What’s up everyone! My name is Collin Theroux and I am a catcher in the Oakland A’s organization. I’m from San Mateo, California and I was drafted out of Oklahoma State University last year.
Currently, I’m in the first month of my first full professional baseball season, playing for the Beloit Snappers in the Class-A Midwest League. My team is based in Wisconsin and we play all over Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan! So basically, I’ve been a human ice cube for the past month!
But don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t be happier. As corny as it sounds, I get to wake up and live my dream every day and it really doesn’t get much better than that. And when I say every day, boy oh boy do I mean EVERY DAY. Except for maybe one off-day a month we find ourselves at the field or on a bus 7 days a week, rain or shine. And since it is spring in the Midwest, it’s usually raining.
On a typical day, I wake up around 10am in my host family’s basement, next to my two teammates who I get to share the basement with. Well actually, we usually wake up around 7:30 when the dogs start going nuts, running all over the place and barking because the school bus pulled up to take our host brother and sister to school.
Then we go mix in a power nap before we have to get up and get ready for work. Normally we’ll cook breakfast or head to a local diner and spend half of our paycheck on a good morning meal. After we eat we wait for our teammates down the street to pick us up, as we stuff six grown men into a Dodge Ram and head to the field.
Once we get to good ol’ Pohlman Field around 11:30, we will change and go through a quick eyewash warmup/stretch before we either lift or go get some early work in. Early work can either consist of hitting or defense work. If it’s hitting, we’ll head to our “huge” hitting facility that consists of one cage in a shed next to our clubhouse.
Something I wanted to touch on here is the new wave of hitters trying to elevate the ball more consistently, as opposed to the conventional hitting philosophy of swinging down and shooting for low line drives. Personally, I absolutely sucked at the plate last year. So, I spent my offseason dedicated to figuring out why I sucked and how I could gear my swing to start smashing like I knew I could.
I was always a guy who believed in swinging down, forcing my hands inside of the ball, and those things just weren’t working for me. My body just wasn’t synced up and I felt lost at the plate, but I just didn’t know how to fix it. I was doing everything that my coaches were suggesting, and the results just weren’t there. I began studying my swing by watching video and comparing my swing to big leaguers, trying to compare the differences. I started reading as much as I could, and interacting with people that I felt could help me improve.
A guy who has really helped me change my game has been Ryan Parker (@RA_Parker on twitter). It started off in the beautiful land of Twitter DM’s, where I would send Ryan video and he would give me feedback or suggest some drills and feels to help me click. I instantly began to see, and FEEL results. That wasn’t enough for me though, and I actually flew down to Texas in December to work with Ryan and a few other incredible hitting minds like Connor Dawson (@CoachDaws) and Jerry Brewer (@JerryBrewerEBHI).
Basically, we worked on gearing my swing to create elevation and angles naturally, instead of forcing it. Ryan, Daws, and Jerry are the absolute best and I highly recommend shooting them a follow and seeing what they’re all about!
After my mind-opening off season, it’s been a huge focus of mine to try and crush balls consistently in the air. That doesn’t mean I’m just selling out and trying to hit mile high pop ups every swing, though. What I do is aim for the batter’s eye and hunt for a pitch that I can drive over it or off it, and let my swing take care of the rest. This game is way more fun when baseballs are being hammered to and over fences, so I think you’d be crazy to not train to crush balls in the air.
Every guy has a daily routine that they feel gets their swing ready for BP and ultimately the game that night. For me personally, I rely more on certain feels than I do a specific tee or front toss routine. Most guys will start with tee work, like high tee to feel themselves get on top, or inside tee to help them get their hands working inside the ball. But to be honest, those things just don’t click with me. And I’m not saying that what other guys do is wrong at all. Every hitter is unique and needs to find what drills or feels work best for them and get them locked in. And I’ve found what I think works best for me.
Really all I try to do with my early work is feel myself be as loose as possible and try to hit it as hard and far as I can, even in the cage. I often pick out a target somewhere in the cage, which is 99.9% of the time going to be a point about halfway down and at the top of the cage. Now, now, now, I know that just pushed someone’s buttons, but hear me out. My goal as a hitter is to do damage every time I step in the box. I really feel like that should be everyone’s goal, but we’re here to talk about me.
So, if I’m going to do damage in a game, it only makes sense to me to practice doing damage every time I swing the bat! My teammates like to poke fun at me when we’re hitting because I take daddy hacks and try to crush the ball every swing and they believe in low line drives and ground balls I guess. But hey, to each his own!
Ha! But I really do love my teammates, man. Talking trash and taking jabs at each other are absolutely necessary to get you through 6 straight months of being crammed together in dugouts, buses, hotel rooms, and basements. It keeps you sane. If you don’t keep things loose, you’ll be miserable. I truly think that applies no matter what level you’re playing at.
Keeping it loose is huge because adversity strikes at all times, not just when you’re in a slump. Every day you have to be ready for what Minor League Baseball might throw your way. There’s rain delays all the time, so sometimes you might just throw a kid in the stands $5 to go grab you some Dip N Dots or cotton candy to snack on while you sit in the dugout and wait out a storm. There’s days when your laundry loop might be missing and you have to scrap together clothes from your teammates just so you can suit up for a game. Your ability to make the best out of crappy situations go a long way towards keeping your mindset positive.
Then there’s the times when you’re on the road in the middle of nowhere, Iowa. Let’s say you play a 13-inning game that ends at 11PM. Guess what? The only food options after a game like that might be what you can salvage from the gas station across the street from your hotel! It happens more than you’d think and it SUCKS, but guess what? You better learn to make the best of it.
At the end of the day, I absolutely love what I do. I couldn’t be luckier to play this game within an organization who believes in me and gives me the opportunity to keep chasing a dream. With that being said, that’s about all the time I’ve got for today. Gotta get to bed and go hop on a bus in the morning! Thanks to NLB for having me and if you guys have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on social media!
-Collin Theroux
