Hitting coach Dan Hennigan of Brain and Barrel Hitting joins the show for a great hitting discussion. We dive into the mindset of the hitter and the role that confidence plays in the success of athletes. Dan describes how he tailors his role as hitting coach and mental coach to help hitters achieve success on the field. We also discuss pairing a player’s physical talent and their swing to garner the best results. Great hitting discussion for players from the youth level to the professional ranks. Find more information on Dan Hennigan on his website brainandbarrelhitting.com.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

Transcript: EP63 – Hitting Coach Dan Hennigan of Brain and Barrel Hitting Discusses His Philosophies

Dan Blewett: [00:00:08] Welcome back to the morning. Brushback this is episode 63. We’ve got a awesome guest today. So Bobby, number one, how are you doing number two? Who’s our guest today.

Bobby Stevens: [00:00:21] I am fantastic as always our guest today is former teammate of both of ours and current hitting coach

Dan Hennigan: [00:00:29] collegiate,

Bobby Stevens: [00:00:30] professionally coach Dan Hennigan, of, brain and barrel hitting.

Find him on Instagram at brain underscore and underscore barrel. Uh, really good talk. Say, what’d you think of it?

Dan Blewett: [00:00:41] I mean, a lot of it, a really deep insights. So what Dan does really interesting. He works with lots of, so, uh, like first round there’s like guys in pro ball, like some secret names that he can’t reveal.

I know everyone like no, but Dan really does work with a lot of high level hitters. Now he was just in Fort Myers, got flown down there to work with some really high level high school players. So. He’s become a really sought after guy. It’s not surprising. He’s a really, really smart dude. He was one of our favorite teammates.

Um, just a guy has a really high baseball IQ and really understands the game. So it’s not surprising that people are really, you know, trying to get in touch with him. And he’s pretty, pretty booked up. It sounds like.

Bobby Stevens: [00:01:22] Yeah, Dan’s always

Dan Blewett: [00:01:23] been, uh,

Bobby Stevens: [00:01:24] at least on the baseball field is just a guy you want to be around to listen to how he, how he used to explain the game, his perspective on the game and.

It’s definitely no coincidence that he sucks selling in the,

Dan Blewett: [00:01:36] in the hitting

Bobby Stevens: [00:01:36] world,

Dan Blewett: [00:01:37] how he is. He’s just not as

Bobby Stevens: [00:01:38] prominent of a name yet because he’s not loud on Twitter and Instagram. How maybe myself is, are you are

Dan Blewett: [00:01:46] definitely

Bobby Stevens: [00:01:47] more, definitely less prominent than, uh,

Dan Blewett: [00:01:50] than Dan

Bobby Stevens: [00:01:51] Blewett is because Dan Blewett is the coach of the stars on

YouTube.

And. Twitter. Well, when we talked about this, I mean, Dan is really making a name for himself we’re accounts, right? Like he has agents sending players to him. He’s got Oregon pro organizations sending players to him rather than wasting all of his time on social media. So I applaud him for this. So when you talk about prominence, you know, internet prominence, which is something we talk about in the, in the discussion internet, prominence is not the same as actually succeeding in the real world.

Right? You can have a lot of Instagram followers or Twitter followers. And not, and still just be really scraping by, or just kind of be just smoking mirrors. So, so yeah, I mean, he’s, he’s got a lot going on and he really shared a lot of that, that, that depth of knowledge today. I mean, some of the things that stuck out for me.

Obviously a lot of the approach stuff and just treading lightly, not trying to pick apart a hit or swing when he’s in a tournament. Right. You can’t just overhaul a guy when he’s right there. We talked a lot about, um, you know, plate discipline approach, but also just like, what are some of the new trends and is hitting really that new, right?

Like everything’s kind of been done. And he kind of said, Hey, I don’t know if there’s that much. That’s actually being new. Sometimes it’s just being explained in a different way.

Bobby Stevens: [00:03:09] Yeah, he breaks it down really well. And that’s, that’s part of the appeal of having Dan as your hitting coach is that he can relate in more than one way.

And that’s always the difficult task of a hitting coach is to explain the same thing, 10 different ways to 10 different people and get the same result. So I think when you listen to this, you’re going to realize it. He’s far ahead of the curve and being able to relate to hitters and to explain and touch on

Dan Blewett: [00:03:34] concepts that

Bobby Stevens: [00:03:35] might seem new might seem difficult, but they’re actually old school and they’re very, very basic.

Once you break it down.

Dan Blewett: [00:03:42] Yep. And obviously Dan was a pro hitter played, like you said, played with both of us and just as a, a wide range of experience. And he’s not a bigger guy. So a lot of times bigger players who would just naturally destroy the ball or throw fuel, you know, as pitchers, they don’t want their, they don’t have to struggle and strive as much.

And Dan was like a gritty middle infielder who really had to, you know, know the game and know situations and maximize his own ability. To be as good as he ended up being. So usually those are the kinds of players that become the best coaches. So, um, Bob let’s jump into it, man. But yeah, this was a great, great conversation.

About 90 minutes. Uh, I know we’re excited to share it here with you. So without further ado, let’s jump into our conversation with. He didn’t coach Dan Hannigan.

Well, Dan, thanks for joining us on the show, man. It’s good to see you again,

Dan Hennigan: [00:04:41] seeing you guys, man. I, uh, I missed you guys, miss, miss playing

Dan Blewett: [00:04:45] with both of you. You’re just saying that I was a pitcher. You didn’t, we weren’t really friends. Yeah,

Bobby Stevens: [00:04:51] damn

Dan Hennigan: [00:04:52] know. I have damn I missed Dan’s work ethic. I miss his a dead list.

Dan Blewett: [00:04:58] I didn’t have a workout like that last two years. I was just trying to, trying to try to keep it together.

Dan Hennigan: [00:05:05] You meant the Lake man getting swole, yelling at people for not putting the weights away?

Dan Blewett: [00:05:11] Uh, there was, I, I don’t know that sounds in character, but who knows?

Dan Hennigan: [00:05:15] No, I don’t know. I never went into weight room or I don’t know.

Dan Blewett: [00:05:19] Dan Dan news place, position players were not welcome. I mean, position players. Dan, what were your work workouts like in college or in college? Not so much in your house

Dan Hennigan: [00:05:31] in pro ball off seasons. It was get yoked. Absolutely enormous. So, um, I’m five, six with the cleats on and, uh, probably my fighting weight.

My fighting weight is probably like one 45. So for me to get to one 60, that it was 15 pounds already enormous on this body. So I just was a bowling ball walking around. Uh, but then by the end of the year, I would always be back to being a little bitch, honestly. Uh, but no, so I would get huge. I would get huge and, uh, I would look like a bodybuilder for a little bit, but it wouldn’t make me a better baseball player.

Cause I didn’t understand functional strength. So I should’ve just gone to like a spring break. Cabo thing. Yeah, there you go. And then, and then my final years, I had so many arm problems toward laboring, twice bone scope in the elbow. So many arm problems that it became just like injury prevention stuff.

Dan Blewett: [00:06:30] Yeah. Uh,

Dan Hennigan: [00:06:32] but honestly I liked when I was yoked and just trying to hit homers and not understanding my game

Dan Blewett: [00:06:38] at all. I like it. He’s a trying good. I appreciate you threw that in there because trying isn’t the same as doing well.

Dan Hennigan: [00:06:44] Yeah, no, no, but I would go up to like guys, the first in spring and spring training, I would like ask people how much they bench and stuff,

Dan Blewett: [00:06:53] you know?

Just

Dan Hennigan: [00:06:54] stack up to me.

Dan Blewett: [00:06:56] Yeah. Well, do you want to get back to that topic? That’s a, I think a really interesting, especially from a guy who’s smaller, like you and a guy who’s really weak, like Bobby is just knowing yourself as a hitter and what you can and can’t do. Right. I know we’re going to talk a lot about, uh, Things like launch angle and exit velocity and, and all the different things.

Bobby Stevens: [00:07:16] That’s not

Dan Blewett: [00:07:16] on the outlets in Bob. It’s going to have the launch

Bobby Stevens: [00:07:19] angle and then wing velocity. Is that what you said?

Dan Hennigan: [00:07:22] You’re wanting week. That’s

Dan Blewett: [00:07:24] probably being Jenna for sure. I’m sorry.

Bobby Stevens: [00:07:27] I glossed over that part of the, yeah.

Dan Blewett: [00:07:30] But every kid wants to know their numbers and they want to hit the ball harder and then they want to lift it and they want to hit dingers.

But a lot of them just can’t like Bobby, right? So you gotta know that’s where you come in as eight guys. So Dan, you were just in Fort Myers. Tell us about your trip.

Dan Hennigan: [00:07:44] Crazy. I cannot believe I sound so old saying this. I cannot believe how good these kids are. Now. This is the absolute best of the best and perfect game is just.

Turning these kids in the little like quasi celebrities already as I was walking in. And it was a kid playing for this team called the Florida burn.

Dan Blewett: [00:08:04] Hold on, back up, back up. So why were you in Fort Myers? What were you doing there? You were attending some sort of, but yeah, I just wanted to

Dan Hennigan: [00:08:11] do it like I wanted to get Tanner and so I went South.

Bobby Stevens: [00:08:16] Hello too.

Dan Hennigan: [00:08:17] Thanks man. That’s that Florida glow. The Florida mosquito grow Glo? Uh, no, I was there cause I have a couple of hitters that were playing in the tournament and they have crazy passionate parents that paid to fly me down and, uh, would work with me when they weren’t playing, keep them fresh for the, for the agencies and Scouts that are watching them.

So I was down there just kind of networking, talking to a lot of agencies talking to, I was trying to talk to some Scouts, trying to figure out what their team. Once, and I found some pretty interesting stuff that maybe we’ll dive into later, but, uh, yet kids are ridiculously good. So I was watching this national tournament and they got 16 year olds throwing 96.

They had a, a kid throwing 92 with almost a 2,700 should RPM spin rate fastball, which is ridiculous and sitting it, um, I kids spitting on mid 80 sliders that. Uh, mid eighties, fast ball in high school for me was the tough one.

Dan Blewett: [00:09:19] And these kids are just spitting on sliders

Dan Hennigan: [00:09:20] and stuff. It’s crazy. How, how good this level is?

Dan Blewett: [00:09:24] What percentage of the talent pool where you actually watching there? I mean, it sounds like that’s probably like the cream of the crop from all over the country. Is that correct?

Dan Hennigan: [00:09:31] Yeah. These kids are freaks the teams. They’re not, they’re not like I, I was from Chester County, Pennsylvania. We had a team called the Chester County crawdads.

We were pretty good. We actually had the entire team. Go, uh, go play college ball. And a couple of us ended up playing professionally. Joey Wendell was on that team with the rays. Um, we were good, but there’s no local team anymore. Like the team that I had, three of the hitters on center field are from Louisiana kid from Cali, get from Hawaii, get from PA you know, so like these aren’t even, they don’t even know each other.

There’s showing up, they get handed jerseys. It’s crazy. So the 1%, and so

Bobby Stevens: [00:10:09] a little about that tournament is. Uh, so my travel organizations is part of a concur, I guess, a conglomerate Chicago Scouts association, which is probably 15 to 18 organizations that send the best of their best to try out. They choose the team.

Um, I coached the 20, 22 fall team. So it’s like an all-star team essentially.

Dan Blewett: [00:10:32] And

Bobby Stevens: [00:10:33] then of course I do. I mean, what could they, they only choose the best coaches they could possibly find, but my team is, you know, Louisville, Louisville, Louisville, South Carolina commit Alabama commits. I mean, it’s just the who’s who of, of all star kids in the area.

So it’s not. It’s not what travel ball is when people think like, Oh, you play with your buddies in the neighborhood. Like now these kids are there. They’re going down there to get your,

Dan Hennigan: [00:11:00] yeah. That’s exactly right.

Bobby Stevens: [00:11:01] There’s no, there’s no other reason to go there other than to try and

Dan Hennigan: [00:11:05] kill yourself or get a late, a late, uh, secondary offer or maybe a leverage offer, you know?

Dan Blewett: [00:11:12] And so for parents who might want our kids who might want to Google, what this storm, what was the exact name of this tournament? Or was it,

Dan Hennigan: [00:11:17] I think it’s called PG national. I think

Dan Blewett: [00:11:20] it was the, WWBA

Dan Hennigan: [00:11:22] usually in Jupiter this year. COVID brought it to Fort Myers.

Bobby Stevens: [00:11:26] So the world would bat, uh, by perfect game. It’s it’s the best tournaments and invite only the Florida, Florida burn.

I actually is usually the favorite in that tournament. That’s top five national program.

Dan Blewett: [00:11:40] Yeah. I just want to interject here and say how pleased I am that there’s now two Dan’s giving Bobby grief, I think. Yeah. I can see how this is going

Bobby Stevens: [00:11:52] to turn on you, Dan. This is going to damn blew it. This is going to turn on your real quick

Dan Blewett: [00:11:58] with air one without, so it’s coming to Bobby from all angles.

Dan Hennigan: [00:12:02] Well, I’m, I’m kinda like I’ve read the tide and I’ll, I’ll jump ship real fast. And I just want to let you know, so there’s no loyalty here. I might even turn on myself, you

Dan Blewett: [00:12:11] know, you never know and bring it. I’m I’m, I’m the King of this jungle who could use, could use a match every once in a while. Like I’m tired of just, you know,

Dan Hennigan: [00:12:20] abusing Bobby.

Dan Blewett: [00:12:22] Well, I am not really tired of it, but you know, a fair fight is always appreciated.

Dan Hennigan: [00:12:27] No, I heard, I, I texted, I texted Bobby beforehand and I said, I’m going to come in yelling real hostile from the get go. No reason. And he said, Oh, so Dan blew it. Yeah.

Dan Blewett: [00:12:37] Classic Napoleon syndrome, you know, classic. That’s what I do.

So when you’re working with these kids, like they’re in a, obviously an important tournament. Yeah, and you probably can’t like do too much and overhaul their swing and screw with them. Right. So like how, how do you tread lightly when kids are, I mean, they’ve got some pretty important games, a lot of important people watching them.

So what do you do to work with them while at the same time, not, you know, getting in their heads.

Dan Hennigan: [00:13:02] I treat these guys the same way I treat my pro clients and that, because they’re going to be, and that is, I figure out. What is going to get them paid. And so what I mean by that is I, uh, came up and the first guy that was actually nice to me in any form of pro ball was named Freddy behind him.

And he played big league time with the Oreos. Really good. Second baseman, middle infielder, solid hitter. And he would always say like, the mindset has to be money. So figure out why a team’s going to pay you. And so then from there, I just kind of took that and found as many different options as possible.

I know pretty much what every hitting coach in the country is teaching. I know what almost all of the mob organizations value. Uh, and so I can figure out within all of that and kind of grab bag different things. Okay. If I use the Dodgers movement of the torso here and we kind of do what the Yankees like to do with the back, like here that’ll really work for this kid.

Whereas another kid might be like me. Um, and he is doing everything perfect as far as what maybe the Mariners are looking for, but he it’s a fly off the center field every time where for another person that’s a Homer. So why is he still doing that? We got to change that up. So I try to figure out what’s going to get these guys paid and then model their game as close to that as possible.

But in a tournament like this, I know what the results need to be. And we have a general idea of the type of pitching they’re about to face. And I try to just simulate that I don’t get in their head at all about mechanics in a tournament. Um, unless there’s just something absolutely glaring. For instance, the one kid was facing this lefty super athletic lefty.

Uh, probably high eighties and he met, he sh he struck out missed underneath good forcing festivals. So I was just saying top knuckle. And what I mean by that is like, if this is the ball, I wanted him to focusing on just crushing, breaking the knuckles on the ball. Instead of down here that had nothing to do with mechanics, super simple.

And he ended up going bananas. And that was such a simple process to the point where he actually hit a double and his double celebration was going like this. So like, it worked for him, but just that mindset, um, So, yeah, I try to just make them comfortable in, in a game scenario in the off season, we’ll dive in, but not in a tournament like this.

That,

Bobby Stevens: [00:15:28] I mean, that cue the top knuckle is it makes so much sense to someone that hits or that’s been in the game, like, okay, you’re making a physical adjustment by thinking something differently. Whereas somebody who doesn’t have a feel like that, uh, what I would consider a bad hitting coach. Is okay. Well, you know, you’re, you’re dropping your top hand or you’re, you know, you’re doing this early or you’re opening up early.

So fix that mechanically. It’s not most, especially in game adjustments or not. Physical like their mental, you know, whatever you’re doing, if you’re way early, you gotta think, you know, you know, crush the first base coach. If you’re way late, you gotta think, you know, hit third base coach, whatever, something mental that gets you to change something physical.

I mean, that’s, that’s an awesome example of a coach with an idea that, Hey, that anything I say, this kid is going to take it and multiply it by 10. Mentally. So it’s gotta be simple and it’s gotta, it’s gotta be something that works, you know, works without him having to think about

Dan Hennigan: [00:16:31] it. Yeah. Thanks man. The, uh, I, um, I wasn’t always like that.

Wasn’t always like that. So there was a stretch where, you know, guys would send me a video and I would send them an eight bullet, you know, thing of what we need to feel the next at bat. And that was as short as maybe three years ago, I was doing that. Um, so I, I gradually had to, had to make the adjustments myself.

Um, but, but I still see you, right. Um, I was actually at a, at a game front row. No big deal got the ticks, but, uh, I was at a game that I got flown to and front row and I was next to another hitting coach and he was looking at video and the guy struck out, and this was a, this was a AA guy struck out and the other hitting coach goes, Oh, he’s not doing it right.

You mean, he’s not, he’s not doing what, right. He’s not doing what I taught him. Right. Like, dude, that was it. It was a bouncing 12, six curve ball. He’s swung at a bad pitch. So now this guy is like giving him a hard time about his mechanics and how he lost the backside and all this thing. And no, he lunged cause he got fooled.

So maybe he needs to recognize pitches better or know that that was an obvious 12, six curve ball moment that he doesn’t know about. Why doesn’t he know that a 12, six should be coming then? So I was that person for sure, but I appreciate the compliments now, man.

Dan Blewett: [00:17:50] So to summarize, you were a trash hitting coach just three years ago.

Dan Hennigan: [00:17:53] That’s right. That’s exactly right.

Dan Blewett: [00:17:56] I know what it is. I appreciate that, you know, like, like everyone else who gets to a high point, you’ve got a lot. I’m like, you’re really sought off here. So I have a hitting coach everyone’s still evolving. Right. And I think that’s, that’s your point is that you still have to learn how to tread lightly and how to not do too much when kids like, still just learning, like even those the basics.

Dan Hennigan: [00:18:19] Yeah, yeah. To the point where my, my latest, uh, Dive deep situation here is now, um, figuring out how to get these guys the right mindset. Um, so I have a couple of hitters that probably mechanically have swings that I’m not sold on and that don’t always work at the highest level. Uh, and then I have guys that are absolutely flawless and, and I mean that, and I’m very proud of both sides, but.

Two of the guys that I can think of in particular that are, that have, you know, one of them has been in a home run Derby. One of them has worlds, has a world series ring. Uh, these are guys that are accomplished and have very large houses and very nice cars because of the game of baseball and their swings.

Aren’t all that good. But their mindset, the moment they walk into a, my gym, like you can feel their energy versus the, some of the guys around them. And. You were making jokes about King of this jungle. You can see it with some of these guys and that matters and the success is there. And so that’s my next thing is these.

I got some kids. I have a fourth rounder with the Braves that is just an absolute phenom. He’s 19 years old. He’s just a freak. And he’s going to be in the big leagues. There’s no doubt, but he doesn’t have that mindset and that’s, what’s going to stop him from being a household name. And so that’s my latest thing.

It’s actually becoming more of a psychologist.

Bobby Stevens: [00:19:48] Yeah, I like the, I like to say, and I’ve tweeted this out before and I want to get into it with you Dan, a little bit, because

Dan Blewett: [00:19:55] I don’t want to say Dan, that doesn’t mean anything to either of us, any ball man or dapper, Dan.

Bobby Stevens: [00:20:04] So Henny, I want to get into how well, my point is confidence as the ultimate hitting tool, like the ma there’s guys in the big leagues with awful mechanics, you see all the time, there’s very, very high level hitters that have a lot of success that have mechanics. You wouldn’t teach anybody, but they’re like you said, their confidence is just through the roof.

They walk into the box, they have an approach, they know what they’re looking for and they battle and they can barrel, um, And I’ve said this on Twitter and it’s baffling to me that you’re a hitting coach that has no Twitter persona. And doesn’t like to battle people on Twitter and it nearly, it actually pisses me off.

To be honest with you, I need you on Twitter. I need somebody on Twitter. I can bounce stuff off of just to antagonize because right now I just basically antagonize myself.

Dan Hennigan: [00:20:53] Yeah. Uh, yeah, I just don’t have the time for it, man. I can’t do it. I, uh,

Bobby Stevens: [00:20:59] you need to make the time for it. I know,

Dan Hennigan: [00:21:02] I know I even stopped doing the Instagram.

People were legitimately stealing my stuff and I wasn’t in a position to monetize and I had to stop. Uh, so I, I get stuck in between. I need people to know about me to reach the monetary goals I want in life and not have to work my whole life. Um, but at the same time, part of why I get the clients I get is because.

I don’t divulge what I’m doing. That’s creating some of the success. And I just found this like diminishing returns on, on. Giving information out. And so, and then the Twitter world, you can’t even give information out because nobody wants to hear it. And they’re just yelling at each other. No,

Bobby Stevens: [00:21:45] we’re not exchanging ideas.

We’re exchanging insults.

Dan Hennigan: [00:21:48] Yeah. And there’s like these little gangs of there’s like these pockets of, they only hang out with their crew. It’s like high school again. And, and so the only listen to what their crew has to say. It’s crazy, man. It’s crazy. So I, I, for my own sanity have avoided most of the social media

Bobby Stevens: [00:22:06] baseball world.

Well, let’s talk about that for a second, because you did say that you understand, like you understand what everybody’s teaching, uh, uh, Dan blew it. I’m sure you understand a lot of what these velocity guys are teaching around the country. You know, you’re, you’re not. Poorly read. You’re a well-read guy from,

Dan Blewett: [00:22:25] well, such a well-read

Bobby Stevens: [00:22:26] fellow, such a well-read guy.

So are there guys, are there guys that you’ve pulled stuff from, that are in the hitting world that, uh, that do have these larger than life personas on social media

Dan Hennigan: [00:22:39] define pooled from,

Bobby Stevens: [00:22:41] uh, three things. Let’s start with guys that you agree. Maybe you agree with some of the stuff that they teach

Dan Hennigan: [00:22:48] I’ve uh, yeah, I’ve definitely learned some stuff.

Or, or seen stuff that I agree with. There’s, there’s nothing that I’ve seen out there that’s strikingly new. Um, and there’s nothing that I’ve seen that isn’t some version of something else that I’ve already experimented with or seen be effective or seem to be ineffective. Um, but no there’s guys that I absolutely agree with on there and those guys that.

Um, have bits and pieces of things that I really like. And then other things they go like, I’m basically like, as they’re talking, I’m like, yup, yup, yup. No, no, no, no. So like there’s a lot of guys like that too, where they just maybe, you know, and just because I disagree doesn’t mean it’s not effective for somebody.

My whole thing is like these guys start arguing with each other about all these different things. And then they say, who have you worked with? That’s it it’s such a random thing because someone who. Works with the power hitter and the guy blows up. What they don’t talk about is I know eight other professionals that that guy worked with that had such bad seasons that their, their team basically said, if you work with that guy again, you know, we’re going to change your contract to the same as, uh, skydiving or work or riding a racing motorcycle.

It’s that detrimental for you to be working with that guy. So don’t do it again. So, you know, the same thing that created one all-star ruined someone else. So it, it’s hard to say. Know, I fully agree with this. This is how it should be, or I completely disagree with this is how it should be.

Dan Blewett: [00:24:10] Do you see new stuff to you on the web?

Like, is anyone like blowing your mind? Is anyone like, wow, I never thought about that or, wow. What an effective, like new thing, whereas it kind of like the Simpsons where you can make new jokes, but the Simpsons already, they already did

Dan Hennigan: [00:24:26] it. Yeah. I just feel like baseball has been around for so long and.

The game goes in cycles for sure. And the way the breaking balls are taught, uh, or pitch movement in general starts to show, uh, more effective swing patterns for that type of pitching. And then everybody starts to follow that type of swing. And by everybody, I mean like the, the social media hitting gurus.

And so they do all that and they post a video of a guy succeeding, and now we’re going to. There was a while where everybody was doing the Josh Donaldson swing. Everybody was teaching that, um, they were doing, it was Jack Peterson for half a year until he starts in 100. Uh, and then, and then it moved on to Aaron judge.

And now it’s, you know, Justin Turner and Aaron natto or whoever else you want. Um, so it, it changes every year, depending on who’s doing well, but really, it depends on the type of pitching. So Mike Schmidt with the, uh, chop down swing would actually be pretty effective against this high spin rate fastball right now.

And he would be dominating once again. But if you put him in the era with Maddix, no shot, he doesn’t touch max. Now with that swing path, he just, it never lines up. So, uh, you just got to figure out what’s going on with the pitching and how you can kind of match that.

Dan Blewett: [00:25:49] Yeah. And especially like, uh,

Bobby Stevens: [00:25:51] like getting his hitting has become a, you need, if you don’t have a brand.

And I think the biggest takeaway for me, for the guys on social media is I don’t agree with probably 90% of what they’re saying, but some of them are saying things differently that will trigger a different thought for myself that will, that will get me to figure it out. So. If you’ve got, like guys say swing down, you know, you know, skid on top of the ball swing down that is interpreted a hundred different ways by a hundred different people.

So it’s, it’s definitely dependent on who you’re working with. Some guys, you say swing down to the ball. Some guys just say, you need to swing under the ball. Some guys would say you need to swing level to the ball. You know, there’s, you’re probably saying the same thing, 20 different ways to get the same result that you’re looking for because your eyes are seeing what needs to happen and they need to feel what needs to happen.

And Twitter does not siphon through that information. They say one thing and that’s my brand and that’s, and that is what got. Ex hitter to the big leagues that I worked with. And I need to ride that guy as long as possible, because he’s my moneymaker kind of how you said that guy made that guy made my money was similar to a lot of the pitching guys.

I’m sure in other sports and I’ve, I’ve tried to actually get another sports, like a, like a soccer, Twitter, or a basketball, Twitter, and it’s no sport has the level of arrogance in coaching that baseball has. And on Twitter go, it’s just unbelievable. Like everybody needs to have their own buzzwords, their own, you know, their own persona.

And I’m still looking for that basketball, Twitter, Twitter guru. No

Dan Blewett: [00:27:34] one wants to talk about basketball. It’s a popular sport at all. It’s so dull. You just run down, you throw the ball in the net. Then the other team runs down and throws it in the other net. And then they do that like 50 times each. Why are we watching this?

How is that a sport? You’re both. Both. You’re throwing the net like 50 times.

Bobby Stevens: [00:27:52] You’re so,

Dan Blewett: [00:27:53] and the team that does it 52 times is the champion. Like that’s a sport

Bobby Stevens: [00:27:59] you’re sided.

Dan Blewett: [00:28:00] Well, um, anyway, did you like summed up basketball? Just like that? Um,

Dan Hennigan: [00:28:06] spot on too.

Dan Blewett: [00:28:07] Yeah. So Dan, um, tell me a little bit more, because I’m personally curious, tell me about the cycle of Instagram, because a lot of people, you know, Instagram is really popular.

I personally got, like, I pushed back from it back in like March. I was like, look. Um, I just can’t do this anymore. This isn’t like my kind of content. It makes me feel guilty that I’m not doing Instagram as a creator, because like you said before, it’s important to be known on the web. And so you feel like if you leave anything on the table, like if I don’t do Twitter, I’m leaving money on the table.

If I don’t lose do this or that, but at a certain point, you’re like, I just can’t do it all. And some of this really drains me mentally. Um, so can you talk about. Building your brand on Instagram as a hidden guy. And then also just like where you’re at now and talk to that a little bit. Yeah. I

Dan Hennigan: [00:28:58] mean, in the beginning, the first maybe 15 videos on my Instagram weren’t even me.

Uh, they were my hitters, but it was my little brother just post cause he was like, dude, you got to do something I get, get on social media. So he started just posting. Uh, and then I started editing some of the videos and just showing these quick, like, I would say, meet whoever, whoever was there. And maybe it was a kid named MCI or a pro guy named Matthew or something.

And I would say, meet Matthew. And then we would go through what we did in that one hour. And I was getting pretty good results. And so then more people would want to do it. And then I started realizing that some of the high school kids, they just wanted to be on. Instagram. I didn’t even realize, I thought they wanted to work with me.

They just liked my editing and wanting to be on Instagram with a cool song. So they now they’re on there and then it starts to blow up a little bit more. And then I did a couple of like with a little bit of a sense of humor and all of a sudden, some of the videos were getting, you know, 80,000 views. And I didn’t understand what was going on.

Um, I worked with a 12 year old that ended up being on the cover of time magazine. And he kind of blew up my page a little bit. And then I got the opportunity to work with some, some pretty big studs that I’ve had a lot of success. A couple of them actually playing in the world series right now. And, uh, but anyway, I, I started to use, I know we were just bashing buzzwords, but I started to make up my own buzzword strictly because part of being a hitting coach is you don’t have like a nine to five.

You have your hours that you’re working. Um, for instance, today, I’m going 1230 to eight 30 tonight. And, but you all, you’re never done. So at midnight, I might get a text from a frantic father or, you know, I’ve had guys call me when there’s an issue. When they go out in a, in a, in a way stadium. And then they go to a bar and they, they got in a fight and they don’t want their agent to know about it.

I get that text. So there’s, there’s like all these different things that you become as it, as a hitting coach and as a friend and. Almost like a big brother to them sometimes, physically, too. Cause I’m enormous. And so, you know, all of that, uh, is there anyway at times when you’re texting all these guys, you can’t just say like, It’s it’s hard sometimes to explain something or use a bunch of words.

So I created these buzzwords just to make the texts easier. So I have something called a release scale, and it’s just the amount that the risk has released by the time they made contact. So what number are we at? Zero to 100. Um, and we could dive into that way more, but just, that was just a quick example.

So if a kid says 40 that’s way different than it’s just a much quicker way so that both of us can understand what’s going

Dan Blewett: [00:31:46] on.

Dan Hennigan: [00:31:47] Uh, and, and. I’m not even, I don’t even remember where this

Dan Blewett: [00:31:50] started. Well, I want to hear what, what do you advise this, this young man who’s in the bar fight who’s in trial immediately.

Like find, find an old car, get the body in the trunk, like who saw it? We need it. Like

Dan Hennigan: [00:32:04] whatever I told you to get, get your hand on ice ASAP. And I gave him the number of a lawyer in case there was going to be any issues. That’s exactly what happened. And the lawyer helped them out and he was good. So, uh,

Dan Blewett: [00:32:17] it’s, it’s funny, dude.

Like I always laid pretty low to my career. Like I just like never really cared about drinking or the bar scene very much. So it was my exposures to risk were low. Like I wasn’t going out that much, but it’s funny how we all have like teammates or just people we know that just like trouble finds them.

Right. Like I had a teammate in college, like it didn’t matter. We went out once a year or once a month, he would get in a fight. Like literally every time, like, it didn’t matter what his frequency was just like he found trouble or trouble found him. It was like so bizarre even when he was being good, like, didn’t do anything.

Anyone, someone like hit him with a bottle or something, or just like throw something at them. It’s like, well,

Dan Hennigan: [00:32:54] you’re like a

Dan Blewett: [00:32:55] magnet for your magnet for trouble. Yeah. I don’t know.

Bobby Stevens: [00:32:59] Yeah. Face to face. Yeah. Punchable,

Dan Hennigan: [00:33:04] but no. So, I mean like, so with all that little stuff, sorry to get, I remember where we were headed with it.

Uh, so using some buzzwords and this was like in 2017 and then on Instagram, all of a sudden I’m seeing guys with like 40,000 followers saying this made up word that I made up a couple months prior and like ridiculous things like, like. Serving the pizza pie is something that I would teach little kids.

I saw a metal hitting instructor saying that phrase like a couple months after. Um, I, I did this thing called the ring and it’s just kind of like this, the ring is a mixture of posture and, uh, like the way the torso moves or maintains, uh, it’s basically this floating halo around the rib cage and you play operation with it.

Once you land, you can’t touch any side of this halo. And if you do, you get zapped. Um, and now I gotta explain the game operation to most kids, but so that that’s, the, the ring is a phrase we use and, and, you know, maybe the ring is too high or it’s tilted too much. Or we ran into the front of the ring, stuff like that.

All of a sudden, I’m seeing guys talking about the ring, talking about, I have this thing called cut the string. And anyway, I was seeing all of this. I wasn’t in a position to monetize the way they were. Uh, they already had kind of a machine behind them and they were grabbing stuff. And, and to the point where I was getting.

Pro guys who were saying like, he’s stealing your stuff and you’re, they would send me the, you know, BMI DM and I’d get salty and be in the shower, like having these fake arguments with them. Um, so I just said, I’m going to get out of here until I can figure out how to, how to monetize better. And plus don’t the one thing I don’t know if it’s actually helped me or hurt me, but I would start to get, once things started to really go well, uh, I would get comments like, okay, how can I hit with you?

And then the comment right underneath would be like, don’t even bother. He, he doesn’t have time, like army, it looks bad. So, and I would delete the both messages and then DM both of them and tell him to get away from me. Never talk to me again. But, but no, I w I just realized I’m not in a position to do what I want to do with this.

I didn’t enjoy that scene. Um, and so I just got out of it.

Dan Blewett: [00:35:15] Yeah. Well, it really is interesting. Just everyone thinks it’s easy to be on these platforms even once they’re successful, but lots of people on Instagram, especially, I think Instagram is hard to monetize. Number one, um, correct me if I’m wrong. But two, you have to do new things every day.

It’s like handing out a flyer, like every day you need to like a new Instagram post, which was part of the reason I just personally it’s like this isn’t for me. Like, I want like, I’m better with like longer form stuff, writing and longer video. So I just like, couldn’t do it. So I’ve been dormant, been dormant for a while.

Dan Hennigan: [00:35:49] The move that cracks me up though, is the guys that will post one swing of a hitter. They worked with them for an hour and they post that one really nice swing, but it’s enough for them to get the views and get the, I just can’t do that. I like to edit. I was, I was putting like music that aligned with the cuts and stuff.

I really enjoyed all that, but it took a while for a, for a 59 second video, you know? And so.

Dan Blewett: [00:36:12] I got it.

Bobby Stevens: [00:36:13] When you’re, when you’re given lessons or working with hitters from 12 to eight or whatever you’re doing to later on today, it’s it doesn’t leave much time for, Oh, let’s go edit this Instagram video for two and a half hours and hopefully watch it.

And somebody deems me for a lesson, right? You’re better off just putting your time into the guys you’re already working with and getting people referred to you because you are good at what you do.

Dan Hennigan: [00:36:41] Thanks, man.

Bobby Stevens: [00:36:41] Not you or either of you. Oh, right. People are good at things and they get referrals.

Dan Hennigan: [00:36:47] Right.

Gotcha. That makes more sense.

Dan Blewett: [00:36:49] Yeah. Well, and it is hard. Find the balance because like you said, if you’re always just doing lessons from sunup to sundown, it’s hard to get out of that because that’s just like working a nine to five job. Ultimately at some point, you want to find a way to teach your systems and then, you know, you can sell an online course or a book or whatever, while you’re doing other things, because the grind of hitting coaches and pitching coaches, even strength coaches, even when you really love working with people, which I think all of us do, it’s still just like, it just wears you out after awhile.

And it’s tough to. Have a social life when you work from 1230 to eight 30. Right. So,

Dan Hennigan: [00:37:26] um, exactly right. And that’s, that’s where I’m transitioning as we speak actually. So not you’re spot

Bobby Stevens: [00:37:32] on. So having a social life,

Dan Hennigan: [00:37:34] I’m learning, well, I’m not social enough. Anyway, Bobby and I, for those listening or watching, uh, we’re roommates were road roomies in 2013 and Bobby and I were both, uh, we would.

Right around 8:30 PM and say our prayers and we would go to bed.

Bobby Stevens: [00:37:57] Bob Bob

Dan Blewett: [00:37:58] was the social butterfly of this conversation.

Dan Hennigan: [00:38:02] Yeah, that’s the one low,

Dan Blewett: [00:38:05] the bar is set low, but you’re definitely the. It seems like the extrovert of the three of us, but so, so Dan you’re in Fort Myers and

Dan Hennigan: [00:38:16] kids

Dan Blewett: [00:38:16] are 96 at 16.

Dan Hennigan: [00:38:18] Yeah. How,

Dan Blewett: [00:38:21] how do you see young people changing?

I mean, are they heavily focused on their metrics and all this stuff? Are they bigger than they used to be five years ago? 10 years ago? Like, what is the youth baseball player? What do they look like today? What are they concerned about and what would you think they should be concerned about? If some of those things, maybe shouldn’t be their primary focus.

Dan Hennigan: [00:38:44] Okay. What do they look like? What are they concerned about? What should they begin? They look like grown ass men. Um, they are well-built, they, I, I really think it all stems from just. They choose something earlier. Now, where I, as small as I was, my first scholarship offer was actually basketball, not baseball.

Um, because I was John Stockton meets Allen Iverson. That’s who I was at. That’s who I thought I was in my bedroom at least. But, uh, no. So they picked something way earlier. They chose baseball. This is their thing. And their parents fully buy in to baseball. This is their thing. And so. They from an earlier age, look at a professional and say, okay, that if that’s, if that’s who I want to be, how can I be that?

And they start to act like it sooner, look like it sooner, play like it sooner. Um, so what do they look like? Bigger, better, stronger,

Bobby Stevens: [00:39:35] uh,

Dan Hennigan: [00:39:36] more professional, much younger, uh, even there, you know, pre at bat approach, I just like walked up to the plate, drag my bed, Hank honed by the knob and like, Picked it up and tried to hit, uh, these guys got a full routine that pop in the chain.

They got their professional from a super early age for better or worse. Uh, what are they focused on? They’re focused on getting to say, uh, what their ranking is. Um, whether that be a perfect game ranking. Or, uh, what college they’re committed to or what PBR has them ranked on their latest showcase? Uh, they’re concerned about the amount of followers they have on social media and, uh, just what they look like.

They’re very concerned about their appearance and what should they be focused on? They should be developing a competitive mindset that an end. To the point where they should be strategizing on what it takes at the position that they’re most likely going to play to reach the highest level, what that looks like currently, where things seem to be shifting and how they can not only match that level or surpass it, but how they can be enough of a Savage too.

Move the people that seem to be in their way out of their way, how they can compete and win. Um, and I, that I don’t see enough of. I don’t see the heavy competitiveness. What I will say is at that level, I did notice a little bit of what I felt in minor league ball, where you have a good game. You can feel someone else on your own team being like scammed.

They are not happy that you just had a good game because they can feel like, Oh, That’s not good. That means I have to have an even better game tomorrow because we play the same position. Um, so, um, I’m in the way of their dream and they’re in the way of my dream. You can see that at 16 years old now with some of these national teams, because depending on you know, how that guy does against Vilo, he might not play the next game.

And scout was there to watch him, but now he’s not playing. Cause he just struggled that game. And the other dude went two for three. So stuff like that, I think they need to. Uh, continue to, they gotta get used to it. Cause that’s how it is. It’s cut throat. So I think the competitiveness is where the focus should be learning how to win.

Bobby Stevens: [00:41:53] I don’t think people understand that, uh, what you said about professional baseball, like it goes against all your better instincts of playing as a team, trying to win, like. You know, being successful with each other. It’s not, no, it’s almost the complete opposite because everybody that’s sitting next to you in that locker room is essentially your competition.

It’s not the other team. The other team is not who you need to beat to make it where you want to go. It’s the guy sitting next to you. So it’s a, it’s like, it’s a weird tug of war between you’re friends with all those guys and. It’s gotta be even tougher for a younger kids. 16, 17 years old to see kids around them doing well that are on wearing the same Jersey.

But knowing that they’re also essentially taking food off of their plate, for lack of a better term,

Dan Blewett: [00:42:43] like they’re,

Bobby Stevens: [00:42:44] they’re, they’re, that’s their comp their competition is the guys in, on their own team, not the guys across the diamond, which is difficult to, you know, and to use Dan’s basketball analogy. You know, you’re not trying to beat the other guys throwing balls in hoops.

We’re trying to beat the case on your own team.

Dan Blewett: [00:43:00] Yeah. Poor use of my analogy. Don’t don’t don’t steal my analogies again. Thank you. This is, um,

Bobby Stevens: [00:43:07] I’m stealing your buzzwords.

Dan Blewett: [00:43:09] That wasn’t, that was just a very rudimentary way of analyzing basketball, but I stand by it. Um, yeah. So do you feel like that has a longterm.

Negative effects on these kids. Like, do you think they can develop the competitiveness that all of us, you know, developed as younger players? Or are they just kind of stuck in that routine? Because if you’re, you know, competing against your teammates, just like in pro ball when you’re not in pro ball, is there ever like a way out?

Dan Hennigan: [00:43:38] Um, well I think there’s two things. One I have seen, there’s a kid on the taxi squad with the Mariners right now. He has every. Possible tool. And I don’t see him making it, uh, and I’ve told him this until he can change his mindset because he’s so focused. He, we could be working alone and he’s just absolutely killing it.

A 12 year old could walk into the gym and you’ll see him look over and he like perks up. He like, posture’s up. He like changes who he is. And now he’s trying to impress us like. Just this other human and that human doesn’t care, but he feels this like burden. And I, I truly believe, I know again, psychological here, but I truly believe it’s stemming from the social media world of like, they’re constantly on Snapchat.

They’re constantly on Instagram or, you know, whatever the newest thing is going to be. Tick-tock. Um, And so th there’s like, they’re almost taught from an early age, how to like what to look like, how to be cool with everything they’re doing. And, uh, it doesn’t leave them just because they got signed. Um, so I, I think that, I don’t know how to remove that from him, but what I have had some sex obsessed with is just doing, uh, you know, just showing them what competitiveness looks like and what a winner looks like.

I’ve been sending guys there’s a. This whole area is video of, of Larry Bird and his trash-talk stories, but to trash talk like he did, and back it up, he was trash talking because he had worked on that thing long enough. And he was able to assess that defender and say, okay, that defender can’t physically or mentally stop me from getting to my spot.

And once I get to my spot, I’ve worked on that long enough to execute. And that’s not a whole lot different than it. A hitter. You know, running his mouth or talking trash or being really cocky about something where like some guys are just cocky to be cocky.

Dan Blewett: [00:45:40] Um,

Dan Hennigan: [00:45:41] and that, that doesn’t make any better. But when you know exactly what you’re trying to execute and, you know, you’re capable of executing it and then you see a pitcher that, you know, doesn’t have a specific thing that can beat you or prevent you from executing, you should be cocky and you should have this.

Killer mentality and, and showing guys what that looks like. Cause a lot of them don’t even know what that looks like. Uh, I have had some success with that with guys changing, but it, it’s not a perfect thing that I’ve, I haven’t found the perfect recipe yet. And I’m still it.

Dan Blewett: [00:46:18] Yeah. I kinda got like a flashback to like backyard baseball where.

You know, sometimes, you know, your body just like can possibly throw past you or just like, can’t get you to swing and miss it. They’re breaking ball. Like, it just isn’t enough. Like you can wait on something else and still not get beat by. It kind of feels like that. Same thing. It is a good, good

Bobby Stevens: [00:46:35] place at American guys.

We’re all friends with each other. Like those guys are, they, they want to see each other succeed at least outwardly, but their competitiveness is to be successful personally. I mean, there. I don’t want to say selfish because baseball is essentially always a selfish game. You’re always trying to be selfish and perform well, but like selfishly, these guys want to play.

Like they want to be paid and everything else happening around them is insignificant, which might take away from the team aspect of baseball that a lot of us in the States are used to, you know, try and win as a team, you know, team, you know, we, before I, or we before me. But

Dan Blewett: [00:47:18] you have a force. He except after C

Bobby Stevens: [00:47:22] proper grammar, Dan,

Dan Blewett: [00:47:23] it

Bobby Stevens: [00:47:24] proper grammar, but the competitiveness with some of these guys is, is going to shape the rest of their lives.

You know, so they

Dan Blewett: [00:47:35] have to be

Bobby Stevens: [00:47:36] Uber competitive. They have

Dan Blewett: [00:47:37] to

Bobby Stevens: [00:47:38] strive to be the best guy. Whereas some of the kids, you know, I’ll use my program. For example, if they don’t go to play college baseball, Their parents have saved for college. They’re going to go to a good school. They’re going to get a good education they’re coming out with, it’s not so much about not necessarily life or death, but it’s not so much of a, uh, rich or poor with, with a lot of kids.

And that’s you see it everywhere. I mean, people that come from nothing have the biggest impact in their sports. Like it’s cyclical, right? Like Mike Tyson, you look at all these guys that are super successful. Most of them come from. Struggled backgrounds, maybe not personally, but, uh, uh, financially or, or when they’re coming up there, they went through some hardships and they’re shaped who they are.

It’s hard to not naturally instill that in somebody.

Dan Hennigan: [00:48:29] Yeah. But I think a lot of that is. And I agree with everything you just said. I think a lot of that is organically groomed in them, uh, out of necessity, whether it be the Latin guy or it be Mike Tyson, there’s no plan B. There’s no safety net. So they fully buy in and, and you’re right.

I went right. When you started telling that story about some of the guys not worried about whether or not they play college ball, I immediately can think of a kid who was a really good ball plan, excellent field or solid hitter and D one player. But. He’s got such a safety net, uh, with his family and his upbringing that it’s just like, there’s no, there’s no fire.

There’s no competitiveness. So you’re right. I, I do, I’m still searching. I still believe that there is a solution and maybe it’s a different solution for each guy, but that has been my latest thing that, especially with the minor league guys where the moment, uh, I can get them to buy into that they go into spring and they’re just like, Meaner than the guys around them.

And they really start to differentiate themselves. And I think that’s the ticket, ultimately that, and knowing I’ve been trying to really find exact equity, what each and sometimes that’s the agent, sometimes it’s the organization, but find exactly what’s going to get that player from that organization to continue to bump up.

And, uh, actually it was, yeah, it was a white Sox first round or Gavin sheets, who was the first guy that I realized like, okay, it’s not just about. That hitters succeeding it’s about that hitter succeeding the way that that organization wants them to succeed. And so that’s where I have to really defer my teachings

Dan Blewett: [00:50:05] from, hit her, to hit her.

Dan Hennigan: [00:50:06] So it’s, it’s a, it’s a psychological game. And then it’s also like this. I have to appease the right people to make sure this guy gets his opportunity to get paid.

Dan Blewett: [00:50:17] So before we leave the, the mental, mental, uh, topic that we were talking about, what does humble. Mean to you. And where do you find that that word needs to, or where do you find neat being humbled needs to be a part of an athlete’s persona.

So I’ll give you an example. My, uh, a buddy of mine went to, you know, guy pitched in pro ball in the major leagues for a little bit. He went to, uh, uh, college and spoke to their, their players. And one of the questions like they were being real quiet, weren’t really asking any questions. And one of the questions that they asked them were like, how do you, how do you stay humble?

And he’s like, it pissed him off. He’s like, I’m here to give you my experience as a high pitcher. And you’re asking me how to stay humble. Like what’s wrong with you. What’s anyway, what does humble mean to you and should athletes be humble? And if so, what does it look like?

Dan Hennigan: [00:51:12] Humble in the baseball world with what does it mean to me?

Um, I guess humble means like, not, uh, Flamboyant with your, with your actions or your success not rubbing in anybody’s face? Um, I think the right version of humble, it would be like what the art of war talks about, where you never really disrespect your opponent. You always. Except the fact that that person can beat you on any given day and you understand, and you take the time to figure out how that person could beat you and you make sure that that doesn’t happen.

Uh, so I think that would be humble in the right way where you’re you never overlook your opponent. Uh, humble in the wrong way would be unafraid or afraid to. Beat the people around you afraid to make someone else look bad. Um, and I think that’s weak. I think it’s saying I struggle with that because I could have buried Bobby multiple times in 2013.

And I just didn’t, I, I let him feel good about himself and I regret that to this day. Um,

Bobby Stevens: [00:52:17] but we all have our regrets.

Dan Hennigan: [00:52:19] I just think we can carry

Bobby Stevens: [00:52:21] carrying that burden for seven years now.

Dan Hennigan: [00:52:23] Finally got it off my chest.

Dan Blewett: [00:52:25] No, that’s a, that’s a good point. And I, uh, I’ve been actually working on, uh, a mindset thing.

So I was actually on that topic yesterday. And. I think kids misunderstand this because I think parents rightly want to raise kids who are humble. Right. And, but you don’t take that on to the field. Like there is no being humble on the field, except for what I think what you said was very apt, which is respecting your opponents and all that stuff.

And I think also redirecting praise, right? So like you see the star athlete, you know, put up 60 points in a basketball match. And they’re asking him about it. And he’s like, well, yeah, you know, like our coaching staff since such a great job, you know, this guy had an amazing game. This guy is pushing us all year long.

Like the team that did talk about the team, right. They redirect the success that they’ve had to other people, but on the field, I feel like too many kids lack this. I’m going to bury this dude. I’m gonna make, I’m gonna make. And I’ve had this thought many, many times, like I’m going to punch out guy three times a day.

And I hope he gets released because of me. Like I had that thought many times on the mound. That’s not humble. That’s not nice. It’s not kind, but during the game, it needs to be that. And afterwards it can be something different, but I find that kids carry humble, this humble attitude, like, Oh yeah, there’s guys better than me.

No, there’s not, not during a game. There’s not, you’re the, you’re the, you’re the only one.

Bobby Stevens: [00:53:48] Did you, Hey Dan’s did you guys see the last dance? I know Dan blew it. You were

Dan Blewett: [00:53:54] watching a little bit of it. I watched it, I enjoyed it. Did you see it?

Dan Hennigan: [00:53:57] Yeah,

Bobby Stevens: [00:53:58] so,

Dan Hennigan: [00:53:59] but I, I should say I watched it in the sense of a playbook, not in the sense of entertainment, you know, like I really watched it with how can I get this mindset?

Because I already knew Jordan had it. You know, that’s not a question, but to learn how he did it, uh, and just get a little better insight into some of that stuff.

Dan Blewett: [00:54:19] Yeah. Did you get any, can you house someone else’s mindset?

Dan Hennigan: [00:54:24] Yeah. I mean, they talk pretty often about how that, how competitive the father would pit him in the brothers against each other, like, which, you know, created love I’m sure.

But it also created a lot of, probably like many traumas and eventually creates this hardened. Competitor that freaks out. If he loses, um, Terry Francona has a story when they’re playing basketball and Francona was like, we gotta get out of the gym and he picks up the ball and shoots Jordan had a freak out and was like, I take the last shot.

I take that. Francona was like, you don’t take the last shot until you can hit a curve ball. But the whole point was Jordan was back competitive that he made that last shot. And some other person tried to pick up his basketball and take another shot. You out of your mind. And like just those little things like that as craziest, like a psycho as that sounds, um, I think there is learning tools in there and just, just little competitive tidbits.

Bobby Stevens: [00:55:20] I think it’s pretty evident F when you watch the end game footage, you know, like he gets interviewed after he loses to the pistons or he loses, you know, or he wins an award and he’s not bashing anybody. He’s like, you know, they, they fought hard. It was their day. You know, we got to get better. We got to compete.

And it sounds like what you would want a professional athlete to say, like show respect for your opponent and then transition into Charles Barkley, got the BP in 93 and they’re asking Jordan about, and he’s like, okay, now it’s personal. Like he, he manifested. Something against somebody else and to overcome it because talent wise, he was always better.

He was always better than everybody else,

Dan Hennigan: [00:56:07] but he needed an edge.

Bobby Stevens: [00:56:08] Like you could tell it was getting like stale. That’s why I went to play baseball, at least according to him, like it was getting stale. He was just beating the crap out of everybody. So when he came back, he started to manage, you know, and I’m sure he did it before, but he’s talking about manifesting, you know, something out of nothing competition where there was no competition, you know, Uh, in edge, you know, somebody said, you’re looking across the diet or the cross, the coordin looking

Dan Hennigan: [00:56:32] at the guy garden, you and this guy said

Bobby Stevens: [00:56:34] something about my wife or my sister, or like he’s manifesting things that aren’t in real life and it’s putting them into this head space.

That’s that’s uncontrollably

Dan Blewett: [00:56:45] competitive. Yeah, hold on for me. I always think so. Say you got to witness exactly how Michael Jordan grew up and you like took notes. The thing is, if you did that same thing to a hundred people, you don’t get a hundred Michael Jordans. You get one still, you still get one. So it’s almost like there’s things you can do, but it’s hard to know.

What’s actually may cause I mean, what I took away from the last dance, it was. Of all the NBA players, incredibly competitive people. He was the most competitive and like hyper-focused at the right times. Compared to all of them, which is why he was who he was like the most recognizable human on the planet, that period of time.

But it’s so weird to think that at the highest levels where the difference between one player and other is nothing that he was like, just significantly better than everyone else. So it’s like you saying bolt where he was just so much faster than everybody else. Like that was so not normal. Right.

Everyone’s winning a gold medal by. A hundred of a second, two hundreds of a second. And then you say in bulk comes along and blows people out by an enormous margin. And it’s just really strange when that happens, especially when you feel like it’s a control more controllable factor, like men mentality, which it just, it was really interesting.

But if either guys read the book by. He was Jordan’s trainer, Tim Grover over. Yeah, I really, I really did. I really disliked that book, but Dan, what was your, what was your takeaway of it?

Dan Hennigan: [00:58:13] Um, well, so I was always using animals as my analogy, and I liked the three that, that he talks about. He talks about the cooler, the closer and the cleaner, um, and.

For those listening. Uh, each one has a little bit of a different personality and each one, uh, has a different value or the way that they get themselves going. One guy kind of is like the height man. He’s dancing in the clubhouse. He’s the one who, when there’s an alley, you P throws his Jersey up in the air.

He’s the crazy guy. He’s Willy dominance for the, for the rays. If you watch him after it, he’s got a celebration with. Every single player on that team. Uh, and then another one is a guy who more just hypes himself up. That was me. Uh, I would, I actually created the pitcher, the catcher and the empire were always against me.

That’s what I put in my head and I would get a hit and I would be cursing at all three of them. And especially in college where, uh, I was more successful and I was also less afraid to be mine. Self, which is something I regret in pro ball, but, uh, in college I would, I would leave the game off with a hit pretty often and, or get on base.

And I would be telling the pitcher, like it’s all F and day, it’s all day, you’re going, you’re going, how many needs you going? Not today. And if I knew that a kid, uh, and then, and then I’d still second and I’d be wiping dirt off. And I would just like, try my best to lock eyes with the catcher and just like, let him know, like, Your arm ready?

Is your arm ready for today? And, and that, that was just, and the catcher. I had no idea what was going on half the time. He didn’t look, look me in the eye because he didn’t care. He was just in his own world, but I’m creating these like thing. If I knew a scout there was for that pitcher, I would try to drop him down as many rounds as I possibly could.

If, if he was supposed to be a fifth rounder by the end of the day, if he was a 15th round and it’s a win for me. Um, so I needed that. That was the other type of person. Um, that’s more like a. Who’s like that a lot of closers are like that. You’ll see them just like really get themselves going. Like they’re like, Oh right.

Attack Farnsworth would be a great example of that. Just screaming at himself. And then the final is just sort of this cerebral dominance where they don’t really need outside. They just created within and they can affect everybody in some powerful way. That’s a quiet Leonard. That’s a Michael Jordan. But the, the reason I don’t like that book is because I think it’s far more nuanced than that.

Because where does Tim Duncan fall in that 10 Duncan as one of the most dominant players of all time, but he’s not mean he often compliments the other guy and tells them, Hey, next time, if you just try this with your elbow, you know, you’ll, you’ll get better leverage on me. And then so keep working kid stuff like that, but then you would also, you know, put up 30 points on you and 12 rebounds.

So, uh, he doesn’t really fall into that category. I feel like, uh, uh, Kurt showing who was someone that was super, uh, Calculated on how he pitched the people at one of the most dominant playoff pitchers of all time. He doesn’t really fall into any of the categories that he talks about. So there’s things that I took from that book, but there’s also things that, you know, I think, uh, and maybe that’s just an editing thing where the editor was like, listen, you can’t have 12 different examples.

We gotta

Dan Blewett: [01:01:19] bring

Dan Hennigan: [01:01:19] it down to three. I don’t know. But. Anyway.

Dan Blewett: [01:01:23] Yeah, I, that book flat from me because it was just like, to me, it’s just stories of guys that fit those three things and like nothing actionable whatsoever of like how you can actually improve your mindset. It’s like, all right. Cool dude code.

Brian’s awesome. Thanks. Like good, good book, Michael Jordan’s bear I’ll ever be. He’s got a mindset that I like. We’ll never have. Awesome. Appreciate ya. Like it was just like the most, I mean like fundamentally useless book after just hearing cool stuff, which can get you fired up, like, you know, great. It’s it’s always great to hear about what other people do, but at the same time, do you have any way of cultivating this?

Are you just telling me that there’s awesome. People that exist?

Dan Hennigan: [01:02:02] Right. And I think that’s where I had to try to create, take his stuff and what he valued or what he found common within all these studs. And I had to try to come up with my own way cause you’re right. He doesn’t really give it to you. And I still haven’t.

I still haven’t come up with it, but not you’re right. But I did, I will say I enjoyed it. I actually enjoyed the audible because whoever reads it gets me fired up. I don’t know who that guy is, but he reads it so well. Hmm, start punching like some,

Dan Blewett: [01:02:32] I,

Bobby Stevens: [01:02:32] I think you touched on something that I want to go back to.

It set like that, that little bit of self-doubt

Dan Blewett: [01:02:39] that

Bobby Stevens: [01:02:41] probably everybody experiences where you’re like, I wish I would have done that in pro ball. Like I wish I would have been myself in pro ball. Like you got to that level for a reason. Right? Like you fought your way to that level. And then we’ve all played at that level.

The professional level. At some point there’s, self-doubt creeps in whether it’s the, you know, can I compete at this level? Am I done at this level? You know, whatever, whatever it has to be, what you’re struggling, you know, I’m just not good enough at this level. And to transition back to a little bit of the Michael Jordan, I feel like he’d never had that self doubt.

Like there was never self doubt in that guy and they, you know, they referenced Kobe Bryant and. Outwardly, at least from a distance, it probably doesn’t seem like he ever had that self-doubt or he never showed it. And I think controlling that self-doubt because you see it. I mean, I work with youth guys a lot more than I work with pro guys.

You see self-doubt all the time. Like these kids have as much as they want to be inclusive and they’re, you know, they’re further along maturity wise and maybe we were with that age in some aspects, there’s a lot more self doubt. Like there’s not a lot, there’s not as much blind confidence in their talent.

Uh, even when they are, you know, talking about these kids in Fort Myers that are Uber talented and they’re going to be the best of the best, you know, in 10 years there there’s, you can tell the kids that have a little bit of self doubt. And it holds them back. It definitely holds them back a little bit.

And it’s, you have to fight through that somehow.

Dan Hennigan: [01:04:07] Yeah. I mean, uh, I mean, Barry bonds, didn’t had no doubt in my opinion. I still think he’s the greatest hitter of all time. Steroids are not, there’s a lot of guys at planet fitness that are taking steroids that can’t do it very bones did. Um, so, but anyway, he, you know, he has that famous quote of like, what are you doing?

You’re in a slump and I don’t slump. That’s his confidence. I don’t slump. I’m very bond. I don’t slump. Um, so like that, that there’s no self doubt there yet. And I guess going back to what you started with with, with me, if you go on to baseball reference and you look at my horrendous numbers, you will see if that’s even possible for the first two weeks to the month of every professional season I had, I was sitting over 400.

So I went into the season training, felt pretty good about myself. Go into the season with kind of a blank canvas. Dominant for a very short period of time by dominant, I mean, soft liners over the second baseman’s head and good defense. Um, so, but by, by month three, I’m hitting two 50 to two 20. And so what happened every single year?

The same thing. And it’s I had a bad game, then I’m the second bad game. And then I’m like, Oh no, here we go. I got to change it. Everything. I’ve got to figure out what’s going on. And then you start talking to people. You get three different voices in your head. Uh, this guy, he played in the big leagues and he just told me I should do this.

So I got to do this. He told me I should switch my bat size. I’m going to switch my bed size now. And that all stems from lack of confidence. And also this willingness, you want to appear coachable and you want to. Reach the levels that someone else reached and without having a concise roadmap and a logical reason why you’re doing what you’re doing, you just take on whatever you just heard.

And so by the end of of month three, uh, I don’t even remember what I was doing month one where I was hitting 400. Um, and, and this is. I I’m going to brag here. Here we go. I have freakish hand-eye coordination to the point where in my senior year of college, I didn’t swing and miss at a ball once. And, uh, my, my, I don’t know if it was my first or second year.

And. With the Somerset Patriots, uh, Lancaster, Barnstormers got well, York revolution got me to swing and miss at a pitch. This is in a day game and I swung and missed. That was my first swing and miss of the year. And it was probably in the second or third month and their whole Penn who was on the right field line, uh, threw their gloves up and the, the catcher.

Said to me, cause they started laughing. The catcher was laughing and the pitcher like this pump, this is strike one and he threw a really good change up. And they had this, these two white barn houses in centerfield and day games. You could see the barn house and you couldn’t see the ball. And so he threw a change up and I just want to miss.

And the catcher told me we had, we had a money pool. We would put money in a hat until we got used to swing and miss. So this is coming from someone who has freakish hand-eye coronation and still sucked. So, uh, and by soft, I mean, low two hundreds, mid two hundreds every single year. So that’s not good enough.

And that’s, again, coming from someone that can basically touch any ball they want to touch. And I still wouldn’t have good numbers. So listening to every single person, uh, and what they have to say about something is detrimental. I should have been a little meaner. I should have been more comfortable telling people.

I understand what you’re saying. Thank you. Um, but I feel pretty good right now, or I think I have a plan, but thanks. Uh, stuff like that. And the more I talk to guys like Josh Donaldson has this story. He was working at Bobby Tewksbary for a while. And Bobby and I did a couple of speeches together. And Donaldson was telling the story about, uh, when he was with the, the A’s and he kept getting pushed down to AAA big leagues, AAA big leagues.

Uh, finally he told the AAA guy, like, he was like, all right, what are we working on this time? And he said, we’re not working on anything. I have a plan here and I’m going to, I’m going to go for it. Cause this is. Like I got to try for myself one time and then he became the, the household name he eventually became.

Um, but I never had that confidence to say something like that. So yeah, th the self-doubt is real and how to get rid of it, I think is telling stories like w what I just told what you told, um, and, and letting guys understand, like, Hey, you’re going to feel this stuff. Um, but you got, you have to have a weapon to get out of it and you have to have a couple of anchors and by anchors, I mean, things that, you know, matter for your success.

And if someone gives you information as, as insightful and beautiful as it might sound, if it doesn’t pertain to your anchors, are you taking that information and that’s not making you any better, if anything, it’s getting you further away from them. And eventually you’re just gonna sail away and forget what you were doing.

Dan Blewett: [01:08:33] Yeah, that’s a hardly really good. Yeah. That’s a hard place to be in to figure out when you can actually reject advice. And when you should try it, because being coachable and with mind, you’re like, Oh, I should try that. But at some point you’re right. You have to like kind of close the door on people’s faces.

Is that what you’re going to say? Bobby, were you going to ask us Bobby

Bobby Stevens: [01:08:50] now with you never. Never,

Dan Hennigan: [01:08:53] he was my compliment me. I

Bobby Stevens: [01:08:54] was going to compliment Dan and I was also going to add on to his mindset is you start the season, hot 404. You know, when you’re playing in pro ball, it’s about getting consistent Abbs.

It’s about being in a lineup every day and hopefully getting picked up and moved up. Well, correct me if I’m wrong, Dan Hennigan. Were, were you ever slotted as the starter for any of those years? Or were you

Dan Hennigan: [01:09:20] just when I, uh, with, with Camden?

Bobby Stevens: [01:09:22] Okay. Well that was later. And for anyone listening look up Dan’s career, that was, that was a little bit later, right?

That wasn’t your first year?

Dan Hennigan: [01:09:29] No, that was my fourth.

Bobby Stevens: [01:09:31] Okay. So the first three years as a guy and I been in this mindset before you start out hot and you’re still not in the lineup every day, You feel like, okay, I got to change something, right? There’s I need to, I need to, somehow the next rung of being a part-time player is being a full-time player.

And the next rung of being a full-time guy and independent ball is getting picked up and being an affiliated ball. Well, if you can’t, you know, if 400 isn’t good enough or starting out that hot, isn’t going to have to get you a full-time guy, then that self-doubt creeps in and okay. I need to do something different.

And then you lose all sense of self. When what you’re doing is very successful, stick with it. And Dan blew it. I’m sure you’ve gone through this and on the pitching side, and I know I’ve done it myself in affiliated ball where you’re. Just you’re fighting like an internal struggle of what everyone else expects X from you and what you know works and what you know is successful for yourself.

And it’s being stubborn too, you know, how do you be coachable and also stubborn in the fact that you know yourself, but, and everybody else.

Dan Blewett: [01:10:36] Yeah. And it’s tough to know when, to, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this. Uh, Dan too, is it’s hard to know when to change and when not to change. That’s one of, I think the most, really difficult decisions you can make.

So for me, and my last three seasons, I hit like a two, two to three weeks slump. Each of those seasons, of course, my last season was just sort of a train wreck. But during those slumps, as it, as they endure, you’re like, Is this just variants, right? Am I just having bad luck or line drives? Not finding holes or my bats, you know, I might just getting beat sometimes and I shouldn’t change my approach or is it actually time where I actually do need to make an adjustment to my swing?

Or do I actually actually need to change my approach? Like when do you actually need to change when you’re not playing your best? Um, you know, my last year in long Island, I was. Like heard enough where my stuff was diminished, but not heard enough where I had to come out of the game. So I wasn’t getting people out.

And I started to get a lot of all, you should do this. Why don’t you throw a sinker? Why don’t you, you know, pitch away more, all things that never ever worked for me. But since I was struggling, I was like, maybe, maybe I, maybe a sinker would help me right now because. Other stuff is different and things aren’t working as well.

And you start to, and then you just get really lost. And that’s where I was and at different points. But my two previous seasons, when I was doing well, I forged right through those slumps. I was like, I’m very sure I’m throwing the ball. Well, I’m very sure things are just, I’m just in a rough patch.

Sometimes you just get hit. I’m very sure that if I keep doing my thing, keep throwing the ball. Well, the results will eventually improve and they did. But Dan, how do you know when you should change and when you shouldn’t? Well,

Dan Hennigan: [01:12:19] I wish there was an easy answer, like a one size fits all, but they’re just not so certain guys like, uh, like for instance, I got flown to San Diego and th there, there was a catcher with them, uh, Austin Barnes, and I think he hit one 79, the last full season.

And this year he was just as poorest and, uh, I got a pretty good video of his movements and they’re solid. He’s got a better swing than a lot of guys that are hitting too. Um, so does that this guy needs swing adjustments, maybe little ones, but should he be trying to make swing adjustments mid season?

Probably not. I think his approach was horrendous. He was swinging at balls way out of the zone. Um, Chasing everything. So I think someone like that when, once you look at the context, uh, you can see, okay, this guy needs in approach adjustment, and maybe just a complete mindset overhaul. And then you look at somebody else who looks like they’re on time.

Um, a Nick Ahmed would be an example of that in my opinion. Uh, so that’s a really good defensive middle infielder for the Diamondbacks, uh, that dude’s swing just. Isn’t good enough yet and it’s getting there, but I think he has great at beds and I think he does some really impressive stuff. Uh, he just went in his bat, touches a ball, cool things don’t happen because he’s not community.

He doesn’t collide with the ball in a way that gives him good results. And so that person, uh, they could mid-season, uh, switched some things up with, with, with their minds and, and then, and then there’s other guys where, and this was my biggest thing. They’re hitting the ball. Well, they’re squaring it up and they’re just getting out and then they start changing and you’re like, dude, don’t touch a thing.

You can’t control the fact that that center fielder was playing in a weird spot and just made a diving play on you. You’re over three was three rockets. Stop it. Um, so those are the three different things. Sometimes the swing is money. Don’t touch it, your mindset or your approach or your vision just sucks.

Um, other guys, your approaches money don’t touch it, but your swing sucks. And then other guys don’t touch a thing. Just keep, just trust what you’re doing. And to know that it’s so different for each person, but I know I failed with it. Um, even the year that I finally got the opera and Bobby put it perfect at it, the independent route is establish a role for yourself.

Once you’ve established that role, prove that it’s a valuable to, uh, an affiliated program and let them sign you from there. And, and that’s the year that I got picked up offensively. It was my, I think my worst year, but I was playing shortstop almost every game I was defending. My arm was really strong that year in defensively.

I was. That was a monster that year. I was making a bunch of web gyms. I had Pedro from these come out to me after a game and make me show him how I was doing certain things and all this cool stuff. And so I finally got that opportunity, but that year I started off that first week with like, I can still vividly remember a couple of line drives where the centerfielder did that thing, where they just kind of like crouched down.

They don’t move and then it catch it. And like, I hit like three or four like that. And that’s a really good result to hit a rocket right at the center field. Or they don’t have to move. Um, but I started changing things cause I was getting out and it’s just like such a common story for so many guys. You struggle.

So yeah. And that brings us all the way back to the confidence.

Dan Blewett: [01:15:43] Yeah. Yep. Do you have like a hard hit, do you have like a hard hit ball ball shard? Or is there anything that you suggest that young hitters do where they can track? Like, because for example, so you have 10 games and you hit a really hard, you hit like one hard hit ball, every, you know, you’re like one for three with a harder ball and all 10 of those games, you’re the potential to hit three 33.

Out of those 10 games, which is a good stretch. Right. But sometimes it mind drives caught maybe three out of the 10 it’s caught and the other seven, it goes through for a hit. So you only got seven hits out of your 30th baths. And so you’re only hitting, you know, uh, two 40, like have, w what advice is there anything tangible, actionable that you give the players to help them understand how they’re actually doing?

Dan Hennigan: [01:16:32] Yeah, so I have, and I, I can’t. Uh, divulge all of it. Um, but I do have a, a lot of guys have a hitting Vilo that they want, or an exit Vilo, or basically how hard the ball comes off the bat in a game. And so there’s, there’s that, and they’re, they’re looking for like, Hey, we gotta be triple digits, man. We gotta get to 100 and then they have a launch angle.

Let’s get to 30. Five and a hundred miles per hour, 35 degrees. Like we’re going to do some really cool stuff. Well, that’s great. But at no point in my life, will I hit a ball, can assistant a hundred miles per hour. So if that ends up being 94, when I really square something up or 96 and I’m at 30 degrees, that’s a fire.

So what I do is I really define what that hitter, especially with the pro guys. Cause most of them. For the most part have physically peaked. Now they could get a little stronger, but all of them take their body very serious. They take their nutrition very serious and their flexibility mobility. Um, so there’s not going to be, unless there’s an obvious momentum or ground force or kinetic chain issue where the, where they just aren’t using, uh, their body well enough to make the bat move faster.

A lot of them are already swinging really hard and they’re really strong. So we’re not going to get any higher fellows. So then we look at okay at that Vilo, where is that ball gonna typically land? And then we will adjust the type of game that they’re gonna play. Um, so certain guys, I do need to bring the launch angle down, uh, and it’s not like a, we need to be at 12 degrees here, but I just, I show them, you know, when you consistently hit a ball like this physics doesn’t lie.

And so that’s where the ball lands. Uh, and then from there we can start to play these two or three man games. And just to give you an example, Um, the Astros did a great job of it. Carlos Correa and George Springer did it where they raise, put four guys on the, on the left side of the infield. And they both punched it through the second base gap.

Uh, kind of like a massive four hole that the brain’s leave open. And so that was a one man game. They were playing Caray was playing against one guy and often it was like Jima and Troy, which no, I love G man. It’s awesome to watch that guy, but. He’s not the defensive guy you’re worried about. So when you can play a one man game against the first basement, there’s a good chance.

If you understand angles and how to attack that ball, he’s not, it’s tough for him to cover all that ground. A three man game would be a man on first, uh, One out and you got the second basement and double play depth. You got the first basement coverings, and now you have this massive four hole and then you’ve got the right fielder.

So can we play as a left? Can we play to the poolside and try to play this three man game me versus three. I’m not competing against the pitcher, the catcher, the umpire I’m competing against the first basement, second basement and right fielder and, and, and what. Point of contact. Can we grab on that ball that gives us that direction and, and the way that that ball can come off in a way that can be hit.

So, yes, there’s absolutely a very tangible things that physics doesn’t lie about. Um, now, as far as like, once we explain that, then we dive immediately into. Just fuels and games within the game that give them that stuff. So earlier we were talking about the top knuckle that’s a game within the game pitcher doesn’t know that the hitter trying to hit the top knuckle of a baseball, he probably doesn’t even know what that means, but the hitter is playing that game within the game.

So there’s a, there’s an easy. A feel for that person that hopefully gives them the results that we know are optimal for that player. Uh, so again, going back to Camden, I had really dove into, uh, driving the ball and hitting mechanics. And I was someone who could always have pretty good, uh, body awareness.

So if you taught me something new, I would literally do what you taught me. Um, And so I did a lot of these teachings at that program we’re working with. And, and anyway, I ended up find out a bunch, a lot of good barrels, but there were fly outs where someone else that Paul’s way out. Um, so that was game for me.

That was so to get back to your question yet, there are tangible things you can do. And, uh, that’s something that I feel has really given me a lot of, uh, success most recently. Uh, it has nothing to do with the mechanics, but, uh, just kind of angles in a way. That in bulk and communicate with each other.

Once, you know, the game you want. I got a kid with the Astros right now. It’s going to be in the big leagues

Bobby Stevens: [01:21:01] and

Dan Hennigan: [01:21:02] awesome mindset. Uh, but he is someone whose mechanics, the Astros hate, but he constantly gets to his spots. I call them, which is just where he’s making contact. And he’s just dominate people. He, they just did their training camp thing for some of the younger guys.

He had a bunch of triples. He was facing a guy throwing a hundred and he went, he poolside Homer and stuff. And anyway, and, and his mechanics. Aren’t great. But he’s getting to good spots and he knows what his good points of contact result in. So a lot of times he can make contact and just kind of put his head down and run the second base.

Cause he knows it’s a double already. Um, and that’s kind of something I’m really proud of.

Bobby Stevens: [01:21:38] So when you’re, when you’re working with guys, let’s, let’s say varsity high school or above, you know, kids that are facing some decent velocity. What are you telling them about two strike approach? Are you, are you changing anything, uh, approach wise or.

You know, what’s the mindset there for you as far as teaching

Dan Blewett: [01:21:56] to

Bobby Stevens: [01:21:58] let’s say better hitters?

Dan Hennigan: [01:21:59] Well, I, I don’t like, uh, this new wave of a strikeout is, is the same as any other out. Um, I just, I don’t like it. And I, I feel that the teams that are able to get to strike heads, which you’ve seen in the playoffs are teams that are winning.

And so I do believe in trying to, I don’t want to say short enough, but. Be more prepared to touch a ball versus to just swing out your shoes. And, uh, so what I teach is different weight distribution things, some, and you can do the same weight distribution with a no stride, like a Daniel Murphy or a one soda pretty often.

Um, Or get the toe down really early and then kind of turn it into a no stride, like a Nelson Cruz, or, um, with a leg kick in, in a hover, uh, like a Trevor story, like a loop foyer. Uh, so there’s a, and they all have the same weight distribution. So all these guys arguing about like what the back legs doing and what the front side should be doing and all these arguments you see, um, a lot of them are actually talking about the same stuff.

They just only were taught to teach it one way. And don’t realize that the other person is actually teaching the exact same ground force and exact same weight distribution. It’s just moving a little differently. So anyway, once you understand how the body can kind of move and set itself up and then hold and still create some type of force.

You can get down early or, or prep yourself earlier than you usually do, and be in a position to touch a ball. And I’m a firm believer in being able to touch a ball, two strikes. Uh, I actually teach a lot of guys to shrink the strike zone. And I got that from Corey Hart who had a couple of pretty big years with the brewers tall blonde dude, if you guys remember him, um, but uh, I work with his son and they’re in Arizona and we’ll have pretty good talks and he, he.

We talk about how that whole team really Prince fielder always had a 400 plus on base percentage and he was on that brewers team. And he would say like a lot of times they shrank the zone once they had two strikes, because those, those nibble pitches are usually fast balls that like really they’re dotted up.

And yet I’ve got to try to fight them off anyway, or it’s a pitch that was never meant to be a strike and it’s a good slide or a good change up that looks like that. Nibble strike and ended up falling off. So once they shrank the zone, it actually made their, uh, at batch with two strikes cleaner. Uh, and I know we don’t have the time to really dive into that, but yeah, I had them really lock in on the middle of the zone and be able to kind of feed off of that because even if your brain is set up for the middle, uh, once the pitches start, you’re going to attack pitches that are a little bit outside of that middle anyway, and that ends up being the edges.

Uh, so that’s been effective. And then just being in a position where you can control bodies. The weight and, and compete. So, uh, Randy Rosen Marina was talking about how his brother brain thinks curve ball, but his hands think fast ball. I think it’s a beautiful little sentiment because there he’s prepared for the speed of a fastball, but he’s also like aware of what all the other things that could be coming.

And I think different versions of that, no matter how you have to say it to someone that’s so valuable, two strikes. Uh, the best compliment I ever got was when, uh, Brad penny, who was in the, or it was a pretty bad penny and clinically for a second.

Dan Blewett: [01:25:14] Was he? I don’t remember. I don’t know. I’m not sure. I want to say yes, but I don’t remember Brad,

Bobby Stevens: [01:25:19] Tyler,

Dan Hennigan: [01:25:21] Brian, tell you that’s my dude, but I tell times, but, uh, I swear at brand penny, penny now not the big chubby bread penny, the sinkerball bread penny.

Anyway, uh, he told me after game one time, like, dude, I hate seeing you in the on-deck circle. Cause immediately my brain goes to like, Oh, I gotta throw 12 more pitches. And I want her to throw this in him. And I took that as a compliment, mainly because I sucked, but uh, me giving them that hard of a time with and knowing that even when they got two strikes on me, that it wasn’t a punch out.

I took that as a compliment. Now imagine. That same feeling that pitcher gets with a hitter. That’s actually dangerous. Unlike what I was, uh, that’s dangerous. That’s scary. And that’s what I think makes Juan Soto. So absolutely dominant is because he has a real two strike approach versus like an Austin Meadows is up there.

Just

Dan Blewett: [01:26:06] hacking. Yeah. Lou Ford was kind of like that in the Atlantic league, even though he wasn’t like ultra dangerous, Lou Ford was fun to pitch against because it brought the best in you, but he was. If it really mattered, he was going to take you 10 pitches, deepen the at bat for sure. And then if you left one over the middle of the zone, he was going to hit it hard, like, yeah.

Dan Hennigan: [01:26:26] And that’s the guy who was ended, ended up playing in the playoffs with the word

Dan Blewett: [01:26:31] when it was like 58 years old too. Yeah.

Bobby Stevens: [01:26:33] He’s still playing. Is he not.

Dan Blewett: [01:26:35] He might be. I mean, and I mean, it’s not hard to see why you can hang around when you just consistently have really quality of bats. Right. Even as your bat speed slows, you know, he’s in his forties still just has great ABAs and eventually gets a good pitch that he can hit.

Right. He, he couldn’t, you know, maybe put a ball out APO anymore on the pitch on the black. Like maybe he go when he was younger, but he’s just gonna say, all right, uh, I’m just going to wait till I get one out or half and I’m going to put in the Rayfield gap or whatever. So, yeah. Um, if only you had the pop Dan go APO taco after you’re on your 13th pitch of the bat, right?

It’s not, not in the cards for you,

Dan Hennigan: [01:27:15] not in the cards it was in there.

Dan Blewett: [01:27:18] Yeah. So Dan, where can people find you on the web? What are you doing out there where they can learn more about you and your message?

Dan Hennigan: [01:27:27] Uh, brain in barrel hitting.com, uh, would be how to find me right now. Go on my Instagram, you’ll learn some stuff.

Uh, you’re not gonna see anything for a little bit, but in a couple of months, uh, I developed something that we touched upon a little bit with with understanding what type of hitter you are. Uh, and I got some financing for it. And so we’re, we’re really gonna push it coming to 2021. And so. Stay on the brain and barrel awareness because it’s going, gonna, it’s going to, the marketing pushes is coming, and if you want to work with me, I’m not easy to get ahold of.

So I apologize, but, uh, I, I, I, uh, DME or go, go through the proper channels on my website. You’ll see the contact me page.

Dan Blewett: [01:28:15] Well, very good, Dan, this is a great conversation. We’ll have to have you back on again. I think we’re going to plan a hitting round table, so we’ll have to have you in it. The guy who.

Just throws, throws down with everyone else to call it the daggers. Yeah. And we need to have, uh, your co-conspirator Kenny on the show at some point to talk about your other endeavor, the, uh, yeah. King of the Hill. Yeah. That’s pretty fun. The experts summit. So, but, uh, it’s obviously been great to, we appreciate your time.

Bobby, do you want to send our, our good friend Dan on his way,

Bobby Stevens: [01:28:49] Annie? Appreciate it. I’ll be in touch with you shortly here. Well, Dan blew it.

Dan Hennigan: [01:28:55] All right.

Dan Blewett: [01:28:56] On our flights.

Dan Hennigan: [01:28:56] I’ve talked to both of you enough today, so that’s okay.