Stephan F Austin Pitching Coach Bo Martino

Welcome to The Baseball Awakening Podcast, where we dive into the raw, unfiltered, unsexy side of player development

Guest Bio:

Bo Martino, Stephan F Austin Pitching Coach, Co-Owner of JohnnyWholestaff.com

Summary:

On this episode, Host Geoff Rottmayer sits down with Bo Martino

Show Notes: In this conversation, Bo talks about:

• His coaching path and where he is now.
• Advise he has for anyone looking to get into coaching.
• What he wish he knew before getting started in coaching.
• How his education, degrees, and master helps him in his job as a pitching coach.
• How his education helps him in recruiting of guys.
• What he looks for in recruiting.
• How important grades are in the recruiting process.
• What events he recommend guys should go to.
• How the rapsodo helps him as a coach and as a recruiter.
• Common myth about recruiting that he can debunk.
• How he evolved as a coach in terms of what he believes.
• At what point does he recommend making changes to guys that come in.
• How he helps guys with the pitching side and getting guys out.
• His favorite resources.
• Why it is important to have a support system as a coach.
• and much more.

Website: www.baseballawakening.com

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Email Address: geoff@baseballawakening.com

Transcript:

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:00:00 On today’s show. I sit now with Bo Martino pitching coach for Stephen F. Austin, and we talk about his path and coaching advice he had for anyone looking to get into coaching. What do you look for? A while he’d recruiting how the Rapsodo, it helped him in recruiting and coaching. Why you need a support team at the coach and much much More.

New Speaker: 00:00:23 Welcome to another episode of the baseball awakening podcast where we dive into the raw, unfiltered unsexy side of player development. Get ready for some knowledge bombs with your host Geoff Rottmayer

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:00:45 Welcome to The Baseball Awakening Podcast. I’m Geoff Rottmayer and today I’m sitting down Bo Martino, the pitching coach for Stephen F. Austin. Bo has a degree in kinesiology and a master in human performance, both pride and dove and being a lifelong learner and doing whatever he can to master his craft. He very knowledgeable in stuff technology that did the Rapsodo and the Motus Sleeve. He did the great resource for the pitcher community. So with that Bo, how are you sir?

Bo Martino: 00:01:18 Good man. How are you doing?

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:01:19 I’m doing great, man. Thanks for coming on. Um, no problem.

Bo Martino: 00:01:23 Appreciate it.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:01:23 Yeah, dude though, you know, right now you are the a coach at Stephen F. Austin. Um, can you kind of take us through your journey as a coach and getting to where you are right now?

Bo Martino: 00:01:40 Yes. So when I graduated from college, um, I went and coached at the high school level, uh, for five years, um, and kind of got to a point where the whole being in the classroom every day and teaching for six out of the seven periods, um, and only getting to do baseball here and there in the afternoons, just kind of getting old to me. Um, and luckily at East Texas Baptist university, which is where I went to school, which was also in the town that I was at, uh, at the high school level at, um, had a pitching coach job open and that’s kind of the route I wanted to go. So I kind of reached out to the head coach and, uh, he hired me on and that kinda started my college coaching career from there. Um, I was at ETB U for a year. Uh, I left there. Um, and actually went and got out of coaching. Well, I’ll say I went back to high school. I was actually going to did for like three months. I was doing a lot of football and everything else. The Texas preparing this is for me. I’ve got to find a way to get back into the college game. So I actually started my masters, um, and then, uh, transferred up the SFA, um, cold called coach Jordanians and said, Hey man, you got anything I can do? So yeah, man, I just had a, a volunteer assistant and graduate assistant lead man. I’m looking for somebody. Um, so came here to SFA for two years. After two years I went to the turtle university as a full time guy. I was there for a year. Uh, then my wife graduated with her master’s and got a full time gig at sulfur Springs. I, so we moved up there and I went to Northeast Texas community college for a semester. A my head coach came in in October, said, Hey, uh, um, I’m uh, getting the new gig with the Mariners are like, awesome, man, we’re excited for you. And we said, when you leave, and he said, next week, we were like, Oh, okay. Um, so we were, you know, October, now I’m starting to kind of look for a job just in case the new guy wants to get rid of me. Um, so I actually found a gig at Cedar Vale university in Ohio and I went up there for a year and a half and we had a kid while we were up in Ohio and we needed to get closer to family. And so coach gardenias said, called me up, say, Hey man, do you want to come back? And just Austin pitching guy. Um, and that was a no brainer at that point to come back to that the Dotrice because we consider home at this point. And, uh, so I came back last year and I’m still here.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:04:03 That man, that’s crazy. You know, the, you know, based on some of the other coaches I’ve had, kind of the opportunity to talk to. This isn’t an unusual path, you know? So can you, can you try to talk a little bit about maybe some of the, I mean, maybe someone who’s listening maybe wants to be a coach one day. Can you kind of talk a little bit of what it’s like, you know, at the young coach, you know, with all the unknown and then having a family along the way, you know, what, what the like do and all these, you know, doing taken out on all these opportunities and uh, the unknown what that like?

Bo Martino: 00:04:35 Yeah. So I got lucky and when I met my now wife, um, we, when we kinda first connected back, I was transitioning out of the high school ranks into the college. So our relationship was still new when all that happened. Um, and so it was a lot easier to kind of work around that then. Um, and luckily my wife understands and gets what my job entails and is very supportive, um, and allowing me to do those things and understanding me being gone for road trips and all the stuff I’ve got to work in the summer to make money and so forth. And, you know, finally a good support system, whether you have a significant other or your family or whatever, they can kind of back you up. Cause when you first officially get into college coaching it, you’re up making a whole lot of money. That doesn’t even mean later on down the road that you’re gonna make a whole lot of money. Right. I’m the volunteer assistant here. Um, so a lot of my income depends on how the weather is because we’re having tournaments on the weekends and that’s how I get paid. So, um, it can be stressful at times. Um, but you know, we just kinda, we make it work. We find fun ways to save money here and there and got it, hit the grind up and drive a couple of hours to work this camp or work that camp. And, um, it’s, it’s not always the easy part, but it’s what I love to do. And I knew that day. I don’t see myself doing anything else other than coaching. Um, you know, I could probably go out and get a full time job somewhere and working nine to five, but I would hate it life. So it’s a lot easier to stay here and enjoy what I’m doing and just take them off with the pay and you know, that’s kind of the deal.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:06:18 Yeah. So, so I mean, you know, kind of looking back and they’re knowing what you know now, you know, what, what would Polly the biggest thing that you wish you knew when you started out?

Bo Martino: 00:06:30 Well, one, one thing that I tell a lot of young guys that, because obviously I’m around college athletes and I come across a bunch of your recruiting and so forth and like, Hey, when I get older I want to be a coach that that’s what I want to do. A fan. It’s awesome. I said, well, what level do you want to coach at? And if they tell me college level, the first thing I told them that, look man, I’m going to be honest with you. It’s hard to get into, but what you need to do is once you graduate, you need to try to find a GA job or a volunteer job somewhere or something like that because it’s really hard to get into college coaching if you don’t have experience in college coach through I got lucky. Yeah. But if you can go to a school and let them pay for your master’s or give you housing while you go to school or whatever it may be, however that school works it out the best way to do it. Um, because like with my route and going into high school first I was like, get a good paycheck. Right? And I’m learning how to live all this money and I’m a single and you know, I’m buying shoes every weekend. I’m cool guy. And then all of a sudden I go to college and I took like a $20,000 pay cut. And you know, I got lucky. Um, a guy in town had a pool house in his backyard. It was a full, like basically like a full house, had a kitchen, the bathroom and everything in it. And he let me live for like $400 cable and internet and every movie channel on, uh, that you can think of where they used to go. And I got lucky there. I wouldn’t have been able to make it, but try to tell those guys, Hey man, find you a GA job. Go be poor for a little bit and then go that route first before you get out and start making money because then you’re not ever going to be able to go back. Um, and then that gives you that, that credibility when a coach calls, Hey man, he’s been working in coaching for me. He knows what he’s doing. He’d do a good job. He just needs an opportunity instead of going, yeah, he played for me, but I don’t know how he coaches. Yeah. So that’s, that’s my big deal is I tell guys are trying to get into the college ranks to go be a GA, go volunteer your time of working with the college and work your way up and get your resume built that way. Um, that’s one thing I’d probably have change is going that route. And just starting the master’s right away because once I went and started working on my master’s and got into college game is actually when I learned more about baseball than I ever had before. I got my math and uh, human performance. And so just learning like how they do research and all those kinds of things really kind of opened my eyes to, Hey, there’s a lot more going on out there in baseball then what so-and-so taught me when I was in seventh grade in a pitching lesson. There’s a lot more going on. And so that’s why I really starting to kind of dive into it and start to do some research on my own about pitching and baseball in general and how the body moves and stuff like that. So that’d be my big deal.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:09:17 Nice. Yeah, I was actually gonna ask you, so you have your degree in kinesiology and then you have your masters in human performance. Um, you know, how, how, how, can you talk a little bit about how that maybe helped you in your current role right now with the pitching coach?

Bo Martino: 00:09:34 Yeah. So just being able to kind of understand how the body moves. So if I’m trying to coach Scott, and the other thing with the human performance field is we actually talked a little bit about motor learning and things like that. So if I’m going to a player, not all players learn the same way and there’s different ways for them to learn, whether it’s blocked practice, random practice and things like that. So we tried to kind of set our practice up into ways that are more beneficial. So like if I just go out and tell a guy, Hey, you’re going to throw 35 fastballs today in your bullpen. Well after a while that guy’s going to kind of figure it out. But in the game, we’re not throwing 35 basketballs in a row. And so like one of the things that we’ll do for, for bullpens, for instance, is we’ll, we’ll break it up into any, so if we’re going over 15 pitches, we’re going to throw it more of buck two winning sets. So if I’m throwing 30 I’m out throw 15 and one any, I’m going to sit down and arrest three four, five minutes for they got throws and then get back up. So we’re trying to mimic as much as we can, what’s going on. So learning things like that during our masters program with motor skills and so forth has helped. And then just like I said earlier, like knowing how the body moves, what are we trying to accomplish? How can we take what we’re doing in the weight room and how those movements are with hip hands and putting force into the ground. How can I mimic that over the pitching? And so now what we’re doing in the weight room, it’s just reinforcing what we’re doing on the field and vice versa. Instead of man, coach, I squat really heavy. I can be really willing to weight room and they get out here and they’re like, Hey, I’m throwing 65 off. Okay, well what are you doing out there that the beat so strong that we’re not mimicking out here? And we start to use the body a little bit more efficiently and allow ourselves to use the core instead of in legs instead of maybe relying just on the arm.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:11:21 Yeah. Nice. So what the, can you talk a little bit more about that? You know, the, you mean when someone listening to this nurse name, he’d be relying more on the core? What is, what is, what does that mean?

Bo Martino: 00:11:36 Well, so one of the Vikings we use, I guess you’d call it device, I don’t know. Um, I wouldn’t call it a GAD big fan and believer in it. So we use the core velocity, lost the belts, the whole lot that Lance Wheeler uses. Um, if you guys have never heard of it or never seen it, man, you know, you go out and buy a $400 bat, but that doesn’t fix your $1 swing I think is the quote with the core Vilo belt, man. You can use it pitching, you can use it for hitting our kitchen coaches, our head coach, and he does a phenomenal job with catchers. He uses it. Um, you, you can do all kinds of stuff with it. Um, and so we were lucky enough when Lance came out with it, um, our assistant coach Tom used to coach with him. And so we got our hands on some pretty quick. So we have about seven. And what that allows our guys to do is learn how to hip hinge, learn how to move the center of the body. Everything’s connected to the center. So if our hips are pushing out our arms gonna push. If we’re able to sit into a hip hinge and use the lower half and get the center mass going down the slope that’s gonna allow the arm just kind of comes along with it and allows it to be free and smooth. And that way it’s, it’s of like the domino effect of what I call it. Whatever the lower half does on the mouth, it’s going to work up the body, out the arm. So if our first domino was off our next Domino’s not going to fall in the right spot, which is good skill calls, that chain reaction to go through there. I think Lance refers to it as peer pressure. Once one thing happened, it starts to push everything else in the wrong direction, but we really hammer out the lower half a with the core velocity belt and med ball drills with it and don’t really do a whole lot of arm action stuff because if you cleaned the hips and the lower half up the arm use, it cleans itself up on its own because it’s starting from the ground up.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:13:15 Right. Nice. So let’s, let’s go back to when you know, with your, with your, uh, your duality and your human performance, uh, education. How does that help you in terms of recruiting guys?

Bo Martino: 00:13:28 Yeah, so we’re able to kind of, he get guys on campus, we’re out looking at FDM. So if I’m at like a camp or an eyebrow camp or something like that, that I’m working and I’m able to kind of watch skies and evaluate them, um, I’m able to look at what they’re doing with their lower half, for instance. And I can say, Hey, he’s pretty good with it and that’s what we’re getting out of it. Then maybe there’s not a whole lot of jumps that he can make. Um, compared to man, he’s pretty good, but he doesn’t use the lower half correctly. Does it do this? Correct. I mean, we could clean that up and there’s a dominant, a rough in there. So it’s kind of like, what are you looking for? You’re looking for a Polish guy that can come in right away, but sometimes you do, sometimes you have some holes and maybe this, the starting rotation, I need to get a sip and right away and I know that guy can do the job. Or maybe I’m looking at a guy that everybody else is passing on because, Oh, he’s only 84. I said, well, his lower half is not very good. I bet if I cleaned that up, there must be a lot more than that take. And you can go on and get that guy for lunch. Cheaper money-wise, scholarship. So that’s one way. Um, I’m trying to remember now. I got to talk and then I get going so fast, I forget. Um, so that, that helps happens pretty frequently. Um, so recruiting was, and the other way was when we get them here on campus and we’re walking them around and we’re showing them the technology that use here at SFA, I’ve been lucky enough to get our hands on. We can kind of talk about, Hey man, this is what we saw with you with this technology. This is what it can help us solve that you’re having a problem with. So, you know, we use a lot of reps Soto, we just got an edge or Tronic camera. So now we can video that guy and say, Hey, here’s where we’re breaking down. This is what we’re trying to use, do more useful. And here’s why that works. Think about when you’re in the weight room and do this. Think about when you’re on the field and you do this. Um, and so knowing a little bit of knowledge of how the body should move, it helps God’s, Oh man, here’s some development that’s going to go on with me and not just how I’m going to get here. I’m gonna throw some bull and hang it up.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:15:32 Yeah. Nice. So then whenever, you know, you talk about the, the pocket camps, um, and guide, you know, evaluating guys, um, you know, that there’s kind of, you know the word Ron, you know, flies around that, you know, the, the, the two little moneymakers and not everybody going to be given a fair look and, and all that stuff. But do you know what you guys have kind of your own parameter that you guys are, you guys know what you’re looking at. You know, what can play at that level? What can’t play, you know what I mean? What the, what the conversation like with the people who don’t quite understand that, look, you’ve gotta, you gotta have some ability to be able to play this law board and utilize the camp properly,

Bo Martino: 00:16:12 right? Yeah. It comes down to how they’re run. A lot of times, if you’re lucky enough to get at an event or from the, some college coaches that are going to be honest with you, that’s the best. Whether you’re good or bad, it doesn’t matter. What you need to hear is the truth. And a lot of times that’s what’s hard because, and I’m not saying anybody’s wrong or right in this situation, so because at the end of the day we all have to make the living too sure. But there’s a lot of people out there that have facilities or give lessons or even college coaches that are out there telling kids what they want to hear. And at the end of the day, I mean, yeah, that keeps your business going and that’s great. I understand you’ve got to provide for your family. Um, but sometimes that’s a disservice to the kid because they are getting a false sense of where they are or the parents are getting false sense where they’re actually going to coach so-and-so, man, he says, Tyler’s doing great. And like Tyler’s going to be a senior this year and his exit below off the bat is like 80. So I got this back. Um, and so he’s thinking, man, I’m a stud, I’m really good. And then you come get evaluated and coach says, man, you’re, you’re hitting at about, you know, a low level, high school ability. Oh, coach so-and-so tells me I’m really good. What are you talking about? So if you can find somebody that is honest with you and tells you where you actually stand, that’s huge because it allows you to not get comfortable. We can’t be comfortable and we’re trying to train even our top God, there’s always something that he needs to be working on. You’re not just, yep, you’ve got it all figured out, you’re perfect, let’s go hang it up. Alright or something every day. And I think that’s where it’s got to get back to is we’ve got a fond that rapport with the kids where it’s not just telling them what they want to hear to keep them back. But we’ve gotta be able to be honest with those kids and understand that I’m being honest with you cause I want to see you succeed and wants you to get better. I don’t want you to have that false sense of where you are.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:18:01 Yeah. No, I mean I agree. So w with, with the, with the topic of, of the data and the rap Sodo and the egg tonic that you do those, the, the numbers that you get from them, how did that influence, you know, your, your, your recruiting and a guy?

Bo Martino: 00:18:19 Yeah, we actually, a couple weeks ago, about a month, month and a half ago, we had an eval camp at our place. Um, and some of our POS we put on the rep Soto because that was going to be their email for the day. They were gonna throw a bullpen face, some hitters live. And that was it because that’s all they do. So we weren’t gonna get to see him hit or anything. So we wanted to give them an added value. Um, and so we put them on the rep Soto and we actually had a young man that was, um, 84 to 86 and, and so you watch him like, okay, at a college level, that’s not a big deal. [inaudible] 46 that, that’d be pretty easy to come by at the division one level. Um, but what we saw with him was that his spin rate was really high. So from Bauer unit standpoint, he was like a 28 bumping 29. So I’m like, Hey, this, this K kids and outlier and what he’s doing, he’s got something different to offer. Um, and so mechanics were pretty clean for what we thought. There were three pitches for strikes and like, Hey, you know what, let’s offer this kid and get him in here because I have a feeling with at 84, 86, a lot of, not a whole lot of other D ones are offering him right now. So we were at actually able to throw some money out here and what we call shown him some love that he wasn’t really getting. Two weeks later, man, he, you know, he verbally commits to us and we’re pretty excited about that kid. Um, and so that’s, that’s one way right there. You know, we have the new stalker, uh, pro to S plus whatever letters it’s got on it that does the spin rate. So now when we go out on the road, if we’re going to measure that with our pitchers, we need to go out and kind of see what the other guys that we’re looking at are able to do. And so we’re, you know, I’ve got our other assistants that are going out on the road recruiting. You’re taking that with them and Hey, you know, he was this but spin rate’s really good or it’s really low or, or whatever it may be. And it just kind of gives us another thing to look at. Um, cause sometimes with some of the high school with junior college stats are not kept very well. Um, or more, they’re not very public, they’re not easy to get to and find. Um, so this kind of gives us a metric that we can start to add in to what we’re doing in our recruiting process and say, Hey, so and so that fits for us. Last year, man, his spin rate was Tex and his Vilo wasZ and this guy’s almost the same thing and he looks the same. So maybe that’s, it got us going to be successful as well. Just gives us another tool.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:20:35 Nice. So then for the people that are listening, can you talk a little bit about why a high spin rate? Good.

Bo Martino: 00:20:42 Yeah. So a high spin rate usually tends to more with swings and misses. Um, so what basically happens is a high spin rate means that it’s obvious, but it means that the ball spends a lot faster than your normal guy. So a normal fast ball spin at the normal Vilo means that when the hitter sees the ball coming in, he sees it exactly where it’s at. Okay. So because due to gravity, the balls going to drop some as it comes in. So with a higher spin rate, what happens is the ball actually comes in a little bit higher than where the batter proceeds it to be. And the reason being with the higher spin, it does it, it fights gravity a little bit longer so it doesn’t drop as fast. So you’re seeing the ball at point a but it’s really slightly above that. So I tend to swing under it. And just vice versa. If I’m a low spin guy, the balls gonna come in a little below. So more of your sink. You’ve got some man, he throws a heavy ball. A lot of times it’s the guy that has the lower spin rate so when you’re going to catch it it’s hit you a little bit deeper in the Palm then where you think it’s going to be. So what we’re able to do then is we start to look at MLB data and so forth and higher spinner guys usually gets more swing and misses cause they can throw up in the zone a little bit more frequently and gets underneath the bat. So that’s kind of what we’re starting to look for here. Now, high and low doesn’t mean good or bad, right? Higher load just kind of lets you know who you are. I think that’s where a lot of other people say, Oh he’s a high spin rate guy. Boom, that’s great. No, not necessarily because he was using that in the wrong way. It’s not going to help him. If he’s down in the zone a lot with a high spin rate, well he’s probably running into a lot more barrels that way. And if he’s low spin rate guy, I don’t, I can’t throw up in the zone as often. I need to work down in the zone and let my pitches work with me. So we just are able to kind of look at that. Um, with the high spin rate, it just tends to a little bit more swinging misses and we all know if they’re not putting the ball in play and you’re throwing strikes, it’s a lot easier to get people out.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:22:39 Right. Nice. So, you know, continuing on the recruiting side of it, um, what else are you looking at

Bo Martino: 00:22:49 from a pitching standpoint, looking for guys like throw multiple pitchers and strikes. Um, I know a lot of times at the high school level you get a little bit of Vilo man, you need to blow people’s doors off all day long and be successful. You could throw some rinky dink curve balls in there and get people out just cause they’re not ready for the movement cause they’re trying to cheat to the basketball. Um, the kind of, for us, if you throw two pitches for strikes and stuff, uh, maybe you’re going to be more of like a reliever top guy, you know, one time through the lineup, maybe a one inning guy left the specialists, I’m only going to face Fridays or whatever. When you start to throw three and four pitches for strikes on them on a consistent basis, um, and you have a little bit of below two, you, you know that mid to upper eighties at least kind of range. Now we’re talking about a guy that can, that can probably start for us. Um, and then we just kind of look at the shape of the pitches as well. Um, is your change up just the speed differential or do you actually have a little bit more vertical and horizontal movement to it? Um, is this your curve ball? Does your breaking ball match up to where you are high or low spin rate from a high spin rate guy, maybe I can throw more of a pitch with a vertical drop to it. Like a more true 12 to six curve ball or slur V type pits. It has depth to it or my low spin rate. God, I need to throw something more like it’s slider. That’s where breaking Flores all. So when I throw it down the zone, it’s not bouncing inconsistently. So we can start to look at those things with guys and from a pitching standpoint, that’s what we’re looking for. Um, I would say more from a hitting standpoint for guys that can barrel up baseballs on a consistent basis, I have a pretty good approach to the plate. Have a pretty good odd, they’re not swinging and missing and, and whipping a lot of pitches, alpha zone, but you’re taking good approaches. They’re looking for their pitch. They’re not getting beat on that old basketball that people try to get ahead of you with and taking the best pitch that they see. Um, they’re turning that around. They’re being aggressive, being aggressive on the Bates path, looking to take that extra base on a ball in the dirt or watching throws in from the outfield and just kind of knowing the game from that standpoint. Defensively, our defensive goats coach flowers, um, does a phenomenal job. Um, we kinda have a deal, we call it infield,U and, w we are, we’re hashtag plain vanilla. We don’t need any swirl in our ice cream. We just want to be plain vanilla. So we’re, we’re looking to make every routine play. If you make a diving play here and there, that’s great, but that’s not what we’re working on everyday. We’re working on making the routine blaze being being cleaned and our first step being clean in our hand and not trying to be extra flashy. Too many times guys worry about all of the, between the legs flip at second base and then when they get a routine ball and they bobble it and Buddha their way. So we, we look for the routine stuff is what we’re looking for.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:25:24 Nice. W what about the, what about the gray part? How can a grade separate? A guy.

Bo Martino: 00:25:29 Yeah. So the best thing that we do is you’ve got to think of once we start talking grades and scholarships and so forth, we’re, we’re talking about money and that’s when it becomes a business. And that’s just the nature of the beast. That’s how it’s always going to be. As long as there’s money involved, there’s some type of business work with it. Um, so the best kind of advice that I give for guys is don’t be happy, number one. Well, I’ve got a good enough GPA and sat score to get into the school. Don’t just be like, I’ve got the bare minimum. I’m good enough to get in because the higher that you can get on GPA and act FTT, usually you’re gonna get more academic money at a school. And what starts to happen, if I take player a and player B, I clone them.

Bo Martino: 00:26:08 The exact same dude. The only difference is their braids. So they’re playing ability to position everything. The exact same player, a right has really good grades, high GPA, did well on sat act. So he’s going to be able to get more academic ones play or be did not do as well. Didn’t study before he went in, you know, stayed out all night before he went act S a T just kinda been struggling to make it by in class, not turning in homework. Grades are bad. But what’s going to happen is if those two talk to their family, cause remember they’re clones. So they’re going to be the same and they say, Hey look, we need 50% of your school covered. We’ve enough saved for college so we can pay for half of it. And so when that young man comes in, he said, coach, my parents out in the 50% covered, we’ll play or a, he’s already getting 25% academic money. Yeah. So I go, Hey, you know what? I can give you the minimum 25% and gets you by your, you’re not going to be an academic grace. You’re a pretty good player. So I can give him 25% that doesn’t cost me a whole lot of money. The other guy comes in and says, Hey, the 50% well how much money you get an academic, he’s not getting any. So now I’ve got to give him 50% his grades aren’t very good. He’s the academic risks. What if I give him that and he fails in the fall and he’s in eligible for the spring? Man, I just can’t do it. How about you could be a walk on force and earn that right and show us. So maybe that’s the, that’s the difference there and the guy that’s giving him a chance or not. I think a lot of parents and kids sometimes don’t understand that. I’m a big, I’m a big fan of take the act and the sat, figure out which one you do better on and then go get a tutor for those and retake it. I had a young man when I was in Ohio, um, he took the act of score to 31 on it the first time and that’s really good. But he said, co stuff’s not good enough. I can do better than that. Went and got him a tutor, learn how to take the test, went back and took it again, got a 35 what that did is that bumped him up into the next bracket installer ship. So he got an extra $7,000 a year. So by taking that test one more time and putting effort into getting a tutor and so forth, over four years, he’s going to save myself $28,000. I mean, in my opinion, that’s worth it.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:28:13 Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. So what, what advice do you have for guys, you know, high school guys? Should they attend all the perfect game events, the PBR, or should they take more of the route of the profit campus than in films?

Bo Martino: 00:28:28 I think it comes down to kind of what we talked about earlier. You’ve got to be true and honest with yourself on what your playing ability is. Um, man, if it’s late in the recruiting game, you’re a senior, you’re not having any luck. Nobody’s biting on what’s going on. You, you need to go to event that’s going to have coaches in front of you, um, that, that are kind of more of your fit. Maybe it’s a D three junior college, maybe it’s a D three school, any IUD to some low level, the ones you need to find more of what’s going to be a fit, you know, Vanderbilt’s not going to be your calling at that point. Probably, you know, your, your top two, your power, five schools that probably not going to be calling, let’s see, hit some crazy growth spurts. Um, so I think you need to start to reach out to those schools and, and don’t just put yourself in one bucket. Um, I played as a division three level, so I have, I’m not knocking it in any way. I love where I went. Um, and now looking back at it, that was the level I needed to be at at the time. I thought it was to be one guy. That was the level I needed to be at. I would not have been at a D one school for very long. Um, so being real and honest with yourself first, it’s going to be a big deal. So you get in front of the right people. I’m going to write it down. I personally feel like you don’t need to go to every single event, every single camp out there. This is kind of what we tell guys when they come in. We try to tell them to put yourself in three buckets. You’re gonna put one bucket is going to be your dream school. Maybe it’s a power five school, maybe it’s a school your mom and dad went to. Okay, you’re going to put some schools in bucket crew, the bucket two’s going to be middle of the road. Man, I think I can play there. They have my major blah blah, blah, blah. It’s a good fit. And then bucket three is like, man, you know, that was my last resort. Um, they have a decent program, definitely have my major, has a good program for that. And you start to reach out to all three of those buckets. And what you’ll start to notice is you’ll start to get interest back from at least one of those buckets. And if you’re getting it all from bucket three, well guess what? I need to probably pay attention to everybody that was in bucket three. I don’t need to worry about bucket one anymore. Okay. If bucket one gets back to you, says, Hey man, uh, we’re our roster school for next year. Okay, we’ll take them out and put a new team in the bucket one. So that way you’ve got a little bit of everything covered and you’ll start to realize where you’re getting attention is probably where you kind of need to focus on being in it. And you know, you just can’t get your feelings hurt that that’s where it is. You know, if you’re truly interested in playing baseball at the next level, you need to go where you’re going to play you, they have your major and you can see yourself going for four years. And if baseball was taken away from you, which can happen in any time, what if they come in the next year and say, Hey, baseball programs gone, or man, ever forbid you have an injury and you’re done, can’t play anymore. Would you still go to that school? Because if you, you can see yourself going to that school and not playing baseball there, it’s going to be a good fit for you. You’re going to enjoy life. You’re not going to be calling mom and dad two weeks in crime to come home. Yeah, you’re going to be locked into that school. And that’s kinda really what we’re looking for. I mean, don’t pick a school just to play baseball. I think a lot of people make that. They get there, they hate it, and now they start transferring to their school and then next thing you know they’re transferring to another school and now it’s three or four transfers. And the coach just once goes, man, why should I take this kid? You’re going to transfer out. You can talk bad about us. There’s a common denominator here and it’s the kid, not the school. So that’s one thing I would tell people would be hesitant enough for sure.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:31:49 Yeah. No, that’s awesome advice. So, you know, and the one thing that we have to have a conversation with kids on it, you guys would rather hear from them right? Than wrong. Mom and dad.

Bo Martino: 00:31:59 Yes. Yeah, yeah. Getting, getting an email from dad saying, Hey, so and so would just love to come there. I was like, yeah, well I would love to go to Vanderbilt, but that wasn’t going to happen when I was playing. Um, so hearing from the kid is a lot better than hearing from the parent. Cause at the end of the day, who’s coming to the school? The parents probably eligibility is out. They’re not coming to my school to play for us. I need to build a relationship with a kid and figure out who he is. Um, so doing that, when they send emails, you’re gonna laugh at this, but make sure you have the school and the coach’s name. Correct. We get, we’ve had one before inside. Coach. I really love Abilene Christian. I’m really interested in coming there. I’m like, man, you know OCHIN I’ll afford that over to coach McCarty and let him know for you, man, good luck. You know, being a wild cat, I don’t know. I know we’re both purple. We have a lot of purple teams in, in the South and I think we have four. So that’s gotta be a record in a conference. But you know, making sure that Hey, it’s fine if you want to do a blanket statement, but put a little bit of effort into it that you’re at least getting the school and the name right. And another way that you can really help. It’s like if you’re, let’s say you’re a catcher, this is an easy example for us. Our head coaches, the catching guy played pro ball as a catcher. What is this stuff coach, man, I saw that you played in such and such organization. I’ve heard really good things about your catcher’s there. I’m a catcher as well. I think coming to your school, but give me a good opportunity to really learn the basic or what’s going on behind the mouth, uh, behind the dish. Um, and doing that and reaching out that way. It separates you from, I heard you’re a really good last year. Well buddy, we were under 500, so that doesn’t work on us, but it might work on a different school. So it’s just putting some time and effort in, man. It’s not that difficult because if you can’t put that time and effort in for five minutes, what are you going to do when you get here? Are you going to put the time and effort into the, to the small details that we asked you to do? So, yeah.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:33:52 Well, one last thing on the, on the recruiting side for, I’d like to get into coaching style too. So the last thing I think of recruiting, what the common myth,

Bo Martino: 00:34:02 common myth on recruiting. Um, man, I’m trying to think, so I’m sure there’s plenty out there, um, on recruiting that just because you had really good stats in high school means that you’re a really good player. Yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s one. Um, because you know, that’s why we try to tell [inaudible] video in. Um, if you’re able to put the metrics in that video, like a radar gun down in the right corner, when you throw or hit and you say you throw 90 and I can visually see that on your gun, you throw 90, I can believe you. But a lot of times say coach man, he hit 600 in high school. Wow, that’s awesome. Where did he play? Well, he played at a, at a one eight school, um, that had nine kids in their program. Well, what was the average below? They faced probably about 70. Okay. Well I hope he hit 600. Um, or are we talking about, you know, a Houston or metroplex school for us, you know, Dallas Fort worth area that we’re at six, eight high schools then and everybody is rolling out against is throwing 90 plus and get two 52 75, two 90. Okay. Man, that’s probably a better guy. He’s facing some more of our level competition. Um, so that’s where you kind of have to, just because you put up good numbers at the high school level and, and travel ball looked at the competition that you’re playing first. Um, I, I think a lot of people just think that they’ll put numbers up and he did this and he did that and he works really hard. Well, that’s great. A lot of people work really hard, but they’re not good at their jobs. So making chicken on things like that I think is a, is a myth that people don’t understand.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:35:40 Yeah. All right, cool. Cool. So let’s, let’s jump over to the, the coaching side. Um, let, let’s just start with, with the mechanics. You know, you talked a little bit about it, you know, you like the core philosophy, bellman and Atlanta and all them doing. Um, [inaudible] I mean, how did you evolve like, you know, at some point, you know, you went from, here’s what I believe to, here’s what I believe. Now, can you talk a little bit about that evolution?

Bo Martino: 00:36:04 Yeah. Um, so, you know, when I got into college coaching, I had coach called me in one day. Hey man, there’s, there’s a God doing some pretty cool things down at Weatherford junior college. Um, his name is Flint wallets and said, man, I really think you should call him up and see you can, can come down and visit him, um, and just kind talk to the pitcher with them. So I called Flint up and made about three and a half hour drive from where I was in Marshall, Texas over to Weatherford and was probably with Flint for about three hours or so. Um, and Flint is now at the Texas baseball ranch and he is, I don’t know his actual title, but he’s pretty high up there. Um, and Flint kind of basically opened my eye to a lot of new things that’s going on and instead of the tallest balls and towel drills and so forth like that, but we need to focus on how the body moves a lot more. There’s things that contribute to pain and things that don’t and, and you know, Hey, it’s okay. We got to get on her arm a little bit, feed it is that Jaeger says and do those kinds of things. So he opened my eyes and said, Hey, you need to go to the ultimate pitching coaches boot camp. So I signed up for that and uh, went down and man, just getting to see your in the room with, there’s big league coaches in there. There’s modernly coaches. Uh, think how Bodhi was actually there from drive on at that point and hearing those guys taught, opens your eyes to what’s going on. So I came back and said, man, I’m going to start studying a lot more. I’m way behind. I don’t know what I’m doing. Um, and then just starting to read up on what they’re doing, reading blog posts from, from people that are higher up, they’re having success with the levels that they’re at. Um, really started making me think I’ve got to do a better job teaching and not kind of put it as a blanket kind of approach. Um, so the, the one thing I’ve really started focused on was our lower half and just kind of how that, um, I think as a [inaudible] I’m a butcher’s name and I don’t want him to get mad. This D deacon that deacon at TCU, the strength coach put out a book, a couple, a couple, not a year ago I guess now probably. Um, and it was talking about, um, just moving over matches and learning how to move. And, and that’s basically what we’ve got to do as pitching coach. We’ve got to help our guys learn how to move. Um, and if we can actually take the mechanics side out of it, it’s going to be even better. So, and what I’m saying there is, you know, we, we talk a lot about like vertical shinning on things like that, but I tried to dumb it down for our players and try to give them fields how to, how to feel this. And that’s where the core velocity belt comes in. You can just put it on, Hey, here’s the goal of this drill. Do it. We don’t tell them how to do it. We’d let them learn how to feel, how to do it, and that way they can repeat it on their own. So that’s been phenomenal for, for me. I’m trying to learn that there’s more out there and trying to break it down where I know it, but I’ve got to get it out to the players where they know how to do it. Some guys can handle the bigger terms. You can get more in depth with some guys. You just have to say, Hey, you know what I want you to do? I just want you to get down Hill that works for them. That’s literally all you gotta tell them, um, for screw your foot into the ground. Okay, that works. Well, really what’s we’re talking about is, Hey, we’re going to counter rotate and sit and do all this thing. Some guys can’t handle that. I don’t need a guy out there thinking on the mountain about all that, all the mechanical stuff. So we try to just kinda dumb it down a little bit for them. That even answered the question. I get off topic.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:39:27 Yeah, no, no, no. You did good. You did good. Yeah. So, uh, so you know, w w with the mechanical chain, did you know when you, when you get, when you get a guy that comes in, um, you know, at what point do you start making recommendation? I know you have, you can quantify a lot of things with the rap Sodo and the video and the, and the egg atonic and all that stuff, which is awesome, you know, but how quick are we able to get the buy in on that or it’s a lot of, a lot of people need to fail before they’re open to making changes. Right, right.

Bo Martino: 00:39:59 So we, you know, we threw bullpens for a couple of weeks once we got here and got ramped up and get made sure guys had been throwing and kinda been on a, a plan for a couple of weeks. We didn’t just day one, Hey, we’re going out throwing up 40 copies. Yeah. So we, we let our guys kind of get their workload going up before we put them on a mail. And really we would put the reps Soto on them, but we wouldn’t really talk about what was going on on the rep Soder in video because I wanted them to kind of face them hitters a little bit first or throat three or four bullpens before we really talked about what we’d see because maybe it’s just a bad day. And the first time I saw him, man maybe there, cause they were in the weight room the first two weeks in the weight room, they’re sore, they’re not moving correctly. So we tried to give them some opportunities to kind of show us what you got first because I’m not seeing something on a rep. So then I was like, eh, that kinda sticks out to me. And then they go in the game and they’re dicing people up at that, break them off and you know that I need to shut up and don’t mess with it. Um, instead of going in and taking what’s actually a good thing for them away. So we, we try to let you guys, like you said, we try to let them fail a little bit or show us what they can do before we start, try to step in and make changes if it works for them, let it go. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Our Friday night guy last year, I mean he got drafted as a junior and I’m gonna tell you right now, I didn’t have to do a whole lot with that guy. Plain and simple. Like he came in, he’s pretty polished. Really. The only thing that we, we talked about with him was kind of some of his uses in different counts. That was it. Two, two counts. I think he had too many waste pitches in. We started to change those and he started to go eight and nine and he’s in the game instead of sick. Um, but he was pretty polished on the mound, had really good stuff and we didn’t try to really tweak it to make it any better. We just kind of let him roll out. He was a competitor. He, he’d been told all of his life, Hey, you’re too small. You don’t throw hard enough. But he goes out and strikes like 107 people out. So I can’t argue with that. So I think it’s just reading your player, letting them kind of fail or succeed, and then starting to make a plan with them on what they think is going on. And a lot of times we try to ask her gut, Hey, what do you think you should do here? What do you feel? And the ethics function, there’s not a right or wrong answer. What you feel this, this is how you, if you call it tomato, and I call it tomato, it doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s that we understand what we’re talking about. Like we have a got, it throws a slider, he calls it a curve ball. It’s not a slot, but it’s a slider. And I told him, I don’t care what you call it, as long as you know how it’s gonna move. Um, so we try to give our gods a little bit of some, some, some freedom in what and what they want to learn and what they think they can handle. And I have guys that come in, we use [inaudible] track to kind of set up our throwing programs that put lot of it back in and so forth.

Bo Martino: 00:42:39 And they’ll come in and say, Hey coach, I know I’m supposed to do a hybrid b-day or a bullpen. Can I move that bull pin up today and do a recovery day tomorrow? And yeah, man, absolutely. You know, we have Moda sleeps as well for all of our pitchers. So we’re able to look at their acute to chronic workloads so we can say, Hey man, um, your, your workload’s not, you’re not there. We need to start to LinkedIn you out a little bit more. Hey, you did too much yesterday. Let’s, let’s kinda make it a recovery day to day instead of a hybrid. B-day we’re starting to kind of learn what guys are able to do, um, that way and kind of being able to individualize that plan a little bit more than just say, here’s the cookie cutter deal. Everybody’s going out for an append today. You need to work on curveballs. Okay, well coach, I don’t throw a curve ball. What do I do? No, we’ll learn how to throw a curve ball today. No, he needs to work on this change up. That’s the pitch she needs to go with. So that’s, that’s what we’re trying to do here. You have those guys, read your guys, give them some feedback and let them put some input in what’s going on. Because here’s the deal. If it’s their idea, at the end of the day, they’re gonna work a lot harder. Their idea. It’s your idea. Yeah.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:43:38 So what if a, what have you got a guy that looked at me? He does. I mean, he just looks really good and you know, the numbers are there, the video looks good, but, but that elbow is always hurting. No. What? What’s that like?

Bo Martino: 00:43:52 We use this, we have pains. There’s gotta be something going wrong. Yeah. So that’s something there that we’re going to go back through that video maybe a little bit more in depth and see for statistical wise and a metrics that it’s spitting out to see if there’s something out there that might be causing you. But we’re also going to get in with our athletic training staff. Uh, we have a full time athletic trainer that’s just with baseball and I’m gonna talk to him, say, Hey man, here’s, I know he’s been coming in to see you for treatment. What do you think it could be? What’s helping him on your end that you think get better, that maybe I can modify out here for him? We go back and forth with our athletic training staff pretty frequently. We get an update twice a day, a morning and an after practice kind of what’s been going on with some of our guys that are been coming in for treatment and so forth.

Bo Martino: 00:44:36 Um, and so I’ve thought his name was Andrew stalling and not, and I’ll sit down and talk to Andrew. My wife’s an athletic trainer, so I have a pretty good rapport with athletic trainers. And so I’ll, I’ll talk to Andrew say, Hey, what are you seeing man? I think this could be the problem. It could be it’s a lab issue, but I think, um, that’s what’s causing the pain in the elbow because it’s not doing this. Okay, well what if we modify this rolling program and focus more on this side of things? Yeah, that’s, we’ve had success being able to bounce ideas back and forth off of each other out of somebody that’s not a pitching guy, but as a baseball minded athletic trainer and allowing us to just kind of work together to solve that problem. Because at the end of the day, if the guys on the bench and not in the game, he’s not doing us any good. So we need to find a way to kill that pain other than the ibuprofen and, and getting back on the Mount where he feels healthy and can give us the best opportunity to win.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:45:28 Nice. Yeah, no, I agree. So, I mean, you know, the let, let’s jump over to the pitching side of things. So you know that the pitchers, pitchers, they got to get guys out now that’s their job. So how do you, how do you coach or develop no. Pitchability

Bo Martino: 00:45:47 yup. So we, we have started to key, uh, probably started this when I was at Northeast Texas. I had to find a way to, um, other than just statistical numbers. Um, so I batting average against and things like that are great. You know, era is not a very good indicator if you’re good or not. Winter lost records, not a very good indicator for a good picture or not. Um, so we had to kind of find a way to come up with a blueprint of what we’re trying to do. So what we use here is what we call it strike chart. And so I kind of use it similar to what the one pitch warrior guy uses. Um, the, I think he has a system. I’ve added some other stuff on top of that at that point. So strikes stands for a shutdown, eating 13 pitches or less. The RS retire, the first hitter, the one is a one, two, three innings, theK is strike outs and he is in the unit. So as soon as you get two outs doesn’t another bat or not come to the plate after that. Um, so we started keeping it plain and simple that at first and then I started editing in, Hey walk your hit by pitch. We’re going to take a point off first pitch strikes, you get a point, uh, two strikes before two balls, you get a point, um, three ball counts, you get a point taken off. So that allows our guys to go out there and say, okay, Hey, what do I need to do to score points? So if I throw a first pitch strike and get a point, okay, let’s do that. If I don’t do it, I still have two strikes for 14 balls I can get. So now it gives me, yes, it’s a plan that that’s okay. We can still be successful. And so if they, we’ve started to notice that the guys at score higher on our strike chart are God that at the end of the day or getting a lot more people out. So that’s kind of gives them a blueprint during the game. Hey, I gave up yet. Like we don’t take points off of it, so we don’t get onto our gas from giving up yet. We just don’t do it. That’s part of the game. If they’re getting hit, guess what they’re doing? They’re throwing strikes. Yeah. So that gives us an opportunity to get guys out when the balls in play, which when we’re walking guys, that’s, that’s where we put ourselves in a hole. So I know a lot of people talking about don’t punish guys for throwing balls and I get that. And I said, but when I came in, I think we were the worst team in the nation the year before it walks or something like that. Yeah, he was, it was pretty bad. And so we had a really focused on pounding the zone and getting after guys. So we hammered first pitch strikes, two strikes for two balls. Go run after God. If that’s what we’re going to do. I can’t get mad at him, but they’re going to give a pit. Right. And we gave up some hits last year and that’s okay. Right. But what we were able to do is we cut our walks down I think by about a hundred from the year before by doing that. And we actually set a single season strikeout record at our school, but just focused on throwing and pounding the zone. Um, so that’s kind of what we tried to do. We try to give them a blueprint.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:48:24 Nice. So, so let’s talk about, you know, when a guy had the bad outing, you know, anytime you have a bad outing, you know, your, your conference, take the head, you know, so how do you help guide through that? Because you know, when you’re on the field, you know what you think and what you feel matters, you know, and there’s a lot of thoughts and a lot of feeling after you have a bad outing. So it it their conversation that you have or that kinda did let them figure it out type of deal.

Bo Martino: 00:48:50 I’ll have that conversation, but I definitely don’t have it when they come off the field. I’ll let them come in the dugout. I’ll let them chill out. Maybe it’s a couple of meetings later. I’ll go down there. Maybe it’s not til the next day when we were taking BP on the field and we’re getting some running in or lifting or whatever. I’ll come and film me. It’s different for every guy. Um, but I’m not a big, as they come off the field, go sit and bomb as they’re just there, they’re mad, they’re adrenaline’s pumping and third level of the pop off and now we have a whole nother problem. It’s nothing that gets them there. They’re just, they’re amped up right now and they’re pissed off and that’s okay. I want you to be pissed off. If you’re coming off the field and you’re not mad that you’re not doing well, then we’ve got a problem. So I kind of let those guys cool down some guys to same day. Some guys the next day or whatever. And then we said, Hey man, what you know, what was going on? You say, what’d you feel? Um, and usually though, I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going on. Well it sounds like the game got got sped up on you a little bit. So maybe, Hey, when I come out for a lot of the stuff that when like we make bound visits, I think everybody makes no business different and nobody actually knows what everybody else’s mountain visit is. Like. Does it make you lead God go out there and he’s giving him all kinds of statistical stuff? Or is he just saying, Hey man, I’m just letting you breathe real quick out here. I know we’re at Yankee stadium tonight and the the a L a CS and stuff. I’m just letting you breathe and just kind of look her, I have no idea. They’re not Mike and a lot of those guys up. And so really our big deal is, Hey man, here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re doing a really good job. I just want you to pound the zone man. You finish going to get him out cause I’m just coming out here. Let’s take a big deep breath and get that underneath the man. And then we might just crack a little joke back and forth and we’re good. And with those guys go, um, we’re starting to read Dodds and you know, maybe the next step to, Hey, Hey, here’s what I thought you got in trouble yesterday. I thought your, you got behind in counts tool. We looked at the two strikes for two balls, man, you had six out of 12. That’s 50%. We’ve got to do a better job there. I think if you do that, it takes some pitches off of you and you’re not getting in counts where you’re having to fill that basketball. You’re having to rely on it and they’re at basketball hitting teams. So I think if you’re able to command off speed a little bit more, guess what? That’s what we’re going to work on this week, man. We’re gonna work on your all speak man. And we’re going to chart your bullpen this weekend. It’d be points for getting two strikes, sports in balls before, uh, um, the end of the bat. Just kinda try to calm down and give him a plan and not let them know that, Hey, you’re just sending your own, figure it out. Yeah. Thank you for you. If you show them the, there’s a plan that can happen, they’re a lot more of a lot of, Hey, this guy cares about me. There’s something wrong. It’s not me. It’s the way that I approach them.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:51:26 Yeah. Well how about this? How about you get a guy who, you know, let’s say the freshmen, um, or maybe a transfer or whatever. Um, you know, the, the outside influenced, you know, too. Maybe he’s away from home for the first time. I’m not hitting Lincoln as well. Maybe you get into a fight with a girlfriend or whatever, you know, bad grade in school. You know, that stuff can have an impact on the performance. And when they’re in college, they’re not quite understanding how to separate, you know, that from the field step and thing in the moment. So I did do, uh, how do you, how do you guys kind of, you know, do you guys have the conversation when you guys kind of, you could, you could see a kid and they, okay, something’s not right. Um, so do you have those conversations and do they open up or, I mean, how does that all work? Yeah. Yeah.

Bo Martino: 00:52:20 And I think at that point, if your first time sitting down and talking to that kid is that he has bad outing door, you can tell that something’s going on behind the scenes. He’s not the same person. If that’s your first conversation with him, we already have a problem. I think that’s something that you have to set at up throughout the fall. From day one, you have to start to kind of build a rapport with every single player that you have. Especially in my case, we have pictures there. Quirky man, we just, we got some weird cats. All right. Um, but if you just start to, Hey, we were in a group, I’m going to talk to everybody, but every once in a while just walk over, say, Hey man, how’s everything going? He liked in school, how’s classical? Talk about, Hey, what’s your major? What are you made your name? Oh, how’s my mom feel about you going away from home? And you start to have small conversations daily and weekly with those kids that when you actually finally see something’s wrong and you go up and talk to them, they’re more likely to open up and talk to you because you’ve had that conversation before. If the first conversation they ever have with you about something outside of baseball is when something’s going wrong, they’re not going to open up as often and you’re not going to get the information out of the seeds that you need. And so you just have to build that rapport and show them that you care about him other than just playing baseball. Yeah. And that a lot of times sticks is what’s going on. Yeah. They could feel like they can open up to you and share things. And don’t go off the handle when they share something. Being honest with you. Right. You’ve gotta listen to them. Let them get it out. Like not one. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. You’re telling me you’re mad because your girlfriend broke up. Hey man, I was in college one. It such some time. We don’t understand until we get older, you know, but 20, 20, they’ll learn when they get older. So you just got to call him down and say, Hey man, I had a crazy girlfriend too. Trust me. You’re going to make it through. It’s going to be okay. So

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:54:11 yeah. So what, uh, as a coach, um, at the level of your ass, what, what is, what are some of your biggest challenges?

Bo Martino: 00:54:23 Um, sometimes it’s, it’s time management stuff. So, um, at, at SFA our field is off campus first. Um, so we’ve got to get God’s the drive out here and set all that up. She’s got to work around class schedules, got to work around tutoring. Um, and that stuff’s comes first. So we don’t, in the fall, especially we don’t miss class or baseball. We’re gone enough on the road in the spring that we’ve gotta be in classes. We’ll have a guy come in. We had a guy come yesterday that coach, Hey, I need to throw my bullpen early. I’ve got tutoring at four. I got to get to, it’s not like, Hey, no, you need to be here. Oh that’s, that’s an that’s non conversation you’re going to tutor. So we make, you know, take our schedule and moving around. Um, we’re, like I said though, we’re, we’re off campus and our coaching staff does all of the field work. We have a natural natural surface. We don’t have turf. Um, our head coach is actually out on the field lowing right now. We just yesterday spent a couple hours putting rice seed out. Um, as a staff we water, we, I mean as you get up this morning, we drag it, we floated, we knew [inaudible] it’s too wet to play. We’ve got to get up there fixing it, sprinklers broke. Okay, here’s what crawled down there and turned the water off. Like we do the majority of our fieldwork. There’s some things from equipment standpoint, we get like our school or the CDD kind of come over and helped us with, cause we don’t have that equipment. But I would say a pro, uh, probably 90% plus of the work that’s done here. We’re doing, so we’re out here having to work during the morning, getting the field ready for practice in the afternoons. Well, when are you going to sit down and make that practice plan though? When are you going to, Hey, so-and-so needs some extra work. He needs to come in early. Well, I’ve got to get the field mode though. How am I going to get the field mode and worked with him for 30 minutes? Um, so things like that can be a challenge and everybody has their own challenges. It doesn’t matter what program you’re at, if you’re, you got all turf, okay, well I’ve got to go this now. I’ve got this kind of paperwork or I have 15 meetings a week, um, with admin and everybody else that doesn’t have to do paperwork and work with their students every day. Um, that, that’s kind of our big thing. It’s just, it’s finding that tie. But guess what? Our athletes had that same problem. They were having to learn how to schedule stuff. I’ve got practice. You got to study tonight. I do have a girlfriend. I want to take her out. Hey, there’s a new movie that came out. Oh man, I left some clothes at home. We’ve got to dinner, we’ve got to go to for a team function for my sheets at home, four hours away. When am I going to go home and get that stuff to drop this weekend. They have things going on too. But that’s our biggest thing is just finding that time to be productive in everything we do. Yeah.

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:57:05 What about, what about, what are the biggest challenges for you at the recruiter?

Bo Martino: 00:57:12 Um, looking and you always feel like you’re not always looking at enough kids, but that makes sense. Like, man, if I’m not out, and this is across the board, cause me being a volunteer, I cannot go out and technically recruit, but I can go to, I can go work events, um, in the ballots and things like that. So it’s a little bit different for me than it is like our re our recruiting coordinator and our second assistant, um, that are out there that don’t have to be paid to go to event. Um, which you always feel like you’re watching the kid, at least I do that, I’m watching him but am I missing something? Is there something or is it better than I think it is or I think I liked this guy but Katie actually play. And so there’s sometimes there’s some doubt and I think the more and more that you recruit and get better and better at it. But I would imagine that any coach has had Mrs. Guy they brought on campus and he was just a dud. He was just not built for this. Um, and so the kind of makes you question, man, am I doing the right thing or did I miss something or you know, am I just liking that kid cause I feel like I can w he talks to me well and I have a good relationship with like look what’s going on. I think that’s her deal is sometimes with recruiting we worry about kind of how it’s perceived and you know, you’re gonna miss on a kid. That’s okay. So

Geoff Rottmayer: 00:58:34 cool. The Bo, I got, uh, three more questions I’d like to get into. I’ve, I appreciate your time. So, alright, so what about the, what about, uh, uh, the biggest failure that you’ve had and what you’ve learned from it?

Bo Martino: 00:58:46 Oh, man. Biggest failure the way I used to coach, but I think year to year, I think if you’re not looking back at what you do on a consistent basis and not learning more to either solidify what you’re doing is right or letting yourself know that, Hey, that’s wrong. I need to change this a little bit. I think that’s a huge failure. And I can tell you right now, when I was first started high school coaching, I was probably one of the worst pitching coaches out there. Looking back at it now, like I’m telling them all kinds of stuff that make no sense just because that’s the way I was taught. That’s all I knew. Right? Um, and so I, uh, can say that I was just thinking about this yesterday. Like I used to get some hitting lessons and I’m looking back now, like I taught them some stupid stuff that makes no sense that now if people saw me doing that, I’d be, they’d be blowing me up on Twitter saying I’m an idiot. And rightfully so. Um, I think that still is, it’s looking back at what I used to do, um, that I was, I was not looking for answers. I was just doing how it always been done. And I challenge anybody, whether you give less, you just give lessons. You don’t even play baseball. You’re just making some extra money given lessons to killer you own a facility, you’re a head coach or college coach, high school coach, doesn’t matter. I think you need to get out there and challenge yourself to step outside of your comfort zone and learn. It’s okay to not know everything, but you need to start to learn some more stuff. If you don’t understand it, get out there and ask questions about, there’s plenty of gods that know what they’re doing that will, you can call them up and they’ll talk to you. Right. And help you out with anything you need. Um, so that is my biggest failure is being a bad coach.

Geoff Rottmayer: 01:00:32 What a, what about, I mean, you mentioned some of it throughout the conversation, but what are some of the Beth resources that helped you along the way?

Bo Martino: 01:00:40 Twitter, Twitter, I’ll tell you right now, Twitter is one of the best resources that are used. I mean, actually that’s how we connected. Yeah. It came across each other on Twitter. Um, I’ve more joke all the time until people do. Um, I have more friends on Twitter than I do in real life. Um, and I truly, I truly believe that though. I mean, I mean there’s guys in there I’ve never met before. I started a website, um, two years ago, Johnny Holt staff with a coach that I had, I had actually never met in person after we, even after we had started the website. Yeah, I’d never met him in person before. Um, Eric Peterson is his name. He’s at Benedictine college. Um, but I can go to Eric’s one of the guys if I have questions going on and what I’m doing, coaching what I know I can call Eric up that trust him. He’s going to be honest with me. That new will challenge you with some questions about how you’re and make you feel uncomfortable and go, man, maybe I’m not doing stuff right. Oh my gosh. Like he hits you with some hard questions. He does a phenomenal job with that. But this amount of information that’s out there on Twitter, um, good or bad, they matter. You need to be able to start to look at it and decide for how things work for everybody. Um, but Twitter’s been a huge thing for me. And that’s even from a recruiting standpoint to things like the flat flat ground app and all those things where you can see more and more kids now, um, from video and get their contact info right there. It’s, it’s free. Yeah. You can’t beat free. Free is awesome. That’s a big one. A, the ABC a has been huge as well. Being able to go out and network gets guys [inaudible] go to the convention and listen to guys that are cutting edge, talk about scenes and walk around the trade show and, and meet the guys from rep Soto and talk about them and get questions. Now I feel comfortable calling them on the phone. Drive on baseball has been a huge resource for me. Um, I, I know some of those guys. I wouldn’t say I know them well. Uh, but I think we know who each other, who each other is. At least there are, or however you say that, um, calling their support system and say, Hey, here’s what’s going on with this, or how can I fix it? Man, they make you feel like they know you when you call. Like it’s the coolest thing and it just allows you to just answer questions. All the three contents they put out all the stuff that you can pay for with drop blind plus all the videos they have that they’re trying to help guys out to get information out there. Um, you know, even like slipped Wallace was huge for me. Just having a guy, like we were saying earlier, I’ve coached, it’s willing to take this time out and answer questions for you. Uh, Pitchapalooza went to that a couple years ago up in Tennessee from uh, Lance Wheeler and being around like minded guys up there. Um, I spent that whole weekend with Justin James who’s the head coach at point Loma Nazarene. I never been to California, but once I, the only way I know him Twitter and we ended up sharing a car and riding around all weekend together and have some great talks and he’s actually led me to do some things, um, with my pitching program that he was doing. So just networking and not being afraid to ask questions. But Twitter I think is the easiest one to get locked into.

Geoff Rottmayer: 01:03:45 I agree. Now Twitter has been phenomenal, like you said, both bad and good. So it took the matter of weeding out you where you believe in stuff. So. All right, cool. One last question, Bo. Um, if you were, if you were me interviewing yourself right now, what would you have asked yourself that in ass,

Bo Martino: 01:04:05 man, I’m trying to think. I think we’ve covered quite a bit. Yeah. Like you said with you, you sometimes get on a roll. I think I ended up answering your question. Go on and answer other stuff too. And I get lost in the conversation. Um, I think, I don’t know if it’s something that’s, I think going back to what we started with is um, building a support system for yourself. No, I think you need to, to find either a couple coaches, family, friends, friends that aren’t in it, people that go to your church or whoever it may be that you can, you can just say, Hey, am I doing the right thing? I’m struggling at work or I’m struggling with this kid coaching him. And just having people that you can call up and be honest and open with. I think it’s huge. I think too many times as coaches, um, especially you have parents yelling at you in the stands about who should be playing it or Oh come on, what are you doing? And it starts to kind of make you sometimes wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Am I coaching their kid the right way? Um, and just being honest and open with other coaches to kind of, Hey man, yeah, I think you’re on the right track. Or Hey, I would do this a little bit differently. Not saying you’re wrong, cause I think there’s another way you might be able to do it instead of just sit out there and just wearing it and feeling like you’re by yourself. You know, it’s really easy for people to sit in the stands and talk about how they’re not winning or I know a lot, a lot going on right now on Twitter is about call like Dallas Cowboys. Then they need to fire this guy and they need to get rid of this guy or the Astros’ need to get rid of Correia and now he’s hitting bombs and things like that. And it’s like, well, it’s really easy for you at the end of the day to say, well, why didn’t they do this? You know, how much analytics goes into the behind the scenes is that those guys are calling plays off of are or what they’re doing and what they’re seeing. That’s you’re sitting at home on your couch and don’t even know what like WOBA is. I can’t listen to that. It’s real easy because you can get on and look at my record at work. You can get on our website and say, our Winslow, I can’t look at years for selling insurance. Right? Or, or whatever you do. Like you’re the, you’re the greatest construction guy. I don’t know that. I can’t get on and look at that. But you can look at my record online. It’s public information. Um, I think that’s sometimes hard on coaches. I think having a support staff behind you, um, support system that you can call up and just talk to the guys and go back and forth with that. At the end of the day, man, are you trying to, are you doing the right thing? You know, are you following you? If you’re, if you’re in into the faith and all that, um, you know, are you trying to live, live right? Do right by the kids. Try to make positive impacts on people and, and from your knowledge, doing what needs to be done at the end of the day, man, that’s what matters.

Geoff Rottmayer: 01:06:53 Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. You know, I mean, we forget that, uh, coaches and player, then everybody that end up in the, in the spotlight are, they’re human. They’re human. They, they have feelings. They have issues. They have, I mean, there’s just a lot going on there. Throw fair. You take a chill pill, you know? Yeah. I mean, you have coaches out there that, that you’re, you’re judging on, on who they’re playing and stuff. Man. Have kids at home. You have kids at home. Like, they love their kids as much as you love your kids, like they’re not out here trying to pick on your kid. Like, I woke up this morning, I’m going to take a little Billy. I ain’t gonna play him this year cause I don’t like it. It doesn’t work like that. And people think that it does. Like you care about your kids, like they care about their kids. There’s other things going on at home, man. Maybe their parents are sick, maybe they have kids that are sick. I mean their car, like your poor volunteer coach and you’ve got a flat tire and you got to figure out how to get that tire place. Been there, done that man. But at that point it’s like, Hey babe, what a, what bill are we not going to pay this month so we can catch up on the other one in this. Like there’s other stuff going on in everybody’s life. So.

Geoff Rottmayer: 01:08:05 Yup. Well Bo, man, I appreciate it. They would T we covered a lot and I appreciate you taking the time to share with the audience, the, your, your side of things. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 01:08:31 [inaudible].