Brandon Kolb Training

This right here it’s what’s wrong with the current state of evaluating young talent.

BALLS vs BRAINS

I threw my last pitch in competitive baseball 22 years ago and most memories have faded some but I’ll always remember my first CG. 1996 Battle Creek MI, Midwest League (low A ball). Sunday day game. Hot as hell with 90% humidity. The Padres had very strict rules on pitch counts across all minor league affiliates with a hard cap at 100 and you can’t start an inning after 90. Throwing a complete game wasn’t exactly on my radar as I trotted for the first inning because I was usually good for 3-5 walks with a few wild pitches to the backstop. If I went 9 in college it was rare that I wasn’t over 130 pitches to get the job done. The first couple innings were pretty routine, the only thing that stood out was that my control was a lot better than usual. Their lineup was getting a heavy dose of 4 different sliders at 84-88, some two seamers thumbed in there at 90-92 to keep them honest with the occasional curve ball in the low 80’s when I got ahead in the count. After 3 shutout innings my pitching coach interrupts my between inning ritual by sitting next to me (don’t do that) and says “nice work, throw your fastball more”. I nod my head “gotcha”, then go back to a meditative state to clear my head and stay focused. Two more innings of the same, weak ground balls, a few pop ups and through 5 they had only squared up a couple balls. I come back to the dugout feeling pretty good about our 4 run lead, I had no idea what my pitch count was but I knew it had to be low with only 1 walk and a few strikeouts. Pitching coach “hey man, I really like how your fastball looks WHEN you throw it. Find I reason to use it more”. My outside voice “you got it, I’ll try”. My inside voice “get the f*** away from me and go sit next to the cooler where you belong. I’m doing things here.” Two more innings slicing and dicing my way through the lineup, rolling over two seams, dropping my arm slot for some frisbees and finishing them with a hard slider in the dirt. Pitching coach “you feeling okay? Try using that 4 seam now.” I said nothing, I stared at him like he just shot my dog for f***ing with my flow but gave him a head nod as I draped a wet towel over my head to gather myself. My inside voice wanted to say “are you serious right now? I’m owning these as****es. I’ve held them to 4 base runners through 7, we’re sitting on a 5 run lead and you want me to change things up?!? GTFOH”. I sit them down in order in the 8th. Coach “alright, you’re sitting at 82 pitches. You want this last inning?”. I said nothing. My catcher yells out “F*** yeah he does!”. I resume my usual spot on the bench and hide beneath my towel contemplating what it would feel like to actually finish my first professional game. I had never thrown in the 9th before. We make our last out. I soak my hat in water. Throw it on my head. Grab my glove and make my way up the steps when I hear GONG! Then I hear Mick’s voice “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over Rock” GONG! Cute, the PA guy is trying to pump up the other team by playing the Rocky theme. I make my way to the first base line and the horns start kicking in. Something was off, I couldn’t feel my feet hit the ground. My sweat turned ice cold. I got goosebumps. GONG!! Face got flushed and hot, my hair felt like it was on fire. I reached down to pick up the ball and my hand was shaking like Michael J Fox. Fatigue went out the window and for no reason at all I was pi**ed. Alright…deep breath. Let’s get this first warmup pitch somewhere near the catcher then I’ll go through my 6 pitch routine before we throw it down. Mission accomplished, I lob one in about 70mph. Next pitch, crank it up a little. Holy s**t. That looked like game speed and I wasn’t even trying. That damn song was still playing and each gong felt like it sent shockwaves through my body. Alright, let’s let this next one go and see what I can bring to the table after 2.5 hours in this heat. POP!! I lit it up. My catcher stuck the landing, tilted his head sideways, paused for a second, stood up and threw it about 90 back at me and pounded his chest. What the hell was this? A new gear? Ball gets thrown down and the batter steps in the box. Catcher calls for a fastball. I grip 4 seams and aim center cut. The hitter didn’t budge. After seeing nothing but wrinkles and off speed all day it was likely the last thing he was expecting. My blood is boiling at this point. Catcher puts down a 3, I shake, a 2, I shake again, then a 1 before he pounds his glove and settles into his stance. I uncork one and the hitter is a day late. My catcher shakes his head and tosses it back. This time he doesn’t bother to put down a sign. He just held his arms out wide and waves his fingers in like “what…bring it then”. Called strike 3 looking on a c**k shot. He didn’t even bother giving me another sign the rest of the inning. Nothing but heaters belt high middle middle as I’m fighting off uncontrollable tremors trying to look normal out there. I ended up punching out the side on 14 consecutive 4 seamers 94-96 to notch my first CG. After we shake hands following the W I get to my pitching coach at the end of the line when he grabs my hand and pulls me into his face and says “what the F*** was that?!?” I said “what was what?”. My catcher stood next to us nodding his head up and down. Pitching coach looks at him and says “THAT”! I said “that as***le up in the booth played the Rocky song”. PC “I’m sorry, he did what?” “The Rocky song, didn’t you hear it? What the hell did you expect?” “Jesus Christ Kolb…you really are nuts aren’t you?” I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. “That’s bulls**t though right, it should be illegal to play that song in between innings.” The manager and he stared at me like a had a p***s growing out of my forehead as they giggled. Now, I ended up with my first CG, our team got the win, but after some time to reflect I saw it as a defeat. I let adrenaline win. The wrong song came on at the wrong time and it threw me for a loop. I had achieved a flow state that carried me through 8 innings pitching with my brain then a shot of adrenaline invited my balls to the party. While I admit, it was kinda fun. But it was also stupid. I busted my ass for 8 strong to put me in that position and I could’ve pi**ed it all away because my balls won an argument with my brain. If I was going to succeed on this journey to the big leagues I needed to get that s**t under control. Unfortunately, I had to learn that lesson far too many times throughout the remainder of my career. A little adrenaline is needed to step on that mound and do battle but too much gives your balls a little too much confidence. At the end of the day, adrenaline is just another distraction to keep you from completing the task at hand. Which is and always will be…use your brain to choose the right pitch, then execute your delivery. Choose your pregame playlist wisely.

I’m a big fan of using golf analogies when I’m trying to explain to parents what we’re trying to accomplish with their young baseball player that’s trying to make that jump from thrower to pitcher. You have all the time you need to decide what swing thought to execute as you address the ball. You get to decide what weapon to use. Should I go with a 5 iron, should I throw a two seam? Meticulously line up your feet, set your body in a comfortable, neutral position prepared to make an athletic move. Take your swing thought through the ex*****on of the swing. Immediately after contact/release point they become evaluators. First, the flight of the ball. Did my slider move down and away? Or was it too flat. Did my 3wood cut back into the wind like I planned or did I just push it right? How was my direction. What adjustment, if any, am I going to make the next time I choose to throw that slider or cut my 3wood. Next and most important. Foundation. Did my swing feel “normal”? Was it my usual tempo? Did I finish balanced or in my usual spot? Did my backside get through nice and easy? Was I too upright? If any part of the foundation was broken nothing about the shot shape or flight of the baseball matters. That would be like telling a pitcher to fix his change up grip when he just rushed through his balance point, ramped up his tempo, fell off to 1B side and threw it behind the batter. Preperation. Ex*****on. HONEST evaluation. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Each pitch. Each swing. It’s a very difficult process for immature brains to grasp because you’re removing OUTCOME from the evaluation process. Once that ball leaves your hand/club face the outcome is completely out of your control. If you misread a putt, then mis**t the ball you can still sink a birdie putt. Are you mature enough to realize that despite the birdie, if you don’t fix your putting stroke it’s going to be a long day. A pitcher can push a change up belt high down the middle and get a line out to CF or execute a well located two seam down and away and give up a duck fart down the line that scores three. Expectations. Phil Mickelson’s approach. It’s playing 463y. Pin is tucked front right so the best angle in is from the left half of the fairway that slopes R to L. The green is sloping back down to the hole so he needs to avoid a full wedge in that could easily spin off the front into a deep bunker. Because he’s down 2 with 4 to play, he decides to tee it up high and ride a draw with the 12mph L to R tailwind hoping to get close enough to punch wedge in with no spin into the backstop even though it’s a riskier shot than knocking down a hybrid leaving a 6 iron in. Start it out 5 paces left, let it feed to the right half of the fairway and hopefully roll out to the left third leaving about 105y in. Set up for a perfect 3/4 knock down GW. Now, a whole lot of surgeries ago I was a pretty decent golfer. I got my handicap to a 3 back when I used had free time. Given my skill set my approach was. Aim middle. It’s far so I hit my Driver. Try to hit it straight enough to not go OB. I knew that I didn’t practice nearly enough for my best swing to become effortless muscle memory. If your kid isn’t on a 60 ft mound yet he’s like an 18 handicap. He’s not painting corners, hopefully he’s hitting the half of the zone he was shooting for. If he can’t repeat his mechanics with a level of precision that allows him to look relatively the same on every single throw it doesn’t matter how he holds his sinker. A lot of it has to do with physical maturity, when they’re going through those fast growth spurts they get awkward, gangly and uncoordinated thanks to legs that get an inch longer every 2 months. The mental maturity. That can start as soon as they can hold their focus for about 15 seconds. The rough time that it takes to go through the process of approach, execute, evaluate. When young pitchers are putting that much thought into every executed pitch there’s no brain capacity left for nerves, emotions, yelling coaches, screaming moms, the opposing dugout or the umpire with the floating strike zone. When your kid can tune out all of the noise and have laser guided tunnel vision on a repeatable process they will finally know what it’s like to be “in the zone”. Even if it only lasts for an inning before something happens that derails his process. For me it usually happened on the first Par 5 where I might be able to get home in 2. I left the range with an effective, positive thought process to execute a Driver swing that worked for the firs 6 holes. If my brain starts thinking Eagle if I hit a bomb over the corner and I’m not able to talk myself out of it before I put a swing on it things almost always go sideways from there. Many parents think that their child is too young for their brains to multitask with that amount of detail out on the mound with the spotlight on them until their 12 year old on the car ride home starts talking about the pitch sequence he used to the 3rd batter in the 4th inning, the adjustments he made along the way and how it influenced the sequence he used on him again in the 7th. Setting realistic expectations for an 18 handicap is crucial when all you want them to do is love the game of golf a little more at the end of each round.

There were 4,524 Tommy John Surgeries performed in 1990. Fast forward to 2024 and that number jumps to 24,863 with almost half of those being performed on 15-19 year olds. Pitch counts and innings have steadily declined during that same time period. Stop chasing velo. Throwing weighted balls, strapping water tanks on your shoulders, wearing bungee belts, crow hopping max effort pull downs into a net shirtless after a firm back slap to get those juices flowing, posting the top radar gun readings at every 10U tourney. Well marketed bulls**t is still bulls**t. Stop telling me how much better these new training methods have gotten when the statistics tell a different story. There’s no cheat code. They’re training muscles to generate more force at younger ages without the proper mechanics to support it. I graduated HS at 84mph. Finally cracked 90 by age 20. Sat 90-94 as a starter Rookie ball through High A. Touched 97 my first year in the bullpen as a 24 year old in AA and maxed out at 99 two years later. Be patient. Learn to locate and change speeds. Learn to pitch. Lift to protect your joints from the violence of throwing a baseball. The velocity will come as your mechanics mature right along with your body.

I spent five years climbing the ranks with the Padres which means I got enough of a peek behind the curtain to see how this man went about his business. Every Spring Training he’d grab the mic and talk hitting to all of the 150+ minor leaguers in attendance. Answering questions like he was holding a Town Hall style debate. Someone asked him what the toughest pitch to hit was. I’m sure everyone was expecting 97+ on the outer black. Maybe Big Unit’s front door slider. Nope. “Change ups thigh high down the middle have always given me trouble. I can never decide where I want to hit it. I’ll change my mind three times before it eventually gets there and I usually pop it up.” I was waiting for him to laugh like that was a punchline. He was serious. I didn’t really feel like pitching anymore when I heard that. Maybe he was just saying that so if any of us ever made it to the big leagues with another organization we’d lob change ups down the middle at him but I highly doubt it. Some athletes are simply operating on a different level that us mortals can’t comprehend. That’s taking the cliche “you have to slow the game down” to new heights.