[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to the Roundhouse podcast with Paul Solentrop of Wichita State University Strategic Communications. Thanks for your time today. Our guest is Shocker Baseball assistant coach Anthony Miller, as we continue our series previewing and reviewing fall baseball practices here at Wichita State. Anthony was hired in June. He had been an assistant coach at Johnson County Community College. Previously, Anthony also played at Johnson County Community College. He was a junior college All American as a first baseman. In 2015, Anthony played five seasons in the minor leagues, most of those with Cleveland. In 2019, he reached AA with the Oakland Athletics. Anthony, let's start with the weekend. You had your first full team scrimmages Saturday and Sunday. There were people out here watching.
Overall impressions. What did you like from what you saw?
[00:01:03] Speaker B: I liked how I mean, obviously, we have a lot of talent, but a lot of our guys are just playing very fast, very hard, being very aggressive. There was mistakes, but when you're erring on the side of being aggressive, it's easier to deal with those mistakes and coach them on that. But overall, I thought they played well. I mean, they got after it. They had some good at bats, made some good pitches, and most importantly, they just grew. They developed, they learned from their mistakes, and they've gotten better.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: So you've got, I think, 34 new players, a new coaching staff. So there's a lot of learning, a lot of teaching going on. So I guess we have an idea how players learn from coaches. How about for a new coaching staff, how do you forget all on the same page? How do you learn, oh, this is the way Brian Green wants this done? Are you talking about it in the weeks leading up to the first practices? How's that process kind of work?
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Yes. We had our coaches retreat in the summer where we went over everything. And then so far since we've been here, every day we break down what we're going to do, and when the guys are stretching, we'll be out at first base or second base, talking about how we want to run the bases, how we approach it, things like that. Everything that we do as a coaching staff or everything we ask our players to do. We have gone over multiple times, either the day before, night before, morning before, or 20 minutes before we do it just to make sure that we're all on the same page, that we're all dialed in together, because we don't want to have multiple voices saying different things. We're all on the same page because it's important that the players know and understand that we all see it through the same lens and that we're all speaking the same language.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Right. So that communication would be really important. So a coach's retreat, that sounds interesting. Tell us a little bit more about what went into that.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: So we just got together at a local hotel in a meeting room, and we just sat there and talked baseball for, I think it was two or three days in a row for seven to 8 hours. We took a lunch break, got back to it, talked more baseball. And ultimately what we did, we discussed our philosophies, what we like, what we don't like, how we teach things just to get on the same page.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: So these are things like, this is how we field ground balls. Or I'm sure it's much more involved than that, but you're talking about hitting philosophy, game situations, all those kind of things.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yes, that and just how we get on and off the field. Little things, too.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Okay. Interesting.
Okay, so your roots are in Kansas City baseball, which to my eye, has really become a big deal over I don't know if it's the last ten years or 15 years. There's a lot of Shockers, a lot of former Shockers from Kansas City. Longtime fans would know names like David Haas and Pat Magnus and Jim Newland. And then recently, there's been Grayson genista. Luke Ritter. Tell us about Kansas City high school baseball. You look around rosters around the country, there's a lot of Kansas City kids on those rosters. How did it grow into this point? What's kind of driving that baseball scene in Kansas City?
[00:04:10] Speaker B: It's been the facilities, like, with Creekside, and I think building champions is building a new park out there by the Legends as well. The facilities and the resources. Those kids have all the programs around there. There's a lot of ex players that have their own facilities, training facilities, and they run their own programs. And they're all really good baseball people. They teach the game the right way, they care, they're passionate. And ultimately they're kind of spoiled with their region, too. It's very easy for college coaches to come in, fly into KCI, go to Creekside, go to any park you can. It's only 2030 minutes away.
But there's just a lot of resources there for these kids to learn and to develop under and a lot of programs with good track records of doing that.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Okay, interesting.
You would have coached three current Shockers at Johnson County last year. Ryan Callahan, played first base. Caleb Anderson, a pitcher, and Braden Lucart. Am I pronouncing that right? Luchart Lucart, an outfielder.
Run through those three for us real quick. Ryan Callahan certainly made an impression over the weekend. I know he homered on Saturday and I think again on Sunday. Yes.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: So Ryan is he is the ultimate clubhouse guy. He's the ultimate gamer. He's one of those guys that he's very versatile. He could play three different positions in a four game series.
He knows himself as a hitter. He's very advanced at the plate, strikes on awareness. He has a really good approach, and he sticks to what he can do best. He's not trying to be somebody he's not. Which leads to him having a lot of success. And last year at Johnson County, he led our team in RBIs, in sack, buns. Very interesting as a cleanup hitter. But he knew his role, he knew our team identity, and he bought into doing his job.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Okay. That is a good tidbit. So, yeah, you probably don't find a lot of people who lead in those two categories. Okay. Interesting.
Caleb Anderson a pitcher. What can you tell us about Caleb?
[00:06:15] Speaker B: He's a very athletic pitcher. Being a two way, he was once a catcher, and then when he got to college, or I believe he got hurt his senior year of high school, so it just limited him to pitching only. And he said it's one of the best things that's happened to him because he took his athleticism competitiveness onto the mound. And he makes pitches, he executes pitches, and he's very passionate the way he gets after it like he gets outs here and he throws a little fist bump. Nothing too crazy to show anybody up, but he loves to get after it to compete. So he's a really good competitor on the mound and very athletic.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Okay. And Braden the outfielder?
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Braden is everything you want in an outfielder as far as getting reads off the bat. He's a big league outfielder, very smart, very good arm. He's also a two way, so he's a pretty good left handed pitcher as well. He didn't get to do it as much last year. We were deep on the mound, but I'm very excited to watch him throw here, especially with clags and Clags'track record to develop pitchers and specifically two way guys. He's done it before, and I think this is a perfect situation for Braden, and I'm looking forward to actually watching him pitch today in our inner squad.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Okay. Good topic. Yeah. Because two way players, it seems like you will have some that come in each fall thinking they're going to do both and then they discover, boy, that's really difficult. It's a physical grind. It's a mental grind. What's the coaching staff's thought on how do you handle those kind of kids?
[00:07:46] Speaker B: You just got to monitor it. You got to make sure that they're not doing too much, that one day is specific to one or the other. Because an issue we had with Braden last year at Johnson County was he tried to do both every day. And you can't do that, the fatigue, the tiredness and all that. And ultimately it was just we got to let him just play right field because that's where he's going to help us the most, because we didn't have the resources with the training staff, the recovery, and all those things that we are fortunate enough to have here. So, so far it's been good. There just needs to be kind of like you said earlier, that communication of him telling us, I'm gassed, my legs are gone, or I'm not going to hit today, but for the most part as a staff, we are on the same page about it every day. Actually, before I came in here, Clag said, Lukehart's thrown today. Is that all right? I was like, yeah, cool enough hitting the lineup, but we're all on the same page with it. And Dan, our trainer, they've been really good with it as well, just as long as we're all communicating.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: And so Ryan Callahan and Brayden would have played in the summer in St. Joseph for Johnny Coy, who is another former Shocker. So, Anthony, you finished college in 2015. You're just a few years removed from playing in the minor leagues. So that age. How does that help you relate to current college players?
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Like you said, I'm not that far removed from my career, my playing career, so I understand what players like the language they're speaking. I'm not saying that the rest of the staff doesn't, but I do know what they're going through. I do know what tools they're trying to utilize, how to speak that language as well as the old school language. And I feel like trial and error of coaching, going through different training environments or situations in practice, trying to get them to understand it, I feel like I'm that buffer between some coaching staff or from some coaches to them.
If that makes sure, sure.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: So on Sunday, you knew who Taylor Swift was with chiefs game.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: Even if the older coaches maybe didn't fully appreciate the importance of Taylor Swift being at Arrowhead. I got it. That makes total sense. Tell us about getting into coaching. Why did you choose this profession?
[00:10:05] Speaker B: So when I was playing offseason job in the fall, back when I lived at home in Stillwell, Kansas, I would go and coach fallball 15. U, I think, was my first fall, then 14 and then 14 again. I really started having a passion for it then and a lot of enthusiasm for it. Just kind of getting to teach kids all the things that I was learning at that point in time. And it's just seeing a kid go out there and execute something that they've been working on. There's just that satisfaction of it, of having an impact on a kid's career or on his game.
And honestly, I am a big fan of serving others, and I love the fact that I get to use the game of baseball to serve all these young men and help them develop into not only the player they want to be, but the person they want to be.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: So whose voices are in your head as far as coaching mentors, who kind of guided you on this path and who provided you some inspiration?
[00:11:09] Speaker B: I've been fortunate enough, very fortunate enough to work under Mitch Thompson, who is now the head coach at Baylor. I was at McLennan in 2021 and 2022, so I got to work underneath him. He's a very good recruiting guy and a very good head coach. I got to learn everything I needed to know about college baseball through him. He spent 20 years at Baylor before he got the job at McClennan, and he's just a very smart guy, very good person. And my other biggest mentor is Coach Green. He recruited me in 2015, where I signed, I committed and signed to New Mexico State. Obviously, I didn't go. I took the draft. And even though I didn't go and play for him from 2015 to 2019, when I was playing, I would constantly be talking to him about hitting, asking him for advice, drills and all that. And when I got into or making that transition into coaching, he started recruiting my guys. So I still was talking baseball with him long after I even met him in 2015. And just having him kind of there for the past almost ten years now, he's been one of the biggest mentors in my coaching career.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Yeah, you told me that story. I wanted to ask you about that. Tell us about his what is it about his personality or the relationship? What clicked that you kept in contact throughout those years?
[00:12:40] Speaker B: He's just very personable and he's very down to earth, and he just communication is huge with him. He's very loyal to and he's never going to lie to you. He's always going to tell you the truth.
But he's just also a really good person, just incredible. And he cares about his players, he cares about his people, even the ones who didn't go play for him, like me. But yeah, he's just a really great person.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Tell us about a major league player or two that you send video clips of to your guys, or you tell them to get on YouTube and watch how this guy plays the outfield or how this guy hits anybody jump to your mind that you use as an example?
[00:13:22] Speaker B: There's a lot of guys. It kind of changes.
Coach Green likes to say, study the freaks. The freaks in the MLB, the ones who play the game at the highest level, the most talented guys who perform night after night.
It kind of varies from player to player.
Like, if I think this guy his swing kind of looks like this person in the big leaguer or in the big leagues, I like to show him that just to kind of compare and say, this is where he could be, things like that. But kind of a default has always been mookie bets with hitting because he's got one of the best swings in the game.
But yeah, it varies. It depends on the player.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Also who they look up to and who their favorite team is.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Did you have a favorite team favorite player growing up?
[00:14:11] Speaker B: My favorite player was Carlos Beltron, or still is Carlos Beltron, although he's done playing favorite team? Kansas City Royals.
It's been hard this year, but the past ten years it's been a lot of fun, but I've been loyal. My family has had season tickets since the park opened, so we are diehard Royals fans.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: Okay. You've been there through it all then. Interesting.
So we talked about a lot of newcomers on this team. Tell us how the coaching staff and the players have gone about building some chemistry, building some bonds.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Honestly, we started with Team Elite, which is a culture building group that comes in and right away that kind of just helped all of us kind of gel and mesh. And then the 06:00 A.m. Waits as a team for the first, I think, month. Everyone was in there, from the coaching staff to the players at 06:00 A.m., watching them get after it, watching them kind of grind together. And then just our guys are very big on just being up here, even when they don't have to be. We'll be here at 07:00 at night coming to do something, and there's ten guys in there playing ping pong. The music's on and there's communicating.
They're having fun together. They're getting after it. They hang out a lot together both on and off the field, which is good to see.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: Sure. Ten returners who's stepping up and doing some of the leadership, helping people get adjusted to college life, wichita State, Wichita State baseball, all those kind of things.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Honestly, I can't pinpoint one of them because all of them have been really good at it. Taking our younger guys under their wing and showing them the ropes, not just from a Wichita State standpoint in the school and the facilities and helping them around the city of Wichita, but just kind of understanding what we as a staff see as very important. They understand that and they're kind of rubbing that off onto the players as well.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: So Wichita State will be scrimmaging a lot. From what it sounds like, Brian Green's been intentional about saying, hey, he wants fans to come out and check out. The shockers hit the fans with a newcomer name or two. Who should they keep an eye on? Who's somebody who's made a good impression at this early, early stage.
We mentioned Ryan Callahan. He's off to a good start.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Honestly, I'm very excited about this whole group, so I can't really pinpoint one or two, but big time arm Tommy Lapore, he is very fun to watch pitch. He's very competitive.
He's just up there just competing. Callahan, Camden Johnson. We have a lot of guys that are just very talented and they play the game the right very it's something to get excited about. Just all the newcomers we have here.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: And Tommy is he's one of those he's from Blue Springs, right? From the Kansas City area. So that would be maybe an example of some of the Kansas City baseball that we talked about as I'm fading away from the mic.
Best pitcher you faced as a professional.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Baseball player, either Blake Trinen or Andrew miller, and those were both in spring training.
It was that's different. It's a little bit different, I would imagine.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Those are two good ones. Yes. Favorite moment, favorite memory as a college baseball player?
[00:17:46] Speaker B: As a college baseball player, it was playing in Grand Junction in 2014.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: And that's where the JUCO World Series yes, sir. Right. Okay. That would be a good one.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Last concert you attended, the Lumineers in Kansas City? That was last fall. My wife and I went to go see The Lumineers for a second time.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: Do you have a favorite concert venue in Kansas City?
[00:18:11] Speaker B: T mobile center.
There's not a bad seat there. It's downtown. Perfect location. There's a lot of food and all that right there. The college basketball experience is there.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: It's also just a beautiful place. It's clean, it's nice, and there's a lot of good concerts down there.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: A lot of good acts. Do you ever go to Knuckleheads? Have you ever been to a concert at Knuckleheads?
[00:18:35] Speaker B: I have not.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Crazy. That's a good place. I've only been to one, but that's a good Kansas City concert venue. Favorite TV show or movie? What would you recommend people check out?
[00:18:45] Speaker B: TV show. I would say the office. My wife and I watch that just about every night.
Movie wise, I'm a big fan of Major League. Just the movie.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Good, solid baseball movie. Yes. All right. Wichita State baseball assistant coach Anthony Miller. Anthony, thanks for your time. We appreciate it.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Yes, sir. Thank you for having me.
[00:19:20] Speaker C: Hi. This is Rick Muma, president of Wichita State University. Check out the latest episode of the Forward Together podcast. Each episode, I sit down with different guests from Shocker Nation to celebrate the vision and mission.
[00:19:54] Speaker D: Of Wichita State University strategic communications. We encourage you to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can find more roundhouse
[email protected]. Malcolm out near the timeline. Left side of the floor to Baker. Ron works deeper to the wing, fires a three.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Good.
[00:20:12] Speaker D: Ron Baker with his third three point field goal of the game, and Wichita State goes ahead by four.
