Sunday Morning Chat: Trinity Manager Miguel Cuello

Trinity Christian has spent the past few years out of district play. This season, the Warriors are back, and they have their sights set on a state title. This week, Manager Miguel Cuello sat down with HSBN to discuss his approach to coaching, the bond between his players, and many other topics. Enjoy!

Anthony: Alright, lets start off by giving our readers a little background into your career.

Coach Cuello: I’ve been the baseball coach here at Trinity since 2005. I was an assistant coach at Grandview Prep in 2004 when this job opened up. I came to interview, and I’ve been here ever since. It has been a joy to be here the last ten years, I love to coach. I’ve been coaching since 1996, I worked at Bucky Dent Baseball school in Delray Beach. I still work there in the off-season. So, baseball has been in my blood since then. I played a little college ball. I played a little professional independent baseball also in ’94. I came to Florida in ’96, I’ve been here ever since. When you want to play baseball, you come to Florida, I guess.

Anthony: The past few years you guys were an independent without any possibility of post season play. How exciting is it to be in a district this season?

Coach Cuello: Oh it is, ‘cause now when you play the district games, it’s kind of different games. And it’s nice to actually know that there is something to win. For the past three years, it’s been over when you know your last game of the season is the last one, that’s it. And then you look in the paper and, this one’s going forward, this teams moving on, it was a little rough. Even without postseason play, we were fortunate, a lot of our guys have gone to D-1 schools, and a lot of guys have been drafted. So, you know, that’s good. A lot of our guys that got drafted have gone to school and have come back to help out here. That’s one thing we take from the past few years’ experience for sure.

Anthony: So you play independent ball and when you come back to district play you find yourself in one of the toughest districts in South Florida. Talk about the competition you guys have walked back in to.

Coach Cuello: Oh yeah, man. To us it isn’t much different being in this district because when we were not playing for three years, we loaded our schedule. We played against all the teams from Miami, and Broward. All those big schools from down here (Broward) and up to our place, we played them all. We did that because we knew, when we come back, we had no idea that we would come back into a district like this, but we wanted to keep the guys in form no matter where we ended up.

Anthony: Your teams have always been known for playing fundamental baseball. What is it that you guys do in your practice that allows for the fundamental success that you have?

Coach Cuello: It’s basically a lot of repetition. The kids get a little tired of it but I say when it comes down to winning or losing a game, if you look back on a loss, you usually see something that wasn’t fundamentally sound happened. It’s not a base hit, it’s not a guy striking out. It’s did you cover the bag? Did you know were to go when the situation happened? Its almost like when you go to spring training and the pitchers have to do PFPs, they hate it, but they have to do it for like a week and a half. But they know that, in the game when they get that ground ball, they know exactly what to do. So if they lose a game like that, they’re like, “Wow, we do this everyday. There’s no reason we can’t do this in a regular game.” So that’s why you have success when you play the game that way, with strong fundamentals. Home runs, base hits, guys striking out, that’s going to happen. But when your team is fundamentally sound and they know what to do all the time, you have more success.

Anthony: Give me something specific that you guys do that you think maybe other teams in the county don’t do. Either your practice plan, or your discipline approach, just something that maybe will be a bit off-color, maybe a little different than what other coaches do.

Coach Cuello: We try definitely to have a lot of fun. That’s number one. A lot of people see our team, we do everything together, we hang out. We go to the pizza place. We go to the movies. We do a whole bunch of stuff I don’t think that other teams do. After the game, most teams go straight home. We don’t go home, we go to McDonalds. We go to McDonalds, we sit down and we’ll be there for an hour playing dominos. We have two things of dominos that we carry everywhere we go. So the kids are having fun playing dominos, you know, you’re beating that guy, I beat the other guy. So we release the competition when we are not on the field so it relaxes the guys. Losing or winning the game, it doesn’t matter.

Anthony: That’s what I was going to ask, the same difference after a win or a loss?

Coach Cuello: When we lose, at the time, we’re mad, but when we get to McDonalds and eat, it’s like when you play little league. When you lose and everybody is mad, but then you take your kid to McDonalds, the kid doesn’t even know what happened ten minutes ago. He doesn’t care. He’s more worried about the hot dog or the French fries. We go, we relax. It’s ok to lose, it’s ok to win, let’s keep it calm and lets get the next game. So that’s one of the things that we do a lot. And you know with the mixture of guys coming from different places, it makes it a little more fun. They may have a different culture, so we want to find out what this guy does. What does he eat, what does he do, what does he like to do. Different languages, stuff like that. It’s kind of neat to see that.

Anthony: So to me, it seems like consistency is key as far as win, loss, bad game, good game, everything stays the same afterwards and once you leave the field, you leave the fields and work on growing these kids as adults.

Coach Cuello: Yes, exactly. One of the things we teach, myself and my coaches, we go a little bit more beyond high school. We give them a little more of an edge for after they get to college. I played college ball, my assistant coach played college ball so we give them that little, “This is what’s going to happen when you go to the next level.” Either pro, or college. We give them a little, but we can’t give them that much because we don’t have that much to give. But when they get there and they give us a call back and they’re like, “Coach, you’re right.” We know they are ready, probably more ready than other guys, but you still are going to be in the learning process. But you’re ready because we already told you. And we do more than high school baseball. We teach them a little bit more of our knowledge, whatever we know. We actually prepare ourselves, we start in September, actually the whole year. Pitching starts in September, and we go all the way through May. People say, “Why do you start so early?” We want to get our guys ready, because we want to see what everybody has, and then we want to try to get the best out of every player. He could have a little bit or he could have a lot. But we try to get as much as we can from each guy, because everybody’s different.

Anthony: You’ve done a lot of winning at Trinity Christian, but this year’s team may be one of your most talented. How hard is it to coach knowing that you have a team capable of competing for a state title?

Coach Cuello: Yes, once you have that tag that everybody’s aiming for you, it’s tough, but that is also what makes it fun. I think that we’ve had even better teams in the past, and you’ve got to understand too, that we lost with those teams. Once you’re in the state finals, only four teams, anything can happen in one game. It could be an error, it could be a base hit, it could be anything to win or lose a game. I’ve seen teams in the state finals that I really thought that, well how did they win? They found a way to win in one game. It’s not two games. You could have your best pitcher, well maybe that day he’s not on. And you’re saying, “Wow, I’m losing to that team.” It’s four teams out of 107 teams, there are only four teams that can go, only one team that can win. So that’s the way that I look at it. Once you’re there, at least you’re there.

Anthony: You hit on this before, you travel to play a lot of games in Broward and Miami. What is something you see from players in Broward and Miami that you’d like to see more of from Palm Beach players.

Coach Cuello: They bring what we call, swag. They go there and teams from Miami or Broward, it’s like Yankees and Red Sox, very competitive. The next thing you know, ok lets go! It’s going to be a game, from the beginning to the end. There’s a lot of yelling, a lot of chanting, “Hey [this and that] pitcher!” So you know there’s just going to be some innings of, lets go get them. And when we come here (Broward), I’m Hispanic, so I know that there’s a lot of teams out there that feel the same way and it’s easy for me to relate to those coaches.

Anthony: Give me an example of a time when you just completely lost your mind on the field and blew up at your team for something that occurred on the field.

Coach Cuello: It would be for lack of trying on the field. Winning or losing means nothing. There will be games where we are playing a team were we think they should be up by ten runs in the third inning and sometimes what happens with us is we go on the same level as the team we are playing. And when that happens you see it yourself, the guys play way different. And that’s the games where I really say, “Guys let’s give it a lot, lets go! Let’s get in, let’s get out, let’s go home.” And it takes them a lot of time. There’s one error with one hit here and the game is too tight and now everybody is panicking. Everybody is panicking because they don’t know whether we’re down or we’re up. I don’t really blow up. I just tell them, “Guys, we played at their level.” We won, but it wasn’t what was supposed to happen at all.

Anthony: What’s the best feeling that the game of baseball has ever given you?

Coach Cuello: The best feeling I’ve had from the game of baseball is actually when my guys that are in pro or college come back. Come back, give me a hat, give me a t-shirt. Hello coach…coach I’m doing this, or coach I’m doing that. I mean you can’t replace that, that’s irreplaceable. Every time I see one of our guys, wow, they’re coming back to see you. To see how we’re doing and to get advice from me, for anything, anything at all.

Anthony: Tell me the differences you see between the Latin players and the American players.

Coach Cuello: It’s a way that they play the game with swag. It’s like, they’ll strike out in a way that, “Oh, he struck out and he’s happy about it.” Because there’s nothing they can do about it. Or they field the ground ball a certain way, or they throw the ball a certain way, they talk a certain way. They’re always flashy in the field. So that’s a difference I see between both. Like you saw in the World Baseball Classic the Dominican team won the game and I think the commentary was saying, “These guys are just having fun.” These guys have earrings on, and they want to dance, and they’re dancing and they’re chirping stuff like that. But other times they’re actually scared to jump in and do something when the guy hits a home run. This guy hits a home run, down by one and the whole dugout comes out to celebrate. So that’s a different thing I see between the Latin players and the kids from the US.

Anthony: Alright, lets finish with some word association. I’ll give you a word or phrase and you tell me the first word that comes to your mind.

Coach Cuello: Ok.

Anthony: Trinity Christian.

Coach Cuello: Competitive.

Anthony: Your players.

Coach Cuello: Knowledgeable.

Anthony: New York Yankees

Coach Cuello: Dedication

Anthony: The best coach in Palm Beach County.

Coach Cuello: Some would say myself, but besides that, I would have to say I think, because I’ve seen the way he coaches the game myself, It would be Magaw.

Anthony: Doug Magaw, over at King’s?

Coach Cuello: Yes, because you watch how his teams get better as the season goes on. He’s been in three different championships and he’s won it all, but the regular season, they lose a lot of game against other teams. Ok, so they lose early, and then as the season moves on, they pick it up. So that shows me there that it’s not the team, it’s the coach. I’ve always said it.

Anthony: My favorite part of the game is…

Coach Cuello: My favorite part of the game would be pitching.

Anthony: Parents.

Coach Cuello: Crazy [laughing]

Anthony: Alright, last one. A state title in your first season back eligible…

Coach Cuello: You can’t beat that. You can’t beat that at all.

Anthony: Alright, thank you and good luck for the rest of the year.

Coach Cuello: Thank you.

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