← Youth Inc. with Greg Olsen
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- [00:00]
Greg Olson
What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode here on youthink. Really excited for today's guest, Rob Freeman, AKA the Pitching Ninja, author of a new book, unhittable How Technology Mavericks and innovators Engineered Baseball's New Era of Pitching dominance. Really fun conversation, a really fun guy. His content's incredible. Huge following, little bit of fun, little bit of education all wrapped up into one. So really excited to chat with Rob today, AKA the Pitching ninja. Youth sports in America are at a crossroads, and I'm here to help lead the conversation forward. I'm Greg Olson. Each week we're sitting down with top athletes, coaches, and more to talk about what's working, what's broken, and what's next. Welcome to YOU Think.
- [00:50]
Podcast Host/Interviewer
Hey, everyone. And welcome back to another episode of you Think, Greg. Hope you're doing well. Let's get right into it. First off, your son TJ's youth baseball team won a tournament a couple weekends back. I have to ask, how was it?
- [01:03]
Greg Olson
Yeah, I think overall we had a. We had a good weekend. It was a big tournament. There were some really good teams in it. We didn't play particularly well on Saturday. We went one and one in pool play. We won our first game. Didn't think we played great. You guys have heard me say this before. Like, we don't coach the scoreboard. Like, there's games that we've won that I felt like we haven't played well and we coached that way and there's games that we lost and, you know, maybe the other team was just better than us, but actually felt like the kids played pretty well and we'll have it. So the scoreboard doesn't really dictate how we feel good or bad about our team. So Saturday, overall, we lost the second game, didn't pitch well. Just. Just weren't. We weren't ourselves. But I think what I was most proud about, the message that we gave the kids Saturday night before we left the fields, if we want to win this thing, we got to play three games tomorrow anyway. So whether we were 2 and O in the 1 seed or 1 and 1 in the 6 seed, we still have a long day tomorrow. And the way it worked out, we actually played in the. In the quarterfinals, the round of eight. We actually played the team that beat us on Saturday. So I think that was a really good way to kind of lock back in and get back to work Sunday morning so we're able to beat them. Played a really good team in the semifinals. A team that's beaten us before. They Beat us for a championship back in the fall. We've played them a bunch. Really good coach, really good group of boys. A lot of kids that we know well that go to school with us. So that was a, that was a good game. I thought our boys played about as well as we could have asked them to play. Got a great pitching performance. We hit the ball really well and then played a really good team in the championship. But it was a long, it was a long day. We were out there like 12 hours, played three games, two of them went the distance to seven innings. So proud of the boys. Long hot day. Played some really good competitive team, saw some really good arms and overall just happy with the way our boys were able to compete. Now as we start building for our two, two big events in June, Rob, I got to tell you this great story. So I'm driving to school today. My calendar comes up on like my carplay on like the dashboard. So it'll say, you know, meeting or whatever and it says, you think interview. So my 13 year old son, who doesn't miss a thing that goes on on the Internet, he goes, oh, dad, who are you interviewing at 9:30? I said, oh, I'm actually interviewing the pitching Ninja. He goes, what? I said, yeah. I said, you know who that is? He goes, of course I know who that is. I follow. I've seen everyone. So just so you know, to a 13 year old boy, it was like I was interviewing the biggest celebrity in the world. So, Rob Friedman, the Pitching Ninja. Welcome to you think.
- [03:35]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
My pleasure. That was a great setup. I can't live up to it.
- [03:38]
Greg Olson
We're super pumped for you to be here, man. I obviously we're deep in the baseball world. We all see your videos, the viral clips, the, you know, the, the tunnel and the, and the different pitch compilation, like all this stuff that you do. But before we dive into pitching and arm care and all the kind of hot button topics around the, the game of baseball at the young level, I want to start from scratch. Like, how do you become the pitching Ninja? Like, what is the origin story for this brand and this platform that you've been able to build?
- [04:07]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Dude, how I became the pitching Ninja, I have no idea. Like, I didn't start out wanting to do any of this. Like I was just a dad who was coaching, who grew up like anybody else, loved baseball, wasn't particularly great at it. But because like I would sit by the field and you know, mind my own business, take pictures during the game, give them the parents and they were like, you Pick out a lot of good stuff with their mechanics. Did you ever think about coaching? And I'm like, dude, I wasn't a great player. I don't know. And they're like, but you're good with kids. So I got suckered into coaching, and it was fantastic. And I kept. But for me, being a lawyer, like, I kept asking questions of folks because I wanted to learn what I didn't get taught. And I happened to come up with a same group of folks that are changing baseball today, like Kyle Bode at Driveline, Ben Brewster at Tread Athletics, Eric Cressy, Matt Blake, who's pitching coach for the Yankees. We were all on this message board together, and then later on X together, and I just kept sharing ideas that I would learn from them, and it just kept going from there. And again, I have no idea how I got here, but it's been great.
- [05:14]
Greg Olson
So you mentioned Ben and tread. So I actually gotten to know Cohen, the owner of tread. We live 15 minutes from Tread. So my boys are very fortunate. They're there probably at least once a week, and they work out and they're teaching mechanics and different. So obviously super lucky living here in Charlotte to have access to, like you said, you. You want access to people that know more than you do. And along the way, you try to steal all the really good points and try to implement them.
- [05:42]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
So one of the things about Ben, Ben Brewster and Cohen is I know Ben since he was like, 16 because he was posting on these boards. And the reason why he ended up working with my son as one of the very, like, first five, maybe the first remote client, because I knew him from the board and was like, this guy knows his stuff, and he started with nothing. So cone I know from way back when to those guys are. They do great stuff.
- [06:06]
Greg Olson
All right, so you've built this brand now. And. And we all see the fun highlights of the, you know, the knuckle balls. And I love when you do the overlays and you just, you know, talk about how hard hitting is, and you just show ball comes out of the same spot, and then it's just craziness from the different pitches. But what's your objective? Like, give us at. At its core, what are. Is it just entertainment? Is it education? Like, what is the core model that you hope people that follow your. Your content follow Pitching Ninja. Like, what do you hope the main takeaway is from anyone that consumes your content regularly?
- [06:39]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
So I think of it more like infotainment, for one. So if you want to look at it Just to see nasty pitches and to say, boy, this is crazy, that's great. If you want to look at and just see the funny moments that happen in a game, that's great. Whatever you like about baseball. But I originally started and my main goal is to provide, provide kind of free information for coaches and players, teaching them why this tunnel works or showing them visually how these things work, sharing grips and stuff. Because I don't think baseball should be a rich kids sport. And I think it ended up being one in the United States where in other places you don't need anything. You can play with a paper bag and you know, go out on the streets in Dominican Republic and here you feel like you have to have a $500 glove, a $500 bat, you know, $3,500, $5,000 teams, all these showcases and coaches, you have to pay for coaching too. And it gets really expensive for people that don't have the means. And I want to provide something for everybody and to help grow the sport basically that way.
- [07:41]
Greg Olson
I do want to pick your brain and like really inform. A lot of our followers are baseball families. They're coaches, they're parents and there's so much noise out there. There's so much information about specialization. Playing year round, how much time should kids take off pitch counts, how many days a weekend? You know, at some of these two and three day tournaments you got kids throwing every single day. So I want to break down some of these big and just kind of rely on your expertise again a little bit more now on like the, the nitty gritty information. So big picture, we, we're living this every single weekend. I'm coaching my, my younger son's 13 year team. I have a 14 year old boy who pitches on, on a different team. They both throw every week and they both pitch. So let's start with give us the healthiest way for a coach to manage an individual kid over the course of a weekend. Is it how many total pitches? Is it the types of pitches? Is it how many days? Like give us a sense of how can we responsibly compete and teach kids how to compete and try to win and try to get better, but also make sure, we're trying to make sure these kids have a high school career and for some of them beyond.
- [08:54]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
There is really no magic answer to this. It's an art form rather than a science. But what I would look at as a coach who has coached and also as a parent, you have to know your individual player for one, know how much they've thrown know how they've worked up to a game, if they're all fully built up or if you know, if they throw in the off season for one. Some do, some don't. You, you have to design a plan customized for each player. One size fits all doesn't work. And different people might experience injuries at different rates. They might be honest with you at different rates too. Like as a coach, if you ask a pitcher if he wants to leave a game, if he has one more inning in him, what do you think they're going to say? Of course, 99% of the time the answer is yes. So you're basically playing mind games with a 12 or 14 year old. You have to know the player and you have to make the decision and that's on you. I would err on the side of being a little more protective because they're kids and they can't really speak for themselves. But by the same token, build them up smartly so you don't want to baby them all the time and then throw them into the fire and say you're going to throw 100 pitches this weekend when they've only thrown 15 in every other game. Because just think about, you're going to, you're going to deadlift after not deadlifting for 10 years and you say I'm going to. You know, I used to be able to do 500, let me do it. You're going to break your back if you try to lift £500 out of the blue. Same thing with pitching. You got to build up smartly.
- [10:17]
Greg Olson
So along those lines, like something that we see a lot and we try not to do this but at times you don't have a choice, right? So there's, you can have a really big roster, right? You can carry a really big roster and you know, you got 15 plus kids. And at our level we don't have like POS or anything like that at this age yet I know at some of the high schools that have the bigger the high school levels, is it separate conversation? We're not there quite yet. But like you gotta get through pool play, right? Where you're still trying to manage. I want a decent seed. Maybe there's a buy I could play one less game in bracket play. So a lot of teams are going to throw starters as like openers on say Saturday of a weekend tournament. But it's only 20 to 30 pitches. But they're getting hot, they're warming up, maybe it's an inning or two. Then on Sunday they get their Start they're like a bracket play starter. Like we've always tried to avoid that. Like we've occasionally used a starter on Saturday to maybe come in and close the last out of an inning. Real limited work. But like in your experience is getting kids hot and throwing live pitches regardless of how many they're throwing in back to back days? Like is that something we should avoid? Should we try to just get kids hot once a weekend and then let them throw their 70, 65, 70 pitches and that's it? Like what is the best way to manage if they get 85 pitches a weekend? Is doing 85 in one day better than doing 20 and 60 again, no magic answer.
- [11:47]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
And it's going to depend on the kid and their, and how they recover and how stressful those pitches were the day before. I would prefer like usually if you have a Friday, Saturday, Sunday tournament, get it, you know, maybe closing out a Friday game, given a day of rest, 20 pitches on Friday and then you know the rest of the start on Sunday or ideally none of that and just have your pitcher pitch one time a week. It does take something out of it because you think about how many throws, we think about throws of how many pitches. But when you're throwing a warm up, you're still throwing. So we're not counting those warm up pitches as well. And you know, a pitcher can do this once or twice every once in a while usually, but if you constantly are putting that pressure on somebody again, you're risking wearing down. There is not a magic answer. I can't say that there is. I'd be lying. But to me once a week would be better.
- [12:39]
Greg Olson
Yeah, that's what we ultimately try to do. We try to have like our guys that are our Saturday, you know, pool play guys and you know, some of them might be catchers or shortstops where you can only ask them to throw so much over the course of the weekend. And then we have like our guys that, you know, your, your game one on Sunday, your game two, so on and so forth and 100% when you don't carry a 15, 16 man roster and you only have 12, at some point somebody has to pitch, right? At some point someone needs to get on the mound and throw it. So it is a little bit of a, of a game where you are trying to be competitive, you are trying to throw competitive innings, but also make sure you do keep the long term interest of the kid. And like you said, it is more of an art than a science.
- [13:25]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
It definitely is. And I don't Want to shame anybody into be like, being not competitive because to me, you want your kids to be bought in. You gain a lot by being competitive as a, as a player, a parent, a person at work. By being competitive with yourself or being competitive with somebody else. If you do it the right way, you're going to be better. Competition is great and you should try to win, and kids should have pride in their team. So if you're constantly losing, trying to be safe, that's also no way to, to compete. But I, you know, again, I don't want to pretend like there's one right way because you have a big roster and maybe you do throw kids every, you know, once a week, and then some kid doesn't get the pitch that week, you're going to get complaints. If you have a small roster and someone gets overworked, you're going to get complaints. It is very tough to be a coach.
- [14:11]
Greg Olson
Oh, especially in today's world, right?
- [14:13]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Yes, totally.
- [14:14]
Greg Olson
Yeah. All those things you just mentioned are super real. I mean, we've had weekends where, you know, let's say it's your, your best pitcher on your roster, like, who you would consider to be, like, your main start. All of a sudden you run into a really good team. And the first, you've been saving that kid for the semifinals or the championship, and all of a sudden you run into a great arm. And the first day a bracket play, some team that you didn't know, but they got one dude on the mound who can beat you, and all of a sudden you end your weekend and your two best pitchers have never stepped foot on the mound.
- [14:44]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
I've seen that team and been both of those teams, right?
- [14:47]
Greg Olson
And then that team loses by a hundred the next round because they only got one arm that can beat you. So it's, it's a fascinating thing that's just super helpful. Again, I'm asking mostly for myself as I'm making decisions and laying in bed at night trying to figure out, like, are we doing these kids justice? Like, are we, are we doing them a good, you know, a disservice if we are so concerned with pitching competitive innings. But I do want to transition to something else because I think in today's day and age, baseball in general, but really all sports at all levels has become very complicated, right? There's analytics, we got spin rates on kids that are 10 years old going to these showcases. And me personally, I think a lot of it has gotten out of control. So when, if you were advising a young, a parent with a Young pitcher, like talk to me about their development. Are we working on locations? Are we worried about spin rate and shapes or like at what age do those things start to be built more into their midweek bullpens, their off season training and then ultimately in competition as opposed to technique, balance, plan, like where, where should we be at different ages and how we start diving into more of like the metrics based coaching.
- [16:04]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Yeah, for, for me it all starts with being athletic. So the one thing you want to do, and this is why a radar gun can occasionally be your best training tool. Not to say you're gunning all the pitches and stuff for a young, really young kid, but you're doing things like long tossing, throwing just for sometimes just freely throw for V just to see what your body can do, feel comfortable with your body and talk about competition. A radar gun creates competition. It's not the be all and end all. And you shouldn't do it all the time because it creates stress, but doing it occasionally let your kid know where they are. And in the end making a high school team and all that, especially beyond that velo becomes more and more important. So knowing how your body moves and creating that platform is a good thing. So being athletic, playing multiple positions, long tossing, things like that I would say are more important. Younger, when you get to, I'm thinking like early high school, I'd like to know where your spin rates are just so you can get used to shaping pitches and stuff. I'm not one of those guys who frown on teaching kids breaking pitches. I think it's. There's no real information that that hurts a pitcher per se, but to me, teaching a young kid spin takes away from their other development stuff because they can dominate with just spin. Young kids can't hit curveballs and you're gonna have the best 9 year old pitcher throwing curveballs, getting guys out and feel good about yourself. But when it comes down to it, is that a skill that's going to be important later on? Maybe less so than throwing hard. So to me bring that on later. That's a high school thing all the time. Throwing hard matters, but also locations matter. So when you're throwing, always have a purpose with your throws. If you watch the Japanese pitchers, Yoshinobi Yamamoto, he takes like 30 seconds between long toss throws even because not only is he trying to throw it far, he has a spot in mind and a feel in mind that he wants to feel his body go through as he throws it. So making every rep count to me is an important thing. Getting Body control and also hit it, trying to hit a spot, having a spot in mind. Is that helpful or might missing your question?
- [18:12]
Greg Olson
No, no, it's super helpful. I, I think that's fascinating to hear about like the breaks, it's, it's very similar to like how Olympic athletes train on their sprint days. They run high, high speed with long rest intervals before reputation repetition. Because the idea is you want as much, you want every single practice rep to be as close to full intent and full, you know, for them, you know, max speed, in this case velocity. So interesting, right? We all play catch before practice and we feel like we've bought into a pretty good throwing routine with our younger kids. Like obviously we do your traditional, you know, throwing, you know, arm warm ups and all that stuff. And then our throwing lines, they work themselves out to a long toss, they work themselves back, start their feet. We do a lot of like throw and catch on the runs. It's kind of like my football mindset. You know, you watch, you watch pregame in a football, you know, in a football game and after everyone does their state stationary static catching, what do they do? They do passing lines, they do throwing and catching on the run. So I, I, it dawned on me, I'm like, why don't we do that in baseball? How often do we catch a ball stationary and throw a ball? So we make the kids run and do a backhand throw on the run, then they do a forehand on the run and then they do a run right at the coach and catch and relay and we do some spin stuff, we do some stuff off the ground. To your point, athleticism, especially at the early age, is really the foundation of pitching or just throwing and catching in general.
- [19:39]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
No, absolutely. And what you just said is the way I would do it. That's why I think playing multiple sports is important not because of anything else other than number one, it reinforces competition. Number two, it's fun. Number three, you learn body control that you can bring to. Even if you want to be a baseball player, playing basketball, playing football, playing soccer, whatever it is, there are little moves you can do in those sports that translate to your pitching motion or your athletic or whatever your athletic endeavor is. Devin Williams, for example, is a soccer player and he mentioned how that helped him with his footwork when he's throwing. So yeah, 100. Keeping it athletic, keeping it fun, keeping it throw. I love that type of drill.
- [20:22]
Greg Olson
Yeah, we try to incorporate that as much as we can. And I'll be honest, a lot of this stuff that we see we see on social content of yourself or tread or like you know, driving some of these people that were just fortunate they're sharing things that we otherwise, you know, 10 years ago, five, even five years ago, we never would have had access to new ways of moving the needle forward and whatnot. So we've tried to steal from very smart people and try to implement understanding what we don't know. But you brought up the multi sport thing and this is not unique to where we live here in Charlotte. This is a national conversation. Where do you see the biggest kind of hurdle of why, why aren't more baseball players playing in football season? Is it fear of injury? Is it fear of missing out on the game reps? Of like, what do you think has changed? So yesterday the University of Miami was practicing at Charlotte Christian. They're in town for the ACC championship. And JD the head coach of Miami, we were talking and he was asking me, we got some really talented baseball players at our school and he's telling all these fun stories about him and A Rod and like five major league baseball players that all were on the football team junior and senior year combined when they were in high school down in Miami together. And you know, it's just, it's funny, like you don't hear those stories anymore. Like, where do you see that big shift? Like, when did you see it? And what do you think is at the root of why kids are not cross? You know, cross season playing and all those things.
- [21:58]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Some of it is on the kid and some of it is on the parents. Like some kids just, they, they just gravitate towards the sport. And to me that's healthy. If they want to do that, that's fine. I still would encourage them to take a look at other things that you don't know. But I don't want to take away from a kid's dream. I want to help amplify it. That being said, I think a lot of parents, there's a fear of missing out. You hear a kid or their friends are playing fall ball baseball and they don't, they're like, you know what, I kind of want to play baseball, I want to play football this year. But the parents think, you know, you're thinking scholarship, scholarship. Some parents think about the like, hey, I want to get my kid a scholarship. Other kids are, other parents are doing it because they want what's best for a kid and they think that their kid's going to miss out and fall behind if they don't play. So I think that that's A more charitable reason for them doing this. And that pressure exists now because of the money in the sport, both payoff as a major league player as well as coaches in the travel organizations. You know, they're, if they're going to have teams, they need players on the team. So they're going to try to encourage you and say, you know, if you miss out in the fall, you're not going to play in the spring. And then what do you do as a player? Well, I guess we got to play in this in the fall. So it's a combination of things. I'm not demonizing necessarily. You know, eventually specializing in a sport because you kind of have to. It's same thing, like, I'm not going to demonize being a po, but you're reducing your chances of doing other things. But if you, you know, if that's your dream, one thing, but otherwise keep in mind that there's so many other things to life and the sport itself than that, and why not take advantage of all of them? And, and also it also helps your body. Body command stuff can be helped by anything. So playing other sports is really valuable in that way.
- [23:43]
Greg Olson
Yeah.
- [23:44]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Obviously this is overused too, right?
- [23:47]
Greg Olson
Yeah. There's so many different levels to it and, and I get it. And I don't, I don't demonize anybody either. I don't take it personal. I don't look differently on those boys, but I, or, you know, or girls. Like, but in this case, like, I try to just educate and I try to just present them that if you do have adults, and especially if it's a coach, if they're telling you that you can't go do other things, my opinion is they're always telling you that not because it's in your best interest, it's typically because it's then their own self interest. Their team will be better. The summer schedule, like, yeah, if your kids are only like, we coach middle school football at our school, it's a K through 12 schools. And a lot of our kids play lacrosse. They play track. They do, obviously baseball. So when we're trying to do our spring workouts like we are today, I have kids, I have parents text me, hey, we have our last baseball game. We have our last lacrosse match. And you know what I'm saying, it's spring. It is lacrosse season. It is baseball season. Great. Like, we'll be here all summer and fall and what? And we'll be here when you get back. Like, I don't know if everyone is doing that right. So in the fall. In the fall, when it's football season, my message is there's no missing football practice for baseball. Right. In the spring, go for it. I get it. Fall. But I don't know how many coaches on the other side of that coin are saying, oh absolutely, go play football. Your spot is secure when you get back. Some dog. I don't think all of them do.
- [25:23]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Yeah, I, I don't think all of them do. I mean that was always my mentality too is, you know, you play whatever sports in season and I'm going to support you. And I guess in p. In their minds though, the parents are sitting there going, yeah, he's saying that my position's secure, but what if somebody else gets a lot of reps out and gets better and now I'm behind and I'm not going to play. Like they're not going to just play me if I'm not good. There's, there's just a fear among, among parents mostly and then it gets inputted onto the kids. I would way rather be a coach. Like you're saying, like you just, you have to be understanding. It's a kid's life and let them do what they're, what they're going to do.
- [25:59]
Greg Olson
One of the last couple things I want to ask you, all right. Someone comes to you with their 10 year old kid. He's now transitioning out of like the wreck ball. He's transitioning out of machine pitch and coach pitch at nine, nine years old. You know, his coach threw him on the mound and taught him how to come set and just throw it to the glove. And nine year old baseball can sometimes be very painful as they learn. Yes, but let's say now they're like 10, right? They're 10, 11. They've been on the field for a while now on the mound and you have a parent come to you and says I want my kid to learn how to pitch. Not worried about throwing hard. I'm not learning about. But I want them to learn the fundamental foundation from the set position to their body weight to understanding how to stay closed and hip short. Like all the foundational elements of pitching. What, what would that program, what would that week of work like? Where would you start?
- [26:52]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Yeah, that's a good question. There's a book by Derek Johnson that is a great overview on pitching in general. Like if you don't know anything about it and you just want the basic stuff, I would grab that book. It's a book that I have on my shelf somewhere over there. The way I would start. There's also a lot of videos on YouTube and stuff. If you want, if you want to teach your kid, there are, there are baseball schools online that can teach you just the, you know, how not to balk and stuff like that, how to, you know, stay athletic. To me, when I'm coaching as a coach, I'm trying to, for I'm looking at long run for players and I'm trying to teach them how to use their body, throw hard, long toss, all that stuff. But by the same token, they do need to learn the fundamentals. You could find a local, local pitching coach.
- [27:37]
Greg Olson
I want you to be the coach. I'm Dr. Dropping my kid off at your practice.
- [27:41]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
They're coming in here, I'm going to sit them on the rubber. I'm going to say, hey, you know, basically it's, it's like electricity. If you take your foot off, you can do anything. Once your foot's on, it's go time. So that's one thing. And then you know, basically going through and teaching them how to pause in a stretch position, teaching them how to go through a wind up, something athletic, unique to them. There's no one way to do it. So I'm going to see how the kid moves. For one, I am not going to give them instruction. I'm going to say what do you think a pitcher does? And then let's work backwards from there. So I'm going to start with what a kid does and then try to refine it from there. But also have the kid watch the game. So to me this is a fundamental thing as a parent and as a coach and the way I raise my own kid every year, no matter what it is, do something that you're in season, practice it for at least an hour, get 1% better every day at one thing, baseball wise. And if it's pitching, that's it. Watch games, that counts, throw that counts. Make sure you do your homework. Before that, do the pitching or piano, whatever you want to do. I don't care something for. Get better at it, then go off and you can do whatever you want. And I'm very, it's free time. I don't want to kill you. Like as a kid, you want your kid to be a kid. But you also as a parent, you have a unique obligation to help them keep their eye on a target and teach them the value of working hard. And to me that's the, the way I came up with it. Basically those three things, homework, practice your sport or whatever the activity is. And then you can do whatever. You play video games. I don't care.
- [29:18]
Greg Olson
Yeah, I love that. All right, last question. We ask a lot of our guests this. We've gotten some really unique answers over the years. I could, I won't tell you mine. You get the magic wand. We like hand you the magic wand and you're in charge. We're going to stick with baseball for right now. Just to stay on brand here. You get to make one universal rule. The entire country has to follow this rule in regards to how we operate the game of youth baseball. We're going to call it like high school and under. You can make any rule you want and every organization, parent, coach, player has to abide by it. That you think is in the best interest of the game, the future and moving it forward, what would it be?
- [30:00]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Personally, I would get rid of the drop third strike rule, but it drives me crazy. A kid throws a nasty pitch and at younger ages the kids can't catch it. And you're getting free consolation prizes. Getting first base.
- [30:11]
Greg Olson
You're the first person to ever give that one. That's good.
- [30:14]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
I had a feeling that would. Because that just sticks with my crawl. Like there's a skill level that you really can't achieve. Advance in those, in those situations, I don't think does anybody any good.
- [30:22]
Greg Olson
That's interesting.
- [30:23]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Yeah, I mean the other thing. So I. We played under these rules. Perfect game was having this unique tournament and it was. You start out with one strike and I think two balls, one strike. So you basically. And if you take a pitch, you're automatically out. You take a strike, you're automatically out. And it sped up games and created this game theory that was a ton of fun. So something like that, where you're putting a lot of pressure from pitch one on a hitter would be kind of fun. Just for me.
- [30:52]
Greg Olson
Yeah, it's like, it's like constraints. We had David Epstein, he wrote a really cool book that just came out called Inside the Box and it's literally on like constraint based learning.
- [31:02]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Yes.
- [31:02]
Greg Olson
And we actually, he was, he was our guest, I'd say like three or four weeks ago. And he was talking about exactly that. He's like, give them some sort of guardrail that asks them to operate within them and then just let them play. And you know, whether it's basketball, you're not allowed to use the backboard or whether, whether it's, you know, make up like kind of interesting. Different rules. So in this case, the count, the, the batter, you know, the batter's Approach in the box to what they can and can't do and let the kids adapt and figure it out. That's super fascinating. And so would you say that pitchers were more locked in to start the at bat knowing they're behind in the count?
- [31:41]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Totally. And you'd also see some first pitch, a lot of first pitch curveballs that would lock a hitter up. And it was hilarious. Like, so it became hitters caught on later, they were able to sit there and they, there's way more focus. Knowing what balls and strikes are watching, release, knowing that a pitcher might throw a curveball first pitch. It's a lot of fun. And also create a lot of gamesmanship in the pitcher too. And learning how to get that curveball over and maybe clipping the top of the zone. Whole bunch of skills brought out. I'm not saying play it all the time, but in practice it's a way to. It's a way to make it fun and unleash something.
- [32:17]
Greg Olson
Well, that's what I was gonna ask. So we do a lot of like live at bats with our guys just to, you know, over the course of a weekend, you only get so many at bats for the pitchers and the, and the hitters. Probably the best way to do live at bats a, it speeds it up. It doesn't take forever. You know, you got 12 guys that you're trying to either get on the mound or get in the box. It could take three hours. But just. But also, not only to speed it up but also to do what you're saying. Lock in the batter's approach early on. It's a 21 count. How do you approach it? Okay, pitcher, how are you going to get back into the count? What pitch can you throw on demand to get yourself back to even? There is an element of focus and approach there that's probably super, super impactful.
- [32:56]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
It is. And it's like what you Darvish told me one time is he throws sometimes with his left hand because it helps him feel how his body works. He learns something different by doing something different. It's the same thing. That's a constraint. And this is another constraint where you can learn something from whether it be your eye, a strategy, whatever it is. And then you become comfortable throwing a curveball at any counter. A hitter becomes comfortable spotting a curveball at any count. And you just learn something versus playing the normal rules. I think it's really an important thing.
- [33:27]
Greg Olson
That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, listen, Rob, I can't thank you enough. Your presence in the space Your presence in our own household obviously with two boys who know a lot about you. Just for you to come on here and just share, share your approach, share you know, your wisdom, your experiences, the fun of it, the education of it. You're doing so much great work. Appreciate you you coming on here with you think is just such a well respected voice in the field for our listeners and our athletes and our coaches that follow us here. This was a lot of fun. I was super pumped to hear that you were coming on.
- [34:02]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
My pleasure. And by the way, if anybody wants to learn like how pitching's developed over the years, I have a new book out unhittable.
- [34:09]
Greg Olson
Come on, plug it, let's go.
- [34:11]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
So you can learn like a lot. I go into some of this coaching stuff but I also touch on like what they're doing now in colleges and and major leagues that have made it's why the game looks so different. How pitchers are now engineered to be great and you could probably take something out of it even if you're not going to go into like be a professional baseball player. Most of the people I fit, I feature in the book loved baseball but weren't good players and they've all impacted the sport hugely. So it's another thing you can take out of it, another reason why the sports.
- [34:39]
Greg Olson
Give me, give me an example. No, that's fascinating. Give me, give me an example. Like give, give us one good story from there that that's what you're talking about.
- [34:46]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Yes. Barton Smith, he is a aerospace engineering professor at Utah State. Invent or discovered seam shifted wake which is the reason why certain pitches like two seamers or change ups or sweep.
- [35:00]
Greg Olson
What do you got? A clean. What do you got?
- [35:01]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
A clean fuego. I do. Yep, I have. This is an original queen clean fuego. I had it said to me when they first started up. So when he discovered this force on a baseball because he's just doing discovery, he liked baseball that makes on that because the seams are oriented a weird way. It makes the ball move in an unexpected manner. And now that is the reason why you see pitches move so nasty today. And this happened within the last five to seven years. So we went 200 years or however long it's been throwing thinking there was only one force on a baseball. This was discovered and that's why you're seeing so many wicked moving pitches. And this is a guy that did not play baseball at any level maybe past Little League.
- [35:48]
Greg Olson
So this is orientation. Now you have me fascinated. This is orientation of the seams in your Grip. This is the orientation of the seams at release.
- [35:57]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
It's. It's when it's. As it's spinning through space. If the seam you. Everybody thinks a two seamer moves, moves arm side because you're pronating it. It's actually the opposite. So guys like Tarek Scubal or Michael King or Nolan McLean who have nasty two seamers are actually. There's a slight cut that comes out of it, but it's because the ball, it causes the ball to rotate through the air with a seam orientation that is consistent. And the. When the air hits it, it's like a scuff and makes it move the other way. So you're throwing it, you're throwing it almost like a cutter, but it's moving the wrong way. Chris Sale throws his change up that way too. He cuts his change up and he was like, they told me to do this. I didn't know why it happened, but it moved the wrong way. So it was these guys. It's blowing their mind. And it's all they're throwing.
- [36:48]
Greg Olson
They're throwing changeups that move glove side
- [36:51]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
and cutters that move change up, that move arm side. But they're cutting the change up.
- [36:56]
Greg Olson
They're cutting it, but it's still moving arm side.
- [36:58]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
It's right. So it's moving armside. But they're not pronating it, they're cutting it and it's creating a spin on the ball, spin axis on the ball that makes it move hard glove side. Because as the air, as it travels through air, the air is hitting the seam because of the seams in a constant location and it's causing it to go the opposite direction.
- [37:17]
Greg Olson
That's fascinating.
- [37:18]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
It's really cool stuff. So that's what the book goes into, a lot of these discoveries and it goes into how Driveline started and how tread started. And, you know, the fact is, you know, Ben was a good baseball player, but he wasn't a major league baseball player. He is one of the smartest guys in the sport. Kyle Bode did not play at all professional baseball. He was a programmer, computer programmer. Very smart guy who just reverse engineered how people throw because he loved baseball and thought that we were behind in where in the way we understood mechanics. Tom House wasn't a great pitcher, but he became one of the most famous coaches in baseball history. So all of these guys building up to. I think I end it with mostly Paul Skeens, for example. I focus on wake. Wake is in your area. Wake as a college program, has a Whole chapter on their pitching lab in my book. So there's a bunch of cool things that as a parent or a coach or a player, you can get out of it. Just learn how, how the game has changed over the years. It's kind of crazy.
- [38:16]
Greg Olson
That is awesome. And we'll be sure to, to link to your book Unhittable How Technology Mavericks and Innovators Engineered Baseball's New Era of Pitching Dominance. Super fascinating. I'm picking it up as a dad who just loves learning this stuff. And again, a guy who didn't grow up playing a ton of competitive baseball didn't even play high school baseball. I've just gotten into loving the sport through coaching my kids and people ask me all the time like why do you spend so much time coaching baseball? Why don't you just go do football? And I'm like, I do football. I've done football. Like I've known that, I've done it for a long time. I actually get just as much if not more enjoyment because aside from the kids learning along the way, I'm learning just along with them because this is stuff that I don't take for granted. This is stuff that I didn't necessarily spend my life doing. So it's just as stimulating for me as I'm learning it in real time with a 13 year old kid.
- [39:11]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
You nailed it. And that is exactly, that's kind of what I was getting at in my book as well, that some of the greatest advancements are not from people that have played because they have a fresh perspective, everything's new to them and they're like, why don't we do it this way? So they're learning on the fly and sometimes break the rules and are better because of it. You're a better coach because you didn't play, mate. Like just think of Michael Jordan being a basketball coach. He's just going to say, do what I did. Why can't you do that?
- [39:39]
Greg Olson
Yeah, like exactly.
- [39:40]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
You want the guy that struggled or the guy that is learning it and invested in learning it like you are or like I did. Like I learned it because I'm motivated to teach the right thing. And you get way more out of coaching than you ever put it. Like it is, it is fantastic to watch the kids grow up, meet some fantastic parents. To me, travel was some of the most fun times of my life watching the kids and some of them made it to the major leagues and I'm, I root for them in the major leagues. It's fantastic.
- [40:08]
Greg Olson
Well, Rob Freeman, AKA the pitching Ninja author. You can make some of the greatest content on the Internet. All fans, especially in this house. So, Rob, I can't thank you enough, man. This was fascinating. I could have talked to you for two more hours, but we'll do an episode two. We'll come back after I, I dive into unhittable. Well, we'll have a little bit more like nerd. We'll nerd out on a little bit more of the analytics of it.
- [40:33]
Rob Freeman (Pitching Ninja)
Anytime, anytime.
- [40:34]
Greg Olson
Rob, thanks so much, man.
- [40:35]
Podcast Host/Interviewer
Now it's time for the part of the show where Greg answers questions that you, the listeners, submitted. As a reminder, DM us your questions on Instagram or email us@amaouth.ink. my 11 year old son is the youngest on his travel baseball team and he's starting to get noticeably less playing time over the last few weeks. He's not complaining, but I can tell it's wearing on him. Do I say something to the coach, talk to my son about it, or do I just let it play it out? I don't want to be that parent, but I also don't want him to think that we don't have his back.
- [41:12]
Greg Olson
Yeah, it's, it's the biggest challenge that I think, you know, so many families go through. We've been through that personally with our three kids. Roles change, standings on teams change. Frankly, teams change, right? They add good players, some kids leave, some kids join. So no team is the same one year to the next, even if the faces in the name stay the same. You know, some kids grow faster than others. You know, sometimes there's a huge separator just physicality wise at some of these ages that takes a little bit time for that gap to, to clear, to, to kind of settle down. So I understand the stress. My advice would be, if you're in the middle of the season right now, just put your head down and keep working, right? The best thing you can teach your son or daughter at any of this, in this case, your son, like, teach them the value of hard work. Teach them to teach them the value of work while you wait, right? It might not be the role, you might not be the position, you want the battery, you want the, the role, but you can learn a really unique and valuable lesson which is work while you're waiting, right? Work while you're waiting for things to break through, while you're waiting for your role to expand. But if, if you're just going to sit and feel sorry for yourself, if you're just going to sit and say, I hope my role changes, traditionally as you get older, it's just going to get harder. So there is such value of learning these lessons at a young age is show up to practice and be the best kid that you can be the first kid there, try to get the extra work in, try to be a great teammate, try to have great energy in and out of the dugout, do all the little things that don't take any talent. Good coaches are going to notice and value those things. And if at the end of the season, you feel like no matter what your son or daughter is doing, their role is not changing, they're not keeping up, or it's not the right fit for you, you can always make a change. There's nothing wrong with making a change between seasons. There's no rule that the team you start with at 10 needs to be your team at 16. So I would right now, continue to work, put your head down. Don't compare yourself to the other kids. Just grind away and work. And then you. At the end of every season, I would advise we do it in our family. I would advise at the end of every season, take a good, hard look at yourself. Is there more that you could be doing? If the answer is yes, you better do it. If there's nothing more than you can do and you are just, this is your ceiling, then maybe there's a different team that's more appropriate, and there's nothing wrong with that.
- [43:36]
Podcast Host/Interviewer
Greg, I absolutely loved that answer. All right, this is the last question I have for you. This one's a big one, so bear with me here. Greg, my son is heading into his freshman year of high school and just told us that he's done with the fall sport he's been playing all of his life. He wants to try golf instead. We're all for it. Golf's a sport he can play forever, and we love that he's making this call himself. The thing is, he's the kind of kid who puts a ton of pressure on himself. No matter what he does. We can already see it. He's watching YouTube swing videos, talking about making the team, getting in his own head before he's even getting started. How do we help him walk into this as a beginner and actually enjoy being bad at something for a little while without us coming in and coming across like we don't think he can be good at it.
- [44:24]
Greg Olson
This is such a common. Such a common question, such a common issue. I mean, we have it in our own house, right? The reality is kids don't like to struggle. Kids don't like to be bad at something. So they're, they're either going to enter into it and then they're going to quickly try to pivot and say, okay, I don't want to do. Kids don't love doing things, traditionally speaking, kids don't love doing things they're bad at, which could be very motivating. Right. I actually like the idea that this kid has high standards. I like the idea that he's taken it upon himself to go out there and watch videos and study and has this ultimate goal of making the team. We've talked about goal setting a lot here on you think and my personal opinion and a lot of the folks that we've had on that really study. All of this is when all the focus is on goal setting and in this case it's make the golf team. You can really set yourself up for if you reach that goal, then what happens? And if you don't reach that goal, you view yourself as a failure. So I think the best advice here would be focus on the process of daily improvement. How can you just continue to get better indefinitely? And if it results in you making the golf team, great. If it results in you not making it and maybe you make it as a sophomore, there's nothing wrong with that either. So I think focus on the habits, focus on the work. Put your head down and don't necessarily make it like a. The ultimate goal pass fail is predicated upon making the team. If you put in the daily work and you just say, I'm going to get better every day forever, chances are you're going to make the golf team. And if you don't, there was nothing else that you could have done. There was no failure in that. So I think that's where kids get very misled, is it's all goal setting and then we base failure or success on whether we reach these arbitrary kind of platform and goals. And I think that could be super dangerous. Preach the work, preach the struggle, preach the grind, preach the habits. And more often than not, you will reach whatever level you're capable of reaching. If you take that approach, more often than not, you'll reach it.
- [46:26]
Podcast Host/Interviewer
Thank you so much, Greg, and thank you for joining us on you think we'll see you next week, guys.