like even even after each game. You know,
(29:46):
a player should probably be having a pretty good self
assessment process, you know, and and thought process on on
how that went from a performance standpoint too. And you
can continue to do that in like a in like
a you know, micro sense where it's like game to game,
but then a macro sense of how it goes from
season to season.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Because so how many because how many kids really understand,
you know, how they pitched in the early spring compared
to the late summer. You know, they're gonna look at
it I did fine, Yeah, yeah, you don't have analytics
things like that.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Definition Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I think, like the the coaches,
a lot of that onus falls on the coaches, right,
like how we're defining success for these players, yeah, you know,
and how we're helping them define success because because they
start to have their own idea of a definition of success,
and and you know, too often it's like how hard
(30:35):
did I throw? And how many strikeouts did I have?
You know, like and and while those things are are
great and we do love you know what I mean
that like, it misses. It misses some big, critical process
oriented goals that we should have to to get to
those outcome driven goals. You know that you know the
the dynamic of that self assessment process. I think the
(30:57):
I think the best players that I've been around have
a very critical and intentional self assessment process that they
really understand where they're at, where they want to go,
and what they need to do to get there, you know.
And and it starts to come very black and white.
You eliminate a lot of the gray area, and that
(31:18):
starts to become very black and white, as it should be,
because if you're in that gray area, you don't know.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
I think I always say, people say, well, how you doing.
I guess, I'm all right. Well, if you're guessing you
don't know, I'm wrong for sure. And that's where you
fall into mistakes. And I think the pattern of you
know you're coming I think everybody's goal. You have these
goals in high school baseball, you know, especially if you're
making varsity, you know, want to win the conference, win districts,
(31:47):
you know, and then see where we go from there.
But after you transition out of that, how do you
set do you do you set that in motion with
with kids prior to their start, especially kids that you're
working with. And I understand not everybody is like this,
but I think maybe we should start thinking about that.
How do you set that so if you know, maybe
you got a chance to be a starter. You know,
(32:09):
here's a goal. We will see when it comes out.
But then do we have a pattern by which once
we get past high school baseball, here's our goals and
this is how we're going to approach the summer?
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah? Yeah, you know the I think at all it
starts with like really big picture goals. Yeah too real quick,
I'm sorry. It starts with really big picture goals, and
I think you know that self assessment process from like
a very big macro view. It's like these big picture
(32:42):
goals of like what do you want out of all this?
You know, is it a college opportunity? Is it you
know winning? Is it like a competitive type of goal
winning state when in a tournament went in something? And
those big picture goals really like kind of set the
course of direction of like what we do on a
day to day basis, and it should I think you
should have like big picture goals and then you should
(33:03):
you know, do un the lead down to like, well,
you know, have to achieve this goal before I get
to that goal. Thing you know, like, if your goal
is to be a major league baseball player, where you
better figure out to be a pretty good high schoolayer first, right,
like so so very good high sure, And and you
ask most people and and that's what they'll say, you know, like, so,
well I want to go play in college, So well,
how are you going to do that? You know? And
I think what you do is you set goals and
(33:23):
you keep asking yourself how you want to do that,
and you're going to get all the way to the
bottom of this like pyramid where it's going to be
very black and white. You're going to ask yourself how
so many times that it's going to come all the
way down to like, well, okay, then tomorrow I need
to do this, yeah, to take one step towards that
big pero. Right, And that's where it starts to get
starts to become much more clear to you. You know.
(33:43):
So in this in this context of like transitioning simper ball,
do the exact same thing, right you You're looking at
how the spring went. You're evaluating how it went on
the field, how it went from a health standpoint, how
I went from a performance standpoint. And when I say performance,
I mean more of like performance metrics, right, Like you've
got on metrics, You've got performance metrics, and you got
you know, like how you feel health health, and you
(34:05):
know standpoint. You know, so you're you're evaluating how that went.
You've got this big picture goal in mind, Well what
do I need to do this summer, you know to
accomplish that big picture goal? Okay, well then what do
I need to do right now on June tenth to
accomplish that goal? You know, and you keep just kind
of making these small, little stairstep goals that eventually lead
you to your big picture goals, you know, So that
(34:27):
that's the best way to go about. And I think
there's so many different circumstances that we could talk about
hypotheticals that you know, this player's dealing with that, and
that player's dealing with this. That that That's why my
answer is, you know, a little bit blanket right now
of saying like it's a very individual like, you know,
because there's so many different scenarios that like create twists
and turns of that overall like development trajectory that we
(34:50):
have to recognize where we're at, recognize where we want
to go, and then build a plan to help kind
of stair step our way to get there. That from
a thirty thousand point of view, that's what it looks like,
you know, that's what it looks like.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
I like that part of it because I think to me,
when you when you watch all these kids go through
this whole high school season and the mindset and whatnot.
As I said before, sometimes you know, some of these
kids are coming out of this and there's a letdown
process and I think something you can probably try and
(35:23):
get back into and going. And that's where if you're
not focused or you don't have the intent, I think
that's where injuries happen a lot.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely, if you're not dialed into those
details and you find yourself kind of just going with
the flow or doing what everybody else is doing just
because that's what you see them doing. Yeah, more often
than not, you're probably gonna find yourself in a situation
where you like, how did I wind up your kind
of kind of mentality? You know, and uh, and you
(35:53):
know we put something out about this on Twitter today
or X I should say, uh, you.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Know, just just like formally no on his Twitter.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah. Formerly, that's right, that you know, the the concept is, uh,
the concept was in that content was about like you know,
the the talking about like UCL injuries, talking about Tommy
John surgeries and talking about you know, like you don't
really think it's gonna happen to you until it happens
to you, right, like, like there's very few people that
go through this, and they're like, oh, well, you know,
(36:23):
and and and you know, I knew it was coming. Yeah,
I knew it was coming, right like like yeah, and
and andrues be told, if you pitched long enough, it
probably is, you know. But and especially like in this
day and age where injuries are becoming so so much
more prevalent, so much more talked about. The surgeries are
getting so much better, and different forms of surgeries like
(36:44):
a brace versus a full reconstruction and all these different things,
right that you know that the point of the content
was that like you kind of have to be taking
this approach where you know that this is a percentage
chance that could happen, and you should be trying to
do everything that you could, like not become a statistic
you know, like not become part of the statistic statistics,
(37:05):
you know, and and and unfortunately, yeah, I think too
many people uh don't think about it until they're in
it that they're like, man, then you start to have
some type of like, you know, regret. Maybe that's like
I should have done this different, I should have done
that different. That you know the concept of like the
pain of discipline over the pain of regret, you know,
like choosing the pain of to be disciplined and take
(37:27):
that intentional approach on a day to day basis that
takes way more focus and energy and you know, intentional
thoughts and programs and plans and whatever. That all of
that discipline, you know, is far less. The pain of
that is far less than the pain of your regret
that you didn't do some of those things on down
(37:47):
the road. That yeah, I mean we all know it.
Like how many people do do you know? Or have
talked to It's like, oh, well, you know, yeah it
was pretty good, but then I got hurt and I
never really like got to do anything else after that.
That that that's the unfortunate like reality of our game
is that you know, not just injuries derailing careers from
a performance standpoint and never getting back to that peak performance,
(38:09):
which a big, big percentage of people who do that
you know, do everything right afterwards and don't get to
the same performance metrics that was going to get them
a certain opportunity that they were hopeful it would. That's
that's a conversation with statistic like a loan. But but
just this year fact say you did, but the timing
of that injury being so critical that it totally changes
(38:31):
the course of where what you were going to do potentially,
you know, like with with your career that you know,
during a very critical recruiting or scouting year for you
you know, like an injury, an injury for a college
junior that might get drafted in the sixth round. You know,
two games left of the season is absolutely catastrophic for
(38:53):
that guy's career, you know, because now he's coming back
for another year, he's trying to he's only probably one
more year of eligibility. That the clock's now really ticking
for that person. Just to get back to a performance level.
It was much less being out that long and being
able to go back out and still compete at a
high enough clip, which is not talked about enough, like
(39:15):
just time spent on the shelf, even if you are
a really good baseball player, like I mean think about it,
if you'd played golf all summer, versus didn't play golf
all summer, and you try to go out and play
in a tournament September, like you're gonna play well better
after a playing all years, you know what I mean? Like,
that's just the reality. So all of that time missed
during very critical times of this journey can completely derail,
(39:39):
you know, some of the goals or dreams like players have,
you know, So taking that intentional approach, taking an intentional
approach to your summer this year, during this like transition time,
making the most of the time that you have ultimately
just for every single day to be trying to take
one step forward towards your big picture goals. I think
(39:59):
is the big.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Point here, you know absolutely, because you know I always
look at the objective. I know we don't think of
this word a lot, but there everybody should.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Have an objective. What is that?
Speaker 2 (40:16):
As you said, you know, some people think MLB, you know,
or you think in college? What what level of college?
Because everything that objective sets every initiative, in everything, every
step you do, what is an initiative. If you lose
the initiative, you're never going to reach your goal and
so all those things set in motion that piece that's
(40:39):
right here. Because to be an m I like what
you said. To be an MLB player, you better be.
You know, there's some guys put up video game numbers
and they're they're not even playing Division one baseball because
of the way that that's how difficult all these things
have become so objectifying where you're going to be able
(41:01):
to set so you know from this time you start,
I know what we're doing in high school. I know
where my position is. In high school. You've had that
conversation with the coach. Are you willing to go have
that conversation with the coach to say, coach, where are
my shot? Where am I at in your thought process?
Where it is? Be honest and know you're and be
(41:22):
be willing to have that conversation, and coach look at
you and go, well, I don't think we're going to
do much unless an injury or whatnot. This when I'm thinking, okay, fantastic,
set your mind. Are we mature enough to have those conversations?
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Run away from that conversation. It's an intimidating conversation to have,
and at sixteen, I know it's naturally, it's natural too.
We just kind of avoid things that make us feel
bad and gravitate towards things that make us feel good.
And I guess just human instinct. And and it's a
very special, uncommon trait for you to like constantly be
(42:01):
looking for things that make you feel uncomfortable. And I
don't mean to say like you're constantly looking for it,
but you're just afraid to take those things, you know,
head on. That that that's where a lot of the
separator like details and factors can be. You know, talk
about talk about all the all the changes going on
in college baseball right now, and how how much harder
now from here on out, at least in the short
(42:22):
short future because it'll change against certain but how much
harder now it's become to be a college baseball player
with the roster cuts and especially from the highest levels
like on down that that, like the dynamic has totally
changed and should really change a lot of the thoughts
(42:44):
and and you know, goals for players. And unfortunately that's
going to be a very reactionary maybe a tough lesson
to learn, like situation for a lot of people. You know,
you know, I've already been talking with some players that
being like, man, you know, like you played great, you
did what you could. It's just like kind of the
circumstances that we're in right now that you're comparing it
to the circumstances you're familiar with from like three and
(43:05):
five years ago or whatever. We like whenever you set
out for this journey, that the circumstances that we find
ourselves in now are just completely different. Like the criteria
has just changed. It's not you you did great, you know,
then you you think that because you did great, you
should get this type of opportunity. Well, now that the
opportunity has all been shuffled around, like how you fit
into that deck like also also has got and shuffled around.
(43:27):
That's hard. That's hard to deal with, you know, emotionally,
you know. So so you know, and I don't even
really know my point there. I kind of wanted to
get that off my chest because there's been a lot
of conversations we've been having that that it's hard. It's
hard to deal with as a player, you know. So
so you kind of you kind of reshuffle that deck,
reframe your mind, you know. But at the end of
(43:47):
the day, none of that changes anything, and the goal
still has just got to be well, what do I
need to do today to take one step towards that
big picture goal? And and you know, unfortunately that that's
one of the punches we have to be ready to
to to you know, roll with these days. And it's
not all just about like what you can see in
front of your face. There's like a lot of things
(44:09):
out play that are you know, bigger and you have
no control over external factors that we have to also
be you know, ready and willing to roll with some
of those punches too, you know. So so there's a
lot of there's a lot of things that like we've
got to we've got to be like equipped to handle
you know, physically, mentally, emotionally throughout this game. That that
(44:29):
ultimately it's on us as as coaches to help, you know,
provide some of the information, like be a resource for players,
you know, tell tell them things that they may not
necessarily be thinking about. That's you know, ahead on the
mountain for them, you know. And then and then also
just how to you know, deal with some of these
day to day things as well.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Absolutely, man, I love that.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, you know this this timeframe for
people is is definitely it can be a fluid one.
You know. I think my my biggest piece of advice
in transitioning throughout summer ball is, you know, into summer
summer time frame is have a really good assessment process
of how, you know, self assessment process of how this
(45:11):
past spring has went for you, where you wound up
from a you know, physical standpoint, health standpoint, and you
know performance standpoint. You know, and what you need to
do based off of what your big pictures goals are,
what you need to do in this short little time
frame and throughout this entire summer time frame, and build
(45:32):
a plan on how you plan to get there by
just continuing to ask yourself how you know, well I
want to accomplish this, well, how are you going to
do that? Okay, well then I need to accomplish this, well,
how am I going to do that? You know, how
am I going to do that? Well? How am I
going to do that? It's going to get you all
the way down to what do I need to do
today to take that next step towards that big picture
goal of my career, and it'll start to get really
(45:54):
black ed. There you go, man, all right, well, thank
you guys for checking out this this episode. If you
guys like it, drop us a light comment subscribe button.
We really appreciate you guys checking out these episodes. If
you guys got any thoughts or questions that come from
this content, feel free to give us a show. We'd
love to talk with you and we'll see you guys
(46:14):
next time.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.