BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED
Baseball Coaches Unplugged is a podcast for insights on high school baseball coaching, travel baseball development, and college recruiting from coaches building winning programs. Each episode features real conversations about high school baseball coaching, travel baseball development, college recruiting, player development, practice planning, pitching and hitting development, and building a winning baseball culture.
If you’re a baseball coach looking for practical ideas on running better practices, developing players, navigating the recruiting process, and leading a successful program, this podcast delivers insights from experienced coaches across high school, travel, and college baseball. Hosted by 27 year veteran high school baseball coach Ken Carpenter.
New episodes drop every Wednesday!
BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED
How To Build Confident Baseball Players With Brutal Honesty
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A lot of coaching advice sounds good until the game speeds up and the dugout gets tense. That’s why this conversation with Ben Bizier hit so hard. Ben shares a surprising tool that sharpened his feel for momentum and body language: playing cards. He explains how learning to “scan the table” becomes a real-world coaching skill for reading both dugouts, adjusting your message on the fly, and knowing when a player is actually hearing you.
From there, we get deep into player development at The Academy in Fort Myers, Florida. Ben breaks down how he designed his facility and staff approach to be adaptable, creative, and built for complete development, not just hitting reps. We talk about the Academy Method, the power of asking players for constructive criticism and suggested solutions, and why real accountability has to be supported by real structure. He also shares why he believes the goal is to change the player, not simply chase performance, so athletes can retain skills and adapt at higher levels.
We also dig into the hard edge of coaching: brutal honesty. Ben explains why players often crave direct truth when it’s paired with follow-up and care, plus practical ideas for training throws from multiple arm angles. And if you’ve ever used “take until you get a strike,” you’ll want to hear his case for “take until two strikes” as a smarter hitting strategy. If you care about baseball coaching, youth baseball training, recruiting, and building confident players, this one is packed.
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Can Cards Improve Your Coaching
SPEAKER_00Today on Baseball Coaches Unplugged, can playing cards make you a better baseball coach? We dive into this and why being brutally honest with your players is the key to getting the most out of them. Also, why taking until you get two strikes is a better strategy than taking until you get a strike. Ben Bazir has five players currently in the MLB, and he joins the show next on Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
SPEAKER_02Baseball, great close, baseball, baseball coat.
SPEAKER_03New episode every Wednesday that you updated the Fed baseball coaches from Twitter created.
SPEAKER_00Today's episode of Baseball Coaches Unplugged is powered by the Netting Professionals, improving programs one facility at a time. Will Minor and his team at the Netting Professionals specialize in the design, fabrication, and installation of custom netting. For baseball and softball, this includes backstops, batting cages, PP turtles, screens, ball carts, and more. They also designed and installed digital graphic wall padding, windscreen, turf, turf protectors, dugout benches, and cubbies. Netting Pros also work with football, soccer, lacrosse, golf courses, and even pickleball. Contact them today at 844-620-2707. That's 844-620-2707. And you can visit them online at www.nettingpros.com. Check out Netting Pros on X, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn for all their latest products and projects.
Meet Ben Bazier And The Academy
SPEAKER_00Hello and welcome to Baseball Coaches Unplugged. I'm your host, Coach Ken Carpenter. If you enjoyed today's show, please be sure to share it with someone who wants to hear coaching advice from some of the best baseball coaches from across the country. Now to today's guest. Hello and welcome to Baseball Coaches Unplugged. I'm your host, Coach Ken Carpenter. Joining me today is the owner of the Academy. He was also head baseball coach at Florida Southwestern State and Broward College in Florida. It's Ben Bazier. Coach, thanks for taking time to join me on Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
SPEAKER_04No problem, man. Thanks for having me. The only reason I joined in is because you titled your show Unplugged. So that takes my style.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Well, you know, I I I love everything I've I've read about you and all the research I've done. So, you know, I I think the listeners want to get what that they're always about learning something new. And I I definitely feel like with the success you've had and what you're doing in Florida, this will definitely be one of those shows where they'll be able to refer back to and and get a lot of good things from it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I hope so.
SPEAKER_00Well, I I gotta start off with the first thing that just blew me away when I read about it.
Scanning Reactions Like A Card Game
SPEAKER_00But tell me about how playing cards helped you gain the temperature of the dugout.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, both dugouts, don't forget, because when you're playing cards, you most of the time you're you're going against somebody. And that's one of the qualities that I just I was able to pick up. I don't know whether my parents kind of put it into me, but I was always, you know, from a very, very young age, I was just always very observant. So I was always, you know, I I talk a lot, but I also am able to, as I'm talking, I'm able to assess. So as I'm acting, I'm able to assess. And playing cards, when I first learned how it's really was like a scan. Like you're scanning, the cards get dealt out, and you have to take a really quick scan around to see how people are receiving what they're getting. And to, and so when you're a baseball coach or, you know, or even a player, being able to speak and then see at the same time how it's being received, it's sort of like giving a card and getting their read on the card and whether they're happy with a card, sad with a card, intermediate on the card. So that's been something that I've always used. I use it every single day, you know, in conversation where, you know, even strategically, I'll start off conversation a lot of times where I'll have in my mind what I want to say, but I but I'll gauge on the reaction that I'm getting back. I will kind of drive it in a different direction or deliver what I'm looking to get across in a different way. And cards has just been like the other side of it was the competitive side of, you know, just trying to put yourself in a position to win. No, and that's the other beautiful thing about playing cards is that you can take, you can take a loss and still win. You know, it's like how you get to sometimes it's like, I'm definitely not gonna win this stand, you know. And then there's games where you're coaching or a relationship that you're having, you're like, I'm not gonna win this situation. It's not gonna happen. I'm gonna take my loss here. I'm gonna keep my chips over here or keep keep mindful of where I'm at on the scoreboard and just regroup and and regather. So that's really kind of how I I put that together. And I had I actually had a that was one of the posts where I posted, and that, and I've always kind of said this about myself on social media. I I get all kinds of views, but no, no likes and and no interactions, very, very limited interaction. But I do get a lot of people that reach out to me. Well, those shoot me text messages and sort of say, like, hey man, you know, let me let me pick your brain on this one, or this is interesting, or I never thought about it this way. And that was one of those ones when I posted that, I got a lot of people that reached out.
SPEAKER_00Yes, definitely. Well, I you know, I I think that that may have been the one that when I read it, I was like, wow, I gotta get this guy on the podcast. He's good.
SPEAKER_04Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Well, you own and coach at the Academy there in Fort Myers, Florida. Talk a little bit about
Designing A Flexible Development Space
SPEAKER_00that. And the thing that really caught my attention was the mindset that you guys have there at the Academy.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, sure. So we when I built this facility, I built the entire facility as if I was still a college baseball coach and as if two players could enter and do everything that they wanted to do in order to get better. So when a lot of facilities get built, they get built out strictly to be monetized. I built the facility with my imagination to where I wanted the facility to be like a ball player: adaptable, flexible, able to handle a lot of different scenarios and situations, but providing the player everything that they needed. And that's what if you go, if you stand in the middle of my facility, I can look at you and I can say, I do player development. We eat over there, we lift over there, we hit over here, we train on the ground over here, we train out up in the air over there, and we can we can cover it all. You know, it's not, and and I'm not meaning to leave out the mental side of things, but you know, just the structure, like our structure includes that too, and our staff includes that too. So I can walk you through, like I just showed you my facility a moment ago. I could, I could have my staff, I could give them maybe three or four different directives, and I could walk back out there and it would not look like the same facility. It would look completely different. So one of the things that we just instituted this year is that every single session that we finish, I make my staff and my players completely open the facility. So we push all the nets back. So if we use it for 45 minutes or we use it for an hour, we push all of the net backs. Sorry, all of the nets back. And what I encourage my staff to do, and what I encourage the players to do, is look at this face and use your imagination. Before we go and set up what discipline we're gonna do, what could what different what could we do differently that's that's what's a variation of the repetition? Because that's what keeps players going. And in all my years, I can tell you, coaching, I always did the same thing. I did the same thing all the time. But it's like going to the to the ice cream shop. They there's different flavors. You're eating ice cream. You're you're going there to eat ice cream. They got different flavors, and that's what keeps the players engaged, and that's what allows you, when you do that, you facilitate that mind process that a lot of times players don't understand they're doing the same thing. It's a new twist on the same thing, and it keeps them fresh, keeps them motivated, keeps them coming back. So, really, this facility is a this is a player development facility. There's too many folks out there that are saying this is player development, and they got a field and an opinion, or a tunnel and a T. And that's not player development. That's that's one component. And we, myself and my staff, we take a lot of pride in covering all of the components.
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, you talk about your staff and what you guys are able to do there. Talk about how many players that have came through your academy.
Criticism Loops And Real Accountability
SPEAKER_04It's been a player development method. Really, the academy method is my and our player development method. So we call it the academy method, but we have guys in the major leagues right now that are you know that are children of the the academy method. And the academy method is constantly growing, constantly changing. When when we first started 15 years ago, we didn't, there's a lot of different things that we had no clue about. But the one thing that has that has helped us grow and continue to shape us is that we are constantly, constantly, constantly asking for our players and the people that we are training for criticism. We want to receive criticism from them. We want to receive criticism, and then we want them to give us a suggested solution. And that's one of the things that has really shaped the way that we've done things because it's drawn out a lot of accountability components in our player development method that I think are so essential that so many people look past. So, for instance, I'll give you, I'll give you a quick example is that when I was at FSW, we had a massive hitting tunnel and it was outside of the clubhouse, and then we had a training room and a clubhouse, and then we had the dugout in the field. So they were all different areas, they weren't right next to each other, but I was always really big on time. Okay. So before the year started, I took clocks and I put clocks in in every spot that they could be, and I made sure that the clocks were all the same. So that if they wanted to come in and get early work or they had to go to the training room or they would get to the dugout, I wanted to make sure if I was gonna hold them accountable to the time, I wanted to make sure that I provided them the time. Okay. So there was one particular week where I started to notice in my own actions and activity that guys were getting to the dugout lit way later than normal. Right. And so being a creature of habit, I'm sort of at first, I just jumped the first couple players. I'm like, I can't believe we have to rush like we do this every day. Why are we rushing? And none of them said anything because I'm I'm sitting there applying pressure, applying pressure, applying pressure, and they're just trying to get the task done of Ben's, Ben, like we already got this routine down. Ben knows we should be better at this. So then after that week goes by, we had individual meetings and we go through kind of the same process each time. And one of the things that we asked for is a constructive criticism and a suggested solution. And one of the kids said, Hey, coach, you know, Dulio hit a ball through the the a hole in the cage the other day and it hit the clock perfectly and it busted the clock. We haven't had a clock in the cage for a week. Can you get a new clock? And so, of course, I thought to myself, I wish somebody had said something to me earlier so that these kids weren't scrambling around for a week. But the fact that we had something in place for me to notice it, and then for the players to say, hey, coach, you don't, you know, it was an arena where they felt comfortable saying, Coach, the thing is broken. Well, can you get a new one? And I we went and got a new one. Wow, that's great. I now, you know, staying with your your junior college. Yeah, I'm sorry. Uh your original question was I went way off topic there. I do that some case. But we've, you know, for all intents and purposes, what we have done in the in what we did from basically 2016 to 2022, if you really, if you objectively just look at the players that are from that realm in that region, we are it's around 50 players or so that we had drafted or signed into professional baseball. And six of them right now, within the last 12 months, have played in a big league game. Okay. So we all know coaches that have never had a big leader. We all know coaches that get one. We've had six in the last 12 months, and it's not just that either. We have a lot of guys, Brian Holiday, Hunter Fitzgerald, Jose Azara, Magnus Ellards, Ben Peterson, Onyx Vega, Mitch Myers is is in triple A right now. So I just named eight or ten guys, and I'm I guarantee you I'm missing some. I just listed a bunch of guys that are on that are in the major leagues that are sorry, that are not in the major leagues, they're in the minor leagues, and they these guys are legitimate guys that could play in the major leagues. So, and they're all from that stretch of what we were doing, okay? And so I will tell you this, okay? It is not a magic potion, it is a commitment to lasting learning. It is a commitment to changing the player so that the player can then leave our purview and be able to adapt on their own. So we have our 100% focus has been we're not trying to change the performance, we want to change the player. And I had a I had a player that went to that I helped send to a Division I school, and I sent him to one of my friends who was a coach. I'm not gonna name the school, I'm not gonna name the player, but I watched him play on TV. I watched it was a there was a game on ESPN, and I watched him play, and he did something that we had trained him not to do. And he did it in the game. And then I talked to him after the game, and the coach took him out of the game, yanked him, took him right out of the game. And he didn't do it in the middle, he did it when you're supposed to do it, but he took him out of the game and the player, I talked to the player, and the player was like, Oh, well, you know, I got yanked and blah-da-da-da. And I said, he 100% should have yanked you, and here's the reason why. Because you were trained to know how to do that, and you allowed the training that you knew how to do, you let it leave you, right? So it's not about what you can achieve in the moment, it's about what you can achieve, retain, perform with, and be a part of what you carry in your growth. So that's that is the that is the thing. And what I will tell you is, is that in order to get there without unrelenting accountability and without like multiple people, like good cop, bad cop, bad cop, good cop, middle cop, all of those things, it was not, it was not Ben. It was the directives that we that and the foundation that we laid, and that's why I have my college coaching staff there with me. We let we left college coaching to do this together. So it's like I'm not out on the floor right now, they're out there getting people better.
SPEAKER_00Now, you mentioned something there, you know, you you were able to call him up on the phone and and totally agree with the coach yanking him from the game.
Why Players Crave Brutal Truth
SPEAKER_00How with the way today's athletes are and how you coached at the junior college level there, do players want that just brutal honesty?
SPEAKER_01And you know, how did you approach that as a coach?
SPEAKER_04They they they yearn for it, but will not out loud say it consistently enough. But when you like when you are crashed, when you are like crashing into it but with strategy and with a support, I'm gonna do this, and this is where I need you to be for this guy, and then follow up. So it's not like that's the other thing is that we're like I'm the king of following up. I don't deliver something one time and then you know, go away from it. It's always I did this, this is what I this is what needs to be said to you. And I will say, you know, there's a lot of like if you were just walking by some of my training or some of even the locker room or you're walking walking by the field, there's probably some some times where just people might cringe, you know, at at how I deliver some things. And that's, you know, there there's there if I'm wrong and I I say sorry, I I'm wrong and I say sorry. But most of the time I deliver things the way that I deliver them with the with just a rawness to them, because I know that that delivery method I'm is gonna open things up for me to really see where the player is. If I if I'm if I'm if I'm using the hammer, I'm gonna be able to use all of the other weapons, all of the other tools that are in the tool bag too. So I have found that players, you know, really you lose the player completely when you're not just dead out truthful. And some of the best conversations and some of the best players that I've ever had, I've told them you are not good enough. I looked at a kid one time and told him he was 25 pounds overweight and that he I wouldn't put him on the team if he was 25 pounds overweight. I looked at him dead in the face. I said, You're overweight, 25 pounds, I'm not putting you on the team. And that kid lost 25 pounds and signed a scholarship with the University of Miami. That's what happened. Like he wasn't, I wasn't even gonna put him on my team. But a lot of people tippy toe around those things when I've just always been like, I'm just gonna put it out there, I'm gonna say it, whether you like to hear it or not, that's how I'm gonna be. And but I prove my love for my players in a lot of different ways after I am able to, you know, hit them with that, with stuff like that.
Training Throws From Every Angle
SPEAKER_00Well, you've talked about an undertrained area that players don't work on enough, and that's the uh throwing from different angles. Why do you think that coaches and players don't work on that enough? And and talk about how you you work on it.
SPEAKER_04Well, weirdly enough, I think it comes down to a comfortability thing because it's just the way that science kind of works a little bit. This is kind of like a a you know fusion of science, is that the longer you go, and the example that I use with families all the time and players all the time is I have five children. I have a 14-year-old, a 10-year-old, an eight-year-old, a six-year-old, and a five-year-old. And if I set them all up next to each other and I just say, hey, walk across the room, and all of them, if I if I got a tape measure down, my 14-year-old is gonna walk the truest. He's gonna have the truest stride. That that measure of that stride is gonna be the same. My 10-year-old is gonna be the next, right? They and the eight-year-old and so on. And my my five-year-old, her steps are gonna vary much more percentage-wise. Okay. So the more you hammer something in, then the more likely it is to just become your habit. So if you're constantly throwing from over the top, over the top, over the top, over the top, and then you get to 15 or 16, and somebody tells you start throwing from multiple angles, you're gonna, it's gonna take you a lot longer for that to be natural. And so one of the things that I always thought about when I was growing up, I was never this, I was never a great baseball player, an amazing baseball player, but I had a stepfather when I was young, and he would get off work and he would, we would walk down to the river and we would skip rocks. And that's what we would do. We would go down there and we would take rocks and we would skip rocks. And I had every kind of a rock. So I'm picking up flat rocks, I'm picking up chunky rocks, I'm picking up every kind of a rock you can imagine. I'm on the coast of Maine and I'm just zipping them, trying to get as many things as I could. I spent an hour there skipping rocks, right? I can. throw from every angle. There, I could walk on the floor right now and hit a you know hit a coffee cup from 50 feet away from six o'clock, three o'clock. So I always had that in my mind. Like this is a skill. So we use the uh Vita's from from Trotsky. We love those. We use bottle caps. We use something that they came up with at uh slowthegamedown.com where they have like their they're kind of like larger they're like a larger hard plastic cap and we use those and we we have a target in the corner and we we will have players like as part of a mini drill because I'm like I'm the master of the mini drill man like I I coach the mini drills. I coach those first 15 minutes from the time you walk out of the dugout and I don't let I never let players hang out in the dugout ever. Dugout was not a social space. You're getting out of the dugout I coached that 15 minutes probably harder than I coached any other time than I than than any other time of practice or any other time of games. I was hammering those guys on those mini journals and that's when we do stuff like that. We would work on our transfer right here and throwing from three o'clock you know double double play feeds or in the hole from a shortstop or deep from third or you attack a ball and you work uphill. And I wanted everybody I want everybody to work on those. And if you're under the age of of 13 or 14 you're throwing the ball from multiple angles every single time that we play catch.
SPEAKER_00That's something that you know when you see a you go to a high school game or or to a travel game don't get me don't don't get me going.
SPEAKER_04Yeah they're turn like this and then throw downhill like this. And it's like the guy receiving it's you know you would just watch that glove go and it's it there's such an easier way you know throw throw a rock yeah well you know you like to talk about being humble with your work ethic and can you share your story about the the Stanley lunch pail that you brought to the dugout yeah sure so I you know the that year we as a staff we had been working really hard and we had some we had a lot of continuity in the staff and we we it was the first time that we started to get some real community continuity where it was like you know we I took when I took over at Broward College I was the youngest head coach in the state of Florida and this that this was my fifth year and we were just we were busting our butts but at the same time man like we were working hard and it wasn't about just working hard we were working hard but we were also we were also bringing a lot of creativity into what was happening and the the crazy part about that year was it's like we were we were all kind of wearing thin because of some administrative like the we just weren't getting a lot of help administratively so I just decided like you know what I don't want the players to see in any way the struggle that we're kind of going through as a staff right now administratively and with support. So
Work Ethic That Fuels Confidence
SPEAKER_04really the the lunch pail was for a lot of different reasons but it was to you know I showed up with that thing on the daily I grew up like there's I grew up in a I was born in a town called Waterville and right next to Waterville there's this town called Winslow and you know right along the side of the Kennebec River there's this massive mill I mean this I I I I didn't grow up in that town I kind of back and forth between another town on the coast but the people that I grew up around I grew up around lobster fishermen and and mill families that's what I grew up around. I didn't know any any person growing up I didn't know any person that their dad didn't work their ass off. Everybody that I knew their dad worked hard. And I and I'm I'm thankful to my parents for making sure that I was around you know people that that their dad worked hard. So I brought that that lunch pail into the year and it became quickly like you know a joke but I never let it on that I was like kind of that I it was funny but I I took it dead serious. So I let the players look at it and I let the coaches look at it in a way that was like oh there's Ben's lunch pail you know but I was dead serious with that lunch pail. You know what I'm you know what I'm saying? And then so one day sitting there throwing I think it was a Sunday and I'm sitting there throwing batting practice and I had brought the lunch pail up to in the dugout and there was team using our field after the game and they come in I see them coming in I'm finishing up throwing BP to another group that was there. They were getting ready to get off and and I had become kind of friends with the the folks from the you know the showcase these were showcase teams and so but I hear them start to talk about the lunch pail because it was a big hunky lunch pail and I hear these coaches start laughing about it. And they're like oh who the who the heck would have a lunch pail like this what is this thing? Look at this and they're literally clowning on this thing and it was perfect timing because I finished up I walked over I just popped those two strings I was like dunk like that and I saw all of them look at me. You know I I I kind of greeted myself and it was like dunk dunk and the thing pops back and I just grab this sandwich and then they're like that's yours and I was like yeah man and that's kind of how you know it's like humble in work ethic confidence in nature and that's just you know I I don't uh apologize you know for the confidence that that I have or that we have I just you know I kind of the thing I always try to say to people is is that I have the confidence level that you want your player to have. You want your players to have confidence. You want them to be like that. So if you're standing in front of them all the time, why would you not want them to have that level of confidence and think that they're gonna hit every time and even when they don't they think they're gonna hit next time and they're gonna punch this guy out or they're gonna put up a zero whatever it is. And if they don't you still want them to think that same way right but the bottom line is that you can't have the you can't have that unshakable confidence. It doesn't exist unless you have that lunch pail unless you're willing to do the work unless you're willing to do what anybody, what everybody else you any job that's there, you'll take any job that's there. And that was kind of the arc of my coaching career is that like I I started from like I'm just in the corner that we don't know who this guy is, you know? And I was willing to do anything to be a part of what they were doing with you know the short, medium and long term goal of what I ultimately wanted to do.
SPEAKER_00I I love the story because it brought me back to the days growing up as a kid in eastern Ohio and my dad was a steel worker and he had something very similar to that that type of lunch pail and you know the thermos the sandwich and off to work you know have the thermos in there too yes well you know talking strategy now I've done this where I've said all right we're gonna take till we get a strike guys we gotta we gotta do something here but you believe that you need to take until you get two strikes that that's the better strategy.
Why Take Until Two Strikes
SPEAKER_04Explain that that philosophy okay so I don't my my thing is and I want to kind of be clear on this is that ideally you don't have either my argument is simply that if you're gonna have your players take you should have them take until two as opposed to having them take until they get one so the and and you're going into a post I I I actually remember the post that you're referring to I put a lot into that because I wanted to make sure that it was very detailed. So if I don't cover every part of that as I'm talking now but basically is typically the first strike that you get is going to be the best to hit right so most most coaches will agree with that that the if if we're talking about if you're gonna get to three strikes if a pitcher's gonna throw you three strikes most of the time the first one is actually going to be the easiest one to hit and I think if you if you go to pitching coaches at every level even at the major leagues right now they're just like hey don't worry about hitting the corner anymore even you know you go from the bottom to the top pitching coaches want to get ahead because of how much their chances increase when they get ahead. So when you take until you get one you now walk yourself through the hole at bat you've only you've what you've done is you've removed the best possible strike that he's going to get right so I don't I definitely don't agree with that. Number two is if you're gonna take until you get a strike is your player like getting in there and having an A B? Are you committing that player to that A B? How are you knocking that player off what what is it going to do to the player when they watch a pitch and then the next one's close and they have to chase that one and they roll over they pop it up or they do whatever with it I mean you any coach is going to feel like a bonehead thing oh man I told him to take a get a strike I wish I he would have swung at that first one. Going back to the other side of it with two, I always thought this the more you see if you're a real hitter and you're training real hitters, the more you see the more you know. Okay. And I used to I remember when I was very very young as a coach I remember specifically training my guys to make sure that they knew and understood that if a guy throws you a first pitch off speed pitch for a strike, he just made a huge mistake because if you are a hitter you're going to be able to compartmentalize exactly what that looked like out of that plane. So what it does is is that it you're actually giving the hitter when you get in and you're like I'm taking till I get to two you're and with the right mindset of course you're creating a library for your hitter right and the more expansive your library is and the more things that are accessible in your library the better off you're gonna be the more command of the zone you're gonna have. And that played itself out on my teams we walked a ton and we hit a ton of extra base hits. And if you just think of did we strike out? Yeah we struck out too but you think about that we walked a ton and we hit a ton of extra base hits if you just ask a group of folks that know baseball, hey we walk a ton and we hit a ton of extra base hits, what does that mean? They'll tell you you're hunting you're hunting you are hunting for it. So it was something I I I didn't have my players take until they got a strike. But if I felt that they needed to see more pitches or if I felt that we as a group were being way too aggressive I didn't make them take until they got a strike. I forced them to take until they got to two I never had a team that liked it they they were pissed but I did a lot of times to to to prove a point and it always like it may have been just luck honestly but it always worked it there was never a time and I wish looking back I wish there was times where I had applied it you know in some other situations that I didn't make sense well you were very successful as a college coach and what advice would you give players and you know I guess even their parents when they're trying to design decide where to go play college baseball? Well
Choosing Schools That Raise Ceilings
SPEAKER_04okay the to me that's a very easy and straightforward answer is that your job is to identify a school situation coaching staff that you think has the best chance to help you reach your career ceiling. That is the criteria that is it not who's not how many catchers they got not how many third basemen they got not how many your goal should be it's a school coaching staff and a situation that's gonna help me reach my career ceiling. That is the that should be the criteria for a ball player. If you are more focused on academics then your goal should not be to be the best ball player you can be your goal should be to mix those things but but it's straightforward if you're trying if you want to be the best you possibly can be and that is the that's right there. Okay the only thing you should it's it's not about who's giving you money or this or that or whatever. It's not has nothing to do with it. Brian Holiday got drafted in the third round and was an all-American at Oklahoma State. He got drafted in the third round I was sitting there telling people to pay I'm I'm telling guys to draft him after his first year with me and nobody drafted him and he ends up getting you know eight or nine hundred grand Brian Holiday walked on. He walked on he walked on because Brian Holiday we were able to successfully convince him we are going to get you to your career ceiling. Here is how here is why and this is what we're gonna do in order to help you do that. We were not we weren't full of it we told him the truth but that's what ball players should be looking for and I I do get bothered when I see that like go where you're wanted no not if you're trying to be as good as you possibly can be you need to go where that you can take a chance Ben Petke is another guy that that played with us and went to Samford and then signed with Houston Ben Petke told me because I told him I said Ben I'm gonna tell you the truth I got no money for you and it's the best pitching staff I think I probably have ever had and he said you think you have the best pitching staff you've ever had and I said yeah and he goes okay then I'll I'll come and I said okay and he said yeah if you got 12 guys you think are better than me then I know that I'm gonna make I'm gonna work my way and become better than them. Wow
Building Strong Parent Relationships
SPEAKER_04and that's what he did he outworked and he outplayed and outperformed guys I thought was better than him and made the team and D1 scholarship and got signed best advice for high school coaches when it comes to dealing with parents I would say so I will say this okay what I have noticed and this is just me what I have noticed is that there's a lot of high school coaches that don't like dealing with parents but if you look at the great college coaches they all deal with parents they all seek those relationships with those parents they all want those relationships with those parents they like some of so like I've had awesome awesome players awesome players okay but I've had so many of those that we've created like I text with parents from 10 years ago you know we created real uh friendships real relationships and so my thought process and my application to that is why is it that high school coaches don't want anything they put a wall up I don't want to talk to parents I'm not dealing with parents but then you look at the best in college and they're they're seeking that they're not like oh yeah I want you can introduce me to your mom. No, as I wanted to know the kids' parents I wanted to call them I wanted I called parents and said hey this is the issue I'm having or hey you know this is this is awesome. Your son's doing an amazing job I'm really happy you guys trusted me. I'm so thankful after games I'd see them hey how are you you know it was it was like that. So I mean I noticed for a lot of other people that I coached against they were like that too like the ones that were winning they were like that. So I would say if you're a high school coach why would you not explore that I mean I think it's something that could really foster and benefit. Now you're you've got to you better have some people skills and you better be able to do that thing we were talking about reading because unfortunately you know I always try to have that faith in folks but I think you know for high school coaches I think sometimes you might get burned by a relationship or being too open or something like that and it can kind of shut you down. But I would just encourage like those things are going to happen. Like you know they're they're just that's part of what this is you regroup you got to be who you are you know and that's you know to the that's also my advice to any coach anywhere is just be who you are like be who you are. And I I always try to encourage young coaches and mid-rangers too like oh the the the legends and the older folks I don't tell them be who you are they're they're already doing it you know they got there that way but the young guys I'm just like hey man you know be be who you are be who you are to your court and and ride with that. And if it's
Persistence Story From Germany To Florida
SPEAKER_04good enough it'll be good enough.
SPEAKER_00Well I want to toward the tail end here I want to hit you with some rapid fire questions here and uh just to get your thoughts on them hate losing or love winning?
SPEAKER_04It is a hundred percent you need to love winning. You need to be focused on what is next. You you don't want to have any fear, anxiety hate losing is the connotation there is fear driven, anxiety based loving the win allows you to become better from the loss. Loving the win allows you to consistently pursue and be and focus on the better.
SPEAKER_00I want to get better I want to get better sack butt or hit and run?
SPEAKER_04Well I'm gonna tell you right now neither I would do run and hit I don't like forcing anybody to to swing the bat you know when so just because somebody's running but I do love the run and hit.
SPEAKER_01I love run and hit Hank Aaron or Barry Bonds?
SPEAKER_04Barry Bonds why Barry because I watched him and he was he was amazing to watch he's the best hitter that's ever walked the face of the earth in my opinion then to finish up your best or funniest story from all your years of coaching college baseball so I have one that is I don't I don't know if I've told it I think I might have told it before but I can't really remember but it's it's definitely an interesting one because this this really happened. So I was overseas in Germany and I had made the decision to it was time for me to leave you know I was just I was I was playing I was coaching I was a GM I was just I was burned I was gonna leave so I started to email all of the coaches in South Florida and I emailed everybody University of Miami FAU Lynn University Palm Beach Palm Beach Atlantic Broward Nova Southeastern Barrie I I hit up everybody and almost all of them responded but Broward was the one that said we have a need and you know we'd love to have you I initiated that conversation we we talked and I basically said hey I'm gonna I'm gonna move there from from Europe so I announced I I had already signed a contract to go back for another year but I just felt really strongly that I needed to go start my my college coaching career. So I made the announcement to the club in Germany and I I said all my goodbyes I I and it was you know I'd been there for two and a half years so there was a lot of good goodbyes to be had so I packed up all my stuff I flew to North Carolina where my car was because that's where I went to college packed up all my stuff that was in a storage unit and I drove down to Fort Lauderdale I got my place all squared away I got the furniture in there and I'm reaching out to the to the head coach letting him know I'm there and so I'm like hey you know I want to before fall gets started before we meet with the team I want to make sure that I you know I'm there at the first team meeting well he sends me an email and he's like yeah we just had our first team meeting and I was like huh okay didn't that's a little surprising I'm like all right well you know can we meet today? And he's like yeah let's meet we'll we'll meet tomorrow morning so I'm definitely concerned I'm like this is very strange I so we we get to the I meet him at the field we we go sit in the dugout we sit down my butt doesn't even hit the bench and he says to me he goes yeah we just don't have a need so we're not gonna I don't think we're gonna need you this fall and I said what do you I said what do you mean and he's like well we just we got a lot of guys that we had put offers out to and they ended up accepting the offers late they turned them down originally and then they came back in and I said I just moved here from Germany and he was like I'm you know I'm really sorry we just don't have a need and so I was quiet for a second and I had never met him and I I turned my head up and I looked at him and I said no you have a need and he was like no I really don't and I said no you do you do I moved here from Germany I'm one of the coaches here I'm not I'm I'm gonna coach here and he was like well I don't really have much for you to do I said I don't care we're gonna find something I said I'll I'll go rake that dirt I'll go clean your cage I'll do your study halls I don't care what it is but I you are gonna give me something to do I came all the way across halfway across the world literally to be here I'm here you're gonna find something for me to do and He was like, okay. And then he handed out the uniforms the next day. And I will, I was, I still have it. Okay. We're in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and it was August. And he handed out, we had like 56 or 57 kids that were trying out for the fall. And he gives the the he they had dressed them up on the bench all pretty along this big dugout, numbers one through 60, right? And he's handing out their, you can tell I don't even know the kids. And he's handing out the jerseys to like returners and stuff like that, kids he knew, and they're going one by one and they're grabbing them, right? And they're leaving. So they're grabbing their thing and they're walking out. And I'm just standing there, right? And then he gets to the coaches, and the coaches start grabbing theirs, right? And I'm still standing there. And then there's just number 59 and number 60 left. And they're all gone. Everybody's gone. And I'm just kind of standing there. And and he goes, Oh, yeah, grab a shirt. And I was like, thanks. And I walk over. I walk over. I I lift up number 59. I look at it. It's double XL. This is it's cotton shirts. Double XL. I lift up number 60 and it's double XL too. Okay. And I wore that friggin' double XL, that single double XL T-shirt every single day for the entire fall. And when I became head coach of that same school, we never bought another piece of cotton again. We had all dry fits. I made sure of it. And I never let number 60, I would we retired 60. So that's a pretty cool story about how things, you know, played out. So I hope I hope whoever listens to that enjoys it. Huh?
SPEAKER_00And you became the head coach.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, there were nine of us. Listen, there was nine of us. There was nine of us that were on that staff, and I'm the only one that's still in baseball. When I became the head coach, I was the only one that was still in baseball. Everybody else was out of baseball. That's great.
Final Takeaways And Where To Follow
SPEAKER_00Well, it's Ben Vizier, owner of the Academy in Florida. Coach, thanks for taking time to join me here on Baseball Coaches Unplugged. Really enjoyed it. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Baseball Coaches Unplugged Podcast is proud to be partnered with the Netting Professionals Improvement Programs, one facility at a time. Contact them today at 844-620-2707 or visit them online at www.nettingpros.com. Thanks again for tuning into the show. If you're interested, follow us on X at BCU Pod. It's at BCU Pod. And you can find us also on Instagram and Facebook at baseball coaches unplugged. As always, I'm your host, Coach Kevin Carpenter. Thanks for listening to Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
