GNA wait and uh let some folks join in and I'm looking forward to discussing uh to be kind uh I'm looking forward to discussing uh a a topic that is near and dear to my heart and so uh first and foremost want to welcome everyone happy opening division one baseball season we are now underway we have division three division 2 NCAA we have Jo uh we have niia uh and now this past weekend uh and through today we have um officially begun our NCAA division 1 uh season so welcome aboard uh and I want to say thank you to everyone I want to let everyone know as you can see here uh Proline is our sponsor on Tuesday evenings uh for our live Q&A I'm kind of battling a little bit of a cold so I hope uh I hope you can bear with me in the nasly sound that I'm uh uh may have today uh but I did want to kind of make sure that I followed up a post uh from this past weekend that seemed to catch the attention uh of several uh adults coaches people who are in the game uh and I really wanted to take a few minutes um and a answer questions and B just kind of shed some light onto the topic it's something that I feel needs to be addressed uh I feel it's long overdue and if nobody else is going to do it then I am going to uh stand on a hill uh and begin to scream as loud as I can and I want to let everyone know you know there is no such thing as you make everybody happy nobody agrees with you 100% of the time I get that uh I welcome and encourage uh discussion uh I'm not so much one to uh get into the name calling game so I try to avoid that I also try not to give people's uh I I I don't like to discredit or discourage but at the same time if somebody wants to engage with me in social media and wants to come out it from a combative perspective not something that I'm willing to do I'm always willing to have a dialogue I'm always willing to discuss uh I will uh often you know be corrected but on this particular topic is something that I feel quite strongly about and we're going to talk tonight about uh the allow all important all powerful uh velocity arm strength and while it is an intrical part of skill set development I feel that we as an industry collectively I think parents I want you to hear my words you know I'm going to try to keep my tone level um and I just want you to hear uh some opinions that I have and I feel that we have to get back to offering uh what I consider to be educational discussions uh informative discussions and then you as parents take that information and do with it uh as you feel uh appropriate for your particular student athlete I also want to let people know whether you're watching on Instagram or Twitter or YouTube or Facebook you can uh uh you know engage you can ask questions I encourage you to ask questions I see it I will put my uh my glasses on I will uh read uh the texts um and I will let you know uh you know that I want this to be a discussion on Tuesdays not just a dialogue directly from me to you and so the purpose of my call tonight is over the weekend I started to notice uh uh you know a lot of scores that were coming in uh from you know this opening weekend in division one baseball uh and I get it it's opening weekend one weekend does not a season make college coaches don't you know they are not out here trying to be engaged or involved in scores that you know double digit wins or double digits on both sides that's that you know no baseball coach goes into the season hoping they're playing in games that are 22 to 21 or 22 to 20 uh you know that's not what they Envision when they put together a squad and a roster uh and and really my point is not so much about the walks and the scores were uh indicative of too many people focusing on velocity it has to do with how we as a uh Sports World now are being sold information we're being sold uh narratives we're being sold products for young athletes Young baseball players that is no longer uh it's not the correct way to learn the game and by that I mean let us look at the business of Youth Baseball it's set up now through these private uh you know venture capitalist funds that now own perfect game they own IMG they own NCSA they're they're they're all working together and they're all working to get parents excited at very young ages they want our children to be ranked at eight years old and our our our athletes teams to be ranked as young as eight years old and they start using the words velocity training and arm strength and all these things and really at the younger ages of let's say 8 to 14 that would be equivalent to trying to teach uh you know young athletes to run marathons before they are you know learn to walk properly uh before they learn to run properly heck in some case before they even learn to crawl you know we're talking about things that are going to happen in their life 8 to 10 years from now you know beginning at eight years old um and a lot of the things that we discuss collectively with with reg regard to baseball hitting pitching Fielding we're asking young athletes to do drills and to use training equipment before they have physically prepared uh to to to perform these or execute uh these types of drills is it really important how hard an 8 to 14 year older throws is it really important uh for them to be doing long toss drills and plyo balls and and my answer to that is definitively no and my whole point about this weekend's uh the scoreboard is pitching is a craft of throwing and we spend uh parents when I say we I talk about as a parent we often spend times and we're giving athletes this false sense of okay everything's going to be okay because we're going to take a pitching lesson you you struggled on the mound let's go get a lesson you struggled at the plate let's go get a lesson baseball for eight to 14 to 15 heck 8 to 18 is incredibly hard and parents we have to let kids begin to fall and fail and oh by the way the really challenging ultra competitive 10 through 13 year old that's really Head and Shoulders above everybody else they're going to probably Plateau you know the big 12y old that pushes everybody around and then you know over the next five years between the ages of 13 to 18 uh all of the growth begins to level out the playing field and those little league Heroes and those really young super fast or hard throwing guys kind of balance out and everybody else catches up to them and the rash of injuries that occur when we get these guys trying to Max effort baseballs does velocity help with pitchers in college and professional baseball uh yeah but does it is it the say all Beall for younger baseball players I see I have so many direct messages from what I assume are adults that infuriate the heck out of me they're condescending uh you know in some cases they're derogatory towards me and I'm willing to wear that I have a son that still plays a little bit but his career is winding down okay I'll take that but what I'm trying to get across to parents is this you're being sold right out of the gate at ages 8 through 12 8 through 14 you're being sold the kids aren't participating in Youth Sports they're part of a production line and you you're going to go from 8U to 9u to 10 youu you're getting this false sense of security that your athlete is really good as an 8-year-old they're really good as a 12y old therefore they're going to be really good as a 14 through 18y old old and there's you really should begin to think about college recruiting and arm strength and bat speed we are way outkicking our coverage as adults with regard to teaching the sport as a soon to be 62y old man I feel it is a incumbent upon me to Simply pass the Baton for the passion the love of the sport of baseball the same way that it was passed to me and I feel that the whole world now is put a quarter in your pocket and I'll tell you anything you want to know and the whole world wants to know where is my son ranked where is my son with regard to arm strength where is my son with regard to hitting we won't know that until they're 17 to 20 years old because a they're physically not able to perform perform the tasks that they think they have to perform based on the exercises and the drills and all the lessons that we're providing for them playing catch I can't tell you how many college coaches I had a SCC coach come on and say we're now looking at our pitchers to see if they can get 60% of the hitters out and people were laughing this is a head coat that's been around the game of baseball for decades and now is a head coach in a power for conference and somehow adults want to tell him that he's he's wrong that's his opinion that's his right as a coach to coach his program we are be trying to tell children that their identity is based in a sport that they just want to play with their peers they they just want to play but yet we have to take them and we have hitting instructors that want to talk and use 50 Cent words and they want to talk about all of these things about don't use your arms use your core they just want to learn how to hit a baseball they just want the barrel of the bat to hit the ball we got young pitchers that are on a mound you know and I have all these goo pitching gur gurus and if we're talking about adults college or professional athletes yes the mound is their office but an8 through 14y old does not need to be on a mound for 12 months a year an 8 to 14 year-old does not need to be doing pitching lessons two times a week off of a mount long tossing and running and gunning into a net for months at a time and then being told okay it's baseball season in February through October here we go you're going to pitch you got teams their coaches are sending me messages saying you are as you are a dinosaur a 100 games the more games you play the better the kids are going to get who's throwing those games who's pitching all those games the kids's gonna catch for five innings and then he's going to pitch for another five innings on Friday and Saturday and then he's going to play Short Stop on Sunday and close for you on Sunday the bottom line is we are burning through young athletes burning through them and we wonder why all of these athletes are the the epidemic of arm injuries that are occurring and I have a statistic and I wanted to make sure I had these for all these people that are coming at me in my DMs and you can keep coming at me I'm not afraid to to get those but I just want to let you know statistically in 2024 Major League Baseball Major League Baseball funded a study that found out over 50% over half of pitchers who undergo Tommy John surgery are under the age of 19 that concern anybody anybody worried about that 50% of Tommy John surgeries are performed on children young as young as 12 years old but they're all for 50% are younger than 19 overuse and injuries have increased 50% over the past decade according to the sports medicine Institute and Studies have shown that throwing over 85 miles an hour before the age of 15 increases the risk of injury by 60% by 60% I want to make sure I read that correctly excuse me I stand corrected Studies have shown that those athletes that throw over 85 miles an hour before the age of 15 injury risk increases by 300% 300% pitching is a craft a craft of being able to play catch to execute how many college coaches Have you listened to on Thursday nights talking about competitive catch being able to throw competitive catch Nevada urri Missouri Vanderbilt UVA I could rattle them all off they've all said the same thing we stress catch play competitive catch play location pitching is a craft of throwing running is a craft of walking we cannot continuously be an industry that is hustling in a three- ring circus and I I would venture to tell you that all of these people that are talking about recruiting and rankings and all of this stuff for parents it's wrong it's wrong it has to stop we have to get back I don't care if you play travel ball I really don't but a 100 games way too much baseball games 20 to 30 20 to 40 over the spring through the fall plenty get some practices in play more catch try to allow children to grow into their bodies we're asking children to throw ply balls into a wall at 10 years old backwards a million times their bodies are not developed for that it's not meant so even if your son throws relatively hard for their age at 12 at what distance are they throwing at is there going to be a correlation from 45 or 50 feet to 60 feet 6 Ines maybe not some boys that are really fast on the Little League field or the Little League Dimensions they get to The Big Field and they're lost for a number of years because their bodies are not developed yet physically there is growth internally there is growth and we are jeopardizing the health at the expense of what in for who I don't understand it so when you hear me talk and you hear me putting something online I give it a great deal of thought before my thumbs get carried away I'm not talking about the scores being out of control I'm talking about the walks I'm talking about the lack of pitchability with multiple pitches when's the last time you've heard anybody talking about the development of a change up when's the last time you've listened to somebody talking about alternating grips or pressure points on a baseball you know we dismiss Greg Maddox as an outlier but Greg Maddox was not physically imposing but he learned how to manipulate a baseball based on pressure points and grips attacking hitters is a skill that must be taught just because you throw hard doesn't mean a hitter is going to swing and miss and you're trying to teach kids how to fool hitters and we're trying to be as adults manipulate young athletes as video games which was my major point over the weekend we can no longer just think of kids athletes as video games we must allow children whether it's the pitcher and the catcher to work amongst themselves at younger ages we must teach athletes particularly pitchers when you go to the m you're competing against a hitter the Umpire you have to throw strikes you got to get them to swing the bats you need them to get aggressive we can't teach them to fear contact pitching is part of the baseball process they have seven people infielders and outfielders behind them that are part of the of the team part of the game use your fielders use your position players it try to induce weak contact move the baseball in and out up and down velocity arm strength we worry about it as adults for our children at such young ages it's silly it's silly it has to stop there can no longer be an emphasis on rankings and in all of these evaluations on boys under the age of 15 or 16 because they haven't grown into their bodies yet we have to allow children to develop a foundation or a passion for the sport once they've developed a love and a passion do you know that for decades for decades since the late 40s early 40s children play baseball between the ages of six through 13 it's the neighborhood thing it's part of the neighborhood the schools everything like that and then at 13 a lot of boys or girls they choose not to play softball not to play baseball they find other Hobbies other interests and then the boys that choose to play baseball between the ages of 13 to 15 they try it at the big diamond ah this isn't really for me and the ones that end up at high school you know they play and for all the boys approximately 450 to get the high school 450,000 across the United States about 10% end up going on to play in college but yet we are making these massive movements to spend money for velocity programs and all of these gits and gadgets for young children and lessons twice a week and running guns and plyo balls and arm strength and all of this stuff arm care Tom house has spent the better part of two decades maybe more talking about just throw things throw footballs throw softballs play catch next I I because I don't want to I don't want to make this go on and on but I do want to say something and I really want to make sure I say this the right way I really want to say to parents what is your Rush what is the rush we have one decade with our children now I'm going to keep my presentation tonight brief because I get emotional when I start talking about this I am 62 years old and I look back on my children uh from the age of 10 to 20 10 years you essentially you know that third or fourth grade into college and all of the stuff that goes on during that 10year time time period Sports driving lessons High School dating dinner table being able to rides home after practices or games or ride homes after family trips and then the kids go off to college and you just don't spend that much time with them anymore and these years as a parent are going to go by in a blink youth sports are a part of who your children are they do not define who your children are are we as adults really paying attention when we're talking to our young athletes are we making sure they know listen this is tough this game is hard you're going to fall you're going to fail it's just a part of who you are whether you get a base hit whether you walk that guy with the bases loaded the world is still going to love you the the world is still going to be here this is just a sport it's just a game what really upsets me is this false set of expectations that we are placing on younger children about college baseball or bust division one baseball or bust velocity or you stink how hard do you throw how hard do you hit a ball off of a te I promise you there was a play in a game in a College World Series where Tyler Campbell hit a ball and it barely got to the shortstop and Vanderbilt ended up winning a game by one run and that ball might have had an exit velocity of 70 it still went in the book as a hit there's a a young man pitching at Vanderbilt everybody told me that I was crazy and he throws 87 to 90 and he has an unbelievable change up and he also has a will to win and he has an ultra competitive attitude my point is a lot of college coaches told him you know you're nuts he's never going to pitch in college velocity is something that's measurable and obvious ly at the highest levels Professional Baseball division one baseball but you can play college baseball and have an enjoyable career if you are working on your body and your strength throughout your high school career to and you have that passion to play there's niia opportunities there's Joo opportunities there's NCAA division 3 in division 2 opportunities you don't have to throw 95 you don't have to hit 110 off of a te and oh by the way you don't need a college recruiting Agency for children under the age of 17 I I I don't get what we're trying to tell athletes in high school just enjoy the the experiences at younger ages and allow the maturity physically and mentally to occur and then when the time comes you can begin to look and evaluate colleges okay I'm going to answer all of these questions plyo balls aren't just for velocity traing they're used for w warm-ups and shoulder care okay so I just want to let you know Chris plyo balls I know about them use them I don't think P balls uh being thrown uh into a net for a 10 to 12 year old is really a wise thing my opinion just my opinion do are they used for shoulder circles yes they are are they used for warm-ups yes they are but trying to throw them uh at extreme uh without supervision it's just like trying to tell a student athlete to bench press with with no one there to spot them you can't just hand young Athletes Training equipment and and say here go do it but I understand your point is under the proper supervision and you want to use a plyo ball to get loose and stretch absolutely um but I don't agree with the the running guns into the walls uh it's a systematic problem listen to Youth players all they talk about is vlo okay why do you think youth players only talk about velocity it's because they hear adults talking about velocity you can't go to a perfect game event or any other event you know and what's the spin rate what's the velocity what's all this stuff for an 18 to 19 or 20 year old okay that might be something we might want to discuss as it pertains to recruiting but for a 12 to 14 year old not so much and I see it on 14U rankings in perfect game and they put you know class of 2030 uh velocity 885 88 who cares I don't care that we need to stop that we need to stop that it needs to stop Major League Baseball should come out and absolutely say based on our study we need to slow this thing down what coaches at the college level are looking for dictate what happens at the lower levels they are now reaping the associated with okay Equity call I don't know what that means college coaches by the way are not the problem you know everybody wants to say there doesn't need to be a villain the villain is not a college coach the villain is not the equipment manufacturer what I'm trying to explain is let's use common sense collectively as a whole and say do we really need to worry about how hard a a 10 through 15 year old is throwing a baseball and is that a true indicator of what they will throw as an 18 to 25 year old no because injuries occur as I just stated earlier and also some boys just don't have the physical strength as they get older they don't have the core strength they don't have the lower half strength are we sacrificing physical development at the expense of chasing velocity are we sacrificing the the the the core foundational pieces to being a highlevel high school and college athlete from strength from nutrition uh from training habits are we putting the cart before the horse is my point here's the other thing college coaches they they get paid to win games they get paid to win games college coaches when they recruit do they get it right and they also get it wrong some guys they think we're going to develop don't develop some guys they thought N I don't think he's going to help us so L help them a ton college coaches I promise you are trying everything in their power to win baseball games at the end of the day athletes student athletes are asked to execute they are asked to perform if you execute you continue to play if you don't execute you will not get a lot of playing time we are we need to get back it is a privilege to get between the lines I want to make sure everybody understands in this world of Youth Baseball everybody nobody wants to try out I said something to a parent the other day about Legion Baseball oh they got to try out I don't want to I don't need to do that we we play for a travel team do travel teams cut or do they just make an Elite double Prospect double a non-recruited team or you know non-committed team here's a deal at varsity they cut at Varsity head coaches have to make decisions on who's going to help that team win in college even with these new roster cap it's going to be tougher there are less roster spots athletes have to perform athletes have to execute pitchers have to throw strikes pitchers have to get outs there is nobody to blame there is nobody to blame when an athlete goes out they either perform or they don't perform they either executed or they didn't execute it's as simple as that it's not that they're not getting a chance it's not that the coach is not doing the right thing this has been going on for centuries players athletes all sports soccer football basketball hockey lacrosse baseball if you perform you play if you don't perform or you don't execute you don't play simple as that okay here's my finger wagging finger wagging you want want me to tell you why I'm finger wagging youth parents in my opinion need to take a deep breath and allow younger children to Simply prepare themselves to play the baseball the game of baseball as long as they desire to play the game you don't need to chase velocity you don't need to chase exit velocity you just simply need to prepare the body to play the game at the level that you can play for as long as you can play the youth model as it's currently constituted is telling us that we have to be doing certain uh have to be performing certain skill sets at certain levels in order to be considered uh above average my point of all of this is simply to say we don't need to chase velocity if we can't throw strikes we don't need to chase exit velocity if we can't make contact we don't need to be thinking about college recruiting if we haven't played a high school inning that's what I'm saying that's as simple as that not not pointing at at fingers at anybody Equity call and I I do want to say uh one thing as well because Mark says it here what if a student athlete is not meant to throw 90 miles an hour he's not meant to run a sub seven he's not meant to be a power hitter does that make him a failure what is his role are we preparing children or athletes to excel at their roles are we trying to tell children you're not good enough unless you throw 90 you're not good enough unless you throw as hard as Billy or Jimmy you're not good enough unless you hit as well as Billy or Jimmy baseball is incredibly hard we're making it seem as if there's answers for everything whether it's lessons a different team uh more games less practices it's hard college baseball we shouldn't be seeing scores and I get it it's opening weekend but 36 to 22 33 to 24 whatever the scores are we have to take a step back and allow younger athletes to play more during the season and out of season recover replenish get stronger get better prepared for what lies ahead as they get older spending time doing other sports spending time maybe in the waight room maybe running track doing things that will allow their bodies to rest and recover it's as simple as that it's not finger wagging it's not pointing it's not saying parents you're wrong I'm saying do we really want to worry about college recruiting for an eighth or nth grader is that something you want to be doing college baseball is changing rapidly even more so in this upcoming spring I don't think children really need to be paralyzed by the thought of what may occur in 2028 or 2029 in 2025 I just don't think that that's something that needs to be done I don't think we need to be worried about somebody that throws 90 as a 15y older I just don't think that that's something that's going to definitely lead to being a college athlete I don't think that there's a correlation between what they do as a 14 to 16 year old and what who they will be as a 20 to 23 year old I just don't think that's the case anyway I'm not here to to lecture parents uh if it came across that way I apologize I'm basically trying to get parents to understand slow your processes down allow the baseball season to come we're getting into that spring season this is the time to get out do progressions allow your body to build up allow your body to stretch out be cognizant listen to your body listen to your elbow listen to your shoulder get your body loosened up stretching and preparing for the upcoming season over the next four or five months uh and obviously into the fall uh I I want to say thank you to those that took the time uh to listen uh let's see there are colleges that way over recruit just want to let you know on this topic over recruiting you know to parents college coaches try to give as much opportunity to players as they can they also recognize that there are players that get hurt there are players that don't perform whether that's athletically or academically and you need to field the team as of today uh up to 40 players and travel with with 32 27 and so you need to have a good uh mix of athletes Available to You college coaches uh they play Within the rules that are set for them uh I can tell you that I don't think any coach over recruits uh to hurt uh student athletes I think you're going to see at the division one level the 38 man fall roster leading to the 34 spring roster I still think there's dialogue uh between the NCAA and college coaches to try and get that number closer to 30 maybe 36 uh maybe 38 uh over the long term um but those those days are going to wrap up uh division two division three they're always around 36 um you know some schools now are going to sub Varsity or JB or developmental teams uh but there's just not a lot of room at the end and so you know the high school athletes have to be physically ready to perform you know in order to be able to be an active participant at the Collegiate level and I think a lot of what is going on with regard to travel baseball and know I am not a fan of travel baseball between the ages of eight and 14 I've stated that clearly it's not an appropriate representation of what lies ahead you know just because each team has a blue purple and gold uh 12-year-old team doesn't mean there's going to be three teams available we have travel teams that are crushing middle school teams they don't even allow Middle School uh to have teams anymore because there's not enough participants because travel baseball and then you get parents that want to say well travel baseball is better okay no more middle school so you lose the sense of community you lose the sense of uh you know playing uh for your your school playing within your peers uh within your community and then you go to high school um so my thing to you is allow children to develop physically and mentally as children and then once they get to that age of like 15 14 or 15 where the introduction of strength training and the passion of the discipline of the routine and the development of the skill will lead with the physical maturation in order to prepare them to potentially be a college student athlete that was my point I appreciate everybody taking the time to join me today uh let's see David we play I Ling you in Southern California our best pitchers here are guys who are 5560 but can locate chain speed novel Concepts working hard and some rewiring is needed I agree uh okay so you know Brett and David I see that was a conversation that you were were having um again there are people here they don't agree with what I'm saying um but my point is 11year old or 12y old can tell a guy hey that guy's throwing hard do I need to know that he's throwing 55 like what's the value of knowing that he throws 55 now I get it if you are a coach and you're working on separation between fastball and change up and you're trying to get that six to eight six 8 to 10 miles an hour separation absolutely get it but trying to sit there with radar guns uh for youth baseball games uh and I've seen it uh you know 10 11 12 and 13 year olds uh you know I I my personal opinion I just don't agree with it just don't agree with it I won't agree with it I will never agree with it I didn't do it as a dad didn't do it as a coach I certainly uh I'm not going to start doing it now um so the moral of the story is allow children to develop the foundation the love for the sport they'll want to increase their work ethic they'll want to get better at the sport I promise you when the time comes and it's that Middle School time period they begin to start to learn how to use body weight exercises stretching working out getting under the supervision uh of trainers and so forth and they understand the routine of strength training along with skill set development at that 14 to 17 year old ages that's great trying to make baseball players at 8 through 14 do things that 20 year olders are doing in my opinion is going to lead to injury you know uh I just don't think that they're physically prepared to play at the distances that they're playing uh they may be the exception uh they may be ultra strong ultra big Ultra fast um but I just don't think it can lead to anything positive down the road because their bodies have not begun to uh you know internally um develop uh into their man bodies yet so I appreciate everybody this week we're going to be talking to the University of Minnesota uh head coach head coach Tai mcdevit uh we're going to talk some go for baseball some big 10 Baseball look forward to talking with everybody on Thursday and thank you for taking the time to join me today