Martin Brunner, MLB Coordinator Development Europe, talks to SPOX about his responsibilities in Major League Baseball services and gives an insight into talent development and the development of players and the sport as a whole.
Brunner also recalls the beginnings of German Major League players Max Kepler and Donald Lutz. He also explains the fascination of baseball and evaluates the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani and current German talents in the Minor Leagues.
SPOX: Mr. Brunner, your title at MLB is “Coordinator Development Europe”. What does this mean?
Martin Brunner: The Major League Baseball wants to help Europe develop itself. Especially “Development” always refers to the development of the players. We have programmes to provide Europe with the know-how to build even more effective programmes to improve the environment around the athlete. My job is to coordinate just that.
SPOX: Describe your general tasks.
Brunner: For example, we organize camps for 15-year-olds under the MLB logo. The aim is to give good athletes a perspective, especially in the phase in which they slowly break away from sport. To show them how baseball as a career can offer an opportunity and that it is worthwhile and tangible.
SPOX: But that’s not all you do…
Brunner: No. At the same time we work together with national coaches and volunteers from various countries to take them under our wing and give them new content. We try to focus on the player consideration in the right age group. This can be well regulated in Europe through the larger events. In the context of the events, we then also offer training courses and try to professionalise their structures in terms of content through discussions with the associations.
SPOX: How long have you been doing this job and how did MLB become aware of you personally?
Brunner: I’ve been doing this for five years now. I founded the first academy in Europe and it caused such a sensation through play that it became a role model for the whole of Europe. By the shown achievements one noticed formally that something positive happens there. In addition, names such as Donald Lutz and Max Kepler emerged from it. That attracted a certain amount of attention. But in the end – and this is also the same at a certain level in every sport – the elite know each other. So it didn’t come as a surprise, but was a development that the MLB became aware of me and approached me.
SPOX: You addressed the academy in Regensburg. What makes the legionaries such a talent factory? With Niklas Rimmel, there will now be twelve players who have made the leap from Regensburg to the USA.
Brunner: There are certainly many other good academies in Europe by now. The Dutch, for example, now have almost their entire junior national team together in one academy. What distinguishes Regensburg is a certain know-how advantage. This is a great culture where players pushed each other and didn’t let each other distract them. There’s a great team culture. In addition, there is always an upward exchange. The new developments in sport arrive very quickly in this centre.
SPOX: How does this exchange work?
Brunner: It’s all about sports. With the new technologies – the clubs have invested heavily in research and development, especially in the US – baseball has developed enormously over the last ten years. If you then work closely with the clubs and partly also for them, you will notice a lot. In a big baseball country like the USA, it takes forever for new insights to reach the bottom of the Little League, but it looks different in Germany.
SPOX: In what way?
Brunner: The talent pool is smaller – significantly smaller. But that is also our strength, because it allows valuable information to reach the bottom of the base more quickly. Through these academies one then has faster good run. This is certainly the biggest factor for the location in Regensburg.
SPOX: To what extent does player scouting play its part?
Brunner: Of course, you also have to make sure that you support the right people. The people of Regensburg certainly did a good job. You have found athletes worth the effort. But of course, the talent pool is so thin that anyone who plays baseball in Germany already knows who is eligible.
SPOX: How do you know who is eligible? Do you mainly look at special data or is the “eye” decisive?
Brunner: It is always an overall view. It’s not how good someone is at 13 or 14. The question is always: how good will someone be in ten years? If someone is already big and strong, he automatically has a biological advantage over the others in the age group. But when he was 17, the others caught up with him again. Thus, figures such as the impact average are not enough. You have to look more at – and this is very subjective – what athletic abilities someone has. How do you assess your physical development? It takes a certain amount of experience and a good eye to see what kind of “tools” someone already has. For example, you see how fast someone is. All this ultimately limits the effort.
SPOX: What role does a player’s personality play in this context?
Brunner: This is always a contradiction. If we had an oversupply of athletes, it would be quite clear that only the mental, the character, the “makeup” of a player would be decisive. The question is how someone defines talent and whether the player can bite his way through. Does he have the stamina? A high degree of self-motivation can outdo many physical things and is probably even the most important thing. But of course it’s also the case that if I just can’t do it physically, I can still be such a correct player who does everything right and still can’t get far. So it’s a combination of both… But especially for 13- or 14-year-olds in the academy, one underestimates how much one can actually earn in the years.
SPOX: Do you have an example?
Brunner: Donald Lutz is a good example. In retrospect, everyone knew him, but at the beginning in the Academy he was not particularly interesting. Actually, nobody wanted to talk to him. But after only one year, he learned to move better. And because he had worked on a few athletic things that he hadn’t seen before, he suddenly became interesting. It is also simply the most important thing to be able to correct yourself on the next level in order to play successfully and develop yourself further. In the end, this was the reason why clubs became aware of him. Donald Lutz has literally worked himself into the Major League.
SPOX: What is the ultimate difficulty in assessing talent in baseball at an early age? In football or football you can usually say that earlier.
Brunner: I’m not sure it’s not difficult in other sports. But especially in baseball, you have to know so many different things. Hit the ball, catch it… In addition, you don’t just walk straight ahead, you also have to be able to move well sideways. Perhaps there is also one who learns technology incredibly quickly. And then you’re also a great talent, because technique is already a big component in baseball. In contrast, I can have the best swing, but I can’t hit a ball. That’s not helping. There are an incredible number of factors that make for a really good baseball player. But since cognitive abilities are difficult to assess at that age, I’m not sure someone can really tell how good a player is when he’s ten or eleven – or 13 and 14. I am not sure that our selection procedure is really reliable.
SPOX: How could it be improved?
Brunner: Basically, I would much prefer that all athletes in Germany practice almost all sports until they are ten years old. Then they should pick out a sport or two that they really do. And when they are 14, they choose the one sport they like best. Then we would bring out even more world stars than at the moment. And not everyone would just end up in football.
Page 1: Martiner Brunner’s tasks, promotion of talents and the example of Donald Lutz
Page 2: German talents, the development of Max Kepler and the fascination of baseball