Episode 5: Chris Hayes, John Rosen & 6Tool — The Sixth Tool

He 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. He 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, Chris Hayes and John Rosen 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.

This is Episode 5 of THE FACEOFF, and the first with two guests in the chair: thirty-eight minutes with Chris and John, in the middle of the World Series. Five tools get you noticed. The sixth one, the brain, wins games.

WHAT'S IN IT

• The mound visit. Chris's first pro outing: six pitches in, bases loaded, nobody out, tie game, and a pitching coach who walked out, told a joke, and walked back. Strike, strike, strikeout, double play. He didn't get any better in between; his mindset did, and that's where the belief that the sixth tool can be coached comes from.

• Five for five, lost 12–0, and feeling great about it. John's sons knew their sixty times, exit velo and spin rate, and never learned why the right fielder throws to second, not home. 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."

• Play the clip, know the play. A big-league clip pauses as the ball reaches right-center: 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. Organizations pay $10 to $20 a player a year; parents start with a $10 assessment.

• Every coach loved it. Some coaches bought it. No coaches used it. The first 6Tool let coaches build their own quizzes, and volunteer coaches never found the time, so John and Chris built the content themselves. The road since wasn't linear, and a reorganization put the company back in the founders' corner.

• 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.

• Rapid fire. Both World Series picks are the Rays, a 6Tool customer, and Chris's one rule for parents: make sure your kid wants to sign up again next year.

FIND CHRIS, JOHN AND 6TOOL

https://6-tool.com

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1658822392

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/6_tool/

X: https://x.com/six6Tool

Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishayes13/

John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrosen/

THE GROUND RULES

Nobody gets published without seeing the cut first, and Chris and John saw theirs. Anything a guest says as fact gets checked before it appears in print, or it's attributed to them by name.

The written version of this conversation is THE FACEOFF VOL XI, free at https://thecoachsboard.com. If you run a club, a facility, a league or a team, or you're building something for the people who do, we'd like to hear from you.

The Coach's Board is the playbook for modern youth sports — the daily briefing for the people who actually run it.

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