Dad, Husband, Coach, problem solver, sober, former MLBer, Who Dey!
Gallatin, TN
Joined March 2024
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Coaching is about building confidence and offering solutions to problems… not being a condescending prick.
Watching travel team coaches this weekend is fun… 😒. one team had three coaches, all overweight, all wearing hoodies and oversized sweatpants, watching their phones all game and had the nerve to wear out their 14u team for losing. Constantly shouting condensing garage to all their kids and the parents just stood there and took it like “that’s tough coaching”. No it’s not, that’s garbage. That’s why kids quit.
60-65% of player in the MLB make league minimum. Spending isn’t a small/large market problem, it’s a league-wide problem.
I’ve heard this many times as a player…
“A lot of players make it to the big leagues, but it’s way harder to stay there.”
Instead of complaining about the Dodgers and the Reds/Pirates spending habits on free agents, why don’t we talk about what every single team pays their younger players? Junior Caminero makes under a million a year. Two-time all-star, bonafide super star, league makes a zillion dollars and Caminero makes under a million? That’s the real problem. Not the Reds, Pirates or Dodgers.
Junior Caminero gets paid a little under 800k….
There’s a college baseball player that gets paid more than that.
Stats and data are great ways to evaluate player value vs other players. It’s also a great way to capture the physics of what’s going on… It however, doesn’t have enough context to determine what to do during the game. There’s way more game within the game type stuff that goes on, that no one ever finds out about unless it’s told to the media. And if I was a player or coach, I would never tell, and they’re all instructed not to. So if you’ve never been in those dugouts, and heard that type of planning ahead and gameplay, how would you even know it exists? The only info you have is what the media tells you and it’s like….a very small percentage of what we talk about on any given day.
Greg Maddox called his next pitch by the way he caught the ball from the catcher. From my knowledge, no one ever knew that. Game within the game.
Probably one of the most underrated aspects and mostly ignored in travel baseball…. Stretching.
If I was a talent evaluator at any level and I saw a player looking “stiff”. You’d be off the list. Fluidity and pliability is as important as the weight room, if not more. Getting jacked is way overhyped to HS players.
Whenever a large market team wins the credit goes to the incredible players and coaches… Whenever a small market team wins, the credit goes to the incredible scouting and analytic departments. lol. The Brewers and Rays may be small market spenders but they don’t have inferior players and coaches. “They do so much more with way less.”
lol. No they don’t.
Two points that may help MLB moving forward.
The Brewers, Indians, and Rays play a better, more entertaining brand of baseball in my opinion. But the comeback is…. But they don’t generate the amount of eye balls as the big dawgs.
Well that’s true because in any professional sport, STARS draw the attention not the brand of play any team has.
The goal of the MLB needs to be that the better brand of baseball needs to be seen…. The solution is we need to do anything and everything to facilitate those small markets to keep their stars and actually invest in better baseball with the ability for teams to afford the stars to stay put THROUGH THEIR PRIME YEARS. That just doesn’t happen anymore unless a team is willing to buyout free agent years when the player is 21 and give em 8-10 years. That’s too big of a gamble and a team can only give that out to the 1 of 1 player.
We need a better solution other than “owners are cheap”. They’ve been saying that for the last 20 years and it hasn’t worked because it can’t. If the owners were able to afford guys like Skenes, THEY WOULD.
Bengals have more fans nation wide because they found a way to keep their stars. Effectively offsetting the small market they’re living in.
And poof. They spent real money this off season, because they could. It’s really that simple.
WHO DEY!!
I’ve seen “feel vs real”. I’ll go a little step further.
Game vs Practice.
We practice against our tendencies so we concentrate on our “feels”. The “reals” are what we observe during a game and it’s just us reacting in the moment.
Trying to practice during a game or try to simulate “game like” feel is impossible. The brain and body treat that situation differently because it is.
Looking at your mechanics during a game is just TMI and messes with your mood. Play the game and then when it’s time to practice….practice.
I’ll say this about season long accumulated stats.
Just a little thought experiment.
Say PCA has 45 homers this season. My question would be. What happened when he hit his 38th homer? Can a season long stat line tell me When, Where, How, and Why that 38th homer occurred? It cannot.
Pro sports is a constant problem solving process and that context is essential to understand the value of that homer.
If your approach at the plate is limited, meaning you’re only trying to do one thing because it says on paper that it leads to more runs…. As a pitcher I know that and I will leverage that aggressiveness in a particular moment.
If I’m a pitcher and I only have two tools in my tool box to get you out, that third time you face me that day, I give the advantage to you.
Adjusting your approach at the plate keeps everyone guessing. Having multiple pitches and locations in your back pocket gives you options
As a fan of the game now, I like that product better. I really don’t care about a perceived value that says on paper this produces more runs on a season long basis.
If a team that has 1/3rd the payroll as another team and still wins, the process of that high priced team is broken. Money SHOULD buy you championships but in baseball it doesn’t.
The game is meant to be played a certain way because we’ve had over a century trying things out.
I just like watching the Brewers, Rays, Padres and the Blue Jays from last year play…regardless of the payroll and how many spreadsheet titles anyone has won in December.
We value the moment more than anything. Can you win.
Grit, resiliency, attitude, life lessons, mental toughness, growth mindset, work with what you got, and character has been replaced by reclassing, grade exemptions, transferring, get the coach fired, pay to play, weekend tourneys, rankings, velocity chasing, 6u player evaluations, hitting fly balls….
Adults have completely shifted the priorities of sub-college sports in the last 25 years. I’m always watching.
The Brewers and the Rays aren’t proof that a salary cap or floor isn’t needed. It’s proof that high-end top 5% free agent talent is way overpriced.
That’s what they figured out.
For all those that say the road shall be known, predictable and paved…
And to all those adults that give me excuses as to why they never made it….
Read this. A good amount of MLB players have stories just like this but they never tell their stories because they are immensely humble and thankful for the opportunity. Truly amazing people.
Cam Booser quit baseball at 25 and got a job installing ceilings.
Tonight he got the win for the Tampa Bay Rays in a playoff game.
Here is everything in between.
He broke his femur playing high school football. He fractured a vertebra lifting weights. He got to Oregon State, threw 11 innings, and tore his UCL. Tommy John surgery.
The Minnesota Twins signed him anyway in 2013, undrafted.
Then he tore the labrum in his shoulder.
Then a car hit him while he was riding his bike and broke a bone in his back.
Five seasons with the Twins. He never got out of High A.
And it was not all injuries. He says that part himself.
"The first part of my career was, by my own doing, pretty bad. I made a few mistakes."
He has told the Chicago Sun-Times that he came back from a drinking problem that "caused me to burn most bridges that I had built with most people."
So in 2017 he was done. Twenty five years old. Out of the game.
He went home to Seattle and moved back in with his parents. He joined Northwest Carpenters Union Local 41 and started installing specialty wood ceilings, at the same company his dad had worked at.
He called himself "a Minor Leaguer" next to the real carpenters.
Three years of that.
Then he picked up a side job giving pitching lessons to kids. And standing out there throwing to 12 year olds, he noticed something.
The ball was still coming out hot.
February 21, 2021. He got back on a real mound.
The Chicago Dogs of the American Association took him. Independent ball. The level below the level below the level.
Arizona gave him a minor league deal in 2022. The Boston Red Sox gave him one in 2023, and at Triple A Worcester he struck out 66 in 57.2 innings.
April 2024. His Triple A manager Chad Tracy walked up and asked if he could give them three innings tomorrow. Booser said sure. Then Tracy told him the Boston Red Sox were in Pittsburgh, and they wanted him there.
He made his major league debut at 31. The oldest rookie the Red Sox had used since 1947.
His teammate Vaughn Grissom filmed him calling his family.
Years earlier, long before any of this was plausible, he had said this out loud: "Ever since I was a kid, Fenway always called me. It was the coolest park to me. The dream is to pitch at Fenway in a Red Sox uniform."
He got that too.
The Chicago White Sox had him in 2025. The Tampa Bay Rays signed him for 2026.
And tonight, Game 2 of the American League Division Series against the New York Yankees, they handed him the ball.
Eight pitches. One out. That was the whole appearance.
Tampa Bay won it 5 to 2, and the W went next to his name.
The carpenter got the win in a playoff game.
The Rays lead the New York Yankees 2 to 0.
I hit a golf ball further than the PGA tour average at 46 years old with zero training. The difference is I can’t control the face at that speed like the pros do.
There’s a bunch of kids that throw a baseball really hard that can’t control it.
If you can’t control your speed, you’re just a long drive guy with a 4 handicap that plays on the weekends for fun. While the guys that can control their speed, make millions.
Speed isn’t that rare but controlled speed is.
I’ve asked a few D1 coaches what they look for before they really dig in to a player. The four most common responses are:
1. Elite statistics
2. Grades
3. Parents
4. Type of kid he is.
They almost never ask about the weight room, their diet, their sleep schedule, their individual instructors, their travel team(other than to see them play), is he a reclass, what their PG ranking is…..
Focus on the things they actually care about. Not what everyone that you pay money to wants you to care about.
Play great, play with joy, be dependable off the field and ask your parents to just be parents.
A lot of the times a scout wants to see a progression. If you can’t throw a thousand miles an hour they’re still gonna look at the kid that doesn’t stop progressing. Because what they also understand is a good amount of guys that you see on tv throw their absolute hardest post 25 years old. Front loading your velo potential too early isn’t always the correct thing to do and it’s not the only way to grab a scout’s or a school’s attention. The top D1 schools want that finished player, but not all schools. If you’re not that fully mature, fully velo’d out, fully physical developed player, the road could be just starting for you. Don’t give up because you’re surrounded by a bunch of commits. Just tell em you’ll see em later. Baseball has so many roads and routes to become great. A little fork in the road never hurt a fella.
John Van Benschoten retweeted
I've coached over 30 Olympic gold medals.
I've worked with some of the greatest athletes in history.
Here are the lessons I wish more people understood:🧵
Keeping an eye on this TSSAA. They talk about the result but they never talk about why we’re here and a solution to a the problem.
Committees are worthless. They’re trying to please everyone so they end up pleasing no one.