My wife and kids took a road trip up the coast to visit her sister last week which left me strangely home alone for a few days...

With my family out of town, I had some free time for two of my favorite non-baseball solo pastimes: golf and poker. I played 18 holes for the first time in months (shockingly I did not play well, but had a blast😁), and then found a few hours over the weekend to battle in a no-limit poker game at one of our local cardrooms.

A few minutes after I sat down at the table, none other than Dodgers legend Orel Hershiser sits down on my direct left and over the next several hours we chatted about all sorts of things in between hands, but mostly we talked baseball.

We talked about Ohtani (he said there is absolutely NO comparison between him and Babe Ruth - Shohei is on a completely different level), the Dodgers (he thinks Mookie is probably the best natural athlete in The Bigs, with Ohtani being right there in that conversation), and eventually we talked about youth baseball.

When I told him what I've been doing for the last 20+ years, he immediately pulled out his phone and started showing me videos that friends of his with kids in Little League sent him of Social Media "coaches" giving advice online; his friends wanted to know if what these guys were teaching was good coaching for kids so they texted one of the all-time greats for his thoughts. Must be nice to have him on speed dial :-)

After sharing a couple of the videos with me, we both agreed that 99% of the information these online coaches were preaching as fact was complete and total nonsense!

I had actually been thinking about this exact topic for some time now as my Instagram feed (because the algorithm has correctly identified be as a fan of baseball) is filled with videos of "online gurus" posting instructional videos, and most of the information they are sharing is complete garbage. Having coached kids since I was a teenager I know what quality instruction is and what isn't, but I can totally see that to a parent who hasn't dedicated their entire life to youth baseball, the amount of information floating around on Instagram and YouTube can be completely overwhelming.

For parents trying to figure out if that IG video you're watching is going to help or hurt your ballplayer, and if you don't have Orel's (or my) phone number, the best advice I can give is the same advice I would give to anyone trying to figure out if the total stranger on the internet knows what they're talking about or not (about any topic): assume by default that what you're watching is nonsense, until you've done some more research on the source.

So, how can you vet a coach that you see dolling out instruction online?

1) If what they're saying seems unnecessarily complicated or confusing, that coach either 1) doesn't know what they're talking about and are trying to intimidate their audience with intentionally complex terminology to maintain an informational advantage so you feel like you need their expertise and will pay for it or 2) they don't know how to make what they're trying to teach sound simple enough for a kid to understand and apply, in which case they're not a very good coach because the most important part of teaching, especially with kids, is the ability to communicate efficiently and effectively.

If you can't figure out what they're talking about, then there's no way your young ballplayer will either.

Great teachers can explain difficult techniques or concepts in an easy-to-understand way.

Here is a paragraph that I cut and paste directly from an instructional pitching video on YouTube that has tens of thousands of views (I swear this 100% real):

"Yanking horizontally into scap retraction tends to lead to excess counter-rotation and a corresponding yanking open of the trunk before the arm has a chance to flip up while the trunk is closed. Chasing static positions like scap retraction and hip/shoulder separation is dangerous - how you flow in/out of these positions is ultimately what matters if you're looking to emulate elite throwers. Well-timed scap retraction (with the forearm vertical and trunk closed) happens as a result of this relaxed pendulum action. The arm travels along this loop, passing through scap retraction and perfectly transitioning into the plane of trunk rotation."

That paragraph is literally jibberish. And even if this was 100% correct information, it's so confusing that nobody, especially a youth pitcher and his parent with no baseball background will have any idea how to decipher and apply whatever it is he's trying to teach.

2) Don't get fooled by follower count as an indication that they're an expert. It takes 5 minutes and couple hundred bucks to buy 1000s of followers so a "coach" with 40k followers doesn't mean anything in terms of his qualifications as an instructor. Like with all social media, an account with 100k followers whose last post got 74 likes is just smoke and mirrors and I would be extremely skeptical of anyone with lots of followers but extremely low engagement.

3) Social Media coaches who obsessively name-drop big leaguers are almost certainly lying. Anyone saying something like, "When Aaron Judge was in a slump he came to me for hitting advice and then hit 62 homeruns the next year..." is 100% full of 💩. All the best hitting instructors for MLB players are working for MLB teams, not making Instagram videos in their garage. One "pro" coach in our area many years ago who would carry around pictures of Manny Ramirez in the batter's box and then tell anyone who was willing to listen that he was the one who taught him how to hit. I mean, give me a break!

There is a current big leaguer who attended my Summer Camp when he was in Little League and you've NEVER heard me talk about him at all have you? And I certainly would never talk about him in an attempt to take credit for his success as a way to try to toot my own horn and get more sign-ups for Summer Camp. Be very skeptical of name dropping!

(That said, and you should DEFINITELY come see me for pitching lessons because I once sat next to Orel Hershiser for 5 hours and now your ballplayer is guaranteed to get drafted in 2032. See how ridiculous that sounds?!?!)

4) Crazy use of props is another warning sign. If the coach in the video is having his student stand upside-down on a lawn chair, while holding a kitchen broom instead of a bat, with a potted plant between his legs and a bowling ball tucked in his armpit while trying to take a swing, just keep scrolling and don't listen to a word he has to say. There's a reason why this scene in "Tin Cup" is so funny!

Hitting is difficult, but it is NOT complicated!

Throwing strikes is difficult, but it is NOT complicated.

5) Ignore any videos you see of "elite" youth players. Just because there is some 9 year old somewhere in the world with a swing that looks like Ken Griffrey, Jr's doesn't mean that's the norm, it doesn't mean your ballplayer is "behind," and doesn't mean you need to start playing U8 club baseball to "catch up." Just because you saw a video of some 11 year old somewhere throwing 84 MPH doesn't mean your 11 year old has no future in the game because he's not throwing that hard. Radar guns are completely pointless until Senior of High School anyway, and just like that "influencer" you see flying around the world in a private jet, that's not real life for 99.999999% of people.

I absolutely understand how difficult it can be as a parent to weed through all the nonsense online, especially in this day in age when anybody with a cell phone can post a video and declare themselves and expert; hopefully this blog gave you some tools to try to evaluate what you see online (and in person).

PLAY HARD, HAVE FUN!