The PHENOM 101 page is a page for players and parents to keep up with the philosophies and coaching points that may have been missed during a training session. Check back
regularly to see if any new info has been added.
12/22/10 WIN THE NEXT PITCH
It's always important for players to have focus and intensity. This can't happen every other pitch or one inning and not the next. If a player wants to have success they need to learn
to compete and "WIN THE NEXT PITCH". By focusing on this thought process they are able to always be ready for what is about to happen. It could be the next pitch they will see from the pitcher or the next pitch that is being thrown on defense. You should always be looking at what is about to happen, not what just happened or what you did or didn't do the previous inning. By trying to always"WIN THE NEXT PITCH", a player will make themselves compete and battle from the 1st pitch to the last!
12/25/10 HITTERS PITCH
Your job as a hitter is to put a good swing on a good pitch, that's all! One of the biggest
factors in making this happen is learning to swing at a hitters pitch. You may step in the
box and think if the pitcher doesn't throw it down the middle, your not suppose to swing. As a hitter you are looking for a pitch in 3 spots with less than 2 strikes. A hitters pitch is, low and in, down the middle and up and away.
The pitch down and in allows you to drop the barrel on the ball and get your backside turned into the pitch. The fastball that is up, waist high or above isn't a pitch that hitters can drive, they usually cause hitters to pop up or swing through it.
The pitch down the middle needs to be hit back in the zone, so that the hitter doesn't get to far out in front and the back elbow doesn't get away from the hitters backside. If you attack
to far out in front will result in the front arm to lock out and the pitch to be pulled and a wrist swing will happen. Not to much power in the wrist swing!
The pitch that is up in the zone, belt high or slightly above and away will let the pitcher do all the work allowing the hitter to let the ball travel and hit the ball with his body. The pitch that is low and away even if it's a strike will result in a swing breakdown and most of the time a
weak ground ball out.
Just because a pitch is a strike doesn't mean it's a hitters strike. Remember, you may work
hard on technique to be a great hitter but that alone doesn't make you a great hitter unless
you take the technique and swing at pitches that allow you to get the most from your swing.
12/30/10 A PLAYERS MAKEUP
As a scout I'm asked evaluate players both on and off the field. Usually the first question I
get asked is what kind of kid is he off the field. I have seen good baseball players get
crossed off lists because off what they do off the field or because they can't stay
under control on the field.
If you train hard in the off season spending hours making yourself a better player on the
field you have to spend just as much time making yourself a better player off the field. You have to realize that your actions have consequences. If you don't get the grades to stay
eligible you will miss games, if you make poor judgments, you may be dismissed from the team. The best way to stay out of trouble is to ask yourself before you do something, "how
will this affect me, my family and my team". If the answer isn't a positive one you shouldn't do it. Believe me, you don't want something you did in your past, to keep you from reaching your goals. Sometimes the company you keep may label you as someone with bad
character even if that's not an accurate one.
On the field your emotions have to be kept in check. There is no place for negative
emotions. Getting down on yourself or on your team mates is counter productive. Baseball,
is one of the hardest sports to excel in to begin with. A negative attitude will make it that
much harder to play the game and have fun doing it. Never transfer blame for something
you do. If you make an error understand what made that happen, don't blame it on the sun,
poor field or a another player. If something goes wrong, learn to understand the breakdown
in technique so it can be fixed. A helmet, bat, glove or any other equipment should never be
thrown or slammed in anger. Even if it's not seen, it can still be heard, if it's thrown in the
dugout it will be heard in the stands. You never know who is watching in the stands. The
one time you decide to throw a helmet in anger, may be the time a scout or coach is in the stands watching you. If you get labeled as that guy, it can't be erased, it will follow you.
Pitchers are on stage more than anyone. Your body language says it all. If you look frustrated it will show. If you stomp, drop your head, talk to yourself or the umpire or any
other negative things, you will get a bad reputation. Coaches at the next level want players with short term memory loss. You have to forget about what just happened and focus on
what you are getting ready to do. There are thousands of players that can play the game
just as good or better, what sets players apart is those that have the total package.
12/30/10 INDIVIDUAL SPORT, TEAM CONCEPT
Baseball is an individual sport with a team concept. There are 9 individuals playing at a
time that all have a job to do. They have a place to be when the play happens on defense
or a job to do on offense. If the individual player does his job(s) than the team will be a
success.
With that being said, players need to train and play to be the best at what they do. As
coaches we see it all the time. When a team is playing against lesser competition, they will play to that level. Instead of doing what they are taught or playing at the level that they train,
they have let downs.
I witnessed a player tonight doing speed training and not giving his all because the
players that were around him weren't up to his ability. Instead of focusing on his own
training, he let the people around him dictate his performance. He had the chance to push himself to complete some tough challenges. He didn't give that extra effort that would have elevated his training from just being there to getting better. If you don't leave a practice and
feel like you are better than you were before you arrived means you didn't have a good
practice. You wasted a chance to take your game to the next level. Then when you play your next game and you are still making the same mistakes or not getting the results you wanted
you can trace it to your training.
Isn't this what happens at practices and during games. You have players show up without the desire to get better, instead they go through the motions, with the thought process that
just doing something is going to transfer to greatness. When one player has the, "just here" approach, the players around him decide to follow. You get a few players doing it and a coach that doesn't see it going on and before you know it your wasting days, months and seasons. Choose to be the player that works hard every time out, no matter what, that way
you are making progress even if the players and coaches around you aren't. Sometimes
you can't control who your team mates and coaches are but you can always control your
approach to practice and games. We all have few chances to be great at something, sports is a way to be great and you can control if it happens. As we get older, the chances get fewer and fewer, take advantage of every day you get to get better. Always work to make progress, don't take 2 steps forward and then 3 steps back.
1/16/11INSTANT GRATIFICATION
As a player I always had to be perfect, if I
didn't go 3-3, I thought it was the end of the world. This was
something that followed me through my career, not just as a young
player. I must have gone through a million different batting stances
along the way. In my mind, if I had a bad day at the plate, it wasn't
my fault, it was my batting stance that caused it to happen. What I
failed to realize as a
player was, that all of those changes to my approach made hitting that
much harder.
Growing up I
attended my first baseball camp at Oklahoma St University, the Christmas
before my sophomore year. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
They had a coach there that was trying to reinvent the wheel with how he
taught players to hit. After only a few short days of being taught
this new way to hit we were back on a plane home. The problem was, in
that short of a time, we didn't have enough time to understand what we
were doing with this new hitting philosophy, nor did we realize what we were being taught
wasn't going to transfer to the next level. As I got older, I found out
this way was nothing more than a way for someone to sell some hitting
videos. The way that was being taught didn't translate to the next
level. It was a way to hit for the moment. Any of those players that
made it to the pros from that school had to spend hours working on
changing the muscle memory to the right way to hit.
The
next winter, it was off to Florida over Christmas, to the New York
Yankees spring training facility to work with them. This was a great
camp, we had Yankee coaches showing us exactly what they taught their
players. We spent a few days doing the drills that made the Yankees the
"YANKEES". After returning home I tried to do what they had shown me
but because of lack of memory and just not having the patience to do the
work needed to get the muscle memory, I went back to hitting my way. I
wasn't seeing the ball go over the fence like I thought it would.
The
biggest reason I went back to hitting the old way was because I wasn't
seeing instant results. I thought that because a Yankees coach showed
me how to hit, that it was just going to happen and if it didn't, it
wasn't the right way to do it. The problem was, I wasn't willing to put
in the hours needed to create the muscle memory in the beginning, to be
able to do it the right way. I thought that just going to a 3 day camp
was going to transform me into a great hitter. Instead, I spent my
high school career hitting my way and because I was a good enough
athlete I had success but not what I could have had.
It wasn't
until my junior year of college, that the things the Yankees had shown
me years earlier, were reintroduced. This time my college coaches spent
hours making us do these drills and finally towards the end of my
career, I was understanding how to play the game. Something that would
have helped me years earlier was the answer to the million dollar
question.
The morals of the story are, just because someone shows
you something doesn't mean you will be able to do it. You have to do
it over and over until you do it without thinking about it. You have to
have someone that pushes you to do it and if it's not done right they
can tell you. There isn't a magic pill that will make you the best, the
closest thing is hard work.
The other moral is be very careful
about who you let teach you the game. As a coach in high school, we had
players come in as freshman that went to this guru or that guy and they
were taught some "new way to hit". It always had the same ending, the
way they were shown made them the best hitters at 12 years old but the
swing didn't transfer to the next level. I have even had college
coaches turn down players because they were associated with this or that
guy. Most of all, if you want instant gratification, baseball might
not be your sport!
4/11/11 LIST OF WHY I STARTED PHENOM
LACK OF DEVELOPMENT: For 8 years as a high school coach I saw players enter high school with no foundation in the sport. Moms and dads would talk about all the games they played each year and all of the trophies their "aau team" won and when "Johny" would take the field for tryouts and had no clue how to get around or through a ground ball, didn't understand what using the lower half meant when they took a swing or couldn't throw from the OF to the infield because he lacked arm strength. It made me wonder what 70+ games of baseball a summer got them, besides a ton of miles on the family car.
LACK OF KNOWLEDGE: Players would also come into high school and would have a very low baseball IQ. Again, they played a ton of games but didn't know who was suppose to go where when a play would happen, the reason why certain techniques are performed or how to breakdown a swing or their mechanics.
KHSAA RULES: High school rules tell you when you can or can't work with a player, if you coach for a high school. They give you a small window for a player to develop with the help of coaches. Baseball is a sport that requires constant work and development. When you play high school you get from Feb 15th - end of May to get better. If you look at this from a players stand point you get about a month after the tryout process ends to get ready for a HS season before games start. If you haven't had access to baseball training prior to this you will spend that first month complaining your arm hurts or trying to figure out your swing. Most players don't start getting comfortable until the end of the season. This is a cycle that happens every year and before they know it they are finished with baseball when they could have moved on to the next level.
PLAYING AT THE NEXT LEVEL: If I ask a kid who wants to play college baseball prior to their HS career I rarely get someone that doesn't raise their hand. Players have that dream early but few follow through with it. I always would hear about the next great player that was getting ready to come to high school, I would hear stories about how they dominated the 12 year old circuit. How they hit towering fly balls that measured 300 feet. Then when they got into HS they never amounted to the hype. I would hear people say they were burned out and that's why they didn't ever get past JV baseball or why they ended up as a back up on the varsity team. If you look at most of the players that fall into this category they all have the same things happen. They were usually big and stronger than the other kids early on and had a lot of success, they had people telling them how good they were, they played on 3 teams at one time and never had a chance for practice and dad was usually the coach. The reality is once the fields get bigger, the other players start to get stronger, they never developed a work ethic to get better and the success becomes less and less, they find that baseball isn't a fun game like when they were 12. So rather than do the things they should have done prior, they find an easy way out and say it's "burn out".
METHOD TO THE MADNESS: For most parents they have grown up in the "rec ball" ( show up not knowing what your coaches experience is in baseball ) "daddy ball" ( the 4 coaches who get together and help out will have their sons get better and play the main positions, who cares about the rest) and local baseball circuit ( get a bunch of players that birthdays fall just before the cut off date and play local teams that aren't very good and say how great they are. PHENOM is different from all of these ways. We have tested everything we are doing, on the players that came before you, so you don't have to struggle as they did playing a very difficult game.
PHENOM makes it easy for players to develop, we are doing things differently than what I mentioned above. Players have to learn a work ethic, how to understand when they have a breakdown in their technique and be able to correct it in the middle of a game, how to play no matter who is lined up next to them, how to deal with coaches who may not like them or put them in situations they are not happy with, how to deal with slumps and how to play for a high school coach that may not know what he is doing depending on where you go to school but still go out and have success. All of these things are what players are learning when they play with PHENOM. Depending on the player will depend on how long it takes for these things to be realized. You are asking your sons to break bad habits created over years and your asking them to go out and perform while they correct these flaws.
I watch Albert Pujols who is hitting .143 the last time I saw him play struggle. He is one of the best and he is having issues.
Lastly, PHENOM is set up to help players by putting them in situations that will mimic what they will face in high school and or college. Players will be put on teams or in situations based on prior evaluations from me to help them grow as a player and as a person. Trust me in this process and remember, I am your sons biggest fan!!
