The 5 Pillars of The Strategic Advantage Baseball Player Development

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Are you a baseball player who has all the measurable but struggles taking it to a game? Are you a baseball coach who is looking help your player with the ‘what’s next?’ conversation? Strategic Baseball Podcast and our Strategic Advantage Baseball Process is for you.

Geoff and Darrell talk about The 5 Pillars of The Strategic Advantage Baseball Player Development

Geoff Rottmayer Twitter – @geoffrottmayer

Geoff Rottmayer Email – grottmayer@athletic-mission.com

Darrell Coulter Twitter – @darrellcoulter

Darrell Coulter Email – dc@starttpitching.com

Website: www.strategicbaseballpodcast.com

Tulsa Baseball Training Lessons Hi, Darryl, like always, I’m gonna let you take it away. On today’s show, we’re talking about the five pillars. The strategic advantage baseball player development.
Yeah, man, I think the last few weeks we’ve had a little deeper conversation about how we approach practice, and, and the different components that makeup practice. And then last week, we kind of went through what we call the strategic advantage mindset practice principles, the five key things that everything we do has to be defined in. And that’s the intent, the measurable the takeaway, the experience, and then the story that that player walks away with that they kind of store in their brain, that kind of shapes what the key takeaway was, and whether it’s something that made a difference in and again, it sounds a little deeper, but I think the truth is, it’s really a simple way of assessing whether what we’re doing is to actually make us a better player. And so we’ve got a lot of great feedback from that. And, and again, we’ve had some good conversations that have been able to walk some, some players and coaches and parents, even through some deeper kind of thoughts about that. And so today, we were going to tackle the what we call the five pillars of the strategic advantage baseball process. And and when it comes to player development, these are the five corTulsa Baseball Training Lessons e themes that either Jeff and I here do
with each individual player that all of our assessments kind of drive through. Tulsa Baseball Training LessonsAnd then as we go through these five pillars, and we find different areas that need to be addressed, and some of them that Jeff and I don’t specialize in, we reach out to people that we trust, to try to make sure that our the the guys here have the absolute best resources, they can have to really feel out what they need to do to be a complete player. And so I’m gonna kind of start it out, walk through these five pillars, and then Jeff can fill in the hitting side as we go through. And the first one is mindset. And, and to us mindset is different than mental game. mental game is part of the second pillar training that we’ll talk about in a second. But mindset is really about what the individual players core beliefs are. And, and again, a lot of what we’ll talk about today can shape that mindset. A lot of external influences, parents, coaches, friends, family, you know, expectations, how much they love the game, all those different kinds of things can play a part or impact their mindset. But at the end of the day, when we’re assessing players and we’re looking at the the type of players that will be a good fit the athletic mission, or the inside the strategic advantage baseball program, the remote coaching program, we’re looking for three core mindsets. And then kind of seeing how we work through those. And for the three mindsets we look at to compare and convince is the player really stuck in this kick comparing convince mindset, where they’re constantly comparing themselves against everybody else, and trying to convince themselves that they’re good enough to be on that team. The second one is, is the competing, contribute now they’ve kind of, they feel like they’re good enough to be on the team. Now, they’re kind of just kind of settling in trying to look like everybody else and seeing how they compete, and then seeing where they’re going to contribute kind of figuring out what kind of role the coach is going to put them in. And, and then decide really, whether they’re happy with that rower. Or they’re going to try to go after a different role or kind of whine and moan about what they’re not doing. And then the third mindset, really, the one that we’re looking for is was what we call the strategic advantage mindset. And with this, this has nothing to do with talent. This has everything to do with the focus of what the individual player believes they need to do to continue to grow and develop and mature as a baseball player. And and this is the ultimate mindset that we want everybody to get to. And so there’s gonna be a lot of players that will start back compared to Vince and they can make that shift to compete and contribute pretty quick. And then the be able to make that mindset shift from compete and contribute to strategic advantage is kind of what we do with the rest of our program here is to kind of show them that Hey, man, you’ve got this baseline talent, you’ve got the the capability of helping this team and helping that coach and then obviously having fun and filling the role. But now how do we continue to grow and evolve as a player and get to that point where you understand that your ability to get better is going to be based on you making that next mindset shift into this strategic advantage mindset. That way, you know that everything that you do, everything that you do for out the rest of this program is about giving you a strategic advantage. And so that’s kind of what we look for in that first pillar, that mindset pillar. Tulsa Baseball Training LessonsThe second pillar is the training pillar. And that’s kind of where most of the baseball world is that this is where most of the internet guru stuff you get, it’s where a practice have or where practice is confused with training a lot of times, and we’ll talk about that in the next pillar. But what we start looking at really this assessment piece, the kind of the strength and conditioning, kind of the physical and the mental training, we kind of put it in this kind of category. And and here’s where all the mechanics works, the biomechanics, the swing, all the different components that goes into what would take and make a good baseball player. And so that’s kind of stuck in there. So we look into offseason training, a lot of times, that’s where we kind of put this category, this pillar is usually addressed, mostly in the offseason training program, where we really focus on the mental health and the physical health, and the mental training and the physical training, really trying to help these guys get an idea of where they’re currently at, physically, kind of the things that they need to do. And again, then where we start looking at building out their individual programs based on all the assessments and and some of the things that they self identified about what they need. And so that kind of makes up that training pillar, which is again, man, that’s where you see velocity training at that’s where you see all of all of the majority of put that way, the majority of baseball training that you see, either in the academy setting, or on the internet is usually in that pillar, that training pillar. And then the third pillar that we’ve created in the strategic advantage baseball process is what we call practice. And the US to us here band practice means baseball specific. And it’s really like we’re developing baseball skills that that would play on game day. And so now the things that we do in practice is not just about the drill work that would come into training. But everything that we do within the practice environment, again, has to be geared with the intent, the measurable the takeaway, the experience in the story. And within that concept within them principles. That’s how we measure whether it’s going to play well on game day, is it something that’s going to continue for to help us master a pitch like when again, man, I in our bullpens, I don’t play bullpen games, I focus on pitch development, and pitch mastery and getting our pitches game ready. Tulsa Baseball Training LessonsAnd so that’s the key. So we might focus just on our fastball just on our curveball just on our change of, we’re not just going to go practice and just throw random mindless bullpens, they’re going to be super specific based on that pitch, and based on what we need to do to get that pitch game ready. And so within that framework within that pillar that kind of sets up the practice one, so we got the mindset, then we got the training pillar, then we got practice. And then the third piece is game planning. And I think, Jeff, this is a place that for, especially for our high school guys, this is where we set ourselves apart at athletic mission. We spend a lot of time with our guys on how to read the study hitters, and how to read the study pictures, and how to have a game plan pregame. And then in game, what are we looking for adjustments from that pitcher hitter, and then post game, you know, we really evaluate where we were at what we seen, and then kind of what adjustments we made. And I think at the heart of that when we start talking about game planning, and we start talking about strategy. This is the this to me, is that piece that that kind of puts players over the top because they can have a ton of talent, and they can be physically capable. But all that talent and capability without a strategy without understanding how we gameplan versus an opponent, honestly is useless man when we start leveling out and playing against guys that are just as good or better than us. If if these guys that have talent don’t understand how they create a strategy with that talent versus an opponent. Then they’re going to struggle on game day. And then that kind of brings up the last pillar and that is game day, man. At the end of the day, Jeff everything that you and I do man we work backwards. We start with game day performance and then we plug in The gaps within these four pillars going backwards. And a lot of people will think, hey man that don’t that seem counterproductive. And, and it might be if you were constantly working with 6789 year olds, but most of the people that we’re working with are on that bubble or are looking to really elevate their game to the next level. And so for us, that tried to set that strategic advantage mindset, we start with game day, because we want them to understand my, if, if you’re going to have success on game day, individually, then you better understand how these other four pillars. And what you do within these other four pillars, is what’s going to give you that competitive advantage, that strategic advantage on game day. And so it does, it kind of opens their mind, and kind of pulls them out of the talent trap. And really look at the like the complete picture of what it takes for them individually to be the best player, they could be on game day. And kind of letting us kind of dissect that from an individual perspective, man. And, and again, I think that’s kind of the heart and soul of what we do, man, we lay out these five pillars. And then again, when we do our initial assessments, especially with the high school and the college and pro guys, we don’t start with mindset, we started game day, and kind of assess backwards, and we end up at mindset, because that will kind of lay out truthfully, you know, the insight that that we’ll need to help them. And it also lays out probably the facts about why they’re reaching out to us for help in the first place, man. And so as coaches that I think we got, we got a couple different options to where we can look at it, we can look at it from the mindset that you and I always do is like, we want these guys to be the CEOs of their careers. We don’t want them to work for us, we don’t want them to be an employee of the strategic Vantage baseball process. We want them to own their careers, and to be able to do that, that we got to be able to help them create a baseball plan. And then what we call the business plan, they got to understand that piece of it if they want to be a next level player. And and again, I think that’s the cool thing about what we do. Because once they take on that mindset, they actually become better teammates, they become they they look at the coach and they look at their teammates as somebody that they feel responsible for. And and when they do, especially in the baseball environment where it’s such an individualized team sport, when they grasp that concept, then man, it’s cool, because each one of these pillars, we kind of tackle it at a different time of the year. the mindset of the game day is something we’re always talking about. But the talent and the training piece is more of a offseason part. And then transitioning to the practice pillar is that transition from offseason to preseason. And then that transition from preseason to game planning that practice the game planning pillar. That’s kind of that transition from the preseason and the end season. And now the games are getting ready to start. And so it feels like a natural flow throughout the year too. So we’re always working on our mindset, we’re always focused on how this is going to show up on game day. But at the end of the day, the sinner these three core pillars in the middle of this strategic advantage baseball process, kind of sets the foundation for the offseason, the transition to preseason the transition to end season, and really helps bring clarity to these guys man and and so far man, it’s been cool because over the last years, we’ve tested this here in Tulsa, we’ve had a ton of success and guys are learning and they’re making faster adjustments and, and they see the things that’s causing, you know, some of the blind spots in the programming. And now we’re able to help plug those holes and really, really help you not only a build out their their programming, but we see this progress, we see the improvement happen a lot faster. And it’s and they’re taking on that ownership of that assessment. And so Jeff, that’s that’s kind of the overview of what you and I have been doing here this last year, kind of laying out the the core to our strategic event, his baseball process and those five pillars, the mindset training practice game planning in Tulsa Baseball Training LessonsGame Day execution, and and kind of laying out the foundation of what we do here, man, so it’s cool. And we would love to have more conversations about it and then you can kind of explain the hitting perspective of that.
Hold up. My microphone fell. Okay. All right. That’s all for
me. My No worries.
That makes sense. Yeah.
Yeah. No, it does. That’s really good.
Yeah. Daryl No, absolutely, dude. And I think, you know, you know, you’re not talking a lot about how we work backwards. And I think this is a good, you know, we finally showing them what that really means is this, you know, we’ve started game day figure out where they’re at kabam explained to where they think they’re at. And then we work backwards, then, you know, what’s your strategy? Like? What How do you game plan? How do you get ready? What’s the mindful there? How do you prepare for an opponent, and then going back into them how they practice, and then going into training and the mindset and, you know, the, the, the mindset part, it’s, like, critical, and I know, like, you know, anytime I work with a different coach, or buy a course, or whatever, it always started mindset. Tulsa Baseball Training LessonsAnd I think a lot of people kind of overblown, kind of, like, look past that part. And but it’s so important, like, the mindset, like bringing awareness and shifting perspective and looking things at a different lens, and, you know, in arcades, and arcade that getting them to quit comparing and convincing themselves, you know, trying to constantly compare, where they’re average where everyone else that and trying to convince themselves that they belong, and, and then going into the competing and contribute. But more importantly, going into that strategic advantage mindset, which is everything that I do, I understand what I do, I know where I’m at, know what I’m doing everything, everything is laid out for me, just like the way we the way you and I put together, you know, the development plan, the business plan, the baseball plans for deed, guys. They understand all of that, give them a strategic manage. And that’s the mindset that they’re in constantly. And then we start plugging in all the other pieces that they need, you know, on a training and again, like you said, we we partner up with people that are really good, we know what we do well, and we stay in our lane. And the cool part about that is that we get these guys the best of the best, you know, it’s not, it’s not an ego thing, we’re trying to say we do it all. Now we know what we’re good at. And we bring in people that are really good. But the practice piece, you know, we talked about the it, like, the practice piece can literally change our player development. And so we really, we this is where you and I like you focus on pit practice. And we focus on hit practice. And the hit practices is really understanding our stick process, that seeing the ball, the timing, the knowledge of the zone, the discipline, this and then the swing, and then really putting it all together and executing the command hitting and then being able to drive balls and execute in certain situations counts. And then all of that allows us to put together a strategy or get an opponent based on what we know what we can do. And so when we talk about the the pillars of player development, and again, like you said, they go into different seasons, they’re, they’re different type of focus on different things, then that’s really the cool piece about it. And then really, when the guide buy into that, then they really buy into the whole process. Because a lot of times, we tend to lot of guys tend to think that the training piece is the player development piece. But really goes into the practice that goes into the game planning goes into game day, too. So all in the mindset as well. But that’s the mindset shift that we have to get the guys to understand that that there’s more to it than just the training piece. Tulsa Baseball Training LessonsAnd how you practice there’s the game day against an opponent. What are you going to do against him that game plan against you? What are you going to do against someone that just as good, if not better than you? And then being able to go out there and execute?
Yeah, and I think and I think when we touch on these five key components, it opens up the player’s mindset to see that, hey, you know what, there is more to the game, then velocity, there’s more to the game than exit velocity. And a lot of times, especially the College of impro guys that are reaching out to us have kind of had that aha moment already, like Hey, man, you know, I’ve got here, I’m pretty good. But you know what, what I’m doing is not going to differentiate me from everybody else. It’s not going to get me to be that weekend starter, it’s not going to be honestly I’m not going to be able to differentiate myself away from the rest of the minor leaguers. That’s going to prove to this major league team that dude that I’m I give them a strategic advantage over everybody else in this organization or anybody else they could go sign. And so at the end of the day, whether your goal was just to make the high school team, then you’re kinda in that comparing convince or Maybe even compete and contribute mindset. But if your goal is to give that coach a strategic advantage on game day, and fill that role, so good that that that role continues into other opportunities, then as you develop, you want to have that opportunity to play at the college or maybe even the pro level, and one day, get to the big leagues, then the foundation of that is going to be getting to that strategic advantage mindset. Tulsa Baseball Training Lessons And man, I can’t stress that enough. Because once you start looking at your training, your practice your game planning, and then your game day performance from that perspective, then it then it takes away the talent factor. And now it’s about execution. It’s about preparation. And and again, all the cliches that everybody talks about, then honestly has to go out and be put into action. And and then I think that’s the difference between what we try to do here than what we see a lot out there. There’s a lot of guys that know how to talk the verbiage and say it, but they don’t know how to help these young guys really become that. And and again, I think that’s part of the technical, the technological revolution, man, we got so much data. And we have very few people out there that can explain to these players why that data matters. And then how to take that data, and strategically use it individually to create a game plan, and then go out and play the game with it. And so I think we got these two camps, we got the old head baseball guy says kind of, you know, wanting to continue to play the game the way we’ve always played it. And then we got these, these data guys, the tech guys, and all this information on what the perfect pitch ought to look like or what the perfect swing ought to look like. But they kind of forgot that humans are playing the game man. And so that’s kind of the bridge that you and I have tried to build here with, you know, the strategic Vantage baseball process, it’s like, Hey, man, we’d love both sides of that we love the baseball side of it. And dude, we’re not afraid of the technology and the data and all the information that comes with it. But instead of judging players with that data, we tried to help these players create a strategic advantage mindset, and then a literal competitive advantage on the field with it. And then we use the different training techniques and practice and intentional practice, to let them build the skills that will actually play on game day, man. And then within that context, we build the game plan. And I think that’s the cool thing about it, if if the World Baseball world would just kind of quit trying to get so defensive about their, their part of the game, and really open their minds to the other sides of it. And then kind of the building that we could build a bridge with these different five pillars that you and I have really been trying to implement. That was the whole key when you and I originally sat down and talked about this was, hey, how do we build the bridge from from the old school baseball guys, which I’m one of them to now taking the technology, the data, the information, and all the training programs that are available to these guys? How do we help these individual players and parents and coaches figure out how to help each player individually create the plan with these five pillars with the having the right mindset, having the right training program for that individual player, practicing the things that that individual player specifically needs to practice to develop baseball skills that that will help him create a strategy that will show up on game day. And I think that is going to be the future of player development man and I think it’s cool that you know that you and I have really dug into trying to be just a small part of building that bridge between the old school baseball guys and then you know, kind of the new evolution or revolution of of stats and data and technology and and and kind of the the internet world of what’s going on and tying those two together that real players can actually have success and and see that hey man, I’m not just judged by my velocity or my exit velocity that at the end of the day, I got to be able to take that talent and and if they don’t show up on game day, then I’m not going to be a very good baseball player without it.
Yeah, for sure. And the players like it too, man. I mean, because oh yeah, you and I we have conversation then it always go back to you know, game day and then what our strategy what was our strategy, you did it work? Did it not work? What adjustments did we make? And you know, not did the jump back to the mechanic all the time? Or my velocity wasn’t there? I didn’t, you know, whatever. It’s all goes back to you know, what was my strategy was my mindset that game and and the kids love it too, can they? They now are looking at the game differently. And they see the game differently and they talk differently and make the difference in terms of where they’re developing and where they need to put their focus in in terms of getting ready for the next game. Especially in season so it’s great man, I think I think we’re, we’re doing some cool man took a lot of fun.
Yeah, and I think over the next few weeks, we’ll break down each one of these pillars individually and take a little deeper dive in it. So the parents and coaches and players out there that are listening that want to really kind of understand how we built out this strategic Vantage baseball process and kind of what our our mindset was in developing it. And then kind of depending on what season or where they’re at, at, throughout the year, how you can focus on each one of these pillars to kind of help build the that that next step into either from offseason pre season the end season. And then kind of how do we set the mindset and, and the way we prepare on game day, so it’s gonna be fun, man. So yeah, hopefully come back next week and listen to the next one, we’ll dig into mindset. And and really start breaking out how this mindset shift is, I don’t care how old the player is, Jeff, if they can grasp this mindset shift, and and they really can, and mentally and emotionally accepted that they’ll get out of this talent piece, and start focusing on how I can create a strategic advantage for my team and my coach. And then personally, how do I continue to develop and grow as a player to eventually, you know, Chase in that role in that dream of whatever you know, that is at whatever level you want to play at, man. And I think that’s the cool piece, about about this part of it is, no matter how old they are, if they love the game, we can introduce the different five pillars at different parts or different times of the year to them. And man, the kids that buy into it, are the ones that incidents that ultimately end up being the best players, man. And it’s pretty cool because you can use it from whatever measurement or metric you want. And you can use it as just a pure talent evaluation or you can measure it from a scouting perspective about you know how well this kid is probably going to project out. And the mindset man, I’m telling you a scouts if you’re listed, if you can understand the difference between this compare and convince, compete and contribute to strategic strategic advantage mindset. I’m telling you that if you grasp this piece of how we assess it, man, it’s a huge difference on how we assess intangibles, and a lot of it starts right there.
Yeah, for sure. And what we see to it not only the most talented kid in the world is the best baseball player and so we’ve seen them guide really like really taking their ability than we know where they’re at and really amplified and really became really good baseball player that really helped their team and become a contributor for their team, even though they’re not the most talented guy but they had the mindset that this is where I’m at and I’m going to help these guys win with where I’m at and they do a great job with it.