Play In School

As the great Shawn Corey Carter famously said… Allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Rich Prado. I’ve spent my entire adult life attempting to bring value to coaches, players & parents. The quick background is as follows… I left a job at a high school teaching Sports Marketing to start a small business doing… Sports Marketing. Play In School was founded in June of 2008. Under this umbrella I’ve done so many things… - Filmed & produced thousands of college recruiting videos. - Launched a DIY recruiting platform - Ran College Bus Tours - Offered a white glove recruiting education service - Provided a recruiting course - Published endless content including 100+ episodes of - “Play In School TV” and 250+ episodes of “Travel Ball Talk” - Launched the “Prospect Planner” - And probably a half dozen other things that I can’t even remember. The common thread through all every product & service was to help coaches, players & parents. Fast forward to around 2020. A bunch of folks sent me the same website asking me if I’d seen it. Something called “StatStak”. Something about data analytics. Was way over my head. But I followed them on social media. Watched them iterate. Watched them pivot into my space. Then in 2023 I saw them pivot again. But this time was into an adjacent space that I’ve been thinking about for over a decade. I cold DM’d them on Twitter. Asked them to show me what they had. I loved it. A couple of months later I’d become a partner in the business. What did they show me that got me so excited? What got me so excited that I have barely touched Play In School in nearly 3 years? In 2023 I saw what I believed could, should & would become the standard operating system for baseball business owners. For 15 years I had been in & out of more baseball facilities than probably anyone in the country due to the nature of my filming business. Literally everyone in my phone book either runs a travel ball organization or a baseball facility or both. At the core of this group are small business owners making a living through their passion of teaching, coaching & mentoring ball players. But the truth is, most prefer throwing BP than doing the behind the scenes admin work that comes along with running a business. I’ve known there was an opportunity to help those guys with that “behind the scenes” work. I had always talked about doing it through a consulting service, but there were a ton of reasons why I thought that approach wouldn’t work. Then, enter StatStak, and why you’ve barely seen or heard from me for nearly 3 years. I knew if you lined up 100 different baseball businesses you’d find 100 different ways that they had duct taped 100 different softwares together to run the back end of their business. StatStak replaced it all. Founded by the rarest of rare guys… an ACC pitcher that knows how to code & run spreadsheets. A unicorn of sorts. At the very core of what I saw in our software was the ability to do 2 things for a business owner… SAVE TIME and MAKE MORE MONEY. So where have I been for nearly 3 years? I’ve been quietly calling on my friends & friends of friends to show them StatStak. Hundreds & hundreds of them. We’ve grown from a 3 man team when I came on board to a nearly 25 person team. We’ve grown from about 10 beta users when I came on board to pushing around 400 baseball & softball businesses on the platform as of this moment. I have quietly brought in over 40% of our business to date. We have now reached the time to no longer be quiet. It is now time to be very public. And as of just a few weeks ago, we have rebranded from “StatStak”, a name that was a great fit for a data analytics tool, to “Baseline” which is a much better fit for what we are today. I’m so thankful to Baseline for allowing me to multiply the number of coaches, players & parents I’m able to impact. Our team is locked in. We are quickly realizing the goal of becoming the standard operating system for baseball & softball businesses. We are helping hundreds of business owners achieve 2 huge goals… SAVE TIME and MAKE MORE MONEY. There are a million software platforms out there. But there’s only 1 that is built by baseball guys, specifically for baseball & softball businesses. I joke, but it’s not a joke, that we quite literally have the hardest throwing software sales staff in the history of the world. I want to put you in touch with those guys & girls I affectionately call our “bullpen”. They’ll sit with you & listen to how you want to run your business then share with you how we can match up with your vision. It is not unusual for 1 of our partners to turn off 3 to 7 different pieces of software when they come onboard with us because we’ve packaged all of those functions under 1 roof, making their lives & the lives of their customers easier. Things we currently have the capability of handling, without locking you into contracts… 💻 Website ⏰ Booking Lessons / Rentals ⛺️ Camp / Membership Registration 🔌 QuickBooks Integration 💬 Messaging 📈 Data collection 👤 Player profiles 📊 Leaderboards 📍 Alumni Maps 👥 Team management w/ Autopay 🏋️ Programming / Remote training 📆 Calendars 💳 POS 📱 All under 1 login 💸 95% of our partners pay $0/month I’ll say the same exact thing that I’ve told hundreds of baseball business owners over the last 3 years… I’d love to show you our software. I don’t know if we’re a perfect fit for you. You’ll need to see it and decide for yourself. And most importantly, if we’re not a perfect fit for you right now, no worries, we’ll stay friends! If you’re looking for a way to possibly SAVE TIME and MAKE MORE MONEY with your baseball or softball business, either call me directly to talk for 3 minutes and I can tell you pretty quickly if it’s worth seeing a demo, or just go ahead and book a demo here… cal.com/team/statstak/… Thanks for listening! Rich Prado rich@baselinepro.com 804-852-8468 Book a demo at cal.com/team/statstak/…

@jkeller_10 Can you shoot me a DM so that I can reply to it? Thanks!

Charging a family to watch their kid that paid to be on a team that paid to be in a tournament should land someone in jail.

1st night coaching 10u Huguenot Little League went great! @coachballgame inspired me to hand out cards. Took just 3 kids before a kid pulled an MLB player I filmed 11 years ago. Pretty cool moment. Anyway, here's @VPasquantino 11 years ago. youtube.com/watch?v=jVomF_…

On February 27th at 11:15 AM CT, Baseline COO Zack Ladner and David Ricks (NXT 1UP Baseball Performance) are going live. They'll cover the questions facility owners deal with daily. Chasing payments, improving retention, educating families, and more! DM us for the reg link. 👍

We aren't just building a scheduling tool or payment tool. We are literally building the standard operating system for baseball businesses. 1 tool. 1 login. Everything you need. DM me to chat or book a demo to see get eyes on the backend... tinyurl.com/prado-demo

@awhendry @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB Post game pizza & mid season impromptu pool parties are basically how I’m judging if this season is a success or failure.

@PlayInSchool @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB Focus on great snacks post-game.

Tonight is draft night at my little league. Volunteered to manage a team to get my son (and 11 other kids) off the waitlist. Here’s the thing, despite coaching HS travel ball & working in college recruiting for nearly 20 years, I’ve actually never coached 10 year olds. Admittedly, I’m a little bit terrified. Would it be possible for all the best minds in baseball to give me some ideas on how to have a successful 10u little league season? Maybe @coachballgame can start things off with some advice?

@jsadams33 Was leaning towards short shorts, high socks & white New Balance. And obviously a whistle.

@PlayInSchool Set the tone. Knickers and old school stirrups mandatory.

Update: Finished draft with 6 of 12 players with parents that volunteered to help. That seemed statistically impossible heading into the night. But I was able to stay focused on the task at hand and somehow found a way to end up on top. Zero clue if we'll win any games. But I expect to lead the league in most improvement & most fun.

Update: Finished draft with 6 of 12 players with parents that volunteered to help. That seemed statistically impossible heading into the night. But I was able to stay focused on the task at hand and somehow found a way to end up on top. Zero clue if we'll win any games. But I expect to lead the league in most improvement & most fun.

@decatur_kid @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB I feel this in my soul after watching 90 minute basketball practices this winter.

@PlayInSchool @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB Time is your enemy, practices > 60m are a mistake you’ll make once. Even well intentioned and designed.

@jchson24 @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB Good stuff.

@PlayInSchool @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB 1B... make sure you teach footwork there. Lots of action but lots of chances for collision injuries at that age. You need capability there. Not a throwaway position.

@BCox5503 @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB Fair. Agree with that. 🙌

@PlayInSchool @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB Non-coach parents who want to help are great. You will need them. I’m talking about the parents who don’t volunteer but want to come talk to their kid in the middle of the game. That’s what I mean by stay out of the dugout.

Why would I want to turn away a parent that wants to help? My entire draft strategy is to pick kids who’s parents indicated they will volunteer. Bad approach?

@BCox5503 @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB Why would I want to turn away a parent that wants to help? My entire draft strategy is to pick kids who’s parents indicated they will volunteer. Bad approach?

@PlayInSchool @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB 1. Make it fun for the kids. If they hate it now, they’ll stop playing. 2. Make parents’ expectations clear — stay out of the dugout, take your turn in concession stand, make practice a priority. 3. Let kids play a bunch of positions. It’s about development first and foremost.

@decatur_kid @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB Frisbee & whiffle ball might be great way to end every practice!

@PlayInSchool @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB Step 1, get a left handed catchers mitt. Throw out the unwritten rules, let kids play/hit in cool positions and pitch. Teach them how to play the game the right way, run the bases like HS+, not the garbage that wins youth games. Before playoffs, play frisbee and whiffle ball.

@jcirig7 @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB Smart!

@PlayInSchool @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB If every kid hits (the hardest thing in sports) find ways to get every kid an opportunity to pitch. Find pitchers. You can’t have too many pitchers.

@CoachYostCP @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB Thanks!

@PlayInSchool @PitchingNinja @LittleLeague @MLB Always keep them moving. Move into drills constantly but don’t forget to explain why you’re doing that drill. Set a few minutes for each drill so they don’t lose focus. The biggest thing, they will match your energy level. Keep it high and excited.

@NVTBLBaseball Despite the stats I posted above, it breaks people’s brains too much to even have a discussion about moving college baseball to the fall semester so I won’t push on that.

@PlayInSchool Most people agree. The issue is that universities don’t want spring regular seasons going well past the academic year.

I posted about "Challenging Popular Beliefs" 9 years ago this week. playinschool.com/popular-belief… I can save you a clip with the following screen shot. Weird coincidence that the college season is roughly 1/3 the length of the MLB season.