Guardians top catching prospect Cooper Ingle speaks with Covering The Corner about his biggest offseason improvements, learning to call games behind the plate and his unique Star Wars-based pre-game routine in this exclusive interview.
Cooper Ingle has been one of the most pleasant surprises of the Cleveland Guardians’ 2023 MLB Draft.
The Guardians selected Ingle in the fourth round out of Clemson University. The catcher earned a brief cup of coffee with a 17-game stint in Lake County at the end of the 2023 season where he slashed .288/.464/.385, walking more than twice (17) as many times as he struck out (8).
Ingle began the 2024 season repeating at High-A and he didn’t disappoint, developing some pop with nine home runs while slashing .313/.431/.493 over 68 games and recently earning a promotion to Double-A Akron. Ingle hasn’t slowed down since and has slashed .294/.415/.441 over his first 10 games at Double-A and he’s really cemented himself as a catching prospect worth keeping an eye on.
Ingle spoke to CoveringTheCorner.com recently about his biggest offseason improvements, learning to call games behind the plate and his unique Star Wars-based pre-game routine in this exclusive interview.
Check it out.
Brian Hemminger: I heard that you’re a pretty good player of MLB The Show, what are some other things that you do like help you bond with your teammates? Like, I’ve talked to, guys, they golf, they play ping pong, there’s cards, whatever. Is there anything that’s really helped you?
Cooper Ingle: I like fishing. I just got to Akron so me and Kody Huff, one of the other catchers were trying to find. some excellent fishing spots. And yeah, I like to play some cards with the guys and I just started getting into golf a little bit. I was gonna get some clubs but I went to a simulator the other day and I think I probably need to start hitting the face of the of the club a little more before I purchased my first set.
Brian Hemminger: Is there like a show on Netflix or any other streaming service that you’re binging right now that you just can’t get enough of?
Cooper Ingle: I just got halfway through the second season of Prison Break. It’s pretty much about what it says — they’re breaking out of prison and trying to fall off the map. So I think it’s pretty cool.
Brian Hemminger: When you’re in college, most of the your teammates are all regular college guys from America. Now, all of a sudden you’ve got maybe a third of your teammates are guys from Central America. How do you kind of develop relationships there? Like what’s kind of like your inroads where you find something that you guys got in common?
Cooper Ingle: I think in our organization we do a really good job of teaching the American guys Spanish as well as the Latin players English. So being able to learn the language as quick as possible and getting at least a basis of how to create conversations is definitely beneficial for everybody. And I think the two teams that I’ve been on this year, it’s been pretty easy going communication-wise for sure.
Brian Hemminger: How has your uh, Spanish been coming along? I remember hearing someone like Bo Naylor, he mastered it, because that was like something that he felt was so important helping him develop relationships with his pitching staff.
Cooper Ingle: Yeah, I’m not gonna lie. I’ve taken Spanish since I was in seventh grade every single year. And with a lot of the guys, it’s it’s still pretty difficult to understand because it’s a lot of slang. It’s not a ton of the stuff that you learn in school, but the more that you listen to in the locker room, it’s it’s easier to pick up. I’m just making making a little progress day by day.
Brian Hemminger: When you first got drafted last year, they went and sent you to the minor leagues right away, but then you had a full offseason to work on all different kinds of things. What was one of the biggest differences you’ve seen in your game between your first experience in the minor leagues compared to when you had a full offseason to work with Cleveland’s coaching staff?
Cooper Ingle: I think that, you know, I just used a lot of my prior knowledge at Clemson to be able to help myself succeed in that first little stint.
Being able to use that offseason to learn swing paths and increase bat speed and that kind of stuff definitely helped. And then I did some some arm re-patterning and velo gaining for some more arm strength and better health throughout a season. So just being able to to get my hands on that for three, four months at a time was definitely beneficial. Being able to use that this year has definitely helped me out a lot.
Brian Hemminger: Cleveland’s kind of been highlighted as an organization that’s very forward in its development. Is there like a drill that stood out to you that you really saw the best response from your game?
Cooper Ingle: I just think me, as a very contact hitter oriented player, doing the swing path changes and velocity stuff has helped tremendously. To put the ball in the air to my pull side, instead of just trying to kind of flick everything the other way, it’s helped a lot for sure.
Brian Hemminger: You had an experience at Lake County where you’ve had an opportunity to work alongside so many unique and talented hitters this year. Whether it was C.J. Kayfus at the beginning of the year and Nate Furman when he was scalding hot, Guy Lipscomb. And then you saw very briefly, guys like Ralphy Velasquez, get called up right before you got called up to Double-A or Steven Kwan coming down and doing a rehab assignment. Travis Bazzana joined the team for a little bit before you got promoted, as did Angel Genao and then now you’re up at Double-A seeing guys like Chase DeLauter (who has since been promoted to Triple-A since I recorded this interview). Is there like anything about some of the preparation of some of these really top high-level prospects that you’ve kind of taken to heart?
Cooper Ingle: Yeah, I think the guy that I watch a lot and I got to play with the last month and a half of the season last year in Lake County was Chase DeLauter
He’s probably 6-foot-4, but it’s still a really contact-oriented approach and he doesn’t swing and miss a lot. So I was just curious what makes him successful. So just being able to watch him a lot, his routines and flips and stuff he does off the machine has has helped me out a ton. I don’t have the frame that DeLauter has, but I think a lot of the stuff that that he does, I kind of incorporate into my game.
The same thing with C.J. Kayfus. In the offseason, we were doing all that swing path and exit speeds. We were doing a lot of that together. So just being able to watch his growth and seeing what he’s doing, like damage-wise now compared to what we were doing in college, it just shows the stuff in the offseason has worked and paid off.
Brian Hemminger: What would you say is like one thing that you feel like you need to improve the most? If you wanna be able to take that next level to, to make it to the show?
Cooper Ingle: I think it’s all defensively, not so much physically. When it comes to defense, I think it’s a lot that has to do with with managing a pitching staff and pitch calling. I think I’ve come a long way this season and just being able to make those consecutive strides over the next couple years is going to help me a lot.
Brian Hemminger: Was it kind of cool that you’ve now been able to catch a guy like Austin Peterson at Lake County and Akron now this year?
Cooper Ingle: Yeah, 100%. I think it’s cool to be able to catch him in both places because there’s different approaches at each level. Because, the hitters and the meetings that other teams go through, they’re a lot more advanced than they were at the previous level. So a guy might change his approach that we played in High-A, and now maybe he’s a better hitter or he’s sitting on certain pitches or certain zones in the game when he’s in Double-A now. So just being able to have that prior relationship you built in Lake County, we can use that to our advantage at the Double-A level.
Brian Hemminger: Cleveland’s an organization where, I’m sure it’s not just at the MLB level, but pitch framing, like little things like that. How do you get better at that?
Cooper Ingle: We pretty much have a top three guy for it defensively in Austin Hedges. So in Spring Training, just being able to pick his brain about everything he knows defensively, especially pitch framing because he’s always one of the best. Being able to to put your body in a position to receive the baseball in the spot that’s going to help you not only keep all strikes strikes, but being able to gain one, two, three a gam, it’s gonna be a big difference in the outcome of a game.
Brian Hemminger: Is it a combination of you getting to know your pitchers better or is it watching film on what they do best that really helps you develop your game plan for game calling?
Cooper Ingle: I think with game calling, for the most part, you’re gonna throw to the pitcher’s strengths and then you’re gonna have anywhere from one to three guys in the lineup that you’re gonna label as your “manage” guys. And those guys are, you’re still gonna pitch to your strengths with whatever pitcher may be on the mound, but there’s certain zones or certain pitches that are, I guess you could say their “Nitro Zone.” That’s the pitch that they hit the hardest. They’re that’s their highest expected sets that they do the most damage with. So you want to avoid those spots, but at the same time, you’re not gonna give up. You’re not going to throw your pitcher’s fourth-best pitch in a certain situation against that guy. You’re still gonna go right at him. You’re just not gonna feed into what they’re trying to do at the plate.
Brian Hemminger: A lot of people say that the jump from High-A to Double-A is one of the toughest in the minor leagues. Was there something that you’ve noticed already? I know it’s been a pretty small sample size, but has there been something that stood out to you already since making that leap?
Cooper Ingle: Yeah, I think just at the plate, the way that I’m getting pitched. You can tell there’s a lot more detail that goes into at least the scouting reports from what I can tell. There there’s some fastballs in certain spots that I’ve never swung at and this whole last week, they just threw there over and over and over. The same thing with off-speed pitches. It’s going to take some some time to get used to, but it’s been good so far. It just it shows you, as a player, what you need to do to make that next step eventually to the Triple-A level.
Brian Hemminger: Did you kind of set out any goals in it at the beginning of this season on what you’d like to accomplish? Whether it was, “I want to make it to this level” or “I want to like this productive“ or “I don’t want to swing and miss in the zone this much.” Were there any specific goals that you had heading into the season?
Cooper Ingle: Not really anything statistically. I knew that I wanted to hit the ball in the air more to my pull side so that I could create more damage and be a more valuable player on offense. I think most of it was just defensively like I said earlier with the beginning calling and managing a staff and being able to build those relationships for guys that I’m going to catch for many years to come.
Brian Hemminger: Baseball can be a superstitious sport and I try to avoid the word superstition. Do you have any types of like routines or anything that makes you feel comfortable before a game or is there anything that you specifically like to do?
Cooper Ingle: Yeah, I mean I’ve kind of got a weird one. I wouldn’t say it’s superstitious. I’ve just done it since I was in 10th, 11th grade in high school and that’s watch “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” and I watch the Anakin and Obi-Wan fight scene before every game. I used to watch the entire movie, but its three hours long. You get these day games and I’m not waking up at 6 a.m. to Star Wars. Guy Lipscomb is a big fan of Star Wars and Alex Mooney is in Lake County as well.
You can follow Cooper on Instagram at TheCooperIngle and on Twitter/X at @IngleCooper.
