An inside look at Dylan Crews' workouts with personal hitting coach, MLB Draft 2023

BATON ROUGE – At this point, Josh Montero's arm has probably had enough.

He's been throwing batting practice for an hour, if not hours, and he has started to scare himself with how hard he's throwing these pitches to this kid while standing no more than 43 feet away.

Even when Montero blows a pitch by his pupil, it doesn't stop the kid from screaming from the batter's box, "Come on, old man! That's the best you've got?!?!"

Montero's workout routines with his other clients are thrown out of wack when this protege is back in town. He knows that all of his energy and effort has to be directed toward him when they're working together, even if it means his arm will be in pain for "probably a month" after his disciple returns to school.

Because that's what Dylan Crews needs.

This was Montero's reality as Crews' personal hitting coach during the superstar's reign with LSU baseball, as Crews ascended to becoming the potential No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, the best hitter in college baseball and arguably the greatest player ever to wear an LSU uniform.

"Every single hitter I work with excels and it's because of the environment that we create," Montero said. "Dylan is the one who taught me that. Dylan is the one that constantly wants to be pushed harder."

For Crews, who finished his career at LSU by helping deliver the program its seventh national championship last month, Montero is a critical figure – in recent years – behind his ascension into becoming an LSU legend.

"Yeah, Josh, he's a great guy," Crews said. "He's been with me for a few years now and it (has) had a huge and tremendous impact on my career so far."

"Dylan's game really elevated once he started working with him," Crews' father, George, said.

A time to remember

Crews began hitting with Montero during his senior year of high school, a season that was cut short because of the pandemic. But Montero had known Crews beforehand, as he and George had developed a friendship in part through Moe Pesce – a mutual friend who was a former MLB scout for the New York Mets and Dylan's hitting coach growing up.

"I always really enjoyed Pesce because he was real old school like me," Montero said.

Crews and a group of other players then started working with Montero at the start of the pandemic, training for days on end when there was no indication that there would be any kind of season in sight.

"Everyone's seasons had kind of ended prematurely. No one knew what was going on with the draft," Montero said. "It was just a very, very hard time period in everyone's life with a lot of emotion."

They all eventually played for Montero on the Sanford River Rats in the Florida Collegiate Summer League once it began that summer.

But to commemorate that difficult time during the pandemic – which ended in triumph with a league championship for the River Rats – Montero, Crews, LSU outfielder Brayden Jobert and Josh Crouch (a catcher in the Detroit Tigers organization) all got matching tattoos that read "Always Remember."

"The relationship between Dylan and I, it's very unique," Montero said. "We literally say I love you every time I get off the phone. It's more than just (being) his hitting coach, he's like a son to me. Or, he doesn't even like to look at it like that, I'm more like a big brother to him or an uncle."

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The workouts

When Montero worked with Crews while he was at LSU, he wasn't swinging at every pitch he threw or working on every aspect of his game. Instead, they worked on the drills LSU coach Jay Johnson and his staff wanted him to do, and practiced the aspects of Crews' game that needed work.

For example: Montero said that heading into this season, Crews and Johnson wanted Crews to work on laying off sliders that he chased outside of the strike zone too often last year.

"We literally do drills where we're only swinging at pitches at certain locations and we're laying off of everything else," Montero said. "... And does it suck for me that I might throw 11 pitches in a row that he's not supposed to swing at? Yeah, it kind of sucks because I love watching him hit. But it's part of the process of what they're trying to do at LSU and part of my job is to try to reinforce that."

Montero knows that if Johnson ever saw how he trained with Crews during his time at LSU, he would "probably lose his mind." He knows that one errant throw on his part this past summer could have ended Crews' season.

But playing it safe on the practice field is not Montero's motto. He refused to back down when he worked with Crews because that level of intensity is what the best player in college baseball needed.

"I didn't make Dylan Crews do anything other than believe in who he is, challenge him, push him harder and be there for him when and if he needs me. And when he's not doing well, keep perspective for him," Montero said. "I just got really lucky to be in the right place at the right time and have a great relationship with him where there's a lot of mutual respect, love between us."

Koki Riley covers LSU sports for The Daily Advertiser. Email him at kriley@theadvertiser.com and follow him on Twitter at @KokiRiley

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Dylan Crews: Top 2023 MLB Draft prospect's workouts, LSU baseball