My Baseball Career: Ken Roberts
My Baseball Career: Ken Roberts
Former MLB LHP, Facility Owner, and Pitching Strategist for the Seattle Mariners, creator of baseballspanishlessons.com
BC: Tell us about your Baseball journey and what you did in your role as a Pitching Strategist?
Ken: Yeah so I played college baseball at Middle Tennessee State, then was a 25th round senior sign. I played pro ball and made it up every single level, eventually making it to the big leagues in 2015 with the Colorado Rockies and Philadelphia Phillies. While I was playing, I was always thinking about what the next step is, like “what will I do when I’m done?” We would be on bus rides for 6-12 hours,so I was always planning. I had the idea for a facility for athletes, where it would be, pricing, how can I market it, how do I get athletes to come train, I was reading blogs, and just planning it out for when the day came when I got released so I could quickly move on it.
In 2016 I was released by the Phillies on the last day of spring training, so I moved back to Arizona, started a facility, and I didn’t have to do all the planning on short notice, because I had it in place already and just had to execute. So, I ran that facility for 4-5 years in Arizona, training athletes from middle school up to Cy Young Winners like Robbie Ray, it was a really wide variety of training, athletes with different skills, sports, ages, and it got to a point where it wasn’t challenging me anymore, and I knew I wanted more of a challenge. It got to a point where I said “if I can’t give them my all, I need to be done”, and so I shut the facility down with no back up plan. Six months later, I got a call from the Mariners about a position that opened up. I wasn’t even thinking of working in pro ball, but when they reached out I was open to it and it was a pitching strategist role. In my role as a Pitching Strategist, I supported pitching development by analyzing player performance data, collaborated with coaching, scouting, and analytics teams, and created development plans and resources to improve player growth and organizational pitching strategy.
There are so many different areas in the game now you can make an impact in. It used to just be either a pitching coach or hitting coach, but now we have analysts, strategists, lab roles, different types of coordinators, integration specialists, and a lot of different roles where we can put people in the right spot to help a team the best way they’re equipped to. When the M’s reached out and pitched the role to me, it felt like a perfect fit. I have a young daily with 4 kids, and the role required little to no travel, and got me back to working with high level athletes and I was able to learn all the new analytics and tech that had become more popular since I played. I learned a ton from the Mariners from all the different departments they have, they were very willing to share information and learn from each other, so that role was a cool opportunity for me to learn but to also help our players and coaches learn and even help the analytics team learn, like saying: “hey from the field this is what we’re seeing, can you help us spread this message better or understand why this happens?”. Working with a lot of different types of people was something I enjoyed with the Mariners, everyone wanted to grow and help the players be the best they can be.
BC: Tell us about transitioning from player to coach? What tools and knowledge does one need, and what did you learn from doing it?
Ken: At one point it was easy because I had just finished playing and so I knew what my athletes were going through, so at the facility I knew what their schedules and timelines were like for throwing programs and what they needed to prepare for. One thing before I started the facility was that I thought everyone was like me and loves planning workout and throwing programs, but I quickly learned that that’s not the way everyone’s brains worked. Sometimes they need a coach to help them work through that level; even though a year ago I was in their boat, now they’re coming to me asking me to tell them what to do. Learning how to ask questions, “how did you feel when this or that happened?”, helped me learn how to help them better and improve that feedback loop. I could remember what it was like and what they were feeling.
I was sometimes over-eager to make a change or an impact, I wanted the player to be the best they could be, sometimes I felt it needed to happen quicker than it needed to. I didn’t need them to buy-in within the first 48 hours or week, I had the whole off-season to teach them at the level they could handle. So taking baby steps toward the goal towards what they need at the moment, giving them what they can handle. Transitioning from playing had ups and downs, watching games from the couch and watching teammates playing can be difficult, but if you have a mission and a purpose you’re pushing toward, it makes it easier. Wanting to see the success of people you’re working with gives you a purpose and a mission that motivates you. Finding something to make you feel not lost and having a plan and moving quickly on it helps with the transition.
BC: What would you say are the most important elements to landing a job in Baseball?
Ken: One is getting experience, when I was playing, every off-season, I loved creating throwing programs and workout routines, I would write them for my pro teammates for their off-season. Teaching them proper form between sets, getting reps of coaching, so whether that means you’re coaching a 9U team in the offseason or your college getting your foot in the door, you’re going to learn so much when you’re actually doing it, you need those coaching reps. Someone will do something you haven’t seen before and that gives you more experience to coach.
Building your network I think is huge in getting a job in pro ball that I don’t think I realized early on. The job with the Mariners happened because Yusei Kikuchi was renting my facility in the off-season and I would come in the afternoon and he talked to catcher Tom Murphy who I played with with the Rockies about it, who talked to Trent Blank who I also played with on Colorado who was then the Bullpen Coach for the Mariners, who then ended up reaching out to me. A lot of the hires we had in my time with Seattle were people that knew somebody with the org and I think that provides a little more confidence, like “hey i know this person and they vouch for the person we’re interviewing.” If you’re a player now, your coaches will still be around, your teammates will get into pro ball, so building your network is huge.
If you’re not a pro player, volunteering at different events where you can meet people, getting out on X and putting your philosophies and work is so important., I remember when we had openings with the Mariners, I was thinking of names from X posts I had seen and throwing them into the hat because their posts aligned with what we’re looking for. We were talking about these guys behind the scenes even without meeting them, so putting your stuff out there is huge; some ideas may not be great, but how you think and work is really important. You need to get as many interviews as possible, and so building your network is so important you don’t know when it will end up helping you. Teams can identify you for a job down the road that ends up being your big break all because of a post you made or a connection you have.
BC: When you were preparing for your first job working in Baseball, what sources or strategies did you find helpful to learn what you needed to know to be successful?
Ken: Honestly, I would have really loved having Baseball Connect during that time to watch your videos and read your blogs for free and have them all in one spot. Baseball Connect really has everything you need and it’s very cleanly laid out, with videos that explain the concepts. Players need to be able to take what they learn in these videos and essentially make their own videos of how they would explain these terms and technologies as a coach. They need to work through it themselves, because when you get an interview, those are the bare minimum questions you get asked; you won’t get an interview without the baseline knowledge of these concepts you can learn on your website, because the players you’ll be coaching will already have that knowledge before they get to you.
When I talk to first year pro players, and ask them about pitch shapes, now they know what shape they are going after, what’s good or not good, they have a plan for themselves, so as a coach you have to raise the bar of what you know in order to help them and add value. You don’t have to be the smartest in the room, but you have to be able to help the players by adding value to their career; and once you do that, the floodgates open because they trust you. If you’re playing right now and looking to become a coach, remember, your coaches and teammates are there for you, they want you to learn what they know. Using them to talk through different ideas, and ask questions. The worst thing players can do is be afraid to ask questions and act like you already know something when you actually don’t. Asking questions is good because it shows you want to learn more and understand it. As coaches, we would light up if a player asked us a question, we would clear our whole schedule just to teach them whatever they were asking. When you ask these questions yourself, you get your own way of explaining these terms as you learn them from different sources. Again, getting those reps of explaining Induced Vertical Break (IVB) or Spin Rate to a 15 year old kid vs a major leaguer, you have to tailor your message differently so learning what is helpful and getting reps coaching it is so important to learning.
BC: Have mentors played a role in your career path? If so, how can someone find a mentor in baseball?
Ken: Any mentor I had, it wasn’t someone I consistently called to ask questions, it was more watching how my coach in high school coached, my college coaches, and internalizing what I liked that they did and what I didn’t. Watching pro ball coaches and seeing who was out for themselves and who was committed to helping players grow. So these coaches mentored me without even knowing it. When I watch Cressey and Tread and people within the org I worked with, how they handle conversations and situations that come up and are difficult, watching how someone handles that is all mentoring to me. Being observant of what’s going on around you, watching on TV and watching how the manager interacts with staff and players when they make mistakes, watching mound visits, how long they stay out there; you can get mentored without knowing them directly. So having someone you know is great, but getting mentored by everyone you’re around or watching is also really impactful and plugging it into me and how i coach. For me, I’m not a high energy ra-ra coach, but knowing I have to bring that at times is important, but knowing I won’t always be like that and can lean into what I do best, which is building relationships is a great balance.
So I’m always watching those types of guys and seeing how they do it. Doesn’t matter how experienced they are, coaches are trying to get the most value out of the player they can. Mentoring doesn’t mean doing something the exact way someone teaches you, it means learning how you would or wouldn’t approach a certain situation or conversation. Coaches should want to guide you down a path, not just THE path, there’s no one right way to do it, and later in your career it will help you to know you took the “wrong path”, it’s so important to compound your experiences together to help others learn what’s best for them.