Crush Your High School Baseball Tryouts (10 Tips)

Hey, Alex here. Thanks for joining me. In today's episode, we're going to be Talking about my 10 tips to crush your high school baseball tryouts. Whether you are a junior or senior that has already made the varsity team in the past, this will help you. Or you're a freshman or sophomore trying to make the varsity team, or just any team in general. I'm going to be talking about positions as well. So I'm going to be talking about pitchers, tips for pitchers during tryouts, catchers, infielders, outfielders, hitters, all around here. Running a 60, a quick little tip that will help you as well. So if you get anything from this video, please smash that thumbs up that, like, button right down here and subscribe to my channel. And if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm a former Division I college coach, scout and recruiter with 11 years of experience. And now what I do is help high school baseball players and their parents navigate this college recruiting process. All right, so let's dive into this. So I want to go over really four or five things before we get into the position. So stay with me because these are important, especially as we go into tryouts. And as a coach that would watch players and recruit players and scout players and decide if they are going to come be part of my team, I would always look at their attire, how they dress, because it says something, all right? If you show up sloppy, there's likelihood that there's going to be a lot of sloppiness in your game. On the field and off the field. Look the part. Look like a ball player. Have your shirt tucked in, have a belt. Do not forget your belt. All right? Wear your hat properly. Okay? Again, tuck in. Whether you want socks down or up doesn't really matter. But look like a ballplayer. This does go a long way because there are first impressions and there is judgment. As far as when they watch a player look at a player right away, okay, act like a ballplayer. In leader especially, this comes with juniors and seniors that maybe feel confident that they're already going to make the team because they were a contributor to the varsity team and they kind of slack off and they are kind of goofing around too much. Hey, cut all that out. You want to be a leader, okay? Lead by example. Take this seriously. Take your team seriously. What's your goal? Right? What's your goal as a team? Probably to win the district, win your conference, go on to go to states. Well, you need to start taking this stuff seriously. And those freshmen and sophomore players are going to be looking up to juniors and seniors. Now, my freshman and sophomore year, you need to come in, all right? Have your shoulders back, keep your chin up, and observe everything. And lead by example, by just how you go about your business. And observe the juniors and seniors, what are they doing well as a leader, what aren't they doing well, and making sure we don't do that. So act like a ball player and act like a leader. Doesn't matter what grade you are in. All right? Body language and energy would always observe this. Take a look at this. I'm watching the body running around, not talking about being crazy, but just having a good energy and having a good vibration about you and hustling and doing all those things that you know you should be doing okay. And sometimes people get caught up, like, oh, I'm kind of going to be looking bad to my peers, to my friends, right, Because I'm hustling, maybe they're kind of slacking. No, if you want to be a good ball player, you want to be a college ballplayer, a pro ballplayer, you need to be running around having good body language, whether you make an error, whether you make a great play, having good body language. And you're not having peaks and valleys of really down and really up. You are steady Eddy as you go through this. Number four, be prepared and play aggressively. Be prepared of what you are doing. A lot of showcases, all right? They will have a showcase style, or as we call it, a pro style, where if you're a position player, you're going to run a 60, going to throw the bases, you're going to hit BP and then hopefully play some games as well, all right? But not everybody has games. But be prepared of what you are doing. So when it comes up, all right, you are ready for it. And obviously, if you're watching this and you got tryouts the next day or two, make sure that you are thinking visually and visualizing yourself of what's coming your way. And be also prepared for the unknown stuff might pop up that you didn't predict. And that is okay. That is life. All right? That is okay. You're not going to get everything right, but as much as you can, think ahead. And then if you're watching this and you have a couple months to go, hey, you need to be running the 60. Throwing, you need to be obviously hitting. Weight room, weight room, weight room. The strength solves a lot of things. Okay, now for my pitchers, all right, so we're in a tryout, a lot of us might throw like a 20 pitch pin. As a coach, especially at the high school level, I am looking for you to fill up the zone. Are we looking for velocity? Of course. Everybody's looking for velocity. And I do want you to throw hard to a certain extent for you, Right. Just because you could throw maybe 85 miles an hour, but you don't know where it's going, doesn't mean you should. I much rather have a guy that throws 80 to 82 that could throw 85. Right. But he's going to fill up the zone. He's going to throw his breaking ball over for a strike all day. I much rather take that guy than a guy that does 85. So velocity is important. Yes, but to a certain extent, don't let Velo take away your strikes, okay? Because if you're going to try to throw and you're all scattering kind of like a shotgun, and everything's just spraying everywhere, that's not what we want. We're more of a rifle. Okay, coming through. Right through the catcher. Okay, so. So filling up the zone. Don't try to be so on the black, if you will. Hey, think middle down, middle down. I'm going to attack the zone. All right? Catchers, work on getting pitches right. Work to get pitches, Work to get pitches back there. Coaches notice that stuff. Your pitchers will love you for that. Don't be lazy back there with your receiving. Just catch it and throw it back. No, you stick it. All right? Even in bullpens, even in trials. Block everything. Have a mindset. If I were to tell you I'm going to throw 100 balls at you, they're going to be crazy. 100 balls, how many are you going to block? You should say 100. I'm going to block all of them. Right? That's the mindset that you have. And be accurate with your throws. Accurate with your throws. Yeah, we're looking for pop times and all of that, but don't be so caught up on the lowest pop time. Be accurate with your throws. Quick feet, quick hands as you go, and good transfer infielders. We're looking for smooth feet and glove. That's what you want. You want to think smooth out there. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. So think as you're going, like usually the middle, infielders, shortstops and second basements. I'm kind of talking about all of infielders here are very smooth. How do you get smooth is you work on being smooth. So work on your feet. Work on your hands and making sure we're following our throw and throwing through the first baseman, not to the first baseman, but throwing through him. Outfielder, stay behind the ball, be in an athletic position and work your way through the ball as you go and work your way through those throws and let it rip. Not making sure that we're not sailing it up in the air, but you're going to have a little bit of an angle because this is obviously a longer throw. And if you can't make it all the way back, think one good one hop throws or two hop throws if you need it. Hitters be a hitter, right? Especially in high school. We don't need all these power guys. You guys aren't all power guys. Know who you are as a, as a hitter, right? And most of us, including myself. When I was in high school, I was a hitter. I was like kind of a dirtbag ball player that knew how to get on base. Singles, doubles, all of those things. I would run into a home run every once in a while, but I didn't try to, okay? Anytime I tried to hit a home run, I got myself in trouble. So be a hitter. Coaches want hitters and they want hitability, which means you consistently hit the ball hard. That's what we want. We're looking for line drives all over the field, not balls off the wall at home runs. If you can do that, man, great. But you still should think, I'm going to hit this ball hard and that will just work into that. That will. Those home runs will come naturally, not you trying to lift the ball and try to hit the ball out of the park, okay? So know your identity and make sure that you are hitting the ball hard at a good trajectory there with your running. When you're running. If I'm running at the camera here, I'm having an open stance, okay? I'm going to have an open stance at this point and making sure you can take a tenth or two off your 60 before you even run. Just like how you're set up. A lot of people close their stuff off and I'm going that way and they have to work around. That's a tenth right there, right? A tenth like that. But you want to have a good open stance. You're not going to be exactly like a sprinter, but if you go 50% having a good open stance, improve that 60. What else? What else did I miss here? Those are my top 10 tips. Hopefully you enjoyed that. If you got anything again, make sure you subscribe and like this video. And I'll see you in the next one. Have a good one.