THE FACEOFF 🤼: Chris Hayes, John Rosen & 6Tool 🎙️

MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2026 · THE FACEOFF · VOL XI

Nine seasons in the minors with a fastball in the seventies and a laptop in the clubhouse ⚾️

Two sons through travel ball and the showcase circuit, understanding the game less every year 📋

Now Chris Hayes and John Rosen are building the sixth tool at 6Tool 🧠

Episode 5 on YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts

This week's FACEOFF 🤼 puts two guests in the chair for the first time, in the middle of the World Series.

Chris Hayes walked on at Northwestern, pitched the better part of a decade in pro ball with a fastball in the seventies, and taught himself to write code from the clubhouse.

John Rosen watched two sons come up through travel ball and the showcase circuit to college baseball, and noticed kids getting bigger, stronger and more polished every year while understanding the game less.

Together they built 6Tool, the quiz-and-video platform that shows coaches what their players actually know about situations, strategy and rules, and then teaches them the rest. Thirty-eight minutes with the two of them. Five takeaways below; the full conversation is one tap away above.

FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM EPISODE 5

1. He didn't get any better between the mound visit and the double play. His mindset did.
   Chris's first pro outing: six pitches in, bases loaded, nobody out, tie game, and a pitching coach who walked out, told a joke he still can't repeat on a podcast, and walked back. Strike, strike, strikeout, double play. That inning is where the master's in psychology from Harvard came from, and the belief that the sixth tool can be coached.

2. Five for five, lost 12–0, and feeling great about it.
   John watched two sons come up through travel ball, the showcase circuit and recruiting to college, where showcase games were about 80 percent of the games they played. The kids knew every number they needed (a sub-seven sixty, exit velo, spin rate) and never learned why the right fielder throws to second, not home. His line for the parents spending thousands on lessons: your kid gets exposed on a play he doesn't understand with twelve college coaches watching. “We are selling confidence.”

3. Play the clip, know the play, and find out at practice, not with the ball in the air.
   The player gets the situation on a scoreboard graphic, a big-league clip that pauses as the ball reaches right-center, and the question: where does the shortstop go? The coach gets the email: 72 percent of your players don't know the infield fly rule, so that's tonight's practice. Sunday night the players get five questions, Monday the coach gets the results, Tuesday every parent hears about their own kid. Organizations pay $10 to $20 a player a year; parents can start with a $10 assessment.

4. Every coach loved it. Some coaches bought it. No coaches used it.
   The first 6Tool was a learning-management system for coaches to build their own quizzes; volunteer coaches with a nine-to-five never found the time. So John and Chris built all the content themselves, and the road wasn't linear: a partner meant to bring it to scale, a product-market-fit miss, and a reorganization that put the company back in the founders' corner with new leadership behind this next phase. The North Star never moved: make baseball IQ a number kids care about the way they care about their sixty time.

5. The gamer who hits .270 beats the kid who hits .292.
   Chris's advice to his twelve-year-old self: stop stressing over your ERA; at the end of a showcase a coach remembers the kid who made the right read and threw to the right base. At a showcase you can see who's been in the gym, John adds, but nothing tells you who's a student of the game. Rapid fire: both picked the Rays, a 6Tool customer, and Chris's one rule for parents is make sure your kid wants to sign up again next year.

That's the short version.
The full thirty-eight minutes, with the open tryout where the Royals signed one guy out of two hundred, the six-second video app that was too early in 2011, the dad who called John after one quiz question turned a four-hour drive into a four-hour conversation, field hockey and flag football on deck, and a rapid-fire round where both World Series picks are the Rays, is on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and every episode of THE FACEOFF lives at thecoachsboard.com/podcast.

FIND CHRIS, JOHN AND 6TOOL
6-tool.com · App Store · Instagram · X · Facebook · Chris on LinkedIn · John on LinkedIn

FOLLOW THE COACH'S BOARD
YouTube · Instagram · X · TikTok · thecoachsboard.com

LOOKING AHEAD ⏭️

THE FACEOFF 🤼 is two a week now. Next in the chair: Alex Laird, the founder of Sporting Founders, the private, free community of founders building in sport, 43 countries and counting, on the different buyers, longer sales cycles and web of gatekeepers that make building in sports its own game. Then on Monday, November 2: Nick D'Errico, a USA Hockey Gold-certified goaltending coach and the owner of D'Crease Goaltending, on PointShot, the marketplace built by coaches where parents book a vetted coach by the session, the film review or the development plan, with a special section on Nick's goalie drill library.

Know an operator, founder or coach we should feature? Just hit reply.