KPB Podcast

Daily KPB

What does your college baseball fit look like? 

It's a straightforward questions that can make or break your recruiting process before it even begins. If you want to improve your chances of finding a college baseball fit, you first need to know what that fit looks like. In this episode, we give you resources and suggestions to to help you answer that question, starting with  this worksheet  to help you sort out your college preferences. For more information and insight, listen to the episode or read the written version here.

Daily KPB

This episode is the podcast version of our written of the same title which can be found here :  https://keepplayingbaseball.org/make-the-most-of-summer-ball-2019/ 

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It’s about that time of the summer when your final tournaments are coming up. Guys are in a lot of different  situations – some may have spent the summer showcasing for college coaches, while others are hoping to make their varsity team this coming year.  

No matter what level you’ve been playing at, there are some things you can look back on now to get the most out of your summer baseball experience. A huge part of progressing in the game is learning and making adjustments. Summer ball is a great time to learn your game, try new things, and figure out what you need to work on.  

On this episode, we ask you to consider 7 important questions about your summer and use them as a tool to reflect on what you’ve learned and what you need to improve on as you move forward. Development is the key to playing at the next level, and this list will help you stay focused on continually improving.   Listen in to find out what they are!

On This Episode:

We’re excited to welcome Paris Junior College Head Coach Clay Cox to the podcast. Cox has been at the helm of the Dragon Baseball Program since 2016 and with the program since 2015. Over this time, he has developed a reputation for dominating in the classroom and on the field. His team is constantly among the nation’s leaders in team GPA and his squad has consistently moved more than a dozen players on to 4-year programs or professional baseball. Prior to his time at Paris JC, Cox spent time coaching at University of West Alabama and in the high school ranks at Rockdale High School, in addition to summers coaching in the Texas Collegiate League where he had a lot of success. Along with his role as head coach, Cox is Founder of Infield U and is active in sharing his coaching practices with the baseball community. Cox brings a wealth of knowledge to the KPB podcast, and in this episode we pick his brain about recruiting, program building, academics, infield play, and much more. So grab a notepad and turn up the volume as we connect with a high energy leader and great baseball mind.

Contact Coach Cox:

Twitter: @CoachCox19 and @Infield_U 

Email:  [email protected] 

Website:  https://www.infieldu.com/ 

Topics:

 JUCO, Recruiting, Infield, Development, Infield U, Academics, Hitting, Pitch Recognition, Texas, Transferring

Daily KPB

 In the recruiting process, the adage “knowledge is power” takes on an especially important meaning. An uninformed or hasty recruiting process greatly increases the risk of ending up with a poor college fit.  Think about it this way. Would you make a $100K investment without knowing every little detail? Probably not. So why would you do the same with your future? Four years of college at many schools costs well over $100K. One of the biggest and most common mistakes made in the recruiting process is taking information for granted or not finding out everything you should before picking a school. To prevent you from making this mistake, we’ve come up with 9 questions you should be able to answer about a program before deciding to commit. In this episode we break down those 9 questions and explain why they are important. You'll notice some overlap with previous podcasts and articles. That's a good thing! We've talked about questions you should ask college coaches and now were talking about questions you need to be able to answer for yourself, so there is lots of overlap. 

Below we've included links to some of the articles and resources we discuss in this episode. Be sure to check them out so you can make educated and informed decisions!

Making Sense of Your Scholarship Offer

Doing a Basic Budget Analysis for Your College Search

Asking Coaches About Training and Development

Daily KPB

This podcast is the audio version of our written article by the same title. You can read that article here. 

Every college-bound high school player dreams of getting noticed by a college coach. If you weren’t interested in that, you wouldn’t be on this podcast right now! Well, we want you to get noticed, too, but we want it to be for the right reasons. A lot of people don’t realize that intangibles, like attitude, knowledge of the game, and appearance, can play a big role in making or breaking your chances of playing for a team.  

You may wonder what we mean by “intangibles.” We are talking about things that can’t be physically touched. They have nothing to do with your athletic skill set, but you can be sure that coaches are looking for them. Intangibles include not only your attitude, your knowledge of the game, and your outward appearance (height, weight, fitness level) but also things like your ability to be in the right position, your understanding of the unwritten rules of the game, your ability to focus, and whether or not you can think on your feet.  

For example, let’s say that there is a player who is interested in playing at a D1 school on the West Coast. We will call him Carl. If it were up to Carl’s talent and athleticism alone, there is little chance that he would be considered for a spot on the team. Sure, Carl is a good player, but to play at the school he is interested in, he would have to be one of the top prospects of the region. Carl attended the showcase for his dream school and the coaches immediately noticed his attitude and his hustle, and that he looked like and carried himself like a ballplayer.  

Now Carl may not end up getting a roster spot on the team, but that is not the point. The point is that even though he may not be expected by many recruiters to be a great player, he may get a shot to play at one of the top schools in the country because of his intangibles. Carl is buying himself additional opportunities: he is getting noticed for the right reasons. Intangibles are things that every player can control through hard work and effort.    

On the flip side, many players of all different talent levels get crossed off of coaches’ lists before they even step between the foul lines. You don’t want to get noticed because you look lazy, distracted, slow, or careless. That would be getting noticed for the wrong reasons.  

In this podcast, we list 10 things (you are in complete control over!) that you can do to get noticed for the right reasons. Listen in!

Daily KPB

College coaches want players who respect others. Seems simple, right? You'd be surprised how man players get crossed off of recruiting lists not for the way they play the game, but because coaches see them having negative interactions with coaches, teammates, umpires, opponents, and parents. If you have any doubt about what people would say about you following an interactions with them, it's time to get to work mending those relationships. Respect is a cornerstone of successful college baseball programs and coaches will be spending a lot of time finding out if you respect others and will be a respectful member of their baseball community. For more, check out the written article here.

Daily KPB

This article shadows the lessons from our written article of by the same title, which you can read HERE.

We strongly suggest reading the written article as well and reading the entire article series about a fictional recruit named Alex, who experiences many of the same recruiting situations that you will. The series uses real life stories and feedback from college coaches to teach valuable recruiting lessons. Learn it from Alex so you don't have to learn it the hard way yourself!

Among the lessons discussed are:

1. Every time you are at the field, you may be being evaluated (before the game, in the dugout, during pre-game, during the game, in between games, etc.)

2. You won't have your best day every single time you are at the field, but find a way to be mentally and physically present each time, even if that means having a good "bad day".

3. You passion and involvement (intangibles that have nothing to do with your on-field skills) speak very loudly to college coaches. Disinterested players get little interest from college coaches. 

4. Show how involved you are with actions and attitude that help your team win

5. We recap some don'ts around the field!

Listen in for more!

In this episode...

 We sit down with former Kansas Jayhawk outfielder and Always Grind Founder, Joe Moroney. Moroney describes his journey from walk-on with a no guarantee of a roster spot as a freshman to team captain as a senior. In the episode, we discuss Moroney's transformation from an undersized role player into one of the Big 12's best outfielders and a professional baseball career. Among the topics discussed are the role or patience, persistence, and process in the college search, building good habits as a high school player to ease the difficult transition to college, and how to use notebooks to improve your development plan and help yourself get recruited. 

Whether you are just starting the recruiting process or entering your senior year with nowhere to play at the next level, you'll draw inspiration and insight from Moroney's story or persistence and success. Listen in for more!

Contact Moroney:

Twitter: @AlwaysGrind365

Email: [email protected]

Topics:

D1, Recruiting, Contact List, Walk-On, Power 5, Patience, Persistence, Planning, Habit Building, Day in the Life, Journaling, Baseball Journal, Always Grind, Notebooks

 This is the audio version for the blog article, You need A Strength and Conditioning Plan

Every year, we ask college baseball players what advice they would give high school guys trying to make a successful transition to college baseball. Every year, we get some variation of the response above: “Get in the weight room!”

Take the advice of the guys who have lived the experience and survived the difficult transition to college baseball. If you want to play college baseball, you need a strength program in high school. Building a baseline level of functional strength is incredibly important for recruiting and to be prepared for the rigorous college season. Functional strength means strength that is useful to performing baseball specific movements more efficiently. A strength and conditioning program that improves functional strength is the answer to many baseball deficiencies and allows a player to throw and hit harder, run faster, bend and move more efficiently, stay healthy and much more.

So what does this mean for recruits wanting to play baseball in college? Plain and simple, make building functional strength a big part of your development plan. As we discuss in our article, Why Size and Physicality Matter in Recruitment, college coaches are looking to recruit physical players. While not everyone develops physically at the same time and not everyone can be 6’3”/205, everyone can add strength and mobility that will help them perform better, stay healthy, and get recruited. Getting in the weight room consistently is one of the single most important things you can do for your development. A quality strength and conditioning program in high school provides the base and preparation necessary to make significant gains in college when your body matures and allows you to improve as a player by leaps and bounds. 

So how do you go about creating a quality strength and conditioning program? We share some basic exercises you can do in this guest blog by former college baseball standout and PT Alex Wirta, but there are many people  who offer great strength and conditioning advice specific to baseball for free. Here are five of our favorite free resources that are well known in the baseball community:

All 5 of these resources share a wealth of strength and conditioning information and are a must follows on social media. Their blogs are linked above and they are also easy to find on Twitter. These resources are a great place to start doing your research and summer is a great time to learn about and implement a strength and conditioning plan that is right for you. Don’t wait, it’s time to get to work!

Disclaimer: As always get approval from your parents, doctor, and school strength coach before you start any conditioning program.