Seeking success in high school and college with Ryan Klesko, a former World Series champion who now helps kids reach baseball’s elite amateur levels
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This is Part 2 of a three-part summer series visiting with three former major league All-Stars turned sports dads. They offer sports and life advice about how to make our kids better players, but also how to get the most out of athletic experiences with them. Read Part I:‘You’re not getting scouted at 12’: Youth sports tips from a LLWS hero
You may remember Ryan Klesko as a solid contributor to the Atlanta Braves’ run of division titles in the 1990s. But have you ever looked closer at his numbers?
He was remarkably consistent, hitting .279 with a .500 slugging percentage over 1,736 games. His sustained success, he says today, was not a result of a singular approach.
“Pull up hitting on TikTok and you’re gonna see 50 clowns,” says Klesko, 54, who now coaches his son, Hunter, at the 16U level in the Atlanta area. “There’s a lot of good information, but there’s a lot of disinformation out there. I call them clowns because these guys are trying to break down the swing, and they have all these weird drills and it worked for one guy. Listen, everybody trains a certain way. I don’t train all my kids to be like Ryan Klesko.”
Klesko carried a collection of physical tools and intellectual and emotional insight he collected from coaches and teammates (and from his mom, Lorene) from the time he was a kid in Southern California
Today, as he directs high school-aged kids, he seeks out snippets of knowledge, whether they come from Hall of Fame teammates Jones, Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, or something he finds online that might help a particular player. Everyone is different.
“I’ve had some bad major league hitting coaches, and they’re friends of mine,” Klesko told USA TODAY Sports. “One of the guys, very successful player, he wasn’t there long. He was trying to teach everybody to hit like he hit. And that was the only way. Chipper Jones doesn’t hit like Fred McGriff.”
Klesko works as a special assistant to the ownership group of Perfect Game, a youth baseball and softball scouting service that runs showcases and tournaments. As he travels around his region and the country with his teams, he looks for partnerships and ways to maximize players’ potential through clinics and instruction.
He offered strategies for athletes and their parents:
Find your comfort zone. There’s not one right answer for everybody
Lorene Klesko was a single mom who worked two jobs to support Ryan and his two sisters, who played softball. She had healthy, home-cooked food on the table and paid for every resource she could to ensure they were always around their favorite sports.
She also caught their fastballs, including Ryan’s, which reached 85 mph when he was a high school freshman.
He went to 10 years of hitting and pitching lessons, where he gained counsel and watched pros stop by the small warehouse behind Anaheim Stadium where he trained.
“I think it’s important for kids to get good structure,” Ryan Klesko says. “Find someone that’s had experience under somebody that’s reputable. They don’t have to go to hitting/pitching schools, but you gotta find someone that can help them through mechanics. Just like any other sport. If you’re going to be a gymnast, you can’t just go jump on the bars. You gotta have instructions, like baseball or anything else.”
As a youth coach, he has learned at least a half-dozen ways to correct flaws in swings, and to approach each hitter with an open mind.
“Barry Bonds, he was thinking swing down on the ball,” Klesko says. “Mike Trout, swing down on the ball. Big Papi, swing down on the ball. Josh Donaldson, he thinks he’s got to swing up on the ball.
“Well, guess what? They’re all good hitters. So I’m trying to find something that associates with that kid in his customized swing to make him better.”
‘Don’t beat yourself up’: Find confidence through failure
Klesko was drafted by the Braves in the fifth round in 1989 as a pitcher. He transitioned in their system to first base and outfield.
He continued to develop his hitting and rode through the minor leagues. He finished third in National League Rookie of the Year voting in 1994. He hit 17 homers in 92 games.
But following a strike that canceled the ’94 season early and delayed the start of 1995, Klesko was batting under .200 with no home runs through the first 18 games.
“One of the pitchers had more homers than me,” he says.
He heard media speculation he would be sent to the minors. “It really hurt me. I think if the coaches came up to me and said, ‘Hey, you’re gonna be fine. We trusted you, don’t listen to all this stuff,’ it would have helped me a little bit more.”
Then he got a push from a teammate, who told him to stop worrying about negativity and do what he could in his next at-bat. Klesko went 4-for-5 and began to break out of his slump. He wound up hitting .310 with 23 homers in 107 games for a World-Series-winning team.
High school hitters don’t have spring training like major leaguers, and they can quickly fall into early-season slumps. It happened to a few of the best players in Klesko’s organization, the Braves scout team, this year.
Klesko took that small step his teammate once did.
“Hey guys,” he wrote to them in a note this past spring. “Just keep grinding. It’s early. Don’t beat yourself up. … Just remember your training. Go with what works for you. Stay confident that your next at-bat or your next inning pitched is gonna be great. Put in the work, trust the process, stay strong mentally and kick some butt.”
‘Let me handle it’: Kids can’t advance when you distract them during games
If you’re a baseball parent, you know the anguish of a kid’s slump. It can paralyze both of you.
“I have several kids that if they start the tournament really good, they’re going to tear up the tournament,” Klesko says. “Teenagers (have) so much stuff going through the head, so that’s why we got our guys in the dugout trying to help them.
“You’ve got a lot of kids, their batting practice looks great, their cage work looks great, their bullpens look great. And when that game starts, they’re a mess. And that’s just working on the mental part. And if they start off by making an error, they’re probably gonna be horrible the whole tournament. We’re trying to get past all that stuff.”
Now imagine how your kid feels when they’re pressing, and we shout instructions during the heat of the game.
“Parents are yelling, ‘You’re dipping this, you’re dipping that,’” Klesko says. “I don’t want my parents yelling anything to ’em. Let me handle it. I want one positive swing thought, and then we’ll work on all the mechanical stuff in the batting cage. We don’t want a bunch of stuff running through their mind.”
Coach Steve: Think you’re helping your kid excel at sports? Think again
‘Release the energy’: Find power in your hitting and pitching
Klesko was an equally good hitter with the San Diego Padres in his 30s. He had an .872 OPS, two points above his career average, over 828 games.
He spent time revamping his swing with his mentor, former major league manager Jim LeFebvre, who helped turn Sammy Sosa, Richie Sexson and Charles Johnson into All-Stars.
While we want our own style, we can look for patterns of success.
“We started watching videos of all the best players, looking at swings and seeing a lot of the same consistencies in all the major league hitters,” Klesko says. “So that’s what we teach now. We teach a lot of the basics of getting in a launch position.”
That is, being in the most powerful spot to be able to move your body efficiently and drive through the ball. Think of it as defending someone in basketball: Your feet are spread out, your backside is down and your legs are in a balanced position that allows you to explode at your point of aggression.
“A lot of the younger guys, when the ball’s coming, they’re already out of their good launch position,” Klesko says. “All these different major leaguers, some start with their hands high, some start with their hands low. All I care about is once the pitch is coming, and when that front foot lands, they can rotate and move to the baseball in the most powerful position.”
When kids are 18 or older, he says, you can teach them how to adjust with their body movements.
“So Ronald Acuña has super fast hands,” Klesko says. “And then other guys like to hit with their lower half, their core, then you start kind of fine-tuning what their specialty is. Do you have fast hands or do they need to create more power from their legs?”
Find a weightlifting program, Klesko says, to move weight quickly to work your fast-twitch muscles. If you’re a pitcher – and this is advice from Maddox, Smoltz and Glavine – look for training programs that value power and strength in your legs over having a whippy arm.
“The analogy is, you’ve got a Ferrari engine, and you’ve got a Toyota break system,” Klesko says. “Something’s gonna break. That’s gonna be the elbow or the shoulder. You have to learn to pitch with your core and your legs, like Tim Lincecum, Nolan Ryan. They’re coming down off that mound so hard, you’ve gotta train the muscles to be able to protect the arm after they release the ball.
“You can teach the arm, but you’ve got to be able to release the energy.”
Don’t be D1 or bust: Go to a college team where you will play
When you find a travel coach or a team where your kid is comfortable, Klesko says, stick with them. Don’t jump to another just because you think it might be a little more competitive.
Sometimes, what you get out of the experience is worth more.
“Is it working for your kid?” Klesko says. “Find somebody that helps your kid get better.”
A number of players from the Braves scout team have committed to Division 1 programs. However, in the era of NIL and the transfer portal, college baseball coaches are leaning on older players. The average age of an NCAA baseball player is just under 22.
If you aspire for college baseball, Klesko suggests to also aim for junior college, Division II or Division III, where you have a better chance to play.
It’s a route Tom Wisnauckas, a reader of my column from Worthington, Massachusetts, has advocated to me over the years. His daughter, Zyna, played lacrosse at Division III Smith College.
“Most parents want their kid to get a D1 athletic scholarship but there are plenty of very good academic D3 schools that give a lot of aid,” Tom Wisnaukas says. “So academics in high school (are) pretty important. Also for the most part, D3 kids, if they choose, are not married to their sport and can take part and enjoy other experiences in college. And most coaches understand the value of academics.
“So let parents know not to poo-poo D3. Also remind them that playing a sport in college is very time consuming and students will need to get good at time management in a hurry.”
Meanwhile, if players are struggling at baseball in high school and reach out through Perfect Game for advice, Klesko tries to respond to them.
He wants kids, on his team and elsewhere, to have the all-inclusive sports experience he once had.
“If it wasn’t for the help from the Little League coach or my high school coach, or the neighbor down the street giving my mom some money for gas to go to a tournament, we would never be able to do all that,” he says. “I’ve seen that, and if it wasn’t for the whole village around me, I would have never made it. So I’m trying to do that exact same thing for the kids.”
Coming next: Fulfilling professional dreams while enjoying the ride as fathers and sons to try and reach them.
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.
Got a question for Coach Steve you want answered in a column? Email him at sborelli@usatoday.com
