I had the great honor of working with the legendary pitching coach Dave Wallace for four years, when he was the minor league pitching coordinator and I was the mental skills coach for the Atlanta Braves. One year at Instructional League, “Wally” approached me and asked if we could organize a discussion with the pitchers in camp to talk about what to do when they were lacking competitiveness on the mound. But instead of having that discussion, we ended up having a different one.
I told Wally that what often looks like a lack of competitiveness is usually something worse…competing with yourself.
You see, most professional athletes are extremely competitive, but they are also often extremely perfectionistic. So when they make a mistake or when they aren’t playing up to their expectations, they turn that competitiveness inward and compare their play to how they “should be” playing. This leads to distraction, as your focus becomes internal (on what you are doing) instead of focusing on what matters. Most action in any sport requires a narrow and external focus. A hitter needs to see the ball out of the pitcher’s hand. A pitcher needs to focus on a target. A basketball player focuses on the back of the rim, a quarterback focuses on small cues, like the way a cornerback’s hips are facing, to know where he needs to put the ball, and then he focuses on the spot he wants to leave it for his receiver, while the receiver looks the ball in and tunes out the man defending him.
Good pitching requires some awareness in between that narrow focus of delivering pitches to a spot. The best pitchers can feel when they have a hitter off balance—they see how hitters react or don’t react to the pitch they have thrown, and that sets them up for the next pitch. Reading bats and reading takes are subtle cues that turn throwing into pitching.
But if I’m in my own head about why I missed my spot or down on myself for giving up a leadoff walk or worried that my day might be over if I don’t get out of this jam, I miss all those observations. When the focus is on myself and my performance, I lose focus on the other guy in the equation, and getting lost in that internal struggle is what can look like a pitcher taking his foot off the gas or a hitter looking lost in the box.
Remember, Wally and I were talking about professional baseball players, not collegiate or high school or youth players. It’s very possible you might have someone on your team who doesn’t have the same killer instinct or competitive fire as the rest of your roster. It’s also possible for a professional ballplayer to have a game or even a week where he’s dragging and unmotivated. I’ve seen plenty of guys go through the motions when they are out of the race and the season is dragging on and on. But most professional athletes pride themselves on their competitiveness and I’d bet that most of the players you coach want to win at everything they do and have high expectations and aspirations.
So the next time you see one of your players looking like he isn’t competing, don’t assume that he’s lacking competitiveness, especially if you know him to be someone who battles on a regular basis. Try to get him back to competing with his opponent instead of himself. If you can get your pitchers to keep focused on attacking the hitter or getting your hitters to keep battling the pitcher, you’ll find that competitiveness comes right back.
Geoff Miller has spent the better part of two decades working in Major League Baseball for multiple organizations. His ongoing mental skills training series and commentary are available through Optimize Mind Performance, an app that links athletes with some of the most renowned mental skills coaches from around the world through the content they create. The materials available in the app cover all the foundations of sports psychology and sports-specific mental skills. For more information, visit www.optimizemindperformance.com.