Do MLB Hitting Coaches Have Big Effect On Players?

What's going on guys? So I got a question on YouTube in the comment section that asked me about coaches minor and major league coaches and what type of effect they can have on players careers. At the major leagues and the minor leagues do coaches kind of just stand hand off hands off and let the player just kind of do their thing or not. And so I'll give you my personal experience because I played at every single level level of the minor leagues and I've the major leagues I've dealt with literally probably a hundred different coaches hitting coaches fielding coaches base running coaches. And so let's talk real quick my experience what I've seen and kind of how things have changed because I talked to a lot of players that are playing in minor league baseball right now and so I do think some things have changed over the years. So first thing there's going to be a lot of coaches a lot okay so every team in the minor leagues is going to have a hitting coach right and there's a lot of levels of the minor leagues so you've got a lot of hitting coaches there. You're also going to have a roving hitting coach who a roving hitting coach is kind of the hitting coach that's in charge of the entire minor league so he's going to come into town he basically works his way through all the affiliates you're going to see him in spring training you're going to see him in fall instructional league and then you've got your major league hitting coach and today there's multiple major league hitting coaches so some teams have two hitting coaches some teams have they've created these new positions for additional hitting coaches so bottom line there's a lot of hitting coaches and that's probably the biggest thing and same on the pitching side okay so I was never a pitcher but same thing on the pitching side you're going to have basically the same type of format that you do on the hitting side so a lot of coaches what type of effect can they have so they can have a huge huge effect on a player's career let me give you a little look into my career because I've had a lot of hitting coaches I've had some really good hitting coaches I've had some hitting coaches that were just you don't really recognize them or realize they're there and they have some hitting coaches that are not very good so the first thing about hitting coaches is hitting coaches at least when I played were a lot of just former players right so they were former players that wanted to stick around and coach hitting they had a passion for coaching hitting well some of them did some of them just needed a job and were just kind of there and they became ball flippers so he's kind of flippy a ball they throw you bp they don't really say much I've had I've had some of those you have some coaches that coach everything they want to coach every little part of your swing so I've had a whole bunch of of hitting coaches so let's go back to my first hitting coach which was Rob Deere he was the hitting coordinator okay so he was a hitting coordinator I should say not my first hitting coach but the first hitting coach that I think had a pretty big effect on me and it was nothing mechanical it was it was from an approach standpoint so so hitting coaches are going to talk to you about a bunch of different things they're going to talk about about the mental game they're going to talk about approach some of them will talk about swing mechanics I think actually probably more coaches especially when I play we're going to talk more about the mental side and the approach side that's the first advice that I got and it really really helped me Rob Deere talked me about being more aggressive talked to me about anticipating getting my pitch and not being afraid to do damage on that pitch I was always a lead-off hitter I was very passive I was probably the most passive hitter you've ever seen and so I didn't swing in anything and that served me pretty well to get to professional baseball and get drafted high because I was a really big on base percentage guy but when I got to short season a ball I hit no home runs and a lot of that was because I didn't want to swing the bat I walked and I walked and I walked and in order to hit for some power you've got to be somewhat aggressive to your pitch you have to identify pitches that you can hit well and drive and you've got to swing at those pitches right and so he told me to anticipate my pitch and that's all he said we didn't work on mechanics or anything and that next year I hit the ball really well now was that the only reason no but I do think that had an effect on me and we're talking about the effects that hitting coaches can have so that was the the first thing and that kind of got me going my swing was great that next year and so I took that advice to heart I actually swung at some first pitch pitches for the first time in my life I hit a grand slam on a first pitch I would never do that ever before and so I hit 21 home runs some of that was mechanics some of that was approach okay so huge effect right there so as we move forward I had other coaches throughout the throughout my next year and actually I was doing so well that they really didn't say anything and they didn't really need to I mean I was hitting over 300 I hit 20 something home runs I was one of the top prospects in the organization and in Major League Baseball and so didn't really say much which was fantastic Max Venable was actually my hitting coach and he talked to me all the time and he said your swing looks great he's like just continue to do what you're doing and I think that is really needed sometimes sometimes coaches just want to coach right they're paid to coach so they just want to coach and Max was great because he said as part of being a coach is understanding when the coach and when not the coach when to say something and when to shut up and so Max was really good at that and there were other coaches there were other coaches in on the Padres and other front office people that wanted to change my swing around didn't think it was going to work at the Major League level and Max actually told me a few times he said just keep doing what you're doing you look good like your swing's locked in you look good don't change which is great advice I think and so moving forward from there my swing started to break down a little bit and a lot of times in professional baseball they wait for you to fail and they want you to fail because then they can come in and talk to you about fixing things and that's how I kind of felt it was with the Padres I started to fail a little bit and then all of a sudden people jumped in and said see I told you were going to fail I told you that stuff wouldn't work at the big league level or whatever level and then they start to try to change you all right sometimes the change is needed sometimes maybe it isn't okay and so here's the big thing about hitting coaches how they can affect your career this is from my perspective I will say there's plenty of players Mike Baxter was one example Mike Baxter in the minor leagues I remember talking to Mike Baxter he was an okay hitter played at Vanderbilt I say okay he was a very good hitter but at the minor league level in Lake Elsinore he's just an okay hitter he came back I think it was the next year and he was an unbelievable hitter and he talked to me about some things that he worked on with his hitting coach in the offseason all of a sudden he's driving the ball he's hitting for a ton of power and he played in the big leagues for a decent amount of time there's an example of somebody that got a huge amount of help from a hitting coach right and so it goes both ways what happened to me was and this is one of the problems in in minor league baseball and even major league baseball is coaches are paid to coach so once you're starting to fail a little bit everybody wants to coach you everybody wants to tell you something everyone has that secret formula that magic pill to help you hit again a lot of coaches want to say I'm the reason this guy got fixed right because I was struggling a little bit imagine if you were a hitting coach somewhere and you told me something that worked and then all of a sudden I went to the big leagues and signed a hundred million dollar contract you could always say hey I'm the one that fixed him I'm the one that got him a hundred million dollars not saying every coach does this but I do think there's some coaches that do that and so that's what kind of happened all these coaches start talking about hitting and there's so many coaches that sometimes you can get confusing and so I got confused because there's so many coaches and one coach will tell you one thing and the other coach will tell you another thing and then this coach will contradict that coach and so you don't know who to listen to and as a young player I always say you've got to learn your swing you have to understand your swing I didn't understand my swing and so I just kind of did what everybody told me and before you know it you have no idea what your swing used to look like looks like now how to fix it how to not fix it you get really really confused okay so it's a big problem I think and this is where again it can really affect you some players it can affect for the positive and I had positive coaches in my career but some affect you in the negative way and so my swing kind of got messed up and it wasn't until I met Sean Wooten who's a teammate of mine and then became a hitting coach and he had a really positive effect on me he helped me kind of figure out my swing he was the one that actually gave me a passion for learning more about swings and so he helped take me from hitting about you know 150 in AAA to then hitting over 300 getting called up the last month of the season and so he had a huge effect talking to me about things I'd never heard before and again gave me a passion for teaching hitting and a lot of the things that I teach today you can trace back to Sean talking to me about them a long time ago so a huge effect huge effect on me allowed me to get to the big leagues I wouldn't have got there without him because I was lost I was completely lost I was like a puppy dog wandering off in the woods and you don't just look for the dog for an hour and give up you get off here you know what you find that dog if you've ever seen Billy Madison so then I got to the big leagues and same kind of thing happened at the big leagues I got to the big leagues and Wally Joyner was our hitting coach and I'm sure he's a great hitting coach but they tried to change me very quickly and tried to get me to do things that I wasn't really comfortable doing and one of the things which brings me to my next point is that one thing that I noticed that I didn't feel like coaches were on the same page I don't feel like there was a lot of communication going on between one hitting coach in the next from the minor leagues to the major leagues and so you just kind of everyone just kind of threw things at the wall and hope something stuck and they didn't really know what I worked on in the past they didn't know what worked for me in the past or what didn't work for me in the past I just got called up with Sean helping fix my swing and all of a sudden I get to the major leagues and they're trying to tell me to do the opposite of what I just learned because in their mind they said well you really struggled this year right you only hit like 220 something but I don't it felt like they didn't understand that I hit 150 for four months and then I hit 300 in the last month and what was the reason for that hitting 300 because I made adjustments I made changes so you would probably want to know what changes I made and what I was doing and why I felt comfortable right and so my kids are banging on the window right over here over and over again and so if you hear that that's what's going on so sorry I lost my train of thought there because my son kept banging on the window I had to tell him to stop so that's one thing I think coaches could do better so hopefully this is giving you some insight into the effect that coaches can have and again I don't want to make it sound like I'm blaming hitting coaches because I had a lot of really really great hitting coaches I just want to give you my perspective and again a lot of players were helped by their hitting coaches and I think today's game I think with with the technology I think hitting coaches from most levels are a little bit more on the same page I think hitting coaches understand that it can't just be a guessing game and so you have this technology which can measure players and you know what their bat speed is and how they're moving their body and all this stuff and so coaches can get on the same page more and it's not just guessing which I think is really important and this is just kind of a little bit of a guess of mine but I have talked to current players that said that that hitting has changed when I tell them about about my stories and so I think it's going in a really good direction hopefully that gives you a little bit of insight again into hitting coaches how they can affect players on the positive and on the negative if you have questions leave in the comment section below subscribe the channel hit the notification all that good stuff we'll talk to you later if you've enjoyed this video and want to learn more about building the elite swing check out our new course we have over two hours of content almost 30 hitting drills we break down the exact mechanics that you're going to want to implement into your swing I've put the link in the description if you want to go check it out