I began my tenure as the Director of Player Development for Eckerd College, 2019 Sunshine State Conference champions, by wanting to look at a few individual player development (PD) metrics that precede any defensive, hitting or pitching instruction; namely, the role communication plays in PD.
In order to quantify the value of communication while working with a low budget, scratch that, no budget, I turned to the G-Suite applications and began by creating a Google Sheet to use as my home base for all data collection. To promote inclusiveness and transparency, I included the rest of the coaching staff, the strength coach, and the athletic trainer as administrators on the page.
Lesson 1: Collecting data is meaningless if it is not seen as being valuable by the staff. I immediately found that giving each coach and trainer full data access created instant synergy amongst all support staff, allowing us to better complement one another. The message was clear. We are all in this together to help each player improve, and if each player improves, we improve.
As opposed to starting my data collection process by recording the traditional metrics of 60s, throwing velocities, and exit velocities, I began with a story and a question. Let it be known that I joined the staff 2 weeks after opening day because of prior commitments I made to train the pro players in my facility until they left for spring training. This put me behind the 8 ball with a team boasting 6 new everyday defensive starters as well as new roster additions well into the double digits. To get up to speed quickly, I used Google Forms to create surveys and quizzes for each guy. This is where I started:
I know that I only get to coach you for a short time. I understand that you may have personal coaches or youth/HS coaches who have helped you more or understand your personal make-up better than anyone else. My goal is to help you become the best you can be, and sometimes that requires tapping into your own personal circle. If you do not mind, please send me that individual's info so if/when you run into struggles or have the need to revisit a piece of your game, we can solve the problem faster and more effectively than ever before by collaborating with the person you feel has been most helpful thus far in your development. If the coach/instructor/individual who fits that description is already on staff, that's totally fine. Just answer accordingly. When it comes to you, we have one overriding goal, to make you the best player possible. The person getting the credit for that development does not matter.
This may seem taboo or like opening pandora’s box since most coaches frown on outside involvement from parents or specialty coaches, but in this day and age, those things are not going away. It is time to ride the wave and reap the benefits of the situation. If the goal is to help each player become the best version of himself, it would be foolish to immediately think I know more about how to best help a player than someone who the player has relied upon for years to get him to his current level. Cultivating those sorts of relationships takes time. In our instance, some of our players credited current members of the staff as their “go to baseball mind,” which is awesome, but that was obviously not going to be the case for every player.
Armed with this information, I then systematically began reaching out to the individual each player credited with being most helpful in his development. Across the board, each individual I contacted was blown away and honored, and each player’s trust level in accepting our instruction rose dramatically. Side note: coaches often spend an inordinate amount of time instructing players who simply go through the motions without any real buy in. This simple exercise established credibility with our players beyond any we could have hoped for by showing them our staff does not claim to have all of the answers and a player’s development ranks higher than our own pride.
Following that initial question, I asked each player to identify where he feels he needs the most improvement to get better in the short term, by the end of the season, and to potentially enhance his draft stock. We as a staff certainly have a good idea of what each players needs to do for each of these things, especially because their skills/improvement in our eyes determines the line-up on a daily basis. However, we found that asking each player to get involved in the process instilled trust between each player and coach, gave us a good sense of each guy’s ability to self-assess, and allowed the player to take a greater level of responsibility and autonomy for his development. All of this is consistent with what I learned in my MBA program, which is that studies of organizational behavior cite trust, ability to self-assess, and autonomy as qualities of a productive and enjoyable work environment, while encouraging commitment to the organization. Obviously, not every player is going to be spot on with their assessment or even take every question I ask 100% seriously, but asking each player to take on some responsibility in his own PD process encourages a great deal of ownership.
Getting back to the point, I then transferred the answers of all players into the Google Sheet roster page, and assigned a staff member or two to take lead in each player’s specific area of development. This area is now known to our team as a player’s improvement focus and the staff member in charge in of that area is known as the improvement focus coach. As a PD Director, my job is to give each player the tools he needs and put him in touch with the individual best served to assist in that development. We now have a system in place to manage that process and ensure no player falls through the cracks.
As previously mentioned, I got started a little late with the team this year, but in only 1 week I feel good about the foundation that we’ve established. Players have been “bucketed” into their areas of greatest needs—both self-identified as well as coach identified. Despite our currently low tech/low budget program, we have begun to collect measurements to assess specifically where each player needs to improve. Staff and players alike feel we are now operating with greater transparency than ever before and have a true roadmap towards improvement.
From here, my ultimate goal is to quantify the role of communication in player development. I know this may sound odd, but with communication playing such a huge role in our daily lives on and off the field, measuring the effectiveness and comprehension of communication can potentially provide me with ability to develop systems to best connect with a single player as well as a team or organization. I will be sure to chronicle our results throughout the season, as well as create some videos, demos, etc. of how we execute these plans.
Thanks,
Adam Moreau, MBA, CSCS
Director of Player Development and Recruiting Coordinator
Eckerd College
419-250-7243
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