re: Baseball is happening right now

Corch rubs some people the wrong way… the point that they just follow him around and DV every post

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It involves Title XI and sports no one gives a shite about and no one watches. I'll leave it at that.

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Why is this even an issue anymore? NIL and poof everyone should have money for a full scholarship right?

It’s early Baseball Texas Tech is ranked. And who I thought we would struggle with. So we may still end up 2-1 on the weekend and that was the goal.

In typical fashion, I criticize our bullpen and they go on the have (so far) two strong outings. Gonna keep being a negative Nancy and see if they keep it up.

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As good of a pitching coach that Butch is I'm not sure why we can't keep some of the elite pitching in the state. if we could just get half of the top 6 pitchers each year in state we could compete for championships.

Hopefully NIL makes it much more attractive to come to AU.

But as I've stated before being a high school coach in the state I will never say negative things about any of the college coaches in the region. I put to many kids on college teams from D1 to community colleges.

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Coarch you may find this interesting. Cimo lives three houses down from me in Auburn. He has great minor league stories BTW. But we usually talk general baseball and Thompson just because he's AU's coach. Specifically, Cimo is a practice-focused coach and Thompson is fine with travel ball. Cimo says - and I agree - you need practice to refine skill, and then 20% of your time is playing in actual games. Thompson is more of 'you can achieve the same practice while playing live games with travel ball'.

I never did the travel ball growing up because it didn't exist, but I agree with Cimo. As an example I had a hitch in my giddy-up throwing to 2nd as a catcher and wasn't accurate and I was nowhere near 2 seconds. I worked on it with a coach for three months and eliminated the issue. I wouldn't have ever done that just playing in games. I also didn't keep my hands inside the ball while hitting and grounded to the right side alot and worked on that too. Boom, .102 added to batting average the next year.

Its not a knock on Thompson, I think he's a really good coach and great at AU but just highlighting two different philosophies. Also, the Vandy, UF etc.. money prevents AU from keeping the top pitchers in state. We did get the Alsott kid from Dothan and he struck out the side in his one inning and lit up the radar gun (96-97). He might be a Sunday starter here soon. He can throw on the inside of the plate.

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Corch rubs some people the wrong way… the point that they just follow him around and DV every post

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Downvoting in general is silly as a concept. I disagree with Oh Black Betty... Jangalang occaisionally but its because I don't like a post or idea and I follow with a post. The DV button is weak sauce. I know I've done it myself but not often.

Randy Savage however... I kid, I kid. He's a CPA(?). He could probably make one call to the IRS and ruin me with their Zenith computers and uncover my Panamanian bearer share accounts.

Alpine I grew up in the non travel ball era as well but when we were 16 we threw together a team for the summer and go some crazy extra games.

I brought my boys up in travel starting at 9 years old because before that I’m not sure how many kids know they want to spend that much time practicing and playing. I had 2 sons very interested and 2 not interested at all. Never force your kids to play encouragement for outdoor activity and find something they enjoy. Baseball definitely isn’t for every kid. Another reason I chose travel ball for my boys was we could practice twice a week and I could generally make 1 practice per week with my schedule and also make most of the games on the weekend because my school team would mostly play during the week until end of season stuff. So worked better for me and for my boys to spend less days at the ball park and have the week to concentrate on school work.

As for development I think you need a good mix of practice and games against proper competition. I also encourage all my pitchers even youth or high school to find a professional pitching coach. I know a good amount about pitching but like you were a catcher. So finding a coach that pitched at high levels that know exactly what to look for is definitely a plus. Catcher and middle infield I’m a very good coach. Hitting and situational hitting I drill and drill and drill. Put they also need to see elite level pitching in the summer so I do encourage them to find teams to get on to push themselves. Example my 16 year old which was 15 last summer played on a 19U team. He was over matched since most of the players on the other teams were kids signed to go to college or had already played a year of college ball. But by the end of the season he was a better outfielder, hitter, and base runner just from playing against much better players. Like the team from Troy they were basically all the freshmen players about to start at Troy or had just completed their first season of ball. So a freshman in high school competing against freshman in college you can learn a lot about the small details you need to get better at.

So for me I encourage all practice, finding professional coaching on the side, and playing the most elite talent you can play against. At the end of the day for the high school player it’s about how much time they want to invest.

Can we make this the 2022 Baseball thread?

I'm no expert but agree with what Cimo says. If you're also practicing enough with travel ball then there is no downside. I agree with the idea of an 80/20 rule with baseball. You practice 80% and work on skills, and play games 20%. 80/20 seems to manifest with most things that exist in life.