The Best Way to Develop a Major League Baseball Player

What is the best way to develop a Major League Baseball player?

Major League organizations have been trying to tame this beast for decades and none of them have hit on a winning formula consistently. Sure, they have stretches but if we're being honest by the time athletes make it to MLB their athletic foundation has largely been set and they are just cherry-picking the best talent. By and large the pros are working with pretty good material. That said, what sets the best organizations apart is their ability to take very good athletes and mold them into elite baseball performers. But that's starting at the end. 

So much happens before an athlete gets to professional baseball that can literally make or break a potential career in the sport. Parents and amateur coaches are responsible for guiding young athletes through these very sensitive years. The baseball industry foists quite a heavy burden on many of these folks whom often work day jobs among a vast array of other responsibilities.

But what if there was a way to make that pre-professional process more manageable? What if the amateur level supplied even better raw material for the professionals to take "advantage"of?

To help shed some light on these questions let's turn to Dr. Greg Rose. Rose is the founder of OnBase University and is one of the leading sports science/bio-mechanics experts in the World with a particular expertise in how the body functions during athletic movements.

Dr. Rose has a very important message that parents and amateur coaches need to hear if they want to optimize the long term development of their young athlete(s):

If your goal as a coach is to create a Major League Baseball player and you get to choose between two boys at the age of 12 (you can only choose one of these kids to coach for the rest of their career) would you choose the best twelve year old athlete in America (whom has never played baseball before) or the #1 twelve year old baseball player in the country? 

According to Dr. Rose if you choose the baseball player the data tells you 96% of the time you would be wrong!

The goal when developing young athletes should always be to build a well-rounded athlete. In order to be a great baseball player you first must be a great athlete. Most of the top MLB players have some type of multi-sport background which is a pretty good indication of how athletic they really are. The very few, like Cody Bellinger, that don't appear to have a multi-sport background are still off the charts athletic. Teammate Max Muncy calls Bellinger's athleticism "freakish."

Playing multiple sports and exposing young athletes to diverse activities from early ages is the absolute best way to develop athleticism. I understand some kids may not want to play other sports but they would also skip math class and eat mac&cheese all day if left to their own devices...

That said, the amateur coaching community and the folks that support them (parents) really should include and insist upon overall athletic development in their programs. If kids aren't getting it elsewhere you have to give it to them where they are at. In other words, the kids may go to "baseball" practice but in reality you have to create a "multi-sport" environment for them.

As Dr. Rose says-

It's easy to play 1 sport... You're just being lazy! The best in the World did all this other stuff...

A foundation of overall athleticism provides kids with a higher ceiling! If you give the best coaches in the World a great athlete it makes their job so much easier. That should be the role of amateur baseball, create environments that allow kids to explore and develop the athleticism they'll need so that when they do ascend to the college/professional level they have the necessary tools to compete. If all you've given them are baseball skills it will not be enough to compete with the best in the World.

If your goal for them is to be the best 12 year old baseball player in town then focusing on baseball may, may get them there. That said, I don't know many kids that dream like that. They dream much BIGGER than that. We need to give them the tools they'll need to have a shot at making their dream a reality.

Playing Multiple Sports: The Chicken or the Egg?

The best baseball players in the World also happen to be tremendous athletes.

Did they develop this athleticism because they played multiple sports as kids... Or, did they play multiple sports as kids because they were terrific all-around athletes?

There are two broad schools of thought on this topic.

There is the idea that when kids are young they should be exposed to and sample as many different activities/sports as possible. The theory is that with this broad exposure they will develop a wide and diverse base of movement skills. With this broad foundation in place it can now support more specific and highly specialized skills. If you were to start with a specific skill, say pitching, you would ultimately be capped because you're foundation is to narrow to optimize the development of that skill. This would be a kin to trying to fire a canon from a canoe in the middle of a lake... Abandon ship!

On the flip side if you first develop a foundation under that canon with building blocks such as coordination, speed, strength, power, bracing, and spatial awareness now when you go to fire the foundation is strong enough for the canon to display it's full potential.

The other element of early sampling/multi-sport participation is actually finding a sport you like and usually that's one you're really good at. If all you did was play baseball and never tried anything else you may miss out on being the next great TEAM USA soccer goal keeper or the next great American male tennis star (America hasn't had one of the latter since Andy Roddick!?!).

Then there is the school of thought that you're just born with IT! Out of the womb you are destined to be the next Mike Trout blessed with both elite athleticism and baseball skills to boot. Great athletes play multiple sports simply because they are great athletes and those opportunities present themselves. Maybe that's true but do you really want to take the risk of finding out for yourself? Because here's the thing if you guess wrong you can't go back and make up for it!

What's the reality?

The reality is that in order to be a great baseball player you first need to be a great athlete! The canon analogy from above is extremely important to understand. A broad base of athleticism gives you a higher ceiling. And the way the game is trending a high ceiling is an absolute prerequisite to compete at the highest level.

So do you have to play multiple sports as a kid to develop that athleticism?

In my opinion it is the BEST strategy for a few reasons.

1. It's the best way to ensure you are developing the athletic foundation and fundamental movement skills you'll need to develop a higher ceiling. The chances that you join a very progressive baseball organization that offers a complete athletic development experience is rare. In over 3 decades of athletic experiences as a player and coach I have never witnessed such an organization. If you find such an organization congratulations you have found the lost city of gold!
2. It's protective! This builds off point one from above. By playing sports seasonally (more on this soon) and trying many different sports you are less likely to develop "poor" motor (movement patterns) skills. I've had conversations with Division 1 coaches and when they ask me what I do they tell me- "what you do is WAY more important than what we do!" They say this because once they get an athlete in their program at 18/19 years of age if that athletic foundation is not in place it makes their job very difficult to squeeze improvement from that player. You are way better off developing athleticism and playing off of that than being plugged into a "system" and learning a style. Hitting, throwing, catching a baseball and running the bases are all propped up by athleticism. The best coaches in the World are at the Collegiate and Professional level and yet they get these athletes after the foundation has been set. It's very hard to break bad habits... Best not to develop them in the first place.
3. There is nothing like playing in a packed football stadium or basketball court on Friday nights! If you want to learn to be a "clutch" performer you need to put yourself in environments like that. It won't happen in Fall Ball or even the most competitive Travel tournament. 

Are playing multiple sports ever detrimental?

It can be IF you don't take seasonal breaks! Play baseball in the Spring/Summer stop in the Fall and play soccer or tennis. In the Winter play basketball or hockey don't just add these on top of your baseball skill work. You need an off-season from baseball to ultimately deepen your skill acquisition pool. If you absolutely don't want to play another sport or it's not an option dedicate time to upgrade your athletic capacities such as flexibility, strength, speed, power, mindset...

I could leave you with a hoard of examples of the baseball players in the World that played multiple-sports as kids but better to give you the one Elite player that did not... At least I couldn't find any evidence that he did. 

Cody Bellinger is the lone great baseball player that I could not find with a multi-sport background. That said, all you have to do is watch this guy play the game and you'll quickly come to understand he is clearly one of the best athletes in the sport. So maybe Cody can get away with it but unless you move like Cody I wouldn't recommend it!

What the two coaches who meet in the 2019 College World Series have to say about multi-sport athletes:

Tim Corbin, Vandebilt - 

"Our mission as a staff is to find multi-sport athletes that play other things besides baseball... I'm dead set against it (early specialization)."

Erik Bakich, University of Michigan - 

"It is, in my opinion, 100% the best decision a parent of a young player can do."

Sports Medicine Trends and Your Kids

I wanted to share with you some of the news and trends that came out last week after an annual meeting of top sports medicine professionals.  These topics should be of great interest because they provide clues and warnings of conditions that are affecting developing young athletes nation wide.

Researchers presenting their work at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine highlighted a common, painful hip condition in elite athletes.

Labral tears in the hip are often associated with a traumatic injury, such as dislocation, but researchers say they are increasingly seeing hip issues due to repetitive motions and underlying structural abnormalities.

“The proper function of the labrum in the hip is a critical component of mobility for any athlete. When this area gets hurt, repair can be difficult,” said research author, Marc J. Philippon, MD, of the Steadman Philippon Research Institute in Vail, Colorado.

http://www.stonehearthnewsletters.com/elite-athlete-hip-condition-a-new-surgical-technique/sports-medicine-injuries/

The above study ties in nicely to the topic of sports hernias that were also covered at the AOSSM meeting.

A sports hernia is a common cause of groin pain in athletes, however until lately little has been known as to why they occur.

Researchers presenting their study today at the AOSSM Annual Meeting suggest that a type of hip condition, Femoral Acetabular Impingement (FAI) might be a contributing cause.

“Our study illustrated that those patients with FAI tend to have a change in hip biomechanics which in turn leads to increased stress across the groin. With these stresses a sports hernia (tear to the oblique abdominal muscles), is more likely to occur,” said lead author, Kostas Economopoulos, MD from the University of Virginia Department of Orthopaedics.

“We hope that our study encourages physicians who see sports hernia and chronic groin pain in athletes to further investigate the possibility of FAI and in turn can recommend better treatment options for this puzzling condition,” said Economopoulos.

http://www.stonehearthnewsletters.com/common-athletic-hip-disorder-increases-chances-for-sports-hernia-study-suggests/exercise/

It’s widely debated whether those with FAI are born with it, or whether it becomes part of normal development in some kids.  Well, I guess it would depend on whether you consider playing one sport to excess year-round “normal.”

Based upon anecdotal evidence (my experience and others in my circle of influence) I would estimate that over 90% of the FAI cases have come in hockey, soccer, and baseball players.  What do these sports have in common?  The demands of each of these sports force athletes to adopt poor pelvic alignment.  Not a big deal if they played sports seasonally and gave their bodies a break but the incidence of FAI and associated hip issues has increased dramatically since the AAU generation rolled in and kids played the same sport 10-12 months of the year!

It is likely that if you screened these athletes early in the season and assigned them a quality-training program to address the demands of their sport (restoring neutrality to the pelvis) these problems could be prevented.

Conversely, a “dead lift-squat-bench” program (standard protocol at most high schools) is a recipe for feeding the pelvic dysfunction that contributes to FAI in the first place and will likely bring about pain and injury more rapidly.

And along with this perspective is the realization that an entire generation of young athletes have been so mismanaged that we’ve actually created a new classification of developmental problems and pathologies: FAI, labral tears, and sports hernias that have the sports medicine community “puzzled.”

Also making news at the AOSSM meeting last week; U.S. Army researchers made a surprising discovery while examining the impact of an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear (a common knee injury), on four indicators associated with cartilage health. The researchers found that pre-injury concentrations for all but one of the four indicators studied were associated with the subsequent likelihood of ACL injury.  U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steven Svoboda, M.D., during his presentation, stated, “ff we can identify people predisposed to ACL tears, one day we may be able to prevent injuries before they occur.”

ACL tears are endemic, with 150,000 ACL injuries in the U.S. each year among military personnel, athletes and others with physically demanding careers or pursuits. Several recent studies have shown that high-risk biomechanical movement patterns, specifically excessive knee valgus angle during landing – or landing knock-kneed – causes increased pressure on the joint. “Our study adds to existing knowledge by raising the possibility of a link between risky movement patterns and biochemical processes associated with cartilage metabolism,” added Dr. Svoboda. “Coaches and athletic trainers of the future may help athletes with high biomarker levels reduce their risk of ACL injury by improving their balance and motor control or correcting how they jump and land.”

The study also has implications for the study of post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA) because a high percentage of those who experience ACL tears go on to develop PTOA.

http://www.stonehearthnewsletters.com/pre-injury-cartilage-biomarkers-associated-with-subsequent-acl-injuries/sports-medicine-injuries-acl/

Patients who undergo repeated anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstructions, or repeat vision surgery, are unlikely to return to prior activity levels despite showing basic functional improvement according to research being presented at the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine’s (AOSSM) Annual Meeting.

http://www.stonehearthnewsletters.com/repeated-acl-surgeries-allow-regain-of-basic-function-but-not-full-activity/sports-medicine-injuries-acl/

One of the 3 Pillars of my youth fitness/athletic development practice is injury –prevention screenings or assessments and the above studies are evidence of why it’s a point of emphasis for me.  Most youth sport injuries are preventable in nature, some health care providers believe that approximately 50% of overuse injuries sustained by young athletes could be prevented if children were better prepared to play the game. [1]

The best way to safeguard children from injury is following a progressive and multi-faceted fitness “education” that is focused on long-term wellness over short-term results.  Absent that, and I am afraid this is just as essential now based upon the fact that basic levels of fitness in children have declined significantly, are injury prevention screenings and a conditioning program that provides what children aren’t getting in school and from sport specific participation. [2]

Injury prevention is a point of emphasis for me because a damaged body never runs as efficiently as the original with all of it’s own parts intact.  Not to mention that surgeries can be quite expensive and as indicated by the ACL research above often lead to degenerative conditions such as osteoarthritis.

To summarize children play to train instead of training to play.  Because children don’t play or rotate sports seasonally their basic movement foundation is lacking and they aren’t equipped to handle the demands of excessive sport participation.  As evidenced by the topics at the AOSSM meeting the current youth sport culture is a major contributor to new classifications of injuries and pathologies.

The answer is diversity of experience particularly for young athletes under the age of 15.  For more advanced athletes in the mid-to-late teen years, injury prevention screenings and training programs that counteract the demands of excessive sport participation have become a necessity.

Resources:

[1] http://championsyouthfitness.com/avery_faigenbaum.php

Dr. William Levine, chairman of the STOP Sport Injuries campaign, summarizes the above information very well in this short video:

[2] http://abcnews.go.com/Health/video/keeping-student-athletes-safe-14372690?tab=9482930&section=4806329&playlist=3547557