Ep. 79 | Tim Huber, Augustana University

What You'll Learn in This Episode

Host Ross Hawley sits down with Tim Huber, head baseball coach at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and a national champion now in his 18th year at Augustana. Huber has built one of the steadiest programs in Division II by doing almost the opposite of what the calendar suggests: a short fall, a long offseason, and a roster deep enough to run a JV schedule.

The conversation gets specific about development. Huber explains why he barely sees his pitchers between October and January, what he is really evaluating during fall scrimmages, how he hires an assistant, why he would rather a freshman play JV games than sit and redshirt, and the honest thing he tells a recruit who wants a promise about playing time.

The highlights:

• Three weeks of fall practice, then straight into the offseason
• Why Augustana scrimmages itself instead of playing the school up the road
• The jump in speed and velocity that catches every freshman off guard
• Hiring a pitching coach who can teach, not just train
• "Keep the real thing the real thing," and why it decided the hire
• The case for a JV program, and what it does for a young player's confidence
• Why good programs do not rely on freshmen, and what that means for recruits
• Baseball IQ in a training era, and the base-running habit he keeps correcting
• Simple hitting advice for young players: swing hard first

A Three-Week Fall, Then Into the Offseason

Augustana's fall runs about three weeks, and Huber is candid that it looks different than most places. It is mostly scrimmages, defensive work, situational baseball, and base running. The staff deliberately stays away from hitting and pitching mechanics in that window and just watches players compete, then moves into the offseason early. Three days a week the team trains off campus at Sanford Power.

They stopped scrimmaging outside competition years ago. Playing a different jersey has value, but Huber gets more from a full inner-squad day, and with the talent currently in the program his own players are the best competition available.

"It's good to play somebody with a different jersey on, but at the same time, I as a coach get a lot more out of seeing 18 guys on the field instead of nine."

The Part Where He Stays Out of the Way

Between the end of fall scrimmages and game one of the spring, Huber says he does not work with his pitchers on anything baseball related. That is the pitching coach's window, and it means the first live outing in January often comes with a surprise, usually a freshman whose body has changed, occasionally an older arm who fixed a pitch. The same thing happens in reverse when the pitching staff sees the hitters for the first time.

During scrimmages he sits in the stands or the opposite dugout and observes, which does not come naturally to him. He is watching how upperclassmen grow into leadership roles they have not held before, and how young players handle themselves. Every play gets clipped into video playlists the team can study. Mostly he leaves them alone unless somebody stops hustling.

What Actually Surprises a Freshman

Huber says the freshmen who impress him most are the ones who are not intimidated: the player he barks at who is standing next to him ten minutes later asking for more. That makeup is rare, and he notices it.

The bigger adjustment is not social, it is the speed of the game. Players arriving from strong high school programs in bigger metro areas think they are prepared because they faced a couple of arms at 90, but most of what they saw was 78 to 82. At Augustana nearly every pitcher is 88 to 92 with stuff to match, and there is no break in the lineup. The same thing happens to infielders on a fast field, where everything speeds up and mistakes multiply.

Hiring Someone Who Can Teach

With one full-time assistant, a couple of part-time coaches, and a graduate assistant, Huber says his hire is almost always on the pitching side and always about one trait: can this person teach? He spent a year as his own pitching coach early in his Augustana tenure, hated it, and knows he knows just enough to be dangerous there. Because he handles the recruiting load himself and enjoys being on the road, recruiting ability is a bonus rather than a requirement.

He never posted the job. Every candidate came through someone he knew, including facility coaches, partly because the program is building a pitching lab and adding technology he believes can separate Augustana at its level. In conversations he pushes past the canned strengths-and-weaknesses questions and tries to draw out philosophy, especially in an era where every young coach can train velocity.

The hire, John Nolan, came from five years at Briar Cliff and a year at Driveline, so the training side was covered. What sold Huber was a single line.

"We've got to keep the real thing the real thing."

Nolan's point was that he had spent his early years focused entirely on making pitchers throw harder, and had watched that pitcher walk the ballpark and lose the game anyway. Holding runners, executing pitches, knowing where your misses are: those matter as much as movement patterns. When Huber called a rival head coach for a reference, the coach volunteered his one concern using the exact same phrase, which made the decision easy.

Riding the Horse

Watching Tarik Skubal come out at 99 pitches and Blake Snell get pulled while cruising, Huber's answer is that the old-school instinct is still there, but it competes with how good modern bullpens are at every level. He wondered aloud whether saving an inning was really about the next start in the series, and agreed that another 20 pitches from a dominant starter is usually worth it.

His own example is Seth Miller, a senior on the 2023 team that reached the Division II World Series, a player Huber puts on the short list of guys he has coached who had an it factor. In game one of that World Series, with a one-run lead late, two runners on, and one of the best hitters in Division II history at the plate, Huber went to the mound with a reliever warm and everyone expecting a change. Miller told him he was good, and Huber went and sat down. They lost the game, and he still defends the decision.

The way a pitcher answers that question is the whole thing. Every pitcher says he wants the ball; Huber listens for whether he means it. A week earlier in the super regional, with the pitch count already over 100 and a trip to the World Series on the line, Miller had made it clear he was not coming out and sent his head coach back to the dugout. He finished somewhere between 130 and 140 pitches, the longest Huber has ever let anyone go, with more than a week of rest waiting on the other side.

The Case for a JV Program

Augustana carries about 45 players and plays a JV schedule, which Huber considers one of the real differences between his program and most others at the level. Development only proves itself in games, and a player who has improved all offseason still has to show it somewhere.

"You can never figure it out unless you give him opportunities."

He is blunt that JV is not a high level of competition, but it is competition, and a player who dominates it forces the staff to ask why he is not playing on Saturday. Every year somebody makes that jump. This past season three players did. The alternative, telling a freshman who has worked all offseason to sit and redshirt without playing a single inning, strikes him as a waste of a year and a miserable experience for the player. Historically more of his players redshirt in year two than year one, once the staff knows more.

There is a roster math piece too. Three-game weekends, midweek doubleheaders, and two to four JV games a week take arms, and when the weekend starters go deep, the freshmen who never got in need somewhere to pitch. That is usually Monday.

What He Tells Recruits About Playing Time

Huber spends more time on the JV conversation with his best recruits than with anyone else, because those are the players who want assurances about year one. His answer is direct: you may well play, but you had better be good, and the program will not be built around you.

"Good programs don't rely on freshmen. They just don't."

He points to his own national championship team, which started three freshman position players hitting fourth, fifth, and ninth. He does not care about class year; he cares whether a player is ready. But he wants recruits and families to understand how rare a freshman impact really is, and what it means when someone promises otherwise.

"If the most important thing for you is to play day one as a freshman, you can probably find it. But how good is that school going to be? Probably not very good if they're guaranteeing you that you're for sure going to play."

In his read there are only two explanations for that kind of promise: the program is not very good, or the coach is telling a recruit whatever it takes to get him on campus.

For players: if you end up on the JV field, Huber's message is not to be upset with the coach. Be upset that you are not on varsity yet, and treat JV as the avenue back.

Baseball IQ in a Training Era

Asked whether baseball IQ is declining, Huber says yes, generally speaking, and names training as part of it. Players spend more time getting bigger and stronger than playing, and he is careful not to blame them: he does not believe the answer is simply to play more games until a player's body is closer to its physical ceiling. Until then, some of that development time is well spent. The tradeoff is real, though, because it is genuinely hard to train hard and perform at the same time.

The other factor is the showcase economy. Summer club baseball exists to put players in front of college coaches, so winning is secondary and skills that do not show up on a scouting report get skipped. Bunting is the obvious casualty. Huber watches college players who have simply never worked at it, and connects it to a manager's old point that percentages may tell you to bunt, but it makes no sense to ask a hitter to do something he cannot do.

He also nudges parents toward the simplest fix available. He makes his five-year-old sit and watch an inning with him and talk through it. Ross describes doing the same thing with his own kids during the playoffs, asking them what they would throw in a given count rather than telling them, which is exactly the kind of thinking a player cannot pick up anywhere else.

The Habit He Keeps Correcting

Augustana builds situational work into practice, often with coach or machine pitch so the pace stays quick and the reps pile up. The example Huber has been harping on all fall is a simple one: runner on first, ball hit to the outfield. The instinct is to drift toward second and read the ball first. His instruction is that once a ball in the air is clearly past the infield, you go, immediately.

The reason is time. A runner has plenty of it to stop, recognize a catch, and get back, but no way of knowing in the first instant whether a fly ball carries over an outfielder's head. Hesitating costs three or four steps, which is the difference between scoring on a double and being thrown out at the plate. The staff builds video playlists of 20 versions of the same situation so players can see a teammate who did it right score easily and the fastest player on the team barely beat a throw home.

Video has limits, though. Huber's view is that you still have to go do it, and the value of film is that some situations will not come up again for two years. When a postseason game produced a confused runner at third who froze after a ball hit the fielder's glove, his instinct as a coach was that the real teaching clip would pan the whole diamond, because the runner everybody noticed was not the only one who got it wrong.

Advice for Young Hitters

Asked for advice on Ross's 10- and 11-year-old sons, Huber starts with one instruction: swing hard. Mechanics can wait, especially at young ages, and the ability to swing hard while keeping your eyes on the ball is the foundation everything else gets built on.

"They're not doing things right, not because they don't want to. They just physically can't do it."

That is the piece he wants parents and youth coaches to sit with. A young swing often looks long because the player is weak, not because he is moving incorrectly, and a player worked out at Augustana that week showed the same thing. From there he would teach a young hitter to use the lower half, getting the back heel to face the sky so power comes from the legs instead of the hands. As players get a little older, he adds two cues, hands back and hands up, because hands that drift back and down lose the barrel early.

He also liked a clip of a dad in a catcher's mask asking a four-year-old to hit balls right back at him. Nobody mentions mechanics, but to line it up at dad the young hitter has to stay inside the ball and organize a decent bat path on his own.

For a walkout song, Huber's college answer was Puff Daddy's instrumental "Come With Me," though his town-team friends spent a few summers cueing up "You're the Best Around" for a 40-year-old. At home, his son asks Alexa for "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard," inherited straight from dad's truck.

Episode Timestamps

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

• 0:00 — Introduction
• 1:00 — What a Division II fall actually looks like
• 2:21 — Why they scrimmage themselves instead of another school
• 4:43 — Not seeing his pitchers again until January
• 7:30 — Freshman nerves, and the ones who come right back
• 9:15 — The jump in speed and velocity at the college level
• 10:33 — Hiring an assistant who can teach
• 13:43 — The questions he asks in an interview
• 16:09 — Keeping the real thing the real thing
• 18:35 — Skubal, Snell, and whether anyone rides the horse anymore
• 20:40 — Seth Miller and a World Series decision
• 22:44 — The super regional start he refused to leave
• 25:09 — Development, and the case for a JV program
• 28:58 — What he tells top recruits about playing time
• 30:50 — Roster size, arms, and getting freshmen innings
• 35:14 — Baseball IQ in a training era
• 37:29 — Travel ball, showcases, and why nobody bunts
• 42:06 — The base-running habit they keep correcting
• 46:17 — Advice for young hitters
• 50:16 — Hands back, hands up
• 52:22 — Walkout song, and what his five-year-old plays

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Tim Huber is the head baseball coach at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Subscribe to the Baseball Forward Podcast for more conversations with the players, coaches, and leaders elevating the next generation of the game.