How I Became A 1st Round MLB Draft Pick

Hey, what's up fellas? How you doing? Manettinelli here. All right. So today we're talking about an interesting subject. I think it's interesting. I get asked this, not so much through emails, but I'll get asked this a lot. Just talking to people when we're talking about baseball players, coaches. How did I become a first round pick? And so I took a bunch of notes over here and just kind of really quickly thought about it. Not a ton of thought, but just kind of went through my career and wanted to give some insight into some of the things that, that I think really helped because I get that question a lot from people. Not only how did I do it, but how can they do it? How can they be, um, a draft pick? How can they be a first round pick? How can they play high level college baseball, just any college baseball. And so I think a lot of these things will help players do all of those things. So, um, let's start off the very first thing when I think about, you know, what helped me get drafted. I was drafted out of high school in 19th round and then in the first round out of college. And the first thing, um, is athleticism. So, um, I played a ton of sports as, as a kid, uh, really my whole life. Sports was kind of my thing. Um, I played football, baseball and hockey in high school, but I played basketball, um, a lot through high school as well. Um, just not actually in high school because I had to pick a sport. I couldn't play hockey and basketball at the same time, but I did basically as many sports as you could. I played soccer. My mom talks a lot, a lot about how she would bring me to one sport and get me in the car, bring me to another sport and get me in the car and bring me to another sport. And so, like I said, sports was something that I was really good at when I was younger. So I took a lot of pride in being really good. I wasn't really good at a lot of other things, um, but I was at sports. And so I worked a lot, not only playing in games and practicing with my team, but practicing on my own, right? Like drawing squares on, um, you know, walls and throwing balls into them, um, playing catch with my dad or shooting hoops with my dad or, you know, shooting in the, in the driveway garage with my dad, or just doing it all by myself. I did that a ton. Just, you know, grab a hockey stick, go downstairs and, and stick handle for two hours. That was for me really, really fun. So that's the first thing that I think about is playing a lot of sports and being serious about it. I wasn't just playing, I was playing to have fun, but I was pretty locked in from a pretty young age of like, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to be really good at. And so I worked really, really hard at it. Um, and I've told the story before, like everybody gets picked on at school. I had a really weird mentality. It's like when somebody picked on me for whatever, like my haircut, my clothes that I wore, I was behind in the times I would wear, like kids would be wearing jeans and I'd be wearing whatever was cool, like four years prior to that. So, you know, kids can sometimes be mean and when they would pick on me about something, like I wouldn't yell at them or punch them or anything like that. I'd go home and I'd, I'd like shoot a thousand pucks into the net and be like, well, I'm going to be better at sports than you. So like, that was like my weird thing that I, that I tried to do. Um, next thing is genetics. So, um, you need to get a little bit lucky. Now in baseball, you know, you could be five, five and play in the, in the major leagues. Um, you could be overweight. You can even be a little slow and not, not a great athlete. Um, but it makes it tougher. So genetics definitely play a role. My, my dad was a good athlete. My grandfather was a good athlete. Um, my mother was a terrible athlete, but I don't think I took after her when it comes to athleticism. Um, but that's part of it. But then also just body type. So, and I'm six, just about six, one, but 180 pounds, 185 pounds. If I do nothing now, I'm a little bit heavier cause I'm old and starting to get a little fat. But normally I'd say I'm about six, one, 180 pounds. I can, um, eat a lot of food or eat unhealthy food and stay really skinny. And so I don't put on, um, body fat very easily. But when I work out, I can put on muscle really easily. So that's all part of genetics. Um, you know, you obviously have to work hard to get bigger and stronger and all that. But, um, some people have to work really, really hard to add muscle and to lose fat. And I don't, so really part of, of genetics and, and just getting, um, just getting lucky. Uh, also I have done that I've always been relatively fast and quick. So it's not like I had to do lots of speed work, uh, lots of agility work ever since I was young. If somebody said, race me, I usually win. Again, some of that may be playing sports and becoming more athletic, but some of it is just, you know, um, I heard them say, or people say like, when you get out of bed and put your feet on the ground, like some people are fast and some people aren't from a young age. And so luckily I was fast. Um, okay. So now let's kind of, those are kind of the things that I think of when I, when I think about being young, um, really young. So now let's go kind of through high school. And I played every sport, like I said, all the way through up to high school. I get to high school and I ended up playing hockey, um, football and baseball. Uh, I'm, my best sport is probably hockey. My next best sport is baseball. They're somewhat close. Um, but I think if you ask somebody when I was younger, you know, what is your best sport? People would probably say hockey. When I went into high school, I think I was probably known as a hockey guy. I think the hockey coaches, like the varsity hockey coaches have heard, had heard about me. I don't think the baseball coaches had heard about me. So, um, I played probably a lot more hockey going into high school. My goal always was to two things. Really. I wanted to play hockey and baseball at UNH, University of New Hampshire. We were good friends with the head baseball coach and assistant hockey coach at UNH. So I used to go to all the games. I was the bat boy for UNH baseball. We went to all the hockey games. I'd go in the locker room after the game and steal people's sticks, not steal them, players would give them to me. Um, but there was nothing better. Like I can remember vividly in high school sitting in even before high school, actually sitting in UNH's hockey, um, stadium. And I thought that was the coolest thing ever. That's all I wanted to do is go there and play two sports, both of those sports. Um, so as I kind of progressed through high school, I started to focus more on baseball. So I stopped, stopped playing hockey as much. I started playing summer ball and I really get serious about baseball to the point where my baseball skill passes my, my hockey skill. And now as I'm becoming older, I'm a junior. I started to decide that I'm going to take the baseball rod. I want to play baseball. Let me back up for one second. When I was younger, I didn't say this, but, um, my goal for pretty much my whole life, at least from when I can remember, I always wanted to play in the NHL or the MLB. That was like my goal. So if you would ask me in probably fifth grade, what do you want to do? I'd say NHL and MLB. One of those two, maybe both. I don't know if you can do both, but that's what I really, really wanted to do. I was focusing on that from a pretty, pretty young age. Okay. So now let's go to college. Um, so I got drafted out of high school in the 19th round by the Dodgers. Basically, mostly based off of my athleticism. Then we'll talk about some of my skills later on, but basically based off athleticism. Um, and so I go to college. My number one goal was to get drafted in the first round. Cause I went in the 19th round, I was out of high school. And, um, I said, when I went to college, like I was really upset about going in the 19th round because I thought I was going to go higher. I was told fifth, sixth, seventh round, possibly went to 19th. So my goal was first round. I think this is very key. This was my number one goal. I'm not saying you should do this. I'm not recommending this, but I could give a crap about school. I give a crap about basically anything in college, except for getting better and going to the first, going in the first round. And so I had a very clear goal and I pretty much wasn't going to let anything get in my way of, of pursuing that. And so I focused on that like 99% of the day, I'd say, almost everything I did was geared to that. Now I wasn't like a psycho about it. Like I still would go out and, you know, I'd still have a beer. Like I'm not saying that I was a completely, completely obsessed. You know, like I wasn't Tom Brady, but I was pretty, um, I was, I thought about it every single day. Let's say that. And I always thought about what do I got to do to take like one step closer to doing this. And so, um, that was like my life's mission at that point. So I ended up having a solid freshman year. I ended up having a solid sophomore year. So, um, I had two good years. I started the very first day on campus. So I played every game as a freshman, every game as a sophomore. Again, I was a good player. Probably wouldn't say I was a first round pick at that point, but I definitely improved a lot. One thing was being a Massachusetts kid. You know, you play a lot of sports, but you don't focus on one a lot, especially baseball, because it's not that warm out. When I got to college, I just focused baseball 24 seven. So I did get a lot better and I improved on some of my weaknesses from high school, which we'll talk about in a second. And so now I'm kinda, I'm getting better. I'm playing in the Cape Cod league, but I'm still not, I'm still not a first round pick. Um, my, after the, after my sophomore year, I went and played in the Cape Cod league. There was an article written by Peter Gammons. I remember vividly seeing it and it said basically like projected next year's projected first round picks or first round. And, um, my name was in like the others to watch. I think it was called, it basically said, um, it said like good player, like has a chance, but really lacks power. And that could be the tool that kind of doesn't allow him to pull it, to get drafted in the first round. And so here's where I think it's important, like focusing on what are your weaknesses? What are your strengths? My, my strength, let's go through my, the tools real quick. So I looked through all the tools and Gammons had already kind of told me that power was the thing I needed, but I go through all my tools. Okay. Speed. I know I can run. I've been able to run. Hi Mia. I've been able to run my whole life. Um, even when I got in college and put on a lot of weight, I could still run. So I usually ran like a six, six, uh, 60. My fastest was like six, five, eight, I think. Um, but usually almost 6.6 on the dot, which for a middle infielder. And, and, you know, I was running these that like I ran them at one 85 and then I also ran them at like two 10 to 15. So the bigger I got, I didn't really slow down very much. Um, arm. So I always threw hard, um, pitched in high school a little bit and threw hard operators, um, would touch like 91, um, in high school. And so, um, how did I throw hard? Why? I don't know. Uh, I was always a good athlete. I guess I'm explosive can move fast. I played a lot, a lot of long toss when I was younger. Like that was the big thing. Um, you know, my dad was always like long toss, long toss. And so when we played catch, I threw the ball as far as I could. Um, when I warmed up, I can remember this a lot in summer ball. Like I watch it now, like some kids go out there, they throw the ball like 90 feet and they're like, okay, I'm good. When I was at practice in summer ball, when I was younger, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, um, I pushed my partner out as far as you could go. And I was throwing the ball as hard and as far as I could, not every single day, but you know, you practice a couple of times a week. That's what I was doing. So did that help? I don't know, but I did it. I'm not saying that that's, um, going to let everyone throw super hard, but I threw the ball a lot. I threw the ball far. Uh, we played pickup games all my life, uh, with my cousins and my friends and we threw the ball as hard as we could. We use tennis balls. We put like a, uh, a wheelbarrow that would, um, we put it behind home plate and we could throw as hard as we wanted tennis balls with metal bats. And, um, so I was just always throwing the ball really, really hard as hard as I could throw it. And you play with your buddies and your cousins, you don't want to lose. So, you know, I'm throwing, I'm throwing 150, 200 balls out there and I'm trying to get everybody out. Okay. Um, defense pretty much my, well, I shouldn't say pretty much my whole life, high school and college. I could make the spectacular play again, based probably off mostly athleticism. I could make that play like pretty easily. People watch me go, wow, what a play, unbelievable defender. But I'd also screw up the routine play sometimes. So I would mess up the routine play probably more than I wanted to. I can remember times fielding the ball routine and just sailing the ball or, you know, not so much booting the ball with my hands. I always have pretty good hands. Um, but my throws were a little erratic at times. So I throw a ball away like routine ball. Um, but overall, like my defense, I was athletic, had good feet and, and people could probably see, scouts could probably see that they could really work on me, work with me because, you know, I had a lot of the tools or a lot of the things that lead to being a good defender. Um, let's look at hitting now. So the biggest thing for me hitting wise was on base percentage. I always had a good eye. I always, um, control the strike zone. I didn't chase pitches. Uh, in high school, I talked to you guys before about this. I never swung the bat. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but I just, I always was hitting with two strikes. I never swung OO. I never swung 20. I almost never swung three one terrible, terrible way to drive the ball. Um, but that was just my philosophy. I was always a lead off hitter. And back then I was like, get on base, get on base, get on base. When I walked, it felt like a home run to me weird, but that's what I did. I think by doing this, I developed a really good skill of like knowing when a pitch was a ball and a strike, not feeling uncomfortable hitting with two strikes. And so I walked a ton super high on base percentage. Um, as far as my swing, it was a little bit inconsistent average wise. I don't think I ever had a really great swing. I think I was more athletic, um, with a bat in my hand and with really good plate discipline and really good hand-eye coordination. Um, but my average was never, was never at high school. That was great. Cause I just hit the ball and play and run really fast and get on first. I had a lot of line drives, a lot of hard ground balls. Um, but I wouldn't say I had a great swing, um, and then power. So this was a big thing. Again, looking at Peter Gammons thing, I, I never had power my whole life, like except for little league, like 12 year old little league. I had a lot of home runs, but once I got on the big diamond, I never hit home runs. Um, in high school, I never hit a home run, uh, in practice or in a game. I just never hit one. I hit a lot of low line drives, a lot of ground balls, walked a ton, which doesn't help. You know, I was never really hunting for a ball to hit, but I couldn't get the ball in the air. My swing was not built for power. Even when I got into college, I had two home runs my freshman year, five home runs my sophomore year. So, and I was pretty big and strong. And, uh, and I just, I was too passive. I didn't hit the ball in the air. So that was the big thing for me. So, um, I read this thing by Peter Gammons. I get obsessed with power. Um, and so I do two things. I basically, um, say I'm going to get as big and strong and explosive as possibly can without taking steroids. People in the comment, Oh, we took steroids. No, without taking steroids. Um, and so how did I do this? When I was in the weight room, I basically said I'm getting the weight up or I'm going to, um, collapse and die under the bar. So that was my philosophy with everything. I last rep was like to exhaustion. Um, when I squatted my mentality literally was I get under the bar and I say, I don't care how much weights on it. I'm going down and getting up or I'm going to get crushed by the bar. So it was very intense in the weight room. I'd always been big into lifting ever since I was probably senior in high school. That's when I started lifting. Um, but I got very obsessed. My junior year of college, because I needed to get more power. And for me, it was just like, okay, I weighed two Oh five going into my junior year. Cause I was one 85 going into freshman year. I was one 95 sophomore year. Um, Oh boy. So I guess I was one 95 ish. Um, going into my junior year and I ended up getting up to two 15. I remember I weighed in right before opening day at two 15. So I was pretty huge, but I didn't have a lot of body fat. Luckily again, good genetics. Um, and so I got obsessed with that getting big and strong, but then I also got obsessed with trying to get the ball in the air more. So the way I did it was everything I did was built towards hitting more power. And I used to go out on the field by myself, um, ball in the tee. And I would just try to hit the ball as far as I possibly could. And I'm a wide ball in the tee. I did that because I could do it by myself. I wouldn't have pitching machines. I'd have to call somebody. I'd go up there late at night, early in the morning. Um, and I put the ball in a tee at home plate and I would just hit home runs. I'm not saying this is a good strategy. I'm telling you what I did. Um, so those are the two big things. And obviously, you know, when I hit flips and stuff, I tried to hit the ball as far as I could, not just pull power, try to hit the ball. I put the ball middle, try to hit out the center, put the ball in, try to hit it off the left center, put the ball away, try to hit up the right center. But everything I was doing was like power obsessed. Cause I knew that was the tool I needed to work on the best or the most. And so you put this all together and I ended up having a really good junior year, at least the first half of the year, I hit like 10 home runs. I think in the first half, I went on opening day, junior year, I hit a home run. Um, I went out in the second game of the year. This is where I think I got drafted. Honestly, tons of scouts were there. First inning against UNC Wilmington. Um, I get a three one fastball and I hit the best ball in my life. Just totally squared it up best. You have to get a little bit lucky. I hit the best ball in my life at the absolute perfect time when every scout was there, not every scout, but a lot. And I hit it. It felt like it went over the light tower. And I remember running third base and going home. And my first thought was I'm going to get drafted in the first round. That's like literally what my thought was. Um, and I do think that really helped me because I think people were like, Whoa, he has a lot of power. Like he has a lot more than he used to have. So I did tail off in the second half of the year. I lost a lot of weight cause I didn't lift in season very hard cause I'm an idiot. And, um, and my swing kind of, my swing has always kind of gone from, you know, because I don't think I've ever had a great swing except for in 2007, I've relied a lot on athleticism. And so my swing was a little inconsistent. When I was locked in, you know, I was pretty good, but I would not be locked in all the time. The other thing is if you really looked at me and did research, a lot of my home runs in college, cause I was so big and strong. Um, I could just, you know, I could get jammed and just kind of flick the ball off his field. He had a ton of home runs to right center field in college. We had a small right center field at Wake Forest. The wind blew out. I was so strong that, you know, I could get jammed and still hit the ball out to right center. So I wasn't as consistent of a hitter as I should have been. I had a lot of home runs cause I was big and strong. If you look at my bat in college, um, I used to get really dented like down towards where you'd get jammed on the bat. I got jammed way more than I should have. So, um, again, I think if I had a better hit skill, I probably still be, not still, I probably would have played in the major leagues longer. That was my problem. Like 2007, my swing was amazing locked in. I had a great year, 2008, my swing stunk, you know, um, 2006, it was okay. I didn't have any power. So like I was just up and down, up and down. And then I got to the point in 2008 where I kind of lost my swing and it was hard for me to get it back. So that, that was really tough. And then the last thing is getting lucky again. So Padres drafted me big into money ball. I was like big into money ball. Not that I knew what money ball was, but I was high on base percentage. I think I was a league leader in the country and walks and on base percentage, maybe not the league leader, but I was up there, especially in walks. I had the wake forest record for walks. Um, at one point, then Alan Dykstra beat me, I believe. And so they wanted someone with high on base and, um, and with some power, which I had. And so it was like the perfect storm. It all came together in the Padres drafted me 17th over on there. Other teams interested in me. And I think a lot of them valued me getting on base. And so, um, but it's all these things. It was like, I think the biggest thing is a good athlete. I had lots of tools. I got on base a ton. I started to hit for some power. And, um, and although I wasn't super consistent with the bat, I still hit, you know, I think I hit three 33, my sophomore junior three 32. I think my sophomore three 33, my junior, which isn't a great average. Like, you know, if you're a first round pick, you should be hitting. I'm not saying you should be hitting, but I probably could have been hitting. And I was for a lot of the year high three hundreds. And then I kind of fell apart the last few weeks. So, um, but that's kind of how it all happened. Hopefully that makes sense. Hopefully this video is still recording. Cause I haven't checked it. And, uh, this seems like it's been a long video, but, um, in a nutshell, going as quickly as possible, we can break these things down for like days and days and days, but really quickly. That's what I think helped me. So, uh, let me know if you have any questions in the comment section below, subscribe to the channel, hit the notification bell, give a thumbs up 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.