#1 Ranked Baseball Prospect Is A 5-Tool BEAST | Derek Curiel Class of 2024

I've been ranked the number one player in the country for the class of 2024. I feel like it leaves a target on my back, but I kind of like it because I get everyone's best and it pushes me to give my best every single time, so I do like it. If he keeps progressing at this rate, then the goal, top 10 in the draft, top 10 overall. Work-wise and clearly ability-wise, he's above a lot of these kids. My name is Derek Curiel. I'm 16 years old, and this is No Days Off. Being able to know that I have a Division I scholarship to go play at a school like LSU, a Power 5 school, is really, really cool. But also, it helps me keep moving forward because I know that there's other commits there that are going to want my spot, so I know that I'm going to have to fight for it. So I just know I have to get better all the time, and I feel like it drives me because I see them play in front of 14,000 fans and I'm like, I want to be the star there day one when I get there as a freshman. By the time he was two years old, he was swinging the bat. My husband would soft-toss our son in the garage, and Derek would always just get the bat and just start swinging, put the big old helmet on, and he started at a very young age. Baseball is something that's in my family and I's veins, so it just grew on to me, and ever since I can remember, I've had a bat in my hand and I've been throwing a ball. He started catching initially, and then from there he pitched, and then he played some first base at a young age. Now he plays center field because he is a lefty lefty. Forward is Curiel, and he makes a diving catch out left center. In baseball, I mean, it's the sport where you fail the most, and I think that it's the hardest sport because you have to bounce back from those failures, and I feel like I do a good job with that, and I think just the reward is just so, like, I just love it. Derek, what's up? What's up, Joe? I met my trainer Joe about three months ago. I've been weight training for about two years now. I was at a different workout place, but now I'm with Joe and Reroute. The first thing I noticed is how polite he was, how humble he was for, you know, a guy of his stature and where he's at in his ranking. So Derek plays at a local high school, which is not far from here, and his family reached out. They were looking for a place for him to train, and I knew that with Joe and Reroute that we had the connection that they needed to really be able to take his game to the next level. We've been training athletes of all sports, not just big leaguers. NFL players, pro tennis players, NBA players. So we've gotten a pretty good track record in the industry of doing good work with these pro players. A little slower, not so quick. Having him around a lot of the professional guys that are here when he trains, I think really pushes him. We have a few guys from the New York Mets, a couple guys from the LA Angels. We've got some Detroit Tigers. There's a myriad of people. He comes every day before school, which is pretty impressive because, you know, most kids don't want to wake up that early. But he comes in here, he's here 7 a.m. every single day, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and we get after it. The goal with him is just to keep putting on muscle mass. You know, he's tall and he has a thinner frame, but, you know, over time, just with age, he's going to fill out. But we can kind of accelerate it with the strength training we're doing. Let's explode up on it. We do a lot of explosive drills in my training because, I mean, baseball is an explosive sport. You got to throw hard. You got to move your hips and you got to run fast. There's a lot of tools that come into playing baseball. So this is a Proteus machine. So the Proteus machine is a 3D resistance machine, meaning it's pretty much the only machine in the whole world that you can get resistance at every single range of motion that you bring it through. I've seen me gain seven pounds in muscle mass and I've seen just the ball jump off my bat a little bit different because I had a couple more pounds on me. I mean, a little bit of weight could do a lot of things. So I've been feeling faster, quicker. My body feels good and that's the progress I've seen. As far as being his father and training with Derek, I pretty much just do the live throwing and batting practice to him just to keep his swing locked in. When you compare kids that come in here, it's very easy to see somebody like Derek stand out. Not even talent wise, which is way above everybody else, but work ethic wise, drive wise. He's focused when he's here. It's yes sir, no sir with everything. You know, there's no complaining. It's no, oh, I don't want to do this today. It's just, what do we have? Let's get to work. And sometimes these high rated guys, they think they don't have to do too much. You know, it's like, I don't got to do too much anymore. I can just kind of go through the motions. I'm going to be fine. And we don't run into that with Derek at all. So his work ethic has been wonderful. What I'm most proud of Derek with baseball is that he's able to juggle being an athlete and student at the same time and putting it in the heart of work in the classroom and on the field and training. He gives it max effort in everything he does. Balancing school and sports is a grind. I mean, just to go on the field and play five hours a day and then training two hours a day and then doing schoolwork six hours a day at school. And then you have to do homework at home and then you have to eat. It's just all a grind. But honestly, my family helps me a lot. And I love them for that. He's put in the hard work, you know, since he was little. I mean, I think his mindset is stronger than anything. And he's so driven and such a competitor at heart. The challenge for him right now is just with all this hype. It's like everywhere you go, every game you play, you have to live up to the hype. You live up to the hype, live up to the hype. I've learned to deal with all the hype outside the field. And now it's just all noise. And I've been preparing to play baseball my whole life. So I feel like there's no need for me to be nervous when I'm out there on the baseball field because it's something I love. And I've learned to slow my heart rate down and just keep my nerves level. And my family has helped me with that. So I'm just ready to play all the time. He's a winner, you know. And we do see him going to college, winning World Series, and, you know, eventually ending up getting drafted, which is the dream, you know. But in all honesty, this is a dream right now. Like, we're living the dream right now as a family. What's next for me is with my high school team, I'm looking forward to hopefully winning three CIF championships this next three years, going to LSU for three years, and then going to the MLB draft. That's the plan. So hopefully we can stick on that. The way I look at it, it's not just Derek with No Days Off. It's like the whole team. And we call ourselves Team Curiel. My wife, our daughter, Donovan, and myself, us five is the team. And it takes all of us to keep this situation going, you know, every morning from the moment we wake up at 5 a.m. till we go to bed. No Days Off means exactly that. It's a grind. You gotta have fun with it because, I mean, the journey is really cool just like Kobe said. He said that the journey is the most fun part rather than the end goal. So honestly, I soak it in like those times where you're like, dang, do I really want to go work out? Like, yes, you want to go work out. And I want to do it because I know it's going to get me better.