Back on The Robbdeville Show with Ben Darnell in Your Afternoon Driver live from Elliott Ballpark. Were joined in the press box right now by Josh McDonald. He has done a fabulous job with his pitching staff this year. As
Yukon Huskies are thirty three and eighteen. They take on Northeastern tonight at six p'oh five, And just just tell me about you know, because we had Jim on last week and he talked about you guys were the last program to have a home weekend you know, series against the team in Division One Baseball and you start, but you start in warmweather states like Porter, you know, places like Puerto Rico, California, Florida, things like that, to help
out because you're a Northeastern squad. In your case, they didn't start out as great as you might have liked. What is that? What happens with you, Jim and the staff to kind of retool and put some guys in the bullpen and some guys in the rotation. How did you come to that that assessment? Uh?
Probably because I had other choice at the time. We just weren't pitching very well at all, you know, we had it we had to just try some different things.
The good news was is a few of the guys that we were pitching in relief early on looked pretty good, and you know, we were just we were at a point where, you know, when you're at I think we're at thirteen seventeen, you kind of look at the mirror and look in the mirror and go, Okay, this isn't working, so we should try to do something a little bit different.
And you know, we did that with.
Uh, you know, with Charlie West jumped in. That was huge for us. He pitches pretty well versus Hofstra, with one of our better pitch games, and you know, at that point of the season and we're like, all right, screw it, We'll put him in on the on the weekend, and sure enough, you know, he pitches well again. And then you know, you know, so some of our relievers, like Sean Finn, who was having a really hard time finding the strike zone for whatever reason, kind of got over,
you know, the pitching fear. You know, you know, on spring break it felt like we were down in North Carolina and he's just kind of carried that. So we've had like a few two or three different guys kind of join, join the join the staff here, you know, and helping us out. And it's just been really big. But what's been really big is, you know, the real
stories that we've been hitting and when you're hitting. It also allowed like a kid like Tommy Ellison whose numbers aren't great, you know, I think as an Era round seven, but it forced him to stay in games like, hey, we got to you know, it's ten to three, you had a bad first inning.
Figure it out.
And if you look at him the last month, he's starting to figure out because you know, we're not yanking him in the second inning because we're down for nothing and we're not scoring. We're okay, it's eight to four, you'll keep going. And all of a sudden, you know, it's like anything else, like these guys get on the
mound enough, they're gonna get get better. And early on the year, we weren't scoring, we weren't pitching, so you know, it was like it was like a carousel ride, right, like you know, you know who's up next type thing. But but yeah, I would say like the last month, because our office has been so good, we've been able to really, okay, let's put this guy in. Let's see
what this guy looks like for two innings. Let's see what this this relieve looks like versus Lefty, And all of a sudden, roles are being a staffablished that when we're going a tight game, like we were versus Villanova a couple weeks ago, you know, we're okay, We're okay. It's not like, all right, who can just throw a ball over plate? It's much more. Hey, this guy's been able to do this, this, and this. They have some confidence.
So another great thing that you have is Garbowski. I mean, your catcher that's been here forever can really handle your staff. And then you've got a great young protege and Connor Lane. How does that work with you? As far as who's calling pitches? What kind of trust you have in these guys? How much how much rain I guess do you give these catchers when it comes to calling pitches and stuff like that, handling your staff?
Yeah, coach wants me to call the game. Ideally, you know, if you can get somebody who can really start to figure it out. But you know, you know, Rob can probably test this too. You know, these guys don't really call games from the age of fourteen, on so there, we try to do it in the fall to see if they're they're pretty good at it. Sometimes are, sometimes aren't. But what's great is that Garbo's really good at giving me feedback on what the guy is doing. And Connor Lane,
you know, you know, he's he's pretty special. We had to catch you a couple years ago. Matt Donald and got signed by the Red Sox. He he gives me similar vibes to him in terms of just really understanding some of the things that that I want understanding. You know, he'll let me know, hey, I don't know how much more he's got things like that. And for an eighteen or nineteen years old kid to be able to start to see.
That, it's it's really good.
I think I think next year or two, you know, I'm gonna be able to, you know, really rely on him even more in terms of, you know, just helping me out in terms of, you know, what he thinks of you know, this guy or that guy. But both those guys are really have been really special to me, and you know, I work I work well with both of them, and you know, thank God, thank God, because we need them.
Talking to Josh McDonald, the pitching coach at the University of Connecticut. I coached out in LA on a similar feel to this that that had the type of turf mound and stuff like that. And I play a lot of AAU tournaments with fifteen sixteen, seventeen weren't seventeen you now and it's similar. Does that help that A lot of these kids that you've coached and say the last ten years have come through the AAU programs, have done
a lot of the tournament ball stuff like that. So when you're getting on different you know, one might be turf, one might be dirt and things like that that that's not really freaking your pitching staff out that much.
Yeah, you know, it is weird. I would say, when we show up with a dirt mound, is when they're like looking like, what the hell is it?
What do I do with this? Yeah? And I'm like, yeah, there's a hole there. You know you're gonna have to work around it. Yeah. Wild, it is. It is wild, you know.
But you know, again, like if you think about summer ball circuit and you know an a you know, if AAU team's gonna have a tournament and they get rain, you know, and these guys can't play. They have to reimburse you know, the team. So you know, would it would would a turf mound, nobody's getting reimbursed. Those lights are going on. They'll be playing at midnight. So these guys.
None of these guys really pitch on dirt mounds really unless we go into like the pro parks and you know, they'll they'll they'll say, hey, it feels a little weird. Things like that. I think the differences with the mounds. Sometimes you get a mound that's a little bit more hollow, and they say it bounces a little bit. Sometimes they say there's not enough stand on it, a little bit more sponge here.
I mean, that's kind of the thing you get.
But yeah, you don't you certainly don't have to worry about you know, when I play with you're like, hey, the lefty starter put a hole on the right side of this thing, and I got you know, you know, I'm getting a blister on the inside of my right foot. I know there's blood all over, you know, inside this sock right here. Like you don't have any of those conversations anymore. I mean, you would go to some places and you'd be like you'd be like, oh my god.
You know, you'd be actually telling, you know, the guys that we're pitching in front of you, hey man, taking ease on that hole man, because I'm coming in relief today, you know. So, but those those days are over, and you know they're just like I said, they're more freaked out when they do see a dirt mount.
Speak on pitching to contact and your philosophy on this. Walks has been an issue at the beginning of the season. That's how we got a lot of the runs on board against us. But what's your philosophy as far as that, And how do you teach your kids to actually throw it so they can't hit it?
Well, you know, it's it's it's it's weird. You know, we're in a we're in an era of baseball where you know, people want velocity and swing a miss and kick chains and sweepers and cutters and bullet sliders and all this garbage. I want out collectors, you know, That's all I tell them. I want out collectors. You give me a guy throwing eighty five to eighty eight. They can move the fastball around and get one or two other pitches that they can just command and they're going
to be really good. And especially nowadays, I feel like, you know, these guys will see ninety five ninety six and they'll turn on it. You know, this is not this is not the baseball ten years ago. But when you can get a guy out there, then you know they can move the ball around.
You know.
They have a lot of trouble that the kid that is pitching for Northeastern, they did that when we went up there and we just had a really hard He wasn't walking us, we weren't making hard contact. So it's really hard. You've got to kind of you have to try to teach these guys those those lessons right, like, hey, freebies are going to kill you. As my dad would be screening the stands. Walks will kill you. Walks will kill you. And uh, you know, you know, pitching to contact,
like contact is not a bad thing. The problem is is that when they when they're working in a lot of these labs, a lot of these places at home, sometimes all they're ever talking about is swinging miss percentage, swinging miss percentage. And I tried to tell them, tell these guys, it's like no, It's like you know, how how much bad contact can you make. If you can make bad contact, then you know, you know, swings and misses are gonna we can we could set guys up.
We can get a swing and a miss, but you know you want you want bad contact, you know, over and over again. I just feel like, you know, again, I don't know what's going on with you know, I I understand the language of the Repsoona machine and the TrackMan, and they'll tell you all these numbers and they'll tell you that this is a great pitch. And I'll have to like remind them that the hitter put it, you know, over the fence over there.
He told you that it wasn't told me there's your answer man.
For some reason, for some reason, my gray hair is telling them that it's wrong, and that machine is telling that's right. So that's that's probably the hardest thing, because you know, these guys are getting this now at thirteen years old again, Rob.
Oh, yeah, Rob took it out. Yeah, Robie a little bit. You're a little bit oler than me.
But I remember, you know, when you were pitching high school and stuff like that, and even when I like I didn't know how hard I threw. I mean, I knew I threw hard. I could tell kind of by the oh I got you know whatever, I got good stuff.
Today they're laid on it, but you didn't really know, you know, until like maybe me like an All Star game and then everybody, hey hit ninety one today, or hey hit eighty nine today, and everybody's be like, oh my god, really and that would just kind of be like, hey, this guy could touch eighty nine and seemed like a thousand miles an hour. These guys, now will I mean they could throw a pit. These guys probably don't remember the last game they threw them where they didn't know
how hard they were throwing. So like that's a great boy, That's that's a big difference. Yeah, you know, so like you can have a guy go out there and let's see it, goes out there and gets six.
Up, six down.
You say, hey, that's great, but his filo is down to let's say eighty six and he's typically eighty eight. He's walking out of there thinking that he didn't have a good day. And that's a different that's all. That's a completely different animal.
Like snow in the World series.
Absolutely, but I wanted to get to that is psychologically. With the technology, they now instantaneously can go to an iPad or can go you know, somebody's got the handheld thing behind home plate and.
Stuff like it.
I think it's a problem, Yeah, because because like it's negative reinforcement, whereas for us, the hitters, let you know what you're throwing. I mean I never cared how hard I was throwing. I was like trying to get guys that make bad contact to my shortstop eye back contact to my second basement. You know, pop it up, strike them out.
You know that.
I wasn't worried about strikeouts.
They come.
But now if you tell them, well, that guy hit it one hundred and fifteen off the bat, So what was it an out?
Yeah?
Did you pop it? Did he pop it up to the infield? I don't care how hard it comes off the bat. Was it an out? And I love what you're saying. I want guys that are freaking out getters collect I'm out collectors. I'm going to steal that because that's that's what you need. It's Baseball's a very still a simplistic game. The technology has kind of rewired their brains.
How do you deal with that? Again?
I think I think you see some of the issues that you're having. You're seeing walks up across the board in college baseball. You see the walks up across the board in minor league baseball. You know, for us, I think we're really lucky in college baseball because in college baseball this is you know, it is development, don't get me wrong, but it's wins and losses first. You know, a lot of a lot of other baseball right now
is all development and training, and development and training. For us, it's you know, listen, you know it may be an old statistic, but you know, era still counts for me. You know, does the guy scoring out when you're on the mound? Uh whip counts to me? Do you allow hits and walks? You know, I don't care if, like you said, I don't care if you're a guy where they just keep hitting fly balls in the warning track. Maybe at the next level those are home runs. You're
not a pro, but here those may be outs. You know, So we have to kind of do both, you know, we have to. Obviously, we want them for you know, we want these guys to be pro. So we want them to, you know, obviously, do the things that the pro guys want them to do. But at the end of the day, you know, if you're stepping on that field. The same thing with batting average. I can't tell you how. You know, about ten years ago, you were going to
these coaching conventions. You have guys like batting average that that's not real, it is, and you'd be sitting there and you're like, I don't know, man, I'm pretty sure every three hundred hitter is pretty goddamn good.
You know, you have about eight or nine of them on your team.
So it's like, so, yeah, we you know, we still think banning average is real. We still think some base percentage is real, you know, over whatever it is, exit average, exit velocity and stuff like that. You know, obviously, the guy that hits the ball hard most often probably is a pretty good hitter. But you know, again, strikeouts are
Strikeouts still suck if you're a hitter. Strike ups are still great if you're a pitcher, and h guys that, for whatever reason keep the ball on the ground tend to have more successing guys to keep it in the air.
So, you know, the one.
The other thing that has changed I think in the past couple of years, I think this is where where where you're starting to see this a little bit is that guys have flattened out their swings, you know, launch angle. For a while was like, I mean you'd be up here, you be twelve strikeouts game? Is that this sauce And all of a sudden they've been flatten them out. And what you're seeing our line drives now because of the
velocity these guys started leave the yard. So you know what I think you're going to see here the next you guys will probably see it two three years from now. Have me back on and say, hey, look at all these sinker ballers that the big leaguers are starting to get again, because I think that's going to be the next in vogue thing like get the ball back on the ground.
Talking to Ukon pitching coach Shash mcdown we got a big game coming up midweek or Northeastern yukon six p thirty five with the first pitch, just talking about recruiting all the time, and we talked to coach Penders, we talked to Gino, we talked to Hurly. All you guys and just what you're looking for and some guys it's a no brainer, like Frank Mazakato, You don't need to see much. You know the numbers, You know what you're
going to see when you get out there. But the guys that are the tweeners, the guys that are from maybe a D two level to a D one level, Like, what are you looking for? What kind of attributes of a high school player or a guy that's looking to step up levels in college do you want to see as a pitching coach.
So the high schoo part is probably the one where I'm having the hardest problem with it because a lot of these guys aren't throwing a lot of innings anymore. So like, you know, if I'm gonna go watch a guy, he's probably the only only two or three innings where you know, if you used to watch a kid again, I'm gonna date myself about ten years ago. You go
watch the start, you'd get six innings of evaluation. Now you're getting three innings would bat uh maybe one one counts at times depending on the event that you're going to. So it makes it a little bit more difficult. So you got to really kind of do some dig in.
You know.
The other thing too, is that you know it's really difficult for somebody to be completely honest with you, right, So, like if it's a picture and you say, hey, man, this guy's a really good arm. Oh man, he's great. He's great worker, he's the hardest worker. He loves baseball, Like I never get man, he doesn't really like baseball. I mean so so again, like you got to kind of the high school guys are different. But with the pooral like the Juco kids, you know, it's a little
bit easier because you're gonna have numbers behind it. But those a lot of times, those coaches can be a little bit more up. Prod can give you a couple, you know, like eight and Doherty, who's gonna pay I think play right field day about three forty he was the best hitter in the m whack. And I remember when I reached out to his coach and I said, hey, tell me something about Aden Dory. He's like, he gets hits And I'm like, all right, what do you what
do you mean? He goes, he goes, He just he goes. If he puts a beat on the ball, it ends up on a green somewhere. And I was like, okay, he's like he can hit ninety five, he can hit eighty five. He just gets hits. So I'm like, okay, like and he's like, you know, no problem. Then you get a kid like Spur who's coming from Endicut and I didn't ask their coach, but I asked another coach in the league and he just said he plays like
his hair is on fire. And You're like, okay, so you know, now you got numbers, you got places with his hair on fire. So there's certain things like that, you know that we want to hear too, you know, because again, like we're not gonna you know, the kids that end up at Tennessee and they're making whatever the one hundred grand and when not getting that kid. So I'm not getting a six with eight kid throwing ninety six to ninety eight who should be pitching in Triple A right now.
I'm not getting that kid.
But I have to get kids that are able to maybe fight against them when they see them, and you know, you got to kind of get kind of those personalities. And that's that's probably something that we spend more time than not on it. You know, if there's red flags there in terms of the recruiting process where you know, doesn't love the weight room.
Hey you know this or that? Like, you know, I don't have time for that.
Sounds like you're talking personality Moore than anything.
Yeah, because you're gonna find talent, you know.
That's That's one the longer I've been doing this, I tell every young coaches too, when you're recruiting, like, don't don't lose sleep over losing the recruit. There's so many good players out there now with the portal and that and the time that you can get to get him. Like, don't don't lose sleep over. If he doesn't want to pick, he doesn't want to pick, you can find another one. Just make sure that when you do start to move in on these guys, these are the kind of guys you want to be around.
Do you like guys reaching out to you?
Yeah?
I like guys reaching out to me, for sure. But I'll also listen if you know, you know, I'll be quite frank. I got a kid coming from an Arizonia junior college this weekend, and I reach out to them. I'm like, hey, I saw some video this guy told me about him. And he's like, yeah, you know, we think he plays gold club defense. He flies goes and he's always at the field.
Okay, that's some good combinations, you know, you know what I mean.
So a lot of it is you know, you know, recruiting, you just had an open mind. But again, like in terms of personality, you want to be around these guys. You want guys again, like you want to have the same kind of like minded guys because you know, you need guys that can kind of push each other. They're not afraid of competition. They're not afraid of competition and practice,
you know. And you know again you know they need to go to school, but you want baseball be really important to them because this is really hard and what we asked them, like you said, we're on the road the first eight weekends of the year. That's really hard, man, That's really hard to do, you know, so you want to hope that you're hitting those marks.
You've done an amazing job, you and Jim, the whole coaching staff. You guys are amazing. Thanks for a few minutes.
Thanks lot, guys, appreciate it. Good luck tonight.
Thanks