Purdue alum Serrato spreading knowledge as Kent State coach

By STEVE KRAH
http://www.IndianaRBI.com

A Purdue University graduate is applying some lessons he learned while playing for the Boilermakers in his role as an assistant baseball coach/recruiting coordinator at Kent (Ohio) State University.
Barrett Serrato, a graduate of West Chicago (Ill.) High School, played four seasons for head coach Doug Schreiber at Purdue (2009-12) and received a Physical Education degree and experienced a Big Ten Conference championship in 2012.
Former Boiler assistants Jamie Sailors (current Lafayette Aviators managers) and Spencer Allen (now a Northwestern University assistant) were involved in Serrato’s recruitment.
“It’s hard to pick one experience,” says Serrato of his time at Purdue. The whole thing was so enjoyable for me.
“We’ve got a team group chat now. Any time anybody texts it’s like we never left.”
Among players who were on the 2009 and 2012 rosters with Serrato are Kyle Bischoff (New Haven High School graduate), Ryan Bridges (Griffith), Eric Charles (Zionsville), Sean Collins (Pendleton Heights), Joe Haase (Knightstown), Jake Hansen (Westfield), Robert Ramer (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Tyler Spillner (Fort Wayne Northrop). Bridges was head coach at Hanover Central High School.
Three future big leaguers were juniors on the 2012 team — Cameron Perkins (Southport), Kevin Plawecki (Westfield) and Nick Wittgren (McCutcheon). Brett Andrzejewski (Westfield) was also on that team.
“We all really got along,” says Serrato. “We all jelled. On the field and off the field we really enjoyed our time.
“Winning conference in 2012 was the icing on the cake.”
That squad went 45-14 overall, 17-7 in the Big Ten and beat Indiana twice to win first Big Ten Tournament title. Serrato was named to the all-tournament team.
Another memorable moment for him came in 2011 while Purdue swept a three-game series from visiting Indiana. It was the first sweep of the Hoosiers in 14 years.
“I remember a couple of fans getting on top of the IU dugout (with brooms),” says Serrato. “That’s as good as it gets.”
In 177 games (151 starts) at Purdue, the lefty-swinging Serrato hit .309 with eight home runs, 117 runs batted in and 116 runs scored.
Lessons learned from Schreiber (who is now head coach at Purdue Fort Wayne) included discipline.
“You have to have discipline in everything you do,” says Serrato. “Be the toughest team on the field at all times. Play hard and don’t back down.
“If you have high goals and high standards you have to be able the stuff that comes with it.”
Serrato says Schreiber stressed fundamentals and following the path.
“You knew the standards and the rules,” says Schreiber. “Nobody got any special treatment. This is how we do things and we’re going to do it this way.
“That’s been the biggest carryover to what I do now.”
In Serrato’s last three seasons in West Lafayette, Jeff Duncan was a Boilers assistant and is heading into his 10th season as Kent State coach in 2023.
Selected in the 48th round of the 2008 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft by the Florida Marlins out of high school, Serrato was later picked in the 30th round by the Texas Rangers in 2012 and played in the minors in 2012 and 2013.
Serrato was on Duncan’s Golden Flashes staff 2015-17, coached 2018-19 at Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn., and was at the University of Central Florida in the fall of 2019 before coming back to Kent State in January 2020.
“Coach Dunc is a people person,” says Serrato. “He relates to every type of person.
“He’s good at making sure each guy feels important.”
As recruiting coordinator, Serrato is after a certain kind of player.
“Here at Kent we have a bit of a track record in western (Pennysylvania) and Ohio,” says Serrato. “We have a similar stomping grounds to Purdue. We go into Chicago and Wisconsin. We get some guys from around the Detroit area. It’s a tough kind of kid.
“We’ve got high standards here. We’re going to go into some big places. We’re going to play some really good teams and we’re going to expect to win. If we don’t have a strong mental will — hey, we’re going to get this done — we’re not going to accomplish what this program has set out to do.”
With relationships as a priority, Serrato wants to bring the right people into the Golden Flashes fold.
“If there’s a bad attitude, we’re out,” says Serrato. “At the end of the day we need people who can handle failure and be mature in what they do.”
While looking at potential recruits, he is readying body language, energy and gathering information from multiple sources.
“Off the field are they positive people?,” says Serrato. “What are others saying about them?”
As a hitting coach, Serrato prepares his players to have mature conversations — something he gleaned from pro ball — and preaches three things in this order: mentality, approach and fundamentals.
“It’s that toughness, that go-get-it attitude,” says Serrato. “Anybody who’s been around this game knows that as a hitter you’re going to fail a lot. Guys who can’t take some punches are really going to struggle.
“With two strikes, we shortened up (our swings) and sacrifice power. Our motto is ‘win fastballs away with two strikes.’ If we get beat (inside) we tip our cap.”
Barrett, 32, and wife Karlie met at Kent State. The couple has two daughters.

Barrett Serrato. (Kent State University Image)

Communication key for Bullpen Tournaments VP Tucker

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Growing up playing sports in Zionsville, Ind., Michael Tucker knew what it was to be a teammate.

A center in basketball and catcher in baseball, Tulsa, Okla.-born Tucker played at Zionsville Community High School and graduated in 2008. Some of his closest friends to this day played on those squads.

“We had some great teams,” says Tucker, who played for head coaches Dave Ferrell and Shaun Busick in basketball and Darrell Osborne and Adam Metzler in baseball and counted Matt Miller as a mate on the court and the diamond. Miller went on to pitch at the University of Michigan and in the Milwaukee Brewers organization.

Eric Charles went on to play baseball at Purdue University.

Ryan Price’s father Tom Price played baseball for Dr. Don Brandon at Anderson (Ind.) University and that’s one of the reasons Tucker ended up at the NCAA Division III school.

Tucker was a standout hitter while playing catcher and first base for the Ravens and the Hall of Famer they called “Bama” for his first two college seasons followed by two with David Pressley.

Brandon impressed Tucker with his memory.

“He can tell you the situation — who was on the mound and the count — (from most any game),” says Tucker. “He was really fun to learn from.”

Pressley was a first-time head coach at Anderson. Tucker credits him with lessons on and off the field.

“I learned how to be a man,” says Tucker. “(Pressley) is a huge man of faith.

“He taught a tremendous amount of life lessons.”

Tucker also gained knowledge from Brad Lantz, who was an AU senior receiver when he was a freshman and went on to be a high school head coach at Guerin Catholic and Lapel and is now coaching in the Indy Sharks travel organization.

“I learned so much about catching, counts and what to look for,” says Tucker. “I learned more from (Lantz) than anyone else.”

Tucker was named to D3baseball.com’s 2010s All-Decade Team.  During his career, Tucket hit .361 with 52 home runs, 50 doubles, 193 runs batted in and a .730 slugging percentage. He was a first-team All-America selection and the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference MVP in 2011.

Franklin (Ind.) College has long been a big HCAC rival for Anderson. Tucker recalls how Grizzlies head coach Lance Marshall sometimes used to bring in a fifth infielder when Tucker was at the plate. 

Not a Marshall fan at the time, Tucker has come to see the veteran coach as one of his favorites.

Tucker received a Management degree with a minor in Entrepreneurship from Anderson U. in 2012. 

His “internship” time was spent coaching (coaching with Cesar Barrientos and the Indiana Baseball Academy Storm while injured in 2009) or playing summer collegiate ball (Fort Mill, S.C., Stingers of the Southern Collegiate Baseball League in 2010 and Hannibal, Mo., Cavemen of the Prospect League in 2011 — a team owned at the time by former big leaguers Ryan Klesko and Woody Williams) and he saw a future related to the diamond. 

“I wanted to make baseball my job whether that was with an indoor facility, coaching, training or tournaments,” says Tucker. “I didn’t know what avenue.”

Tucker was a director at the Incrediplex on the northeast side of Indianapolis 2013-15 and coached for the Indiana Bulls travel organization 2012-16.

Since April 2015, Tucker has been part of a different team as vice president for Bullpen Tournaments, Prep Baseball Report Tournaments (with Rhett Goodmiller as director of tournaments) and Pro X Athlete Development (with former big league pitcher Joe Thatcher as co-founder and president) are tenants at Grand Park in Westfield, Ind. Bullpen, with Tucker as the director of day-to-day operations, is involved with Pro X and works with PBR Indiana and consults with PBR national, which operates LakePoint Sports campus in Emerson, Ga., and Creekside Baseball Park in Parkville, Mo.

Ground was recently broken for Championship Park in Kokomo, Ind., and that complex will also be used by Bullpen and PBR.

The 2021 summer will mark Tucker’s seventh with Bullpen Tournaments. 

Hired by BT president Blake Hibler, whom he knew from working Prep Baseball Report showcases, Tucker started at Bullpen in time to experience Grand Park’s first full summer.

“I did everything,” says Tucker. “I tried to be a sponge. Being in baseball your whole life is completely different from the tournament industry.

“There’s learning the business side and scheduling.”

While at the Incrediplex near Lawrence, Tucker had done scheduling on a smaller scale and had become comfortable with software.

Tucker appreciates that Hibler lets him seek out processes.

“If I can find a better mousetrap, he lets me run with it,” says Tucker.

Bullpen is a very large operation.

“We’re a different beast in a lot of ways,” says Tucker, who notes that on any given weekend the company may have as many as 45 fields under its control, including those on and off the Grand Park campus.

Tucker says the key is getting the word out to teams, families and recruiters.

“You have to be able to communicate,” says Tucker. “Half of scheduling is the communicating of the schedule.”

With Hibler having a large part in brainstorming and development, Bullpen first used the Tourney Machine app and now works with Playbook 365 while also helping develop PitchAware and ScoreHQ. 

Bullpen hires scorekeepers for every high school tournament game (15U to 18U) at Grand Park. In 2020, there was also video on six fields.

“It’s huge to have accurate data,” says Tucker. “We can overlay video with stats.

“(A college) coach can recruit from his office.”

But even though Bullpen is dealing with many moving parts, there are only a half dozen full-time employees.

“Guys are tasked to learn a lot of different things,” says Tucker. “But we never feel like this is something I can’t do. Our mentality is we’re going bust our butts and how do we solve this problem?

“Our guys do a tremendous job of being flexible.”

An example of teamwork and flexibility is the creation of the College Summer League at Grand Park, which came about when so many other leagues were canceling the 2020 summer season during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team that made it happen include Hibler, Tucker, Thatcher, Phil Wade, Luke Dietz, Mark Walther, Matt Bowles, Logan Weins, Cam Eveland and Kevin Ricks. Thatcher and Walther are at Pro X. Weins splits his time between Bullpen Tournaments and PBR Tournaments.

With many players reaching out, Bullpen saw the need and went to work to put together what became a 12-team league with most games played at Grand Park with a few at Kokomo Municipal Stadium and Victory Field in downtown Indianapolis.

The league was constructed with safety, NCAA and recruiting regulations in mind. Players were placed, umpires were lined up and jerseys were distributed in a very short time frame.

“We had about seven days to do it,” says Tucker. “We’re excited for it to come back (in 2021).”

As a D-III alum, Tucker was especially pleased that the CSL allowed top-flight players like Joe Moran (who pitched for Anderson and has transferred to Taylor University) was able to compete against D-I talent.

While the pandemic slowed the start of the 2020 Bullpen season, Tucker estimates that there were upwards of 80 percent in games played as compared to a normal year.

The fall included more contests than ever.

“Teams couldn’t play in the spring and that baseball hunger was still there,” says Tucker. “They wanted to play a little longer.

“We had a great fall.”

Weather plays a part, but the first games each year at Grand Park with all its turf fields are collegiate in February. 

“If we get a warm-weather day our phone blows up,” says Tucker. 

Activity starts to ramp up in March with the first 8U to 14U contests the last weekend of that month.

Of course, the pandemic will have a say in what happens in 2021.

“With all the uncertainty it’s tough,” says Tucker. “It’s going to be an interesting spring.”

A perk of Tucker’s position and location is the relationships he gets to build with high school coaches. 

He sees the unique dynamic between between Noblesville’s Justin Keever, Westfield’s Ryan Bunnell, Zionsville’s Jered Moore and Fishers’ Matt Cherry of the Hoosier Crossroads Conference.

“They’re buddies,” says Tucker. “They go out to eat after the game.”

Michael and wife Dani Tucker live in Noblesville, Ind., with son Cole (5) and Cali (3).

The Tucker family (from left): Cali, Dani, Michael and Cole. Michael Tucker is vice president of Bullpen Tournaments is a tenant at Grand Park in Westfield, Ind.