Ep. 63 | RD Spiehs, Tarleton State

What You'll Learn in This Episode

Host Ross Hawley sits down with RD Spiehs, pitching coach for the Tarleton State Texans in Stephenville, Texas. Spiehs pitched three years at Nebraska during the program's climb to Omaha, spent seven years in professional baseball, and is now in his 16th year of coaching. He arrived at Tarleton with head coach Fuller Smith for the program's first full Division I schedule, and the Texans followed a preseason ranking of ninth in the conference by winning the WAC tournament.

It is the end of June, the least restful month on a college staff's calendar, and both sides of his job are in season: the pitchers already on campus and the ones he is still recruiting. His filter for both is unusually simple, and it has more to do with competitiveness and honesty than with a Trackman readout.

The highlights:

• Why Randall Dale became RD, and how a Grand Island kid ended up pitching for the Huskers
• What is fueling Tarleton's rise, from NAIA and Division II roots to half a billion dollars of construction
• The three things that made Stephenville the right job at this stage of his career
• A June that included kids camp, four scouting events, seven portal visits, and 35 high school games
• How a 34-man roster splits, and where those players come from
• The two non-negotiables for pitchers: true competitor and true strike-thrower
• How he spots a competitor, and why he coaches execution over emotion
• Honest communication as arm care, plus what gets a high school player on a Division I radar

Randall Dale, From Grand Island

The name comes from central Nebraska and is, in his telling, entirely unoriginal: his father is a Randall with a different middle name, and there is a Dale among his uncle and grandfather, so the family settled on RD before he was born 45 years ago. He grew up in Grand Island, on Interstate 80 about 90 miles west of Lincoln, a town of 50,000 in the old 308 area code, where two branches of a river created the island in the name.

His father had been a catcher and co-captain at Nebraska, so Lincoln always had a pull, but the recruiting path came with a twist. Spiehs was the last recruit signed under head coach John Sanders, and a month later the program changed direction and a staff arrived from Northwestern State led by Dave Van Horn. The result was a regional as a freshman, a super regional as a sophomore, and the College World Series as a junior, where a teammate started the opener and Spiehs got game two in Omaha. Nebraska went back in 2002 and 2005. He is candid that from the inside, at 18 to 22 years old with expectations that high, it mostly felt hard, and that only later did it register as the ground floor of what got built there.

The Ground Floor of Another Rise

Tarleton State had no baseball program 38 years ago. From there it went NAIA, then Division II, and it has only been Division I for about seven years — as recently as 2023, before Fuller Smith and Spiehs arrived, roughly a dozen games on the schedule were still against Division II opponents. They came aboard for the first full Division I slate, were picked ninth in the conference for 2024, and about 120 days later were piling on each other after winning the conference tournament.

The reason he thinks the trajectory holds is that the money and the enrollment are both moving. Tarleton is part of the Texas A&M System, and Spiehs believes it is the institution the system wants to plant a flag with in North Central Texas: he cites $554 million of construction under contract, an arena and event center, an 8,000-square-foot weight room addition, and several million dollars directed toward baseball and softball in a single calendar year. Add the fastest-growing Division I athletic program among the 25 in Texas, a university growing fast enough that dorm beds have run out, and what he tells recruits stops being a promise and starts being a construction schedule: you can be on the ground floor of the first Tarleton team to reach a regional.

Why Stephenville Checked Every Box

He names three reasons he took the job. First, weather: a northerner by birth, he liked the idea of putting the shovel and snowblower away and seeing ball flight out of the hand and off the bat for 120 days of winter. Second, the people — a university president in Dr. James Hurley who he calls the biggest go-getter he has met, up running at five in the morning and emailing boosters an hour later, an athletic director with stops at Nebraska, Oklahoma State, and West Virginia, and a head coach in Fuller Smith he describes as a tireless recruiter and a better human being. Third, geography: he and his wife had started their Texas run at Grayson College, and seven and a half million people in the metroplex makes the recruiting map work.

Leadership from the top, he says, is infectious and shows up in every sport on campus, from tennis conference titles to a softball team a game away from a regional. So does the town. Stephenville is about 25,000 people, and rather than treating that as a limitation he calls it a fishbowl worth swimming in, because the thing to do in town is Tarleton — a campus that has also stacked up national rodeo championships. He sums up the character of the place as gritty over pretty, and the sign of momentum he offers is small and telling: at the coffee shop, the cup came back labeled "coach" instead of his name.

A June in the Life of a Division I Pitching Coach

His June was a five-headed monster: six days of kids camp, four scouting events looking at the 2026, 2027, and 2028 classes, seven transfer portal visits, and 35 select high school travel games hosted on their own field. With roughly 3,300 Division I players in the portal, his staff's working spreadsheet was down to 400 names. Meanwhile 17 of his own pitchers were on individual throwing plans — coming back, de-loading, on-ramping, throwing bullpens in indoor facilities — so that the guys who have already worn the uniform are in a good place when players report back on campus in the middle of August.

The roster math is straightforward. At 34 players, he and Smith split it down the middle: 17 pitchers and 17 position players, ideally about six left-handers and 11 right-handers. The classes get diversified on purpose, and at the time of the conversation the roster was roughly half junior college, 30 percent transfer portal, and 20 percent out of high school, with five incoming freshmen — a blend of players still open to learning and veterans with some gray in the beard. Seven of their top eight position players chose to come back rather than test another uniform.

Transactional Money, Transformational Program

Spiehs does not pretend the money is irrelevant. There is a transactional piece that either keeps a player in uniform or brings him to campus, and Tarleton now has a little NIL, a dash of revenue share, and a slight bump in scholarships — enough, in his words, that they are no longer bringing a butter knife to a gunfight. He is equally blunt that the conference is good and that Tarleton is not in this for a participation ribbon.

What he wants recruits to hear is what happens after the deal. Once a player is on campus it becomes transformational: a brotherhood inside a department of more than 400 student-athletes. He tells families it is not his business whether their checking account holds two dollars or two hundred million, because every player wants the same thing, which is to feel taken care of and to have weight lifted off his shoulders. The measure of success he gives is unchanged by any of the new money: develop, pile on each other after a win, get guys drafted, and get them their degrees.

Competitors and Strike-Throwers

From the top of the funnel down, his standard for a pitcher is short.

"If you're not a true competitor and if you're not a true strike-thrower, you're probably not going to see the mound very much here at Tarleton."

From there it moves to being an honest communicator, and then to the parts nobody sees: how much concentration goes into catch play, how diligent the body and arm prep is before a pitcher ever touches a baseball.

"There's 168 hours in the week, and realistically, what we're seeing in between the white lines is just the byproduct of what they're doing the other 165 hours of the week."

He programs pitchers individually so the sum comes out greater than the parts, and he has no interest in cloning arms. His staff has long-toss disciples throwing 30 minutes out to 330 feet and others on much shorter versions, splitter guys, sinker guys, sliders, north-south types, and high-carry fastballs. He wants the collage, because a game that decides a conference tournament or a super regional is won by having the specific arm the moment calls for — the left-on-left slider, or the change-up when that is the opponent's weakness. He would happily take a rotation of 100 mile-per-hour arms or the best spin rate in the country, and he notes the pitcher with that spin rate went in the 12th round. For him, the ranking is guts design, heart design, and strike design over pitch design.

Sweaty but Steady

His read on a true competitor is a blend: a little sweat running down the neck, and a stoic face.

"Your hand might be sweaty, but it's steady. The situation's getting a little tight, but the heart rate is down and the focus is up."

The phrase he uses for it is execution over emotion, a term he says he did not learn until after he was done playing. Once the final out is recorded, have the primal yell. In the moment, he wants a laser focal point. The easiest place to evaluate it is when something goes wrong: an error behind a pitcher, or an umpire missing a call. If the response is palms up and eyes rolling, he assumes the player is an excuse maker who will struggle to adjust. If it is lunch pail, next pitch, what is important now — a wonderful opportunity to get a ground ball double play — that is the profile, because everyone in college baseball eventually gets a large piece of humble pie.

Honest Communication as Arm Care

Spiehs gives two reasons he puts honest communication on the same level as competing. The first is health. If the relationship is not a two-way street, a pitcher six weeks into a season will hide a shoulder that feels like it has a golf ball in it, because he is afraid the coaching staff will call him soft. When the communication works, that pitcher gets backed off: no long toss, no pull-downs, bullpen pushed a couple of days, trainer evaluation.

The second is the moment late in a game when the tank is emptying and a coach asks a pitcher what he has left.

"In game, we tell our guys, we need zeros and not heroes."

Without an honest answer, a coach sends out a lesser version of the pitcher, risks an injury, and hands the opponent momentum that can turn a series or a season. Hawley points out how many young players will face exactly that question, say they are fine, and not be — and that there is nothing wrong with saying so.

Advice for Players and Parents

For players: stay healthy, perform, and have a carrying tool. He wants to see something real — a runner who can get under a 6.7 in the 60, a bat that can bang doubles and home runs, or on the mound velocity, spin, deception, a clean delivery, or plain athleticism. Then be proactive, because emails do fall on deaf ears and there is no reason to hold your cards close to your chest. If you want to be at Tarleton, tell Tarleton; if you want to play in Fort Worth or Austin, tell those schools. He points to two incoming freshmen whose parents are both alumni and who simply shouted from the treetops that they wanted to be there. Academics count too — the program sits around a 3.16 GPA.

For parents: his advice fits on an index card.

"Keep it competitive, but let's not get crazy. All in, but not all overboard."

He explains what is at stake with a detail parents rarely think about. Recruiting due diligence is thorough, and it runs through high school coaches and select coaches, which means staffs regularly hear a version of "good kid, but the parents are a lot." Liking a player and putting him in the lineup are two different decisions, and the family reputation travels with him. Everything the staff does is professional rather than personal, so his ask is that parents keep it professional too: support your player, help him work hard and have fun, get things back on the rails when they slip, and remember that people are always watching. Let the body of work on the field do the talking rather than row four.

As for whether Division I staffs are tracking results at 10U and 12U, the answer is no. The odds of any player reaching pro ball, let alone the majors, are tiny, and what he wants for kids that age is the clubhouse: the camaraderie, the friendships, the brotherhood, not an argument over whether a scorekeeper ruled a play an error. His evidence is two group texts that are still alive — one with the guys he played with at 14 on the Grand Island Gladiators, and one from his college team.

Disciplined or Disappointed

Asked what he would tell his younger self, Spiehs starts with enjoying the wins more. High-level competitors of any age dwell on losses and skip past victories, and winning a college game is hard: discipline, practice, a village of things going right. He can look back across three years of college and seven years of professional ball and remember slapping hands after a win while already talking about the one that got away.

The second piece is a line he heard somewhere and now opens his first pitchers' classroom meeting with.

"Baseball players are stereotypically one of two things. They're disciplined or they're disappointed."

His players assume he is talking about Saturday night. He means the discipline of catch play, of playing good defense while in a slump, of being the first man up to greet a teammate who just scored, of picking up the trash in the dugout because you are not a 38-year-old big leaguer and you can leave a place better than you found it. The mantra covers the weight room, sleep, nutrition, and hydration: be disciplined, or end up disappointed.

His walkout music never quite earned an A. As a Nebraska freshman he did not get to choose — the staff handed him a George Strait song — and later attempts, including a Neil Diamond track, did not land with the crowd. In pro ball he went further off the grid with Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" and a couple of Tool songs. These days the truck radio ping-pongs between new country and a 2000s channel, which doubles as a yearbook for him and his wife. He closes with the same thought he gives his pitchers: time goes quickly, so enjoy it, because there are winners and there are learners, and the game gives back far more than a scoreboard.

Episode Timestamps

Tap any timestamp to jump the player straight to that moment.

• 0:00 — Introduction
• 0:57 — What the RD stands for
• 1:35 — Grand Island, Nebraska, and the 308 area code
• 3:26 — Regional, super regional, and a start in Omaha
• 5:40 — Tarleton baseball from NAIA to Division II to Division I
• 6:43 — Half a billion dollars of construction under contract
• 9:18 — Three reasons he chose Stephenville
• 13:02 — Gritty over pretty: a town where the thing is Tarleton
• 15:08 — A June of camps, scouting events, and portal visits
• 16:41 — Roster math: 17 pitchers and 17 position players
• 19:32 — Transactional money, transformational program
• 24:22 — True competitor and true strike-thrower
• 27:14 — Sweaty but steady, and execution over emotion
• 29:32 — Honest communication as arm care
• 32:25 — What gets a high school player on a Division I radar
• 34:53 — Advice for parents: competitive but not crazy
• 38:48 — What Division I staffs are not watching at 10U
• 42:13 — Regrets, and enjoying the wins more
• 45:02 — Walkout music, from George Strait to Led Zeppelin
• 47:41 — Closing thoughts: winners and learners

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RD Spiehs is the pitching coach for the Tarleton State Texans in Stephenville, Texas, after pitching three years at Nebraska and seven years professionally. Subscribe to the Baseball Forward Podcast for more conversations with the players, coaches, and leaders elevating the next generation of the game.