Play Hard Baseball Academy,LLC- Kevin Govan

Haha! Get outch ya feelings, he’s the GOAT! Sustained production and dominance for over 20 years and still going!

My guy Zachary Hamrick (29’, WOW Factor Charlotte Scout 15u, Cox Mill H.S) took the opportunity to get some extra reps in at the end of summer travel ball season with Arena Baseball and went yard (with the wood). Great job this summer Zac, it was an opportunity for him to see better pitching all summer and will definitely prepare him for fall ball! Keep attacking the ball and more importantly keep having fun!! ⚾️

This is awesome. 3-4 guys I’ve seen in my lifetime to do this! It’s such a special talent!!

Should’ve been the #1 pick! Tar Heel Fam showing what we all knew….

*******LETS TALK ABOUT IT******
I know I post a lot of my clients hitting home runs and getting statistical hits overall which is great. What we talk about and work on executing at Play Hard Baseball Academy is “doing a job”… I am often asked, what do college coaches and scouts look for in hitters. Home runs, doubles/triples are great and are exciting to watch but as a coach and having talked to college coaches and scouts, they are looking for hitters who can execute as situational hitters. What do you mean you ask…. As I watched the College World Series this past season, there were a lot of 1 and 2 run games. In these games, the pitching was stellar and runs even base runners were hard to come by. So what do they want. They want a mentally tough hitter who can put “WE” before “ ME”….Can you move runners late in the game. A common scenario would be tie game, bottom of 9th inning and pitcher is shoving!!
-Leadoff batter reaches on walk.
-steals 2nd. Now we have no outs, runner in 2nd.
-the next hitters job is what the coaches and scouts look for…get the runner to 3rd with less than 2outs.
Options: obviously base hit would work but hits are scarce.. so get the ball on the ground anywhere but pitcher and 3rd base.. sac bunt anywhere but back to pitcher or fly ball to the out field for the tag up. If either 3 of these are executed we are sitting pretty with 1 out runner on 3rd base.
The next batter besides a clean base hit has 2 options here. The infield is drawn in so we have the safety squeeze/bunt or look for a ball up in the zone to get the ball in the air to mid/deep outfield.
Can you execute in small ball situations….. let’s normalize approach, practicing barrel control and being mentally tough enough to believe in yourself and know you can do it.
I say this because my guy Jacob Justice (‘27, QC Corn Dogs 2027, Northwest Cabarrus H.S) came up to bat last weekend with the bases loaded and had a great at bat that statistically didn’t end up with a hit but he got into a two strike count, fouled off 4 good pitches and ended up hitting a deep fly ball to left field to tag the runner up from 3rd. So parents coaches and instructors, that’s what coaches look for…. Execute when times are tough! ⚾️

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