A (4:10)

Well, so I want to talk about the book because you were gracious enough to kind of to send me where you're at with it right now. And I think there's a lot of really interesting points that you raise in this book. So if we could, I want to kind of dive into the various lessons that you talk about in the book, and then I'm going to have questions, really, for each of you guys. Hugh, from your standpoint as a father, but also as, you know, on the hitting side with pro organizations, and then Gus with you, how a lot of this stuff kind of ties into the scouting component and how you're having to look at or in your various roles have had to look at and really identify and evaluate the effects of all these different things. So the first thing I sent this.

B (4:52)

Thing to, God, I sent this thing to Gus a month ago. There's zero chance he's ready yet. So if he's been the older brother, he's typically been that thing still sitting on a printer somewhere. But.

C (5:02)

Well, we can rewind back to June Matt, when I had my charity golf tournament, neither of you guys appeared. Matt has a number of clients. Not one auction item. Huey or Hugh, I should say was. Had plenty of athletes at his disposal. Not one auction item. So thank you both.

A (5:23)

Well, what I. What I love about you, Gus, is I get a phone call from you, I think it was like a week after, and you said, hey, thanks for coming. And I said, what are you talking about? Thanks for coming my golf tournament? When was it? How come I didn't get an invitation? All you got to do is let me know. I get nothing.

C (5:39)

Well, your audience. Your audience knows you're a revisionist history major, so we can make things up. That's all right.

A (5:46)

And this is the comedian I was telling everybody about, so thank you for letting everybody see that side of you. So, Hugh, so lesson one is control. The controllables. Right? So the core idea there is really focusing on what your son. Or let's just say, if you're a coach listening to this, focusing on what your player can't control. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean when you say that? I think fundamentally, it makes all the sense in the world, but I think sometimes people throw these terms around without really understanding how important it is. So when you wrote those words, like, what exactly did you mean when you said that?

B (6:23)

Yeah. So you see it obviously, at every level. And my first experience, whether it was pro ball, Everything in pro ball wants to pull you towards your results. Your batting average, your. Your own individual stats. I mean, everything's trying to pull you away from things you actually do control. So you get pulled away from process and pulled towards results and end up focusing on the wrong things sometimes. And. And we know how emotionally charged youth baseball is. And you can just flip on Instagram and find thousands of clips of parents yelling at umpires or other coaches and whatever. It happens all over the place. So we know how emotionally charged it is. So just getting people to remind themselves that, like, there's only so much you actually control in your development process. You don't control whether they catch the ball in center field or whether the umpire makes a bad call. And it's so easy to forget that. But it's just a simple way of saying process over results in a game that. That constantly wants to pull you towards emotion and results that. That don't connect really well.

A (7:32)

And when you talk, you say things like, you know, conditional confidence versus unconditional confidence help. Help the families understand. What. What do you mean by unconditional confidence?

B (7:44)

Yeah, that. God, if I could get that across to more people easier that so many people are, are, especially in baseball, their confidence rides the wave of their last at bat or if they got a hit, sure, they'll be better in the next game or the next at bat because they got that hit. That's, that means their confidence is conditional on their previous about or conditional on. You know, you'll hear kids, they're constantly complaining that the pitcher, you know, he's doing this or he's throwing, he's throwing a weird curveball. Like, okay, is that the only way you can succeed is if he throws it the way you're used to a pitcher throwing it. So getting people to understand that, you know, if you prepare better, if you, again, if you just focus on process more, you, you find more ways to be, you know, confident unconditionally, no matter what. You're not dependent on conditions being perfect that day when you show up at that at the park to play for you to be successful. And again, all those things that pop up that are out of your control, whether center fielder made a dive and catch on you, you got a bad call. The pitcher was tough to see that day, whatever it was, you know, you're, you're less affected, less vulnerable to all those, you know, varied conditions that inevitably, inevitably are going to pop up.

A (8:59)

Well, and I think it's the reason why I love that it's in lesson one, because I feel like if there's one kind of big ticket item that I think most players struggle with, it's that exact thing, right? I, I've, I even recently spoke about a really, really good pitcher who, one of the best in the country. And I asked him, you know, what makes you so good? And he paused and he's like, what do you mean? I said, what? Like, what is the thing that you believe makes you what you are? And he literally sat there and didn't know how to answer it. And then he eventually gets to this place where he says, well, I can tell you this, what brings me confidence is when I'm performing well. And it's exactly what you're saying. Well, we know that in any career, right, Whether it's in amateur baseball, college, or even in pro ball, you're going to get to a point where you hit failure, you struggle. It's part of this game. And if all you're doing is being reliant on needing to maintain performance at every single stage, like you're going to get to a place where that stops, and then what does it say about you when you fail, right? And I think, you know, I've had Zach Scott on this podcast, Thad Levine on this podcast, and oftentimes what I hear from these executives and Gus, we've even talked about this is, you know, at the end of the day, these organizations, they almost want to create failure early for players so that they can see how that player responds. And then hopefully they get the tools that they're going to ultimately need when they get to the big leagues and that failure becomes much more a part of their game. Instead of, let's just say if you're a hitter, instead of going over 30, maybe you go over 10 and you can get to a place where you're having success a lot quicker. If you're a pitcher, you know, instead of, you know, having a repeated number of innings where you're just mechanically out of sync and you don't have that confidence, how do you, how do you minimize that negative side of your performance as quickly as possible? So, Gus, my question for you now is from a scouting perspective, how do you maybe it's communicate with other scouts? Cause I know in your history in this game, like you've overseen a lot of various scouting positions, right? How do you tend to teach scouts to evaluate that? Like, is there things that you're looking for or what would you say as far as that goes?

C (11:18)

All different spaces, whether it's amateur scouting, pro scouting, international scouting, we have to get at. How do they manage? The game has never been noisier than it is today with all the information, all the social media, all the tech, the feedback that an athlete receives. So we do our best to educate our scouts on how to best get at. Now, you can't always get into homes and the domestic amateur player. You can get into the home and you can try to get at. Are they process oriented like Hugh talked about, or they were results oriented?

C (11:56)

What types of adversity have they faced in the past and how have they dealt with it? Are they a critical thinker? What do they do with the information that they now have at their disposal? What level of exposure have they had? Because that can dictate, most importantly for our evaluators, regardless of the stage, just how much you're going to project on that athlete? Maybe they've already been exposed to a lot. And so therefore you can't project quite as aggressively as you could on a kid who hasn't been in a weight room, hasn't been exposed to the tech, hasn't had great coaching. So there are a lot of things that we try to get at with the 360 evaluation, talking to their teammates, talking to their teachers, talking to their coaches and other sports, seeing them in an uncomfortable environment where they're not the guy. Maybe it's a different sport, maybe it's in the classroom. We try to get at all of that, to think about the noise that they deal with.

A (12:59)

Yeah. What's interesting is I feel like when you talk about all players.

A (13:05)

As I've gone through this book, Hugh, each one of these lessons, I think sometimes parents can get so hung up on looking at this. Like, it's like a math equation, right? Like, okay, if I do A, B and C, then I'm gonna get the result I want. And then, okay, let's go to the next lesson. And if I do A, B and C with this next lesson, then I'm gonna get what I want. In reality, all of these things are connected. Right. If you're not controlling the controllables, you're oftentimes maybe not going to have that unconditional confidence that you're talking about. And then that ties into the second lesson, which is what you call let them play. Right. And the core idea there is prioritize game like reps over drills to build adaptability. Variability in practice should mirror real chaos in a game. And so can you talk about that a little bit? Because I think that's a. It's a brilliant point. How many of these players, when they're focused on development, Because I talk about this a lot with, you know, oftentimes the hierarchy for parents is exposure is the most important thing. And then maybe number two is the competition. Right. And then number three is development. And I've always encouraged players to really spend time developing. But what I'm kind of understanding, or at least what I'm receiving with this lesson is, well, what kind of development? Right. There's a way to develop, but also making it game like. So what can you talk about as far as that goes with, like, how when you've spent your time with these various organizations, right. In, let's just say a coordinator role. And I'll use like the Mariners as, as an example because you obviously worked with a lot of really, really good players there. Did you guys have anything in place that you would kind of employ to help these players really create that, like, game, like chaos that you're talking about in practice?

B (14:49)

100. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah. This, this thing, this comes up all the time. I literally just sent a text to a parent who's talking about their programming for their son. All winter and how they're going to get lessons and get their extra reps here and their extra reps here. And I just was kind of pumping the brakes for them a little bit on, you know, just make sure that not all practice is created equal. And you know, some of it honestly is, can be detrimental. So it's not, you're not 100%. Like you said, the ABC isn't necessarily making your player better if you're not doing things that are beneficial. So I think the simplest answer, yeah, working backwards from what the game is like and having all your practices try to be as representative of the game environment as you can. It's not always possible. That's the challenge of baseball. It's not easy to get into a pickup baseball game like it is in basketball, for example. But the more you can, I mean, some of the best stuff you can do is get out there with a brother or just if you have a dad or even a mom who can throw half decent BP with, even if it's a wiffle ball, make it move a little bit, throw it hard, have a wind up, it's going to feel a lot more like a game. And now you're using actual game like cues, game speed, you can use your game bat. Those practices are so much more valuable for, you know, what's going to actually transfer and be retained by the player when they actually get to the game. So yeah, any thing you can do. I mean, the example I use in the book too is how Bryce Harper kind of, I think he was on the COVID of Sports Illustrated when they were talking about how many travel ball games he was playing. And obviously you got to pay attention to burnout and not doing more than the kid wants to be doing. But I think that was a huge part of Bryce Harper's development. He wasn't, you know, sounded like he was spending a lot more time playing games and seeing real pitching and guys trying to get him out with a mix of pitches instead of just banging off a tee in the backyard or with a, with a lesson coach in a cage every day.

A (16:51)

So I think the analogy that you use in the book too is perfect. And I want to kind of invite everybody into thinking about this. So you compare a zoo tiger, right, with the guy who, let's just say, needs to be in this perfect environment where he is working on one thing a certain way. And then the alternative tiger would be like a jungle tiger. And that would be the guy who is more like the Bryce Harper who's like really trying to maximize his development by doing things a certain way. So, yeah, I don't know if you want to touch on those two things.

B (17:22)

Yeah, I felt like Bryce is the perfect. It sounds like he was putting himself in the jungle every day. He didn't know what those pitchers were going to throw at him. It was always an unpredictable environment that was in a game every time that, you know, I think the zoo tiger in baseball is that kid, you know, that's in a cage for 90% of his swings that he takes with a instructor, feeding a flip or a controlled tea environment or whatever. And that's the. Yeah, that's the zoo tiger who, if you threw out into the wild, is far less prepared to get. Get food that the. The tiger that's been hunting and running around, climbing trees and running over mountains to get his food is going to get that steak a lot faster than. Than the zoo tiger had it thrown in the cage for him.

C (18:03)

So there's a level of fearlessness in there that a scout would identify. And I remember at the time, he was young for his level. Right. He always pushed himself playing against older kids.

B (18:15)

Talking about Harper.

C (18:16)

Yes.

B (18:17)

Yeah, yeah.

C (18:17)

And so I think that's part of his DNA that made him the great player that he became. I also think, you know, just to circle back to what Hugh was talking about from an evaluation standpoint, we're not always just looking at games. Yes, the game environment's ideal. However, we do want to see how players practice and how do they go about their business at practice, especially when no one's watching.

A (18:42)

Right, right.

C (18:43)

So that. That is something that. Whether it's game like or not, that is something that scouts are definitely mindful of. Part of their itinerary or when they're in town.

A (18:54)

Well, look, and I think that's a great message, too, because a lot of families, and especially players, I think everyone is so stuck on this idea of games where they think that scouts are only there. Right. I need to. I need to get up for the game. And in a sense, it almost feels like they're thinking about baseball like it's football. Like, I play once a week, and if I have a good game, then I'm in a good spot. And they're not thinking about all these other opportunities that they have throughout the week. And if a player can hear this and get to a place where he is getting up for practice and he's thinking about practice as an opportunity, whether someone is there or not, it doesn't matter. The intent should be the same, because that's the thing that I'm hearing from you, Hugh. It's not like the reason you're getting up is because the scouts there. The reason you're getting up is because you're trying to match and take advantage of every single opportunity, big or small, to use it as a way to get better. Right?

B (19:50)

A hundred percent, yeah. I didn't even fully answer your original question, but in. In professional baseball, I think almost every team at this point has. Has bought this pitching machine that probably the most advanced fishing machine on the market. It's a really.

B (20:05)

Yeah. Trajectory and you probably talked about it here, but it has, you know, full spin replication speed, exact replication of a pitch you would see from any pitcher in Major League Baseball. And it has a video of that pitcher, you know, synced up to the pitch and you're tracking it as is close to a game scenario. You can sit up there and face Garrett Cole, you know, his full pitch mix for as long as you want on those machines. And players are doing that all over professional baseball now. Yeah, our kids going to have access to that machine, you know, maybe in some, some select facilities coming soon. But the best thing you can do short of that is find somebody that's willing to throw, that is good enough to throw hard enough for your level and have a little bit of a mix to the pitches where they're not just throwing one speed and get up there and face it as much as you can. It's the best thing you can do.

A (20:57)

So as we go to this next lesson I have, the way that you describe is get that finger on the trigger. And the core idea is train early preparation and instinctive reactions. And one of the things that you say is hitters must load rhythmically to respond under pressure. Avoid rigid mechanics, focus on readiness. That obviously is coming from your experience in pro ball, Right. What made you put this in the book? Like, what was. Why do you find this to be so important?

B (21:25)

For a simple reason. I walk around any Little League complex or watch any Little League game and you'll hear multiple parents when the. Or coaches, when the count gets to three, one or two or whatever. Make it be perfect. Make it be perfect. And that takes. Takes you off the trigger right away. If a kid hears that, they're thinking, oh, it's gotta be perfect, and they go off of basically go right from the bat. Now you're waiting to see if it's a strike and then deciding to swing. And that's just not how the game works. You gotta get on the trigger early. I mean, I think the example I use in the book is there. I'm sure anybody listening to this watches their favorite team, major league team playing, gets frustrated when you know a Pete Alonso or you know, any, any of their favorite players chases the ball in the dirt. But there are a lot of major leaguers chasing balls all over the place. So why is that happening? Because they're aggressive. They're aggressive first. And I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind. And I just, it always. I cringe every time I hear the make it be perfect, make it be perfect. It's like, no, no, no, no. You got to stay on the trigger. You're in attack mode. And in younger ages, I think coaches everywhere just need and parents need to just be more willing to let their kids swing in a bad pitch and but stay maintain their aggressiveness and let them over time learn that that pitch isn't one I hit very well. But I'm going to stay aggressive and I'll over time learn to, to check off of my swing and go from yes, yes to no when it's a ball. But that, you know, it's, it's cliche. You hear yes, yes, no all the time. And the better coaches out there with youth teams are saying that a lot, which is great, but just to caution people from getting too passive and keeping that go mentality is critical.

C (23:04)

So for over that over time part, Matt, from a scout standpoint, we've talked about this before is just over time. What are we looking for as evaluators? It's the ability to make adjustments. And no better thing in swing take decisions. If we can see a hitter maturing with his swing take decisions, whether it be on video or in person, that, that is a huge.

C (23:30)

Light will go off for evaluators. Wow. Do you see that he's making adjustments. That's great.

A (23:35)

What I'm learning and I love starts.

B (23:37)

With staying on go for like even with pro guys we have in every organization, I've had players who are chasing a little bit too much and every time we've told them to whatever. You got to take those pitches. Chase less or the messaging is too reduced. Chase centric. They lose who they are, they lose their aggressiveness. And I've seen it go the opposite way where they end up getting worse. So finding ways, hey, we're going to stay really aggressive. Let's target this part of the zone more when you do it. But I think the messaging there is so critical.

A (24:10)

Well, and I think again, Gus, you brought up adjustments too. Within adjustments is failure because you're adjusting from failing to success. And these players think it's like, I've got to go four for four every day. I've got to strike everybody out. So when they walk a guy or if they strike out, it's, oh, my gosh, now you know, this game is ruined. And no, what I'm hearing you say, Gus, is what you're paying attention to as a scout at that game or if you're a recruiting coordinator, it's, I want to see what the guy then does. The next at bat, does he make that adjustment? I want to look at the guy who just walked the bases loaded. What is he going to come back and do the next batter? That other stuff is already done. And so I think the thing that people need to understand is this whole concept and idea of making an adjustment within it is failure. So we're not avoiding failure. It's how we're responding to it that is the most important thing.

C (25:03)

Yeah. From pitch to pitch, game to game, day to day, season to season, we're building history as evaluators. And I think I've become much more aware of, with all the noise that we all face, whether we're athletes or just human beings, is, are you able to center yourself and breathe? I think in. My brother and I have talked about this a lot in the athletic space. Nothing tougher than hitting major league pitching, especially with these bullpens that are coming out in the fifth inning now. And. But. And you're going to fail, but are you able to center yourself and regroup and stay prioritizing process? If that. If we're two words that have come out with Hughes talk here, it's prioritizing process over the results.

A (25:50)

Hugh, let me ask you this, because if a parent is listening to this and they're the parent that you described earlier, which is yelling at their kid, swing at the perfect pitch or wait for the perfect pitch. What is some. What is something better? And it's not that there's like a perfect word, but like, what is a more appropriate thing that they could remind their kid of? And I'm not saying that's ever in the middle of an at bat, but maybe after a game that this mom or dad could do that would be more beneficial for the kid to really kind of wrestle with and think about.

B (26:25)

Yeah, I think the simplest way to do it is just, you know, what was your plan there?

A (26:29)

What.

B (26:29)

What were you trying to do? Just start with that question and then build off of that. If they're like, well, I mean, I Was, I was trying, I knew he was going to throw a fastball. I was trying to drive it right back at him. Okay, then that's, that's a pretty simple approach. And if, if it turned out that they took a fastball right down the middle, you got to, you know, drill down from there on. Okay, where, where what, what happened? And then you just keep asking questions, and eventually they're going to say, well, he throw that through that curveball to Jimmy the about before. So I just got curveball in the back of my head, and that's why I took that fastball. Perfect. You just, you just solved a huge problem. You've answered, you know, you've done it without screaming at the kid. That happens all the time to players where they just get the wrong pitch in the back of their head and they basically end up guessing and guess wrong. So it's an easy lesson there. Okay, well, you had the right plan. You just, you just got distracted for a sec. So just make sure you, like Gus is saying, use your breathing techniques or whatever to stay focused in that moment so you don't lose your plan and you stay on it. And then when you get that fastball, you're all over it. So I, I, that's the key to it.

A (27:34)

I think that's great. I just did a podcast, actually, about the difference for parents between expectations and agreements, and this is kind of in the same vein where, you know, oftentimes parents have these expectations that are not communicated with their kid, and instead, what they need to do is they need to make agreements with their son. And what that entails is having a conversation and asking questions. Instead of telling them, do this, ask them, what were you trying to do in that at bat? Right. That is going to create, in a sense, them lifting the mental weight and learning from the experience. When you tell your son, what are you doing? Why did you do that? What do you think he's going to say? Well, obviously, if I swung, I thought it was a pitch I could hit. Yeah, I made a mistake. And instead, they feel ridiculed and not. They're not working through it mentally in the way that they're ultimately going to have to be doing at the next level, whether that's in college or pro ball.

B (28:27)

Yeah, yeah. Just to put a button on that lesson in general, I just, I think if everybody just flipped their mindset, that's way better to be too aggressive at young ages than too passive. Way better. So they'll learn over time. They'll, they'll swing it enough fastballs over their head that they don't touch that that mental representation of that pitch gets built and built and built that eventually they'll stop the swing at that point, but you can't, but can't lose the aggressiveness. And yeah, I mean it's, it's so hard. Especially if you're a dad or a mom and a coach. You, when you're coaching, you get into coach mode. And coach mode is, can often be you're directing kids here and there. Even whether it's just to keep them in the dugout and stop sitting on each other's laps in the darn dugout. You're, you're in a very directorial mode. So it's hard to get, get to a question based coaching mode. But the more you can think, I don't do it well all the time at all. And there's, you're short on time and you want to give the direction and get out of there. So just reminding yourself, you know, that there's so much that, that you get paid off by asking questions instead of just shouting directives. It's, it's so helpful.

A (29:31)

Well, I know one of the biggest challenges parents have is they may even be thinking and you know, hearing this saying, like, I can't even ask my son any questions because anything I say to him, he's like blocking it out. And that's where it's like, all right, well when's the right time to do it? It's probably not immediately after a bad game, right? Maybe it's a little bit later. Maybe it's the coach that needs to hear this because the mom and dad can't be the one that says anything because he just doesn't want to listen to mom and dad. So it's the coach needing to be mindful of asking questions and not doing the same thing that mom and dad would do, which is just directing the ridicule towards them. So.

B (30:05)

And make sure you ask questions when they succeed too, because then it's not always connected to bad results, the bad outcomes. Yeah, I think that that can help too.

A (30:14)

Good call out. All right, so the next lesson. Teach them to coach themselves. This one I love. So foster self awareness so players diagnose and adjust independently. The ultimate goal is autonomy, not dependence on a coach or a parent.

A (30:30)

I think this is one of the most important ones because when you talk about a player who's ultimately successful long term, if you're living and dying by any individual coach that you have at any one level, well, guess what happens at some Point, if you're an amateur baseball, you're going to get older and maybe that coach isn't coaching you anymore. Maybe you get to the minor leagues and you get traded and now that coach who coached you that you loved isn't there anymore. Maybe you get to the big leagues and again, new coach, you can't live and die by whether that coach is the best coach you've ever had at your position. So you being able to coach yourself, at the end of the day, this is your career, right? And so for these young kids listening to this, Hugh, how would you recommend that they go about learning to be their best coach? How does that start?

B (31:20)

Yeah, that's where the questions are so important, where you're raising every time you're asking a question, instead of shouting a directive, you're raising that player's self awareness over what's going on. I'll cap it with a really simple example that I kind of switched in the last couple years with my son's 12 year old group. When I, when I help out with them, I would always, when they'd get the third, I'd be there at third base and be, hey, ground ball, you're going, fly ball, you're tagging. And I would just shout these directives and they're just in follow, follow mode, follow coach's direction and they're never thinking about that. And we just, we constantly screw up, whether we a tag up or whatever. And I just completely flipped the script. It was like when they get there, I'm going to say what are you doing on the ground ball? What are you doing on a fly ball? How many outs are there? And it got them to start thinking so much more about how they were going to do it themselves. And that was, I mean our results changed dramatically on, on how often we got the right read in those scenarios. And I would attribute it 100% to just flipping the coach script there, to asking quick questions instead of shouting out orders of what they're supposed to do.

A (32:24)

So on that note, Gus, so for you again, on the scouting side, you guys are paying attention to everything. When you see a play, like first off, what is it that you see when you watch a player to say that oh, this guy actually he can coach himself on some level, like he understands this game, he understands his game. What are maybe some of the things that you see that would tell you that a player actually does?

C (32:50)

Well, we first try to get at what they've been exposed to. We talk to their coaches on what they've been working on with them, if anything, how. If it's an advanced program or an advanced organization, how do they take to all the information that you're providing them with game planning or with drill work? That's. We try to get at their critical thinking. So yes, we want the best athletes, but we also want those instincts and those that can take information and apply it quickly to help them make those adjustments. And those who can raise their hand and say, I'm not getting this, like some humility too, just to have this is this cue is not working for me. And so just some self awareness that Hugh touched on earlier. We can get at through conversation with the player himself, getting at his environment and those that are around him, whether it be the coaches or the parents.

A (33:47)

Yeah, it's. It's amazing what humility does too, because I think a lot of times players think perfection is the goal. I need to, I need to give off this idea that I am this perfect player. Right. And in reality, and an example that I'll use and it's not related to baseball, but in football. Jalen Milroe, the old quarterback at Alabama, I read this article where when he was going through the combine, all of these teams were so impressed that in his answers to questions, he was articulating his weaknesses. And then he would go so far above and beyond to say, and this is what I'm doing to work on my weaknesses. And so you would take what seems to be a negative and he turns it into a positive. Compare that to another player who sits there and says, I don't have any weaknesses. I'm the best there's ever been. No one can do what I do. Like, at the end of the day, that player, you know, he's still going to fail. And if he thinks there's nothing that he needs to work on, well, how far, you know, behind somebody else is he eventually going to be down the road? And so I think players ultimately need to realize, look, humility is one of the greatest things that you can have if you can get curious with yourself and really ask yourself, like, how can I get better as a baseball player and not be afraid of it or hide it, but actually get it out into the open. What I think you're ultimately going to realize as a player is you're going to have people that are going to come alongside you and give you the tools to help you make those adjustments and make those changes. And everybody wants to see players perform better. Nobody wants to see failure. Right. We've all seen a kid fail and it's like, oh man, we feel, you know, secondhand embarrassment on some level. Like I didn't want to see that kid strikeout. It's his third strikeout of the game. Right.

C (35:30)

I also think it's just a level of accountability. When you are vulnerable, your teammates, whether they admit it or not, are just as vulnerable. Of course, I think they'll appreciate that. And no tougher environment than a clubhouse. Right. When you're with each other all season long for 162 games, it's hard dyke. And if you're accountable and you have potential to be a leader or at least at a minimum, a good, a good teammate, your teammates will pick up on that. Your coaches will pick up on that.

A (36:01)

Yeah. And if you can get it out into the open and identify it, it's going to turn into a strength long before any one of your teammates is going to be willing to do that. So if you can look at humility as actually a tool that you can employ, I think at the end of the day that's going to be one of the things that leads you to getting better sooner. And I don't know many kids at these young ages now in amateur baseball that are. Nobody wants to feel that way. Right. We're kind of trained to avoid it. So next lesson is go ahead. I'm sorry.

B (36:30)

I always add, I've spent a ton of time for coaches and for players diving in on that like confident humility spectrum and what the, what the ideal position on that spectrum is. And I think, I mean we see this in pro ball sometimes we're so focused on the development piece for a minor league or and their weaknesses and they got to get better at this. They're not going to get from a ball to high A to double A that players also, you can go too far down that road and players can also end up feeling like they're always broken. Like, ah, this is still not working. So balancing it out with knowing, hey, you still also have these superpowers and these huge strengths and constantly reinforcing the strengths while you are working on the humility, obviously you got to know the individual. If it's a guy that's got zero humility, then sure, that's where you can tip the scales more towards that end of the spectrum. But just making sure you also maintain guys confidence in a game that's trying to pound away at them with failure all day is critical too.

A (37:25)

Spot on. Yeah. So the next lesson is begin with the end in mind. Now this one for me, maybe a lot of the coaches Listening to this could get something from this. But reverse engineer practices from game demands. Clarify purpose to align efforts. Obviously, I know plenty of coaches who, you know, they'll have practices, and I know there are a lot of really good coaches out there, and some will have a specific plan with intent on what they're trying to accomplish. But. But Hugh, where does this lesson come from in your experience that you've seen in pro ball? Like, why is reverse engineering a practice? Why is that something that you find to be really valuable?

B (38:04)

Yeah, just. It's an industry in the private lesson world, in the professional development world in baseball, where, again, if you're, you know, people are constantly trying to work on their swing, work on parts of the game, and we have all these training tools and all these, you know, facilities that are meant to help with that. What gets lost there is working backwards from game results to be like, is this something I should actually be working on? You know, you can end up in a cage, be hitting with a guy who's a pretty good hitter, doing. Maybe you're doing a lesson with him and you and another guy with a coach, and that guy has a leg kick, and you're like, hey, that leg kick looks pretty good. That guy hits, is hitting the heck out of the ball. You start doing a leg kick. Well, does that connect back to something that's happening to you in the game that you need to fix? Is your timing off and you need the leg kick because you're late on fastball? Sure. If that's the reason you do it and you work backwards from something that's going on on the field, then that. That makes a lot of sense. But I think just. It's so often forgotten to just make sure you're connecting what you're working on to what you're seeing show up on the field when you play each. Each whatever weekend or when you're playing more during the week. So just. Yeah. Working backwards from the game.

B (39:15)

And then building all your practice designs off of. If you're swinging and missing under a bunch of high fastballs, most of your practice can be around working on the high fastball. It's. The game has showed you that that is a weakness that's being exposed more than you probably want it to be. So work backwards from that to fix it instead of just randomly going to a lesson, working a. He didn't like your first swing off the tee. So you end up working on something that's totally disconnected from what's happening in the game.

A (39:42)

Yeah, I feel like a good thing for every player to kind of ask themselves before going to a practice or a coach to even ask themselves is like, why are we doing the thing that we're doing today? Like, what's actually. What are we trying to achieve? Right. Because I think you're absolutely right. If. If the goal is like, okay, I need to take a hundred swings today. All right, well, why. What are we trying to do in the cage with those a hundred swings? And I'll even use an example. Joey Votto, who was a client of ours, you know, he would. And everybody would know this about him the minute he would step foot in a stadium. Like, he was in go mode. Like, just completely different intention, completely focused on what his task was that day. And every single swing he took in a batting cage was 100% effort. Now, there are probably some people out there that'd be like, all right, well, let's slow down a little bit. But I think it's more about his intention was so clear that everybody knew when he was in the cage, he was working. There was no casual. Like, I'm just joking around. There was no jokes.

B (40:39)

Yeah.

A (40:39)

And I think that's something that a lot of these younger players, not that they need to duplicate what Joey did, but really just think about, how am I going about my cage work? How am I going about my bullpens? What is the intention? Why am I doing the thing that I'm doing? And if your coach isn't the one that's going to do that for you, well, then you need to be the one that's thinking about this stuff. You need to be the one that has the plan.

B (41:01)

And it just makes all your reps that you do end up taking in practice so much more deliberate, so much more targeted, you know, and you're not just kind of taking swings to take swings. The anecdote I hit on in the. In the book that I. I think is perfect for this is this. I don't know if you remember the Hawaii baseball team probably a handful of years ago now that just torched the Little League World Series. I mean, they hit homer after homer, all the swing. It was like, I was so intrigued by. They're hitting homer, center, right, center. Like they were driving balls middle of the field. The ninth hitter was hitting homers. So I knew somebody who knew their coaches and reached out and was eventually able to get in touch with them. And it was such a cool conversation. Just because it's this begin with the end of mind. Totally the perfect example of it. They had been there the year before they didn't win it, they saw what was there. They saw really fast pitching. They saw those pitchers were always trying to target the outside part of the plate because sometimes umpires would give them that call and they didn't even have to throw it over the plate half the time. They saw that the best pitchers had that a good fastball and a mix. They knew exactly what they had to do well to get back there and win it. And that's all they focused on the next entire off season. Going into that they went and they got 13 year olds from the team before, so they throw harder than anything they'd ever seen. They got everybody up on top of the plate, basically both heels on the chalk line on close to the plate. So they knew everybody's throwing fastballs away. They went and got elbow pads so they wouldn't get hurt if the ball snuck inside on them. And they just drilled it and drilled it and drilled it. Faced those, those 13 year old pitchers every day throwing mix and hard trying to target the outside. And that, that was their practice regimen and it completely paid off. If you just go YouTube that team, it's hilarious watching how many home runs they hit and how they torched everybody.

A (42:56)

That oh yeah, I remember well. And Gus, I want to hearken back to something you said about adjustments. There's plenty of people who are listening to this, players even who think to themselves like, well, I don't have a process right now. I don't have that, that plan. And I know from a scouting perspective when you identify players like you obviously want to make sure that that guy does. But if you're that 15 year old kid right now or 14 year old kid and you don't have that yet, well, guess what this is, it's an opportunity to make an adjustment, right? We haven't done it yet. But now that you have the information, how do you use that information to now improve? Right? And I know for, for scouts, Gus, you know, I think sometimes all these players think, oh, I'm not going to get scouted until my senior year, right? Whether that's in high school, obviously in college, it's your junior year. But I know that not to be true because you guys are obviously at all of these other events, maybe watching seniors, but guess what you're going to see, you're going to see some other kid who's a sophomore or a junior and you've never seen him before and you're like, oh, that kid can play. And so you write the kid's name down so Even though you're not bearing down on that kid, there's still plenty of opportunities for these kids to be seen. And so then what happens when that 14 or 15 year old kid who you may have seen a couple years ago, now he's a senior and you're looking at somebody totally different and you're like, oh man, I can tell this guy's made some adjustments. He's actually made a lot of improvements.

C (44:21)

That's where building history is so important for us in scouting. And it's not just, I would argue, not just in person now with today's technology, the video, all these showcases and we just have so much more video at our disposal which affects the Marriott points for sure. We're not traveling quite as much.

A (44:41)

Right.

C (44:42)

But we just have so many more looks to complement all the data that we're also collecting on these athletes. So it's a very informed opinion. Still hard because you're betting on human beings. I can't say that we're necessarily that much more accurate, but we have a lot more reps and a lot more info at our disposal.

A (45:04)

So I think this next lesson may be the most controversial. Controversial meaning like people are going to be like, oh, they're going to be paying attention to it, which is value the test of time, trust enduring principles over trends, filter social media noise over for proven methods and be mindful of TikTok fads in these travel ball circles. And I know plenty of people where they are going down rabbit holes on whether it's YouTube, TikTok, all the social media and there's these new hitting coaches preaching this one way of hitting. So Hugh, what would you tell these, these parents who do that, who, or watch their son do that and every tournament it's like they're trying something new and they're tinkering constantly. What would you, what would you say to them?

B (45:49)

Yeah, it's, and it's, I don't blame any of them. It's hard. I, I get drawn in by the next TikTok infomercial as much as anybody else.

C (45:57)

It's, it's.

B (45:58)

I mean they do a good job selling. A lot of guys do a great job selling stuff and there's a lot of really quality content that might start off as a trend or a fad and ends up standing the test of time and being something that every organization's doing eventually. So it's not, this isn't a binary choice here of, you know, just do the older school stuff that's worked and completely reject the new school it's just both work. This chapter in particular is about, hey, we do know for sure if you want to trust what's most reliable. The stuff that's been around in the game from, you know, the early 1900s and is still there today is probably worth paying a lot of attention to because it's worked for a really long time. So that's just, it's just a reminder that that's the more reliable stuff. And you know, just talking to so many players in, at the major league level, every one of them talks about having a foundation built as a kid that was, you know, on the fundamentals, on the, you know, getting the routines right and millions of ground balls and millions of swings and, you know, they're the foundational part of the game is, is always going to be incredibly important. And just it's easy to forget that when you get caught on the, the most recent Instagram video that lures you in.

A (47:08)

So, yeah, I mean, we represented Josh Donaldson and I feel like, you know, at one point he was like the poster child for, oh, like swing like Josh Donaldson, right. There's this guy who's not the biggest, not necessarily the strongest, even though JD Was a freak athlete and extremely, extremely strong. But it was like everybody needed to duplicate the leg kick. Him and Jose Batista. And sure enough, what we all saw happen was, you know, you may have perfected the leg kick in a batting cage the minute you go into, you know, a game and all of a sudden you can't get your timing down, you're not replicating it enough. And so then you try something new and then you go on to the next thing. And so yeah, these, these kind of fads and these trends have popped up for the last 20 years. Even more reason why I feel like a lot of these players do need to be mindful of like not every swing, not every different trend is meant for every single different body type. And Gus, for you, what do you think when you go watch a kid play and you see a kid who's changing his mechanics or tinkering with his mechanics consistently, what message does that send?

C (48:17)

Well, you have to ask questions and dig a little deeper. Why is this happening day to day or at bat to a bat? Does he trust himself? Is he getting over coached what's going on in his environment that is leading to this? And if you can get at that, it helps get a better feel for what exactly this player is dealing with in his environment or within his own head.

A (48:43)

Yeah, well, and I think this leads perfectly to the next Lesson which is always individualize. Right. Which Hugh, I know you talked about in the book. But, like, tailor your unique needs, your body, your learning style, and avoid this one size fits all approach.

A (48:59)

You know, I think a challenge sometimes is a kid may go to a particular hitting coach who tends to preach really, this one way of hitting. And so maybe this message isn't necessarily to the kid or the dad or the mom, it's to the coach who does do that. What would you say to a coach who thinks there's only, like, this one way to hit mechanically?

B (49:24)

Yeah, I mean that. And there's a lot of coaches out there that are doing better with that. And I think, you know, there's some groups out there that are really pushing the individuality of movement, you know, profiles and how humans are so different. You're seeing it more at the pro level, but that is starting to trickle down to youth levels. But, you know, like, it goes right back to the Instagram thing. You see, you know, a drill or a trick or, you know, a device that a pro coach posts on on Instagram. You think, oh, that's going to. Yeah, it might be the right tool for the right guy, but not, not necessarily for everybody. So just, you know, just keeping in mind that everybody is different and not everything is going to connect with every player. And just being this doesn't mean you can't try some things. But, you know, don't be afraid to pull the plug if it doesn't seem like it's resonating with the player quickly. So, yeah, just, it's, it's. Everybody moves so differently, Everybody thinks so differently. So the one size fits all thing just almost never works in baseball.

A (50:22)

Well, and this may be a question for both of you guys, but when you get a guy in pro ball who swings a certain way and maybe you're watching a swing and you're just like, man, this isn't going to translate in the big leagues. Right. For whatever reason, how challenging is that to deal with? Because maybe this kid's been swinging like this and it's just what he's always done. And to his credit, he could point to his stats and say, yeah, but it works, right? Maybe he's in double A and he's like, it's never failed me. So what do you mean it's not going to work in the big leagues? Like, what would you. If that's ever happened. I know that it's. It's happened because I've obviously had guys who have gone through it. But when you've Seen stuff like that, I guess talk a little bit about what you see and how you handle that situation.

B (51:05)

Yeah, I mean, that, that definitely does happen. I think it goes back to why working backwards from the game is so important. If a guy has not been exposed yet, there probably, there probably isn't a reason to fix it until that blog gets exposed. Now, obviously, if you have seen a lot of major league baseball and can, can bring that experience to a minor league player, for example, or if you've seen a lot of college baseball and can bring an example to a high school player where, hey, that you, you're very confident that that's not going to work for them when they get to a higher level, then your sale, your sales pitch better be really compelling because if the player is not bought in on making the change, it's not going to work anyway. So getting the player to buy in because they believe. Okay, that makes sense. I've been exposed enough on that pitch. You know, whether it's a high fastball or whatever, that I buy into this can help me solve that problem. But if nothing's showing up on the field, again, work backwards in the game. If nothing is showing up on the field, that's showing that they can't do it this way. I'd be really, really hesitant to make big changes. It's really hard to predict how a human can, can organize themselves in a different environment to find ways to succeed. So I'll let some guys, as many guys have, you know, been able to predict that they're going to struggle. There have been a lot of players out there that people thought they were going to struggle when they got to the major leagues and they didn't. So just, you know, approaching that one carefully is huge.

C (52:36)

And when we're training evaluators, we're very careful. The big disclaimers, there are no absolutes. They come in different shapes and sizes with things that may not look right. We're not trying to cookie cut our players and it's okay if they're smaller or I remember they left back in the day at the Pedroia selection. Or Hunter Pence had a lot of moving parts right in that swing. It looked like he was in black and white footage. They don't all look the same, but like digging deeper, looking at the performance history, reverse engineering from the games, what is the game revealing in their performance that would suggest that this won't play at higher levels?

A (53:20)

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. All right, so I'm going to skip ahead because we only have a few minutes Left. I want to go to the technique chapter. Okay. Because the technique chapter, the core ideas here focus on fundamentals, alignment, adjustability, sequencing for depth, direction and swings.

A (53:38)

I guess my question for you, Hugh, is, you know, players and coaches oftentimes can get really overwhelmed by the mechanics, kind of like we've been talking about.

A (53:48)

I know that you break it down and you really talk about like pillars.

A (53:53)

Like alignment, as an example. What do you mean by that? Like, when. How do you take something that is extremely complex, like a hitter's mechanics, and how do you teach it in a way where they're focused on the things that matter?

B (54:08)

Yeah. So that chapter was by far the most challenging. I went back and forth on whether it was even worth including because it's so hard. Like, we just spent 10 minutes talking about how important it is to individualize things and how there's a lot of different major league players skinning the cat of offense in different ways. So it's, it's, it's really. It was a really tricky chapter to write. I tried to boil it down to the simplest things that seem to. That I've seen apply across as many major league hitters as. As I, I could. And you know, I got most anybody that's a baseball fan has probably seen that meme or that picture of. Of all those player hitters at launch position. Those players, almost everybody is in a pretty similar position. So I, I tried to work backwards from that. There's there many guys that when they get ready to actually launch the bat, are in a drastically different position than all the other top hitters in the game. So just working back from the, you know, the simple things that go into basically getting to that position and where you at, you know, start your swing from and building off of that. So that, that was the alignment piece was just making sure your, your body and your batter, you know, in as good a position as they can be when you go to move into the hitting zone with that bat, that they work well together and make, make the hitting task, you know, seem as easy as it can be and more efficient, you know, at youth levels. You'll see right off the bat, if you just focus on that, a kid goes to fire instead of being in a good position with his hand, the bat is still way tipped out when he's going to fire. And it's very clear, like he's just not giving himself a chance to even get that bat on playing with the pitch when it's, you know, deeper in the zone. So really simple was, was meant to Be a really simple way to just look at a few basic things right before they fire the bat that usually signal alignment, that that's easy to. To use in a game.

A (56:10)

And, Gus, from a scouting perspective, when we talk about.

A (56:16)

You know, process. Right. What can you say? Cause you've obviously seen guys come from the amateur level and then move on through the professional ranks. And some of the best hitters, let's just say as an amateur, maybe don't develop into being the player that that organization thought they would be. How much of the time is that related to? Well, they didn't have a process.

C (56:39)

It could be, and we're just trying to. A lot of times our scouts are best at identifying some talent changes or mechanical changes that might lead to something better than what we're currently seeing and so that the data might not reveal. And so those are the types of things we're looking to complement what we're already gathering with the measurables. So if we see something with the mechanic change, like an introduction of a leg kick or maybe it's a body change because he applied himself differently in the off season or got exposed to different training, that type of stuff, we're constantly trying to look for what we call talent changes.

A (57:23)

Yeah. Okay.

C (57:24)

And therefore, maybe the player is more available when the guy's dominating and everyone knows about them. They're hard. Harder to acquire, obviously.

A (57:34)

Yeah, of course. All right. So as we wrap up, and I would be remiss not to come back to your charity, Gus, so I want to touch on that, but before I do, I want to leave everybody with something that you have, Hugh, at the very end of your book. And I just want to read it for everybody so they hear what you say. Is if there's one idea I hope you take from this book, it's that great coaching, especially when it involves your own kids, isn't about finding shortcuts or magic formulas. It's about building something steady, layer by layer over time. It's about mastering the fundamentals, teaching them how to think instead of what to think and creating environments or learning growth and confidence happens naturally. And then you actually have a bonus section. And for everybody listening. And I'll put this on our YouTube and our Instagram. If you want his guide, there's essentially like these seven takeaways.

A (58:33)

DM Me guide on Instagram. And I will send you this list, but I want to read this very last section here that you have that talks, I think, kind of phrases coach perfectly. And you have the original meaning of the word coach. Comes from the old horse drawn carriage. Excuse me, the old horse drawn carriages that carried people from one place to another. That's your job, too, to guide, not control. You're carrying players along their development journey, not dragging them there. And I feel like that is absolutely perfect. And then your final thought is, if your child or player loves the game more at 18 than they did at 8, you've won. That's the real scoreboard. And I feel like that is a perfect way to end. Kind of like not only this conversation, but more importantly, as we go into the future. We've all seen parents who, you know, to no fault of their own, they want what's best for their kids. At the end of the day, that is what they're trying to achieve. They want to help their son maximize his opportunity, live out his dream. I just think sometimes we all could kind of get lost in the shuffle a little bit and go down these rabbit holes and think that we've got to control all this stuff. At the end of the day, we want to make sure that your son is growing as a man. He's enjoying the game that he's playing. And so if he's having more fun at 18 than he is at 8, then that is certainly a win. Thank you both for being here, obviously. Gus, tell us about your charity and how can we we help? Because I certainly don't need to have you back on the podcast again and then getting called out for not doing my part.

C (60:08)

No, I've been overexposed with this podcast.

A (60:11)

So I appreciate it's not just in baseball. It's also. Yeah. In charitable work.

C (60:16)

But I'm also shameless. So I am Spreading orange.

B (60:18)

Yeah.

A (60:18)

Give the shameless plug right here.

C (60:21)

Spreading orange. For the group that I work with, we joined, my family and I joined over a year ago, Ms. For Ms. So ms, the number four ms, helping those that are fighting the disease, multiple sclerosis that I also have. I was diagnosed back in 21 and been working through that challenge with a lot of other Ms. Warriors. And we're just trying to not only invest in research to someday come up with a cure, but also find those that are in need that don't have the resources to deal with the adversity that comes with the disease and try to help them out when we can. So Holly, my wife, and my girls are all very proud to have joined that group. And hopefully you and Hugh can join us next year for that event.

A (61:11)

And what's the website? Guess. Msforms.org okay, I'll put it on the show Notes, too. So if anybody wants to check it out.

C (61:20)

Always appreciate that and just wanted to wish you guys a happy holiday. And yeah, Matt, thanks for having me. And I'm glad you were able to bring Hugh into this conversation. It's important. He's coached at every level. And so I just thought. And you agreed that you'd have a really interesting perspective.

A (61:38)

So I know I'm gonna get a bunch of messages about the book. Do you have any idea when it's gonna be out? Do we know yet? Or. It's still. You're still working through it?

B (61:47)

Yeah, it's not. Nothing final yet. There's, you know, send it out to some agencies, and one agency in particular is. Is interested in helping develop it. So they're. They're trying to finalize that development process of it. But so hopefully in the next few months, we'll. We'll get something wrapped up and out that people can get that. Get to. But yeah, that.

C (62:12)

That's.

B (62:13)

We're getting there. We're close.

A (62:14)

No.

C (62:15)

And again, we can get Morgan Free. Morgan Freeman as the voice for the book on tape, although we don't use tapes anymore.

A (62:22)

Yeah, the audiobook.

C (62:24)

Yeah, audio.

B (62:24)

Way to get Morgan Freeman to do the audiobook. I'm all in.

A (62:28)

That's amazing. Hey, you never know with AI. You could probably replicate it or get something close to it.

A (62:34)

No, but I. Look, having gone through the material that we just went through, and obviously me. And again, for everybody who wants to see the parent guide, you know, you bring up some. Some really, really important subjects that I think undoubtedly will make parents and coaches tremendously better and in turn, the players. So this is something that I think is important for kind of the next generation to receive. So kudos to you for writing it. I know that's not easy, and thank you both for taking the time.

B (63:03)

Yeah, thanks, man. Yeah, I mean, it's not. It's nothing revolutionary. It's stuff I screw up still to this day. And it's more just to help remind. Remind you to get. Get back away from the emotions of the game and back to the things that may actually move the needle for guys. I don't know if you saw the. The Rick Patino clip of him crushing his team in the locker room after the. After the last game.

A (63:23)

I haven't.

C (63:24)

It's great.

B (63:25)

It's got. It's got a little bit viral. He just, you know, they had a tough half or a game, and he's just crushing. What. Like, what. What is what. Who raised you guys like what is going on with you, Gu? Where is some show me some toughness. But my point to that is I feel like more and more coaches at the higher levels in college and everywhere are going to be looking for players who can separate themselves with some of these skills. And that's sort of hopefully the book will help parents cultivate that and you know, help help players stand out because they're doing some of these things the right way and it'll really stand out to, you know, high school coaches, college coaches and pro scouts like us though.

A (64:02)

Well, and let me know when it's when you got it, you know, to the finishing stage because I'd love either have you back on or even do whatever I can to help promote the book because yeah, it's a no brainer.

C (64:12)

Thank you. Appreciate it.

A (64:13)

Qubon brothers, appreciate your time boys.

B (64:16)

Thanks man.

A (64:16)

We'll see you.