Play Ball Kid Baseball Development Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Baseball players have shared the importance of strong forearms and grip strength for years. But recently, Daryl & Adam Moreau have taken it to the next level by developing the Flex Pro Grip, that allows specialized protocols to measure and improve each joint in each finger. They spent the last year working with the San Diego Padres organization and they join us to share some of what they have discovered in those trials. Discover how their device trains the 3 flexors muscles that are responsible for keeping our UCL safe, how different finger strength should influence your pitch design and where arm care and performance are headed in the coming years. 

Rick Strickland is the Cubs AA hitting coach and the owner of Train Right Academy in St Louis. He has coached travel teams and was a former Yankee draft pick. When Rick Strickland broke his hand in his Junior year of college at Austin Peay, he was Top 10 in the nation in Batting Avg. and Stolen Bases. It was a blow missing the season, but like he tells his players when one door closes, another opens. He got a chance to play in the Cape Cod League with some amazing talent. “I played with great players and future Hall of Famers. Frank Thomas, Mo Vaugh, Tim Salmon, Jeff Kent, and Denny Neagle. Playing with top talent elevates your game and your mind” Rick came back and tore it up his Senior year leading the team to its first winning season in a decade and helping turn the program around. “The leadership, that’s what really stays with me. What the team and I helped do for the program was immense.” Rick’s standout play caught the attention of the Yankees, who drafted him. After spending time in their farm system, Rick brought his passion for player development and innovation to coaching. Rick is driven by improving players and helping them battle through challenges – mental and physical. “If you want to hit hard or throw hard, you have to train hard. You have to push your past what you think you can do to achieve more.” Baseball is a game of speed and power. What you do in the gym, will show on the field. His obsession with making improvements and player feedback took him down the technology path, where he has been a pioneer. He worked in early-stage development with Blast Motion, Rapsodo, Diamond Kinetics, and Uplift. A true student of the game, Rick grew up in Chicago as a two-way guy – a player AND a sports reporter. “Starting at 6 years old, I played constantly, but I also had to give my uncle complete recaps of the Cubs and White Sox games. I was his ESPN. What was the score? How did they get their runs? I had to tell him the story behind the game.” After years of playing, coaching, and “reporting,” Rick can readily spot the story behind each player’s swing and throw. For him, and the CRTR staff, understanding how a player moves in training and practice is key to unlocking how they will perform on the field. Their collective job is to make players better. With over 375 college commits, 78 professional players, and 2 All-Stars in Andrew Benitendi and Jake Odorizzi, Coach Strickland’s obsession with player development is the centerpiece of every training program.

Tracy Hayes, aka “MobilityChick” is the founder of Amplified Movement and a Movement + Mobility Specialist most known for her 12-Week Baseball Mobility Series launched within the MLB community in 2020 that has garnered the attention of players and strength coaches from 24 of the 30 MLB organizations, from A-ball to All-Star. In less than 2 years since her mobility series’ launch, Tracy has had nearly 1k enrollments in her various mobility routines and programs within pro and non-pro baseball. Tracy has been featured on MLB.com for her work with the Orioles and for personally mentoring their Strength Coach, Liz Pardo. Tracy has been a featured guest on several podcasts. 

Tracy has a unique perspective as a former “baseball wife”, is a mama to 4 young children, two of whom currently play Little League, and she has made it her mission to create a healthy, fun, and effective youth sports experience for all of her children and the millions of other kids who love to get outside and play the game of baseball. Make sure to check out her Youth Warm Up series.

Tracy’s vast background includes Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, and Linguistics during her studies at Northwestern University, a professional career in Research at McKinsey & Company in addition to advanced studies in biomechanics for athletes. Her methods incorporate fundamentals from PRI, FRC, ELDOA, Physical Therapy-based functional yoga (LYT), in addition to Classical Pilates, and over 1,000 hours of specialized yoga training. Tracy is a Master Pilates instructor and published author, an NLP Practitioner, trained in EFT (Tapping), and is a regular with Vipassana meditation.

Please share this episode with every baseball mom and dad that you know. Let's help our kids move better. The payoffs will be amplified.

Javi DeJesus was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico where he learned to love the game of baseball.  His parents moved to Beaumont, TX where he had a lucrative high school career throwing the schools first two no-hitters, District 22-5A MVP and earned a scholarship to the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. From 1990-1992, Javi amassed a record of 23-1 (22-0 as a starter), with a 13-0 junior season which earned him  1st Team All-American Teams Coach’s Poll, 2nd Team All American Collegiate Weekly, and 3rd Team All America Baseball America. He also earned 1st All Louisiana and Sun Belt Co-Pitcher of the Year award.

In 1992, he was invited to represent Puerto Rico in the Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. His junior season helped capture the attention of the Minnesota Twins who drafted him in the 17th round.  He played 10 years in the minors with a record of 54-33 and a 3.99 ERA earning 4 All Star appearances and Minnesota Twins Pitcher of the Month in 1994.

After retirement, Javi began coaching and working with young men throughout the Northeast Indiana and Northwest Ohio area.  He along with the late Charly Butcher founded the Fort Wayne Cubs, nka FW Diamondbacks, which has helped over 300+ young men of playing at the collegiate level with over dozen drafter to play professionally and two current MLB players, Kevin Keirmaier and Zack McKinstry.

Currently, Javi is the Pitching Coach at Ivy Tech CC where helped lead his staff finish 30th in the country in Pitching.  His passion for teaching the game and developing pitchers has led mat Peters to be considered as an MLB Draft prospects taking him from 89-93 mph to touching 103 and sitting 96-98mph over the course of the spring season.  His work ethic and constant use of video analysis apps has helped transform his pitchers into formidable prospects for 4 year schools.

In this episode we discuss:

• What he is looking for when recruiting pitchers
• What parents and student athletes should look for in a program when evaluating how will they develop players
• Some of the tools Javi brought into his pitching lab at Ivy Tech (PitchAI, The Kinetic Arm and the PitchLogic Smart baseball).
• What he is doing with the 16 year old pitchers he coaches this summer to help their development and recruiting.

Corey Gardner is currently the Assistant Coach and Recruiting Coordinator at Southern Wesleyan University, where he coaches hitters & infielders. Corey had previous stops at The University of Rio Grande and Kentucky Christian Univeristy. He previously owned a travel baseball program as well. 

In this episode we talk about how student athletes can project confidence when speaking to college coaches on the phone or in person. Corey shares the 1 question he would ask over 10,000 student athletes every year on the recruiting trail. Corey shares advice on how to connect with coaches on email and social media. We also answer a few audience questions since this was recorded live on Twitter Spaces on May 27th, 2022. Question include:

"If you get an introduction email from a player and you are not allowed to respond due to age restrictions. How does player know if you are interested or not."

and 

"As Corey mentioned, parents aren’t around their child when in college….  With the surge of student athletes who have taken their own lives, what are some things a parent/athletes can ask when looking for a program in regards to supporting your athletes mentally or safeguarding the athletes whole self?   Second- how do college coaches makes sure their athletes are mentally and emotionally balanced/ being supported with the pressures of being a college athlete?"

Patrick Jones is the host of the Patrick Jones Baseball podcast, a private hitting coach, as well as a former MilB coach & high school coach. Patrick is the first guest on this podcast to be interviewed by both Sammy (3 years ago) and Bryan. Patrick has been spending a lot of time speaking to college coaches, travel ball coaches on his podcast recently and is also helping families with the college baseball recruiting process.  

Kirk Cabana is the founder of Pursuit 4 Purpose and the recruiting coordinator and assistant coach at Carolina University. The Pursuit 4 Purpose podcast brings together the world’s most passionate athletes together to encourage our goals and aspirations. By using the principles of the greatest minds before us, our athletes will become champions of character. Kirk is also the head coach of the Carolina Disco Turkeys independent baseball team. Kirk has a remarkable baseball journey returning to play when he was 30 years old and now coaching just a few short years later.

Sarah Howard, is the founder of Elite Mobility Training (EMT). We spend time talking about how to incorporate recovery routines, why they are so important, why Yoga seems to be taboo, what are the benefits of mobility training and her use of the inexpensive Yoga Tune Up and Coregeous balls with baseball players from youth to MLB players like Jack Flaherty.

Rick Saggese, XFS, CSAC, played his collegiate baseball at the University of Miami; one of the top collegiate baseball programs in the nation.  At Miami, Rick battled back from his third knee injury while getting hurt in Honolulu, Hawaii to open the season.  He kept his goals in sight once again and became a three-year starter, played in three College World Series, was a Collegiate All-American, and accumulated a career .302 batting average with 21 home runs and 101 RBI’s.  In 1996 Rick played in the National Championship game against LSU which was arguably the best College World Series title game in history, as LSU won in the ninth inning on a walk off home run.  During the 1997 & 1998 summers Rick started for the Hyannis Mets (now Harbor Hawks) in the Cape Cod Amateur Collegiate Wooden Bat League and played with former MLB stars Eric Hinske, Eric Byrnes & J.J. Putz. In 1999 Rick transferred to FIU (Florida International University) for his senior season.  He finished his collegiate career by hitting a game winning homerun against South Alabama at the Houston Astros AAA stadium.  He played with Alex Cora (Boston Red Sox Head Coach), Pat Burrell (Phillies/Giants), Aubrey Huff (Rays/Giants) and Jason Michaels (Phillies/Indians) during his playing days at Miami.  Rick was coached and trained by some of the finest coaches in the country including Walter Hriniak (former Red Sox/White Sox batting coach), Jim Morris (Miami) and Mark Calvi (South Alabama)!  Rick has trained athletes in core/strength training with the same exercises that are used at world renown athlete’s performance centers and uses the Mattes Method (AIS) to help increase flexibility and explosiveness.  Rick was an associate scout for the Cleveland Indians for 5 seasons and knows what scouts look for in players to excel at the professional level. Rick is an EXOS Certified Fitness Specialist as well as being certified to perform the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) and Y-Balance Test (YBT).  He uses FMS prior to the majority of strength and agility training to assess the athlete for possible “weak links” associated with their movement patterns.  He also not only goes over past injury history with the athlete on the initial session, but does a postural analysis as necessary to find deeper related movement limitations.  He has participated in some of the top speed/quickness camps in the country and is an Certified Speed and Agility Coach by the National Sports Performance Association.  Rick has attended and learned from events taught by various top success and peak performance coaches including Tony Robbins, Dan Lier, and Jim Fannin. Take your game to another level on and off the field as Rick will help you remove any barriers that may be holding you back to get the success you want.  Rick has helped many of his clients play at the collegiate and professional levels (view testimonials tab). He offers personal consulting services to coaches, parents and players on the methodologies he has successfully implemented in his training the past 19 years with over 15k athletes he has trained. Rick is the author of "Baseball For Building Boys To Men"  and owner of Think Outside the Diamond training center.

Will Carroll writes about sports science, sports medicine, and sports. We chat about his latest book "The Science of Baseball." His “Under The Knife” column was called “essential reading” by Hall of Famer Peter Gammons. Author of two award-winning books (Saving The Pitcher and The Juice), Carroll currently writes about injuries for his own newsletter and consults with several professional teams and players on sports science. His work has been seen on ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Baseball Prospectus, and the New York Times. He lives in Indianapolis and is @injuryexpert on most platforms.

Will and I discuss how our athletes could benefit from data and using science to develop and reduce injury. He offers a great tip for anyone evaluating programs to choose in their collegiate journey. We explore what the future might look like with his NorthStarr.ai project as well.