Truth, or Validation?

Recently, I had the privilege of attending and speaking at CatcherFest 2025, a conference hosted by the Florida Baseball Ranch to educate and support catching coaches. Over the course of the event, I listened to a number of excellent speakers cover a wide range of topics—from physical skill development and drill design to smarter approaches to resource management. The lineup was impressive across the board.

One presenter, however, stood out to me: Alex Burg.

Alex is the catching coach for the San Francisco Giants, where he has helped Patrick Bailey earn back-to-back Gold Glove awards. Although he wasn’t officially scheduled to present, Alex generously volunteered to share insights on receiving pitches at the top of the strike zone.

Over the past several years, the top of the zone has become the most difficult area to gain extra strikes—largely because modern receiving techniques have evolved to dominate the bottom of the zone. As an industry, we’ve embraced that trade-off. The prevailing belief has been that you can’t cover both effectively, so you might as well focus where the perceived return is greater.

Alex and Bailey weren’t satisfied with that conclusion.

They had been working intentionally to improve receiving at the top of the zone but weren’t seeing the results they wanted. Then, while reviewing video from the previous night, Alex noticed Bailey receive a top-zone pitch that earned a strike—despite being caught in what most coaches would consider an “incorrect” way.

“He didn’t catch it the way you’re supposed to,” Alex said, “and that caught my eye.”

Instead of dismissing it, Alex studied the clip repeatedly. He thought about it. He talked it through with his catcher. Together, they decided to explore the technique rather than ignore it. As he shared this story, you could feel the room come alive—coaches leaning in, buzzing with curiosity, testing the validity and applicability of this “new” idea.

That single moment told me everything I need to know about Alex Burg as a coach. He’s not committed to how the ball is “supposed” to be caught. He is committed to the truth.

It would have been easy to label the pitch a lucky strike—something baseball’s orthodox echo chamber often does when results don’t align with existing beliefs. But Alex didn’t do that. Instead, with humility and intellectual honesty, he pursued understanding rather than validation. That mindset ultimately helped put his player on a path to a second consecutive Gold Glove.

As coaches, our egos want our opinions to be right. It’s easy to cherry-pick evidence that supports what we already believe. But humility leads to truth. And the willingness to change your mind when presented with evidence is a sign of intelligence and wisdom—not weakness.

At the end of the day, what best serves the player is the truth.

So the question remains: what will you choose—truth, or validation?