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PODCAST

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED

Baseball Coaches Unplugged is a podcast for insights on high school baseball coaching, travel baseball development, and college recruiting from coaches building winning programs. Each episode features real conversations about high school baseball coaching, travel baseball development, college recruiting, player development, practice planning, pitching and hitting development, and building a winning baseball culture.If you’re a baseball coach looking for practical ideas on running better practices,

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All Episodes

11:54

Why Playing Other Sports Can Improve Baseball...

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/10/07

Send us Fan Mail Parents Are Running Baseball This episode makes a direct case against year-round single-sport specialization in youth baseball. Coach Ken Carpenter argues that multi-sport athletes are more durable, less burned out, and better prepared for long-term development than kids who play baseball only. He breaks down the issue through sports science, psychology, and real-world coaching observations, with the core message that athletes should diversify instead of locking into basebal...

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52:36

How To Teach Base Stealing That Wins Games

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/09/30

Send us Fan Mail Kevin Graeber on Masters Academy International, year-round development, and a practical system for base stealing Coach Ken Carpenter talks with Kevin Graeber, the coach behind Masters Academy International in Massachusetts, about building an athletics-centered school, developing runners without overloading them, and teaching base stealing with repeatable mechanics. Kevin breaks down his approach to leads, returns, right-handed and left-handed pitchers, momentum steals, and st...

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30:58

3 Reasons Why Command and Movement Will Always Beat...

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/09/23

Send us Fan Mail Win a state championship as a player, win a gold medal with Team USA, then come home and win another state title as the head baseball coach. That is the arc Coach Kristen Caldwell brings to Baseball Coaches Unplugged, and it is packed with practical lessons for anyone building a high school baseball program the right way. We talk about the real transition from assistant to head coach at Caravel Academy in Delaware, including how she handled roster turnover, set priorities, an...

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12:50

How Elite High School Coaches Win With Average Rosters

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/09/16

Send us Fan Mail The gap between a good high school baseball team and a great one is rarely just talent. It is the coach’s ability to create an environment where “average” players execute like winners and where the team keeps improving when the schedule gets tough. We start with an uncomfortable question: if two programs have the same roster of gritty, ordinary athletes, why does one compete for district and regional titles while the other scrapes for 10 wins and blames everyone else? We get...

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30:04

Is It Mechanics or Overuse? The Truth About High...

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/09/09

Send us Fan Mail Tommy John surgery shouldn’t feel like a rite of passage for teenage pitchers, yet more high school baseball players are dealing with UCL tears and elbow sprains before they ever graduate. We sit down with Dan Deleandro, a sports physical therapist at Ohio State University Sports Med and an assistant varsity baseball coach, to get honest about what he’s seeing in the clinic and on the field and why the elbow is taking the hit more than the shoulder. We dig into when throwing...

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47:24

How To Build Confident Baseball Players With Brutal...

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/09/02

Send us Fan Mail A lot of coaching advice sounds good until the game speeds up and the dugout gets tense. That’s why this conversation with Ben Bizier hit so hard. Ben shares a surprising tool that sharpened his feel for momentum and body language: playing cards. He explains how learning to “scan the table” becomes a real-world coaching skill for reading both dugouts, adjusting your message on the fly, and knowing when a player is actually hearing you. From there, we get deep into player dev...

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49:11

Why Winning Follows When Culture Comes First

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/08/26

Send us Fan Mail You can feel it when a program is built to last and Highland Sparta High School baseball in Ohio has had that feeling for decades. We sit down with Donnie Kline and Travis Church, two coaches who have both been head coach and assistant coach in the same program, to unpack what actually drives long-term success when the roster changes every year. The headline is simple but hard to execute: culture first, players second, coaches third, and wins show up as the outcome. We dig i...

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9:58

Stay or Quit: The Emotional Baseball Coaching...

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/08/19

Send us Fan Mail A single late-night email from an angry parent can stick with you for years. That’s where we start: the words you can still quote, the blame that still burns, and the way August silence has a sneaky way of dragging every hard moment back into the room with you. When the field is empty and the dugouts are quiet, it’s easy to wonder if you’re done, especially after a season of pressure, tough losses, and giving your best energy to someone else’s kids. We walk through the full ...

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41:52

Why Youth Baseball Is Key To High School Success

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/08/12

Send us Fan Mail Baseball can feel like it’s thriving on highlight reels while quietly shrinking in the neighborhoods that used to feed high school programs every spring. We sit down with Pittsburgh coach Joe Capobianco to talk about what happens when you return to your alma mater and try to rebuild a once-proud program at Penn Hills while participation numbers fall and confidence is hard to find. The big question is simple and urgent: how do you keep kids playing when the cost of youth baseb...

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12:25

Why Did the Best Kid in Town Quit Baseball?

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/08/05

Send us Fan Mail A 14-year-old can have a loose arm, quick feet, and a bat that makes every coach look up and still get pushed out of baseball by one question: “How much is this going to cost by the end of the summer?” That’s the gut-check driving this conversation, because the cost of youth baseball has become more than team dues. It’s uniforms, gate fees, composite bats, turf shoes, gas, hotel blocks, missed work, and the kind of math families shouldn’t have to do just to keep a kid playing...

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51:09

Baseball Coaching Strategies for Close Games and...

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/07/29

Send us Fan Mail You can watch a high school baseball game and think it’s all about the swings, the calls, and the final score. Then you talk to a head coach and realize the real game is happening in a hundred small moments: preparation, communication, trust, and the ability to make a decision and live with it when one pitch changes everything. We’re joined by Jonathan Gelnar, head baseball coach at Claremore High School in Oklahoma and host of the Ahead of the Curve podcast, for a candid co...

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10:36

When Baseball Gets Small And Life Gets Big

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/07/22

Send us Fan Mail A two mile an hour ride on a hospital gurney can do what 27 years in a baseball dugout never could: tell you, without mercy, what actually matters. We step away from signs, stats, and strategy and talk as a coach, a father, and a husband who had to stare down an eight-hour surgery and hear the words “50% failure rate.” When your world shrinks to the ceiling above you, the scoreboard disappears and the real highlight reel starts playing. We share a powerful image from t...

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33:41

Blue-Collar Blueprint for Baseball Players

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/07/15

Send us Fan Mail Division I baseball isn’t just "more intense"—it’s a daily war of attrition where a single bad day can cost your players an entire week of progress. On this episode of Baseball Coaches Unplugged, two-way standout Keegan Holmstrom pulls back the curtain on the brutal daily discipline required to survive and dominate at the collegiate level. Keegan breaks down the exact blue-collar routine he uses to balance elite lifting, nutrition, and skill work. He also shares raw insight i...

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38:16

The Real Cost Of Travel Baseball

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/07/08

Send us Fan Mail Your son makes a top travel or select team and suddenly everything feels urgent. Tryouts, fees, rankings, showcases, guest players, tournament schedules, recruiting promises. We slow the moment down and ask the question that actually protects families: are you buying real player development, or are you buying a uniform and a calendar? We sit down with Bobby Minor, a former D1 player and longtime coach who now helps baseball parents make smarter decisions from Little League t...

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9:35

How To Pick A Travel Baseball Team That Develops Players

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/07/01

Send us Fan Mail A lot of families make the same travel baseball mistake every July: they chase the loudest logo, the flashiest graphics, and the team that “wins the weekend,” then wonder why their player stops improving. I’m Coach Ken Carpenter, and I’m pulling the curtain back on the trophy team versus development team debate so you can make a smarter choice for 2027. We talk about the red flags that show up fast in youth baseball and travel ball, starting with roster size. If a program ca...

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29:42

College Baseball Reality Check - A Player's Perspective

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/06/24

Send us Fan Mail The biggest mistake high school players make is treating college baseball like a status contest instead of a development decision. Riley Bender just finished his career at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor after time at the Division I level, and he tells the truth most families do not hear early enough: playing time, relationships, and the right environment can matter more than the label on the jersey when you are trying to grow as a player and a person. We dig into...

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30:37

Why Playing Fast Is a Competitive Advantage Most...

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/06/17

Send us Fan Mail What does it really mean to build a “fundamentally sound” baseball program? In this episode, we sit down with Eddie Hull, Head Baseball Coach at Charlotte Catholic High School in North Carolina, whose teams have earned a reputation for consistency, toughness, and attention to detail. That reputation doesn’t happen by accident. Coach Hull breaks down the everyday standards that drive his program, starting with two clear non‑negotiables: play fast and compete every pitch. We di...

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38:32

6 Reasons Why Troy Is In The College World Series

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/06/11

Send us Fan Mail College baseball used to give players time to grow up. That window is closing fast, and Troy University head baseball coach Skylar Meade doesn’t sugarcoat why. With transfer portal mobility, rising investment in facilities, and the pressure to win now, coaches have to make quicker decisions and players have to show they can thrive early, not just hang around and develop someday. We talk through the real recruiting priorities he’s using to build a high-level roster: the “outl...

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56:43

From The Brink Of Extinction To The CWS - WVU Baseball

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/06/11

Send us Fan Mail A winning program can be built on talent, but it’s sustained by something harder to measure: trust, standards, and relationships that outlive the final box score. I’m joined by recently retired West Virginia University head baseball coach Randy Mazey and his wife Amanda for a candid, funny, and sometimes heavy conversation about what it really takes to build champions and keep your family steady while you do it. Randy breaks down how WVU baseball went from being on the...

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44:52

How 2026 National Champion Denison Builds A Dominant...

BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED ·

2026/06/10

Send us Fan Mail Preseason rankings feel nice until you realize you start playing the games and now you have to earn everything again. Denison University associate head coach and pitching coach Ryne Romick joins us to explain how a championship-level program keeps its edge, rebuilds identity, and stays hungry while on their way to a national championship. We get specific on what actually plays for pitchers at the college level: why “strikes win” never stops being true, how fastball life...

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228 results

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