Podcast: Long Term Athletic Development with Pirates Catcher Nick Cimillo

Today we’re sitting down and talking with Rutgers catcher Nick Cimillo. He was twice named Player of the Year and MAAC Preseason Player of the Year (in his first 2 years of college ball).  He also earned Collegiate Baseball Freshmen All-American, MAAC Rookie of The Year and All-MAAC First Team in 2019. He most recently transferred to Rutgers this past year, where, as a red-shirt Junior he has blown the roof off, holding a .385 batting average and a slugging pct of over 700.

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Podcast: Building Explosive Pitchers with Pitching Coach Josh Epstein

My guest today is Josh Epstein, Pitching Coach at the University of Richmond (Spiders) in Virginia. Josh has over 14 years of collegiate coaching experience with previous stops at Lincoln Memorial, Bloomsburg, Ramapo College and Monmouth. In his three seasons at Monmouth, the Hawks finished second in ERA in the MAAC conference, including an overall 3.21 team ERA after the 2021 campaign.

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What is the Most Effective 4-Seam Tilt Axis in MLB?

There is certainly no shortage of data available from MLB for on-field performance by pitchers and players. In this article, we have combined data from several sources, including FanGraphs and Baseball Savant, to help identify the most effective pitch movement patterns in Major League Baseball. More specifically, we analyzed the performance of 4-seam fastballs from major league pitchers during the 2021 season (392 right-handed), by comparing slugging averages against horizontal, vertical movements and tilt axes of fast baseballs.

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Podcast: An In-depth Look into Recruiting with Walter Beede

My guest today is Walter Beede, a very interesting guy, with a baseball career that spans over 40 years, as a player, a coach and a father. He attended Fitchburg high school in Massachusetts, where he was All-New England 1st Team as a high school player. He received a scholarship from Arizona State University and was selected by the Chicago Cubs as a 13th round draft pick in 1981.

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How did our Pitchers do this Spring?

Before we begin, we would like to extend our congratulations to Alex Kranzler (junior from Old Tappan High School) for earning All-State NJ.com “Player of the Year” honors.  This is a significant accomplishment and it’s a credit to his hard work these past few years at RPP.  He has been pitching, throwing and training at RPP since 2019 and probably spent over a total of 150 hours training this past off-season.  Alex’s fastball was up to 93 mph this spring.  Congrats Alex (as a side note Sean Hard also from RPP earned the same state-wide honor in 2021, he was up to 95 mph).

Ok, so how did our pitchers do this spring?

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Podcast: Player Development, Coaching and Lessons Learned with Jerry Weinstein

Super excited about my guest today, Jerry Weinstein. If there is a guy whose done it all on the coaching / player development side, it’s Jerry.  Frankly, if I were young aspiring ball player or someone who wanted to go into coaching, any time Jerry speaks I would be listening… So, let’s go!

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