How can you Respect your Opponent and Want to Beat him Badly, at the Same Time?

Guest Blogger: Inner-Sports

by Garret Kramer

This question was recently asked of me during my talk to the players at Baseball Factory’s Omaha Pro Select Training and Tournament in Council Bluffs, Iowa. It is certainly a great question and my answer might surprise you. Think about your opponents in baseball as being present to perform a generous service for your benefit. They are actually playing with you to help you drive passed your current skill level. So, if you actually think of competition as cooperation you can have it both ways: you can respect your opponents because they are there for you, pushing you along; while at the same time it is your job to play with maximum effort in your quest to beat them. Thinking about the game and competition in this fashion allows you to appreciate the opposing team, as you approach the game unbounded by any type of negative energy. In this state of higher consciousness, the game will simply comes easier as you see things more clearly on and off the field.

The next time you find your team in any type of tournament setting, try to look at the competition in this way: the role of each team you face is to throw tough pitches and hit hard balls at you until you master your own ability to handle these plays. When achieved, you move on to face an even tougher opponent and so on. By the end of the tournament, I can virtually guarantee that the team comprised of players and coaches who have looked at their adversaries in this respectful but competitive manner, will have moved through their opponents one by one, until there are none left standing!



Garret Kramer is the founder and Managing Partner of Inner-Sports, LLC. Inner-Sports evaluates and then coaches athletes of all ages on the behavioral characteristics that lead to peak performance on and off the field of play. Inner-Sport’s evaluative partner has created the behavioral assessment used at both the National Hockey League and the Major League Lacrosse scouting combines. Inner-Sports and Garret work with Baseball Factory players at select player development events.

Why Does RPI Matter?

Kelly Kulina: Your Link to the Colleges

Why does the RPI matter? To get into the NCAA postseason, teams will either need to win their conference championship or earn an “at-large” bid. These at-large bids are awarded by an NCAA committee to teams that win a convincing number of games during the regular season. In the case of team sports, RPI is used to determine whether or not a “bubble” team should be given or denied an at-large bid to the tournament. Teams with wins over tough competition typically get the nod over teams with the same number of wins over easier competition.

For those of you who aren’t college basketball fans, Relative Power Index (RPI) is a measure of a team’s strength of schedule. So, teams are credited for playing a tougher schedule and penalized for playing a softer schedule.

To calculate a team’s RPI, the NCAA uses the following formula:

(0.25 * team winning percentage) + (0.50 * opponents’ winning percentage) + (0.25 * opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage)

As you can see, winning is only 25% of the total index, with much more emphasis being placed on teams’ opponents.

As with anything involved with the postseason, the RPI and its role in postseason selection does not come without controversy. Critics of the RPI point out that it compounds the disadvantage cold weather teams face against warm weather teams. Since they must spend the first three weeks of the season on the road, many cold weather teams will start with a losing record and play against other teams in their conference with losing records. This creates the compounding effect causing the RPI disadvantage. In fact, many lower tier teams in warm weather conferences will get an at-large nod over upper tier teams from cold weather conferences. If you take a look at the past few years’ College World Series participants and winners, you’ll see a major disparity between cold weather teams and warm weather teams.

This past November, Greg Van Zant, Head Coach at West Virginia University, proposed a change in the calculation of RPI. Rather than counting all wins equal, he suggested using an “adjusted winning percentage,” which awards 1.0 wins on a neutral site, 1.25 wins on the road and 0.833 wins at home. College basketball is currently using something similar, although they award 1.4 wins on the road and 0.6 wins at home. While this is still a while away from being presented formally to the Division I baseball committee, I’m looking forward to seeing how it is received by other coaches and the NCAA.

There’s no doubt in my mind that northern teams could use a helping hand when it comes to staying competitive nationally. At the same time, one thing won’t change: you still need to win the majority of your games!

Kelly Kulina is the Senior Vice President of College Recruiting at Baseball Factory. Kulina is a former Associate Head Coach and recruiting coordinator with the University of Maryland. As a former recruiting coordinator for ten years in the ACC, Kulina has vast contacts and is widely respected throughout the nation. From 1989 to 2000, Kulina coached 46 players who were selected in the MLB draft.

LIVE: From the USA 16U Baseball Championships part 2

Dave Lax: We're There

A winning trend has started for the Baseball Factory team! Baseball Factory took out the 2006 USA 16U Baseball Champion All-American Prospects Red. The Baseball Factory came away with their third victory in a row at the USA 16U Baseball Championships East. As the visiting team, the offense wasted no time as they loaded the bases in the 1st inning. With two outs, Joe D'Annunzio (Scotch Plains, NJ) came through with a 2-RBI single to left. Two batters later, Mike Ford (Belle Meade, NJ) scored the 3rd run on a passed ball.

After shutting down the Prospects in the bottom of the inning, Baseball Factory's offense got back to work in the 2nd. Patrick Martin (Bassett, VA) started things off with a double. He eventually would score after an overthrown pick-off attempt and a fielder's choice. With a runner on 1st, Denzel Campbell (College Park, GA) hit an RBI double down the left field line, putting the Factory up 5-0.

For the rest of the game, Baseball Factory continued to get on base, but were unable to get anyone across the plate. However, the story continues to be Baseball Factory’s pitching. Mark Williams (Vienna, VA) and Harrison Musgrave (Notter Fort, WV) pitched four innings and three innings respectively. Both shut down the Prospects throughout the game, scattering hits while striking out seven batters (Williams 2, Harrison 5). Our defense was also solid behind them, with only one error throughout the entire game. There were also two outstanding plays made in the field - a diving catch in left field by Campbell and a heads up double play by Sean Hagen (Reading, PA) behind the dish. The Factory won the game by a final score of 5-1.

Baseball Factory will take on the 7th overall seeded Virginia Mavericks at 8 AM on Thursday.

THIS JUST IN: Baseball Factory upended the #7 Mavericks 8-2 in the first game of the day. A full recap will come in later today. Our next game is at 5 PM.

Update: (3:00PM)
Same Old Story

Once again, the bats came alive and the pitching stayed strong as Baseball Factory beat the 7th seeded Virginia Mavericks, 8-2. Michael Bradshaw (Crestwood, NY) pitched a solid 3 innings, giving up just one run and recording two strikeouts.

The offense got going in the 4th, when Joseph McCrary (Stone Mountain, GA) led off the inning with a double to right. The next batter, Mike Ford (Belle Mead, NJ) reached first base on a throwing error by the second baseman, which would also score McCrary. After a single by Denzel Campbell (College Park, GA), Anthony Bowman (Damascus, MD) hit a sacrifice fly to score Ford and Baseball Factory went up 2-1.

Andrew Chin (Newton, MA) came into pitch in the top of the 4th inning. The Mavericks came up with a tying run, but stranded two to keep the game tied at 2-2.

Andrew Green (Mt. Juliet, TN) terrorized the base paths to start off the 5th inning. He reached 1st and advanced to second on a throwing error and would later take 3rd on a passed ball. After a walk by Chad Miller (Angleton, TX), McCrary beat out an infield hit and scored Green from 3rd. Miller would later score from 3rd when Mike Ford hit into a double play. After the 5th inning, Baseball Factory had a 4-2 lead.

Chin came back with two more great innings. He ended his day pitching three innings, giving up one run and striking out three.

Still leading 4-2 at the top of the 7th inning, the Baseball Factory team took advantage of some Mavericks errors and had some timely hitting. Baseball Factory added 4 runs in part by McCrary's RBI single to center, Ford's RBI triple to the right center gap and Trevor Larson's (Northbridge, MA) RBI single to left.

With the score 8-2 going into the bottom of the 7th, Mike Ford came in to close the game. After a couple harmless hits, Ford shut out the Mavericks to give Baseball Factory its 4th victory in a row, 8-2.

Baseball Factory is now 1 out of 16 teams still fighting for the championship. Remember this tournament started with 72 teams! Wish us luck as we play again today at 5pm!