First impressions matter when it comes to high-performance footwear. If your baseball shoes aren’t delivering comfort and stability right out of the box, you’re being shortchanged on power, speed, and injury prevention. We asked a rising Frontier League talent and a veteran trainer to tell us how it feels to switch to SQAIRZ baseball shoes—including the moment you know that SQAIRZ is about to change everything.
The Player’s Perspective: Stephen Hrustic, Florence Y’alls
Hitting is hard; everybody knows that. The simpler and easier you can make it, the better. SQAIRZ cleaned up a big part of my swing—immediately and without having to think about it.
Not long after I arrived at the University of Michigan, I went to the batting cages early one morning to get in some extra practice and met Chad Miller from Slugger Science. Chad is an expert in how to move the body properly and efficiently, and he was working with SQAIRZ on their baseball shoes. When he introduced me to them, I could see they had a different look because of the toe box and thought they were very interesting.
When you put on SQAIRZ shoes, you feel the difference right away. The first thing I noticed was that my foot wasn’t moving around while I was hitting. That was a huge discovery for me because I like to keep hitting very simple. I could put on those shoes and know my foot is secure in the ground and using the ground properly.
This is important because, obviously, you want to produce power when you swing. I’ve learned that means paying attention to the big toe, pinky toe, and heel. I like to feel that I'm pressing through the entirety of my foot, and when I wear other shoes, I have a harder time doing that. But once I started wearing SQAIRZ, that process became so much easier, which means I’m not putting all of my attention into that process every time I swing. So, SQAIRZ really helped me simplify everything. To this day, even in the offseason, I wear them when I hit—every single day. I’m performing to the best of my ability and taking my level of play even higher.
Stephen Hrustich is an alumnus of Northwestern University and the University of Michigan who’s been tearing it up with the Florence Y'alls since his multi-hit professional debut in 2024.
The Trainer’s Perspective: Allen Thomas
SQAIRZ puts your foot in a neutral profile so you get the stability that’s needed when you swing.
There's a buzzword in my world: mobility. Everybody wants to be more mobile, but when you're about to swing a bat, you want a shoe that keeps the foot from rolling over. Some of the biggest injuries in sport right now are from a foot not being able to stabilize in the shoe. SQAIRZ shoes can eliminate that.
You see this problem with in-fielders too. They’ll approach a ball from the right or left and slide into it, which again, puts them in danger of rolling the ankle. I like to see players practicing in shoes that emulate what they're going to do in in real-time sport, and so often players are in tennis shoes, slipping and sliding. They're not able to go about their free game practice wholeheartedly because they’re anticipating a slide. You need to be stable when you pick up the ball and throw it. SQAIRZ has been able to provide that while making sure you’re transferring energy efficiently throughout the movement.
I recently heard about how much time has been shaved off the Olympic 100-meter sprint over the past hundred years, and it’s tenths of a second. In that time, the only things that have really changed are the running surface and the shoes—the equipment. So a lot of performance is due to having the right equipment, and SQAIRZ is very needed in today's sports world.
Allen Thomas is the director of Player Performance and Development at Slugger Science. Previously, he spent nearly two decades with the Chicago White Sox as a conditioning coach and then director of strength and conditioning.
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