QUICK STUDY
An English teacher by day, Orioles co-hitting coach and former Husky Ryan Fuller used ‘virtual portfolio’ on social media for rapid rise in coaching
Years after Ryan Fuller delivered the biggest hit in Uconn history, he popped on coach Jim Penders’ radar again — in the form of a request from his high-school-aged son.
“Dad, I’ve got to get to this guy Ryan Fuller,” his son told him, not making the connection that the hitting instructor whose social media videos and progressive methods were sweeping across Connecticut was no stranger.
“He was a famous hitting guy all of a sudden,” Penders said. “I [told my son], that was Ryan; he played third base. But it snuck up on me.”
So, too, did all the opportunities that followed for Fuller, who upon joining the Orioles’ minor league staff three years ago was teaching high school English by day and giving hitting lessons by night.
Now, at age 31, he’s a co-hitting coach for the Orioles, looking to further influence their rebuild with a unique approach to hitting.
“It’s pretty remarkable what he’s done in such a short amount of time and at such a young age, to get into a major league dugout,” Penders said.
Fuller grew up in Old Lyme, hoping to play for the Huskies but spent two years at Uconn-avery Point before he got the chance.
Once he did, Fuller smoothly replaced firstround pick Mike Olt at third base; his walk-off single in the NCAA regional in 2011 at Clemson still lives in Husky lore.
He signed as a free agent with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2012 with the hopes pro ball would be a chance to learn, only to find that wasn’t the situation he was in. The best players moved up, and all the rest — himself included — moved on.
Fuller got into coaching at Quinnipiac University in 2013 but didn’t make enough to move out of his parents’ house. He posited he would as a financial advisor and earned the required certifications, only to remember teaching and coaching were his passions. So, Fuller got his master’s degree in English and took a job at Haddam-killingworth High in Higganum, teaching English and coaching baseball.
“That’s what I thought I’d do for the next 35 years,” Fuller said. “I thought that would be a pretty good life. But looking back now, I attribute most of my coaching strengths to my teaching career — being incredibly organized, being prepared with multiple contingency plans and more than anything else, learning how to connect with young adults who would rather be
doing anything else than reading ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and going over motifs.”
It wasn’t long into teaching that baseball grew to an outsized role. He wanted to provide the athletes whose families paid him with a different experience than they might have had with more traditional coaching. The curiosity as to how came naturally.
In college, he’d spend hours watching Youtube clips of elite hitters. As a coach, he dived into biomechanics and its relation to the swing, then dug into how those skills are developed and transferred from practice to games.
He started with younger athletes but enjoyed the complex problems — and the research required to help solve them — that more advanced hitters presented. He eschewed easy drill work for more challenging and variable tasks, and “it was always described as fun and disguised as competition,” he said.
“When we started doing that, it was like, holy smokes, they’re getting better quicker and I’m saying way less as a coach,” Fuller said. “So, creating these really fun practice designs was something that led me on this path of continued learning of how skill actually develops and transfers to the game. When I did that, the players were not only more engaged but had a lot more success when they would leave, too.”
He later worked at The PIT, a hitting facility in Niantic, where owner Tim Burrows said Fuller’s social media presence caught their eye as they sought instructors. He said they “speak the same language” in terms of getting the barrel to the ball early, staying in the zone a long time and matching pitch plane. Fuller was attracted to the live batted ball data provided by their Hittrax system.
“The one thing I’d take from him is it was never a one cookie-cutter approach for hitters,” Burrows said. “He built relationships with hitters at our facility and customized plans based off their inefficiencies.”
One such client was Connor Podeszwa, Connecticut’s 2021 Gatorade Player of the Year and son of Uconn assistant Chris Podeszwa. Connor Podeswa was always more of a pitcher, but vowed in the winter of 2018 to make himself into a hitter. That offseason with Fuller their work produced a better swing and a jump of over 10 mph in his average exit velocity and 100 feet in average distance.
The Hittrax data reinforced what they were doing was working, but so did Fuller.
“When we were hitting and you had a really good round or got ahold of one, he’d always be more excited for you than you were,” Connor Podeswza said. “You’d piece up a ball and you’d feel really good, but he’s back behind the L-screen jumping and all pumped up for you — it just makes you really good as a player.”
The younger Podeszwa loved the unique drills Fuller presented, and more importantly, understood why they were benefiting him.
“He would talk about some of the drills they’d do, and I’d have to have him explain to me,” his father said. “‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this? What’s the theory behind you doing this?’ And he was able to communicate that to me, my son. So, if he was able to communicate it to me, Ryan was doing a great job communicating those things to him.”
At the encouragement of his now-wife, Georgia, Fuller put some of those drills on social media. He was pouring hours into finding solutions for his athletes, and they figured sharing it could help him attract more clients in the process.
It quickly grew. Each video would garner thousands of new followers in what Fuller called “the “Wild West of the Instagram days.” His pages include hitters smacking soft Plyocare balls that only travel far when struck solidly on the barrel, “skeet-shooting” with batted balls off the tee as Fuller tosses softballs out into the cage, and countless other swing breakdowns.
His Instagram grew to over 60,000 followers and allowed Fuller to interface with other hitting minds from inside and outside pro ball. His page — which came to represent what he calls a “virtual portfolio” — helped him gain the Orioles’ attention in the fall of 2019. He wasn’t prepared for the crossroads he’d arrived at but figured the comfortable life he so enjoyed would be available if professional baseball wasn’t for him.
He was hired as the hitting coach for Low-a Delmarva as part of director of player development Matt Blood’s revamping of the hitting program for the 2020 season.
Fuller worried he’d flop, that his background wouldn’t be enough to influence even low-minors hitters. Because of the pandemic, he instead spent the summer at the Orioles’ alternate site with major league hitters and top prospects.
He and fellow newcomer Anthony Villa decided they could only teach how, and what, they knew, which doubled as the Orioles’ philosophies of improving swing decisions, hard consistent contact and doing damage.
There was some pushback on changing the regular routine, but success ended that, both in Bowie and Baltimore. DJ Stewart left the alternate site and went on a home run binge. Austin Hays and Cedric Mullins had strong Septembers upon recall after previously struggling. Ryan Mountcastle debuted from the alternate site and looked immediately like he belonged. Some of those players texted Fuller after games to relay how prepared they felt, and those messages helped build buy-in for the prospects at the alternate site.
The message was simple: “They want to get better, and if you show value in what you’re teaching, they’re going to keep coming back to it if they’re getting better,” Fuller said.
That was also the case at Double-a Bowie this year where Fuller, in addition to in his role as full-season hitting coordinator, helped create a program that led to widespread improvement across the Orioles farm.
Orioles full-season affiliates enjoyed a 37-point jump in OPS from 2019 to 2021, with home run and walk rates up as well. Fuller said the staff under manager Buck Britton at Bowie was one that melded the learning and development required for growth with the grind of a 120-game season well. Fuller had a chance to test and refine many of his theories and practices in a seasonlong environment. Many paid off.
“This year was a huge confidence booster of taking theory, putting it into action and seeing it in production,” he said.
So, too, was the opportunity to interview for the Orioles’ major league hitting coach job when executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias offered that opportunity. Instead of being strictly a coordinator in 2022, Fuller will be in the major league dugout working alongside Matt Borgschulte to take the cutting-edge practices that have worked in player development to the results-based environment of the big leagues.
“We have a really unique opportunity to have a completely unified hitting department from the [Dominican Republic] all the way to the big leagues,” Fuller said. “That was something intriguing for not just me, but for the entire hitting staff, where when a guy goes from Double A to Triple A to the big leagues, he’s not missing a step. I know we’re super excited for that.”