Failure Is an Ingredient
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Episode Summary
Todd Merkow sits down with Andrew Beinbrink — former collegiate baseball player at Arizona State University (College World Series finalist), six-year professional baseball player who reached Triple-A with both the Tampa Bay Rays and Texas Rangers, and CEO and founder of SportsForce (sportsforce.io), a recruiting advisory platform that has guided families through the college athletic recruiting process for over fifteen years. Andrew grew up in San Diego as a multi-sport athlete — soccer, baseball, football, basketball, tennis, golf, body surfing — and brings both the lived experience of a player who navigated the process and the data of an entrepreneur who has spent a decade and a half studying what actually works.
The episode opens with Andrew's origin story: a San Diego kid who competed in everything, with an older brother who set the pace and a street culture built around pickup games in the front yard, the backyard, and the park. His father — a Navy captain who played college lacrosse at the Naval Academy — had no background in baseball but tried to be as hands-on and supportive as he could. That support came to a head sophomore year of high school, when Andrew was on varsity, struggling at the plate, and feeling the weight of both his own expectations and his father's presence directly behind the backstop. He describes the moment in detail: sitting in his bedroom in tears, asking his dad to step back — to watch from down the right field line with the other parents, or not come to games at all. His father honored it. Andrew's message to young athletes is direct: you are allowed to tell your parents what you need. Creating space for a young athlete to step up requires the parent to step back first.
The multi-sport section is one of the most practically grounded in the series. Andrew played soccer and football through his junior year of high school and didn't fully specialize in baseball until his senior year. He credits basketball and soccer for the footwork and timing he brought to his infield play, and the mental and physical break from baseball for keeping him fresh enough to develop. He introduces a study from the California Interscholastic Federation that identified the three core reasons high school athletes play sports: it's fun, it's with their friends, and they get feedback on how well they performed. He calls these the three F's — fun, friends, and feedback — and says if parents keep those three things at the center of how they support their kids, the rest takes care of itself.
Creating that space is difficult for a young man or young woman to step up if there's no room for them to step up. Being able to take a step back allows them to step up.
The Arizona State section covers the full arc: drafted by the Red Sox out of high school, choosing ASU over Stanford and the University of Arizona because he wanted to win a national championship and the Pat Murphy era was just beginning, arriving as a freshman to face players who were married and had children, and learning for the first time what it meant to compete at that level. He describes the mental game framework he developed under Murphy — controlling the controllables, letting go of failure, buying into process over results — and says it has served him in business and in life as much as it did on the field. His formulation: failure is an ingredient in the development process. Parents who protect their kids from failure are removing a necessary ingredient.
Failure is an ingredient in their development process. Being able to really buy in, trust, and fall in love with that process — and detach from the results — that's part of the missing link right now.
The SportsForce section is the most data-dense in the episode. Andrew lays out the landscape with precision: 6,000-plus players entered the baseball transfer portal last summer alone. The recruiting timeline has moved later as a result, with many Division I-caliber high school seniors still without a college home. Families waste the most time and money in this process by chasing exposure too early and at the wrong schools — flying across the country for camps that are primarily revenue sources, targeting programs based on brand rather than fit, and skipping the step of getting an objective assessment of where their son or daughter actually stands. SportsForce has an over-80% placement rate on its highest-touch service, and Andrew attributes that to one thing: vetting reality before the process starts, not after.
Families waste the most time and money in this process by chasing exposure too early and at the wrong schools, as opposed to polishing the development and making sure the athlete is ready for the moment.
The episode closes with Andrew's most personal moment — a closing thought he offers unprompted. His father was diagnosed with cancer when Andrew was a senior in high school. There were 600 games Andrew played in college and professional baseball that his father never had a chance to see. His message to every parent in the stands: these are fleeting moments. Find the joy in watching your child wear a jersey. Savor it. It goes faster than you think.
There were 600 games I played in my college and professional career that my dad never had a chance to see. Finding the joy just to witness your child play the sport they love needs to be savored. These are fleeting moments.
Top 5 Takeaways
Kids are allowed to tell their parents what they need — and parents need to honor it. Andrew's sophomore year moment is one of the most direct accounts on this podcast of a young athlete asking a parent to step back. He was on varsity, struggling, feeling the weight of his own expectations and his father's presence directly behind the backstop. He sat in his bedroom in tears and asked his dad to move down the right field line or stop coming to games. His father honored it. Andrew's message to young athletes: you are allowed to ask for what you need. His message to parents: when your kid asks you to step back, that is not rejection. It is the most important thing they can do for their own development, and the most important thing you can do is listen.
The three F's are the real reason kids play sports. A California Interscholastic Federation study identified three core reasons high school athletes play sports: it's fun, it's with their friends, and they get feedback on how well they performed. Not Division I scholarships. Not professional contracts. Fun, friends, and feedback. Andrew says if parents keep those three things at the center of how they support their kids, the rest takes care of itself. The parents who lose the thread are the ones who have replaced those three things with outcomes — rankings, offers, exposure events — before their kid is old enough to have a driver's license.
Failure is a necessary ingredient, not a problem to be solved. Andrew's formulation is precise: failure is an ingredient in the development process. Athletes who thrive are the ones who learn to let go of failure, buy into process over results, and trust that the work will compound. Parents who protect their kids from failure — who candy-coat bad performances, who intervene before the kid has a chance to sit with disappointment — are removing a necessary ingredient from the recipe. The corollary: praise the effort, not the results. Not the three-for-four with the double. The effort. That is what you can control, and that is what you want your kid to learn to control.
Over-coaching is a real injury. Andrew describes a pattern he experienced in professional baseball — coaches who became attached to improving his performance and began installing their own philosophy into his mechanics. They wanted him to hit for more power, so they taught him a leg kick. What happened instead is what happens to a lot of young athletes: he lost the natural movement patterns and comfort in his body that had made him effective in the first place. It is very difficult to perform at a high level if you don't feel relaxed and comfortable. This applies at every level. Coaches who are coaching for their own benefit — to prove a point, to justify their system, to produce a result they can point to — are not coaching for the athlete. The question Christian Lavers raised in the previous episode applies here too: is this coaching point for your benefit or for theirs?
The transfer portal has fundamentally changed the high school recruiting landscape. More than 6,000 players entered the baseball transfer portal last summer alone. That number, extrapolated across every sport, means college rosters are increasingly filled with experienced players who have already played at the next level. The result: recruiting has moved later for high school athletes, and many Division I-caliber seniors still don't have a college home by the time they graduate. The families who are best positioned are the ones who started with an honest assessment of where their athlete stands — athletically and academically — before they started chasing exposure. The families who are worst positioned are the ones who spent two years and tens of thousands of dollars on camps and showcases at schools that were never going to recruit their kid.
Fit matters more than brand. Andrew's single biggest misconception families have about making it in college sports: they fall in love with the brand of the school and not the fit. A kid who gets into USC and plays club baseball is not a failure. A kid who plays Division II and starts every game is not settling. The question is not which logo is on the jersey. The question is whether the athlete is in an environment where they can develop, compete, and thrive. SportsForce's over-80% placement rate is built on one thing: getting families to ask the right question before the process starts, not after.
Kids self-organize better than we think. Andrew's answer to how he and his wife plan to approach sports with their own children: expose them to as many different sports and inputs as possible, and let them self-organize. Kids are remarkable at figuring out what they love and what they're good at when they're given the space to do it. They don't need as much coaching as we think. What they need is room to explore, permission to fail, and parents who are watching from down the right field line — present, supportive, and quiet enough to let the game do its work.
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