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Kevin Graeber on Masters Academy International, year-round development, and a practical system for base stealing
Coach Ken Carpenter talks with Kevin Graeber, the coach behind Masters Academy International in Massachusetts, about building an athletics-centered school, developing runners without overloading them, and teaching base stealing with repeatable mechanics. Kevin breaks down his approach to leads, returns, right-handed and left-handed pitchers, momentum steals, and stealing home.We discuss both the coaching philosophy and the technical details: how to create a culture players buy into, why Japanese baseball has influenced his thinking, and how confidence and specificity shape elite baserunning. Kevin also shares a personal coaching origin story that started with a cancer diagnosis and eventually led to coaching at every level of the game.
Key topics
- Kevin explains the mission of Masters Academy International and how it fills a New England gap for athletes who want academics and year-round sports development on equal footing.
- He describes the school’s enrollment mix, including boarding, day, postgraduate, and middle school options, with baseball players coming from places like the Dominican Republic, California, Florida, Chicago, and Massachusetts.
- In discussing year-round development, Kevin emphasizes workload management, mental skills, strength and conditioning, and seasonal training blocks that reduce overuse and burnout.
- He challenges the common coach mindset of labeling runners simply as “fast” or “slow,” arguing that base stealing and momentum steals need daily attention and microdosed practice.
- Kevin teaches base running through force direction, especially the difference between vertical force and horizontal force, and uses simple analogies to help players understand shin angle, posture, and center of mass.
- He outlines his teaching progression for leads off first base, including measuring 12 feet, building comfort with eyes closed, and learning how to return safely with a four-step dive-back progression.
- For right-handed pitchers, Kevin focuses on a gaze anchor, usually the back heel and front heel, plus shoulder cues, while letting players find the cues that work best for them.
- Against left-handed pitchers, Kevin uses a one-way lead and a one shuffle secondary before layering in delayed steals, run and hit actions, and first-movement steals.
- Kevin says Japanese baseball has heavily influenced his thinking, especially its emphasis on stealing culture, sliding, straight-steal mechanics, and falling rather than pushing to create horizontal movement.
- He makes a strong case for stealing home when the timing, distance, and anticipation all line up, especially on throwbacks from the catcher.
- The conversation shifts to coaching culture, where Kevin stresses defining “play hard” with specificity and using core values for both on-field and off-field behavior.
- Kevin shares that one of the biggest surprises in coaching was realizing how much he still had to learn, and he intentionally aims to look back every five years and be amazed by how little he knew before.
- He recounts surviving a serious cancer diagnosis in college, then getting his first coaching opportunity through an American Legion team, which helped launch his coaching career.
- The episode closes with stories about arguing with umpires, respecting officials, and the importance of catching players doing good.
Timestamps
00:00 - Introducing Kevin Graeber and Masters Academy International
01:18 - Why Masters Academy International exists in New England
02:51 - Who enrolls at the academy and where the baseball players come from
03:27 - Managing year-round development without burning players out
05:01 - Why baserunning gets ignored compared with hitting and pitching
06:48 - Teaching horizontal force instead of just “speed”
08:26 - The evolution of how Kevin teaches a primary lead
10:44 - Building a 12-foot lead and learning to find distance by feel
12:48 - Surrendering to technique on dive backs and returns
14:38 - Momentum steals and the four checkboxes Kevin uses
15:22 - What to read on right-handed pitchers
17:27 - How Kevin coaches left-handed pitchers
20:21 - Delayed steals, run and hit, and first-movement steals
23:11 - What coaches can learn from Japanese baseball
24:27 - Lou Brock’s zero step and the fall-and-pull idea
27:48 - How Kevin thinks about stealing home
31:39 - Building culture intentionally with specific standards
33:54 - The coaching lesson Kevin learned from surviving cancer
37:29 - Why fear of failure motivates him more than winning
38:44 - Choosing Lou Brock and Johnny Bench over other legends
41:02 - Growing up with unstructured sandlot baseball
43:26 - Best story from coaching in Double-A
47:00 - Respecting umpires and catching kids doing good
49:01 - Coaching the Lowell Spinners and stealing 160 bases in 59 games
50:09 - Sharing ideas freely to grow the gam
If you coach high school baseball, travel ball, or college baseball and want more runs without changing your lineup, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share it with a coaching friend, and leave a review so more coaches can find the show.
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