“Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.”
Of all of Yogi Berra’s “Yogi-isms,” that gem is one of his best known. There’s more than a kernel of truth to it, too. If a player is in the wrong headspace or dwelling on a mistake, they will not play to their abilities.
The Pirates emphasized how important the mental side of the game is this week by hiring John Baker as their new director of coaching and player development, an evolution of the traditional “farm director” role. Baker spent the last four years focusing on the psychological side of the game with the Cubs and is currently perusing his masters in the field. When it comes to player development, the Pirates want to make sure their team is ready both physically and mentally.
Unsurprisingly, Baker's background has director of mental strength Bernie Holliday eager to work him.
“I think with all the technology that’s out there right now that really lets get deep into the numbers, you can sometimes lose the human factor of performance and how emotion and thought process factors into a person’s ability to perform under stress,” Holliday was telling me. “I think with Bake coming on board, having both a playing background and a tremendous background of sports psychology and mental skills, we’re going to be able to find that balance where we don’t lose the human in the training.”
During his introductory call, Baker said that sports psychology is in its third wave, where it’s validity and worth is “empirically supported at this point.”
Holliday has been with the Pirates for 11 seasons, and the biggest change he has seen is breaking down the stigma of mental skills coaching and psychology. It’s something for all players, not just a select few with confidence issues or the yips.
“We’ve seen more recently that a mental skills coach is the mental equivalent of a strength coach,” Holliday said. “If you want to get bigger, faster, stronger, you go to your strength coach, and if you work out regularly, your body adapts to that physical demand. And along the same lines, if a player wants to get mentally faster, stronger, then he would work with a mental strength coach.
“I think in the past, a lot of people viewed it like the mental equivalent to an athletic trainer or a sports medicine doctor. When they were banged up, bruised or broken, they would go see a mental skills coach, where now it is seen more as an advantage. A chance to be able to gain an edge over your opposition.”
But what exactly is mental skills coaching, and how is it applied?
For the Pirates, there are three overarching goals for players and coaches to explore: How to use mental skills to optimize development, performance and emotional wellness in their everyday life. At the core, they focus on promoting confidence, concentration, composure, motivation, resilience and adaptability. To do that, they teach mental tools and techniques, such as effect self-talk, goal setting, energy management and routine development. Those techniques are going to be different for everyone, so it's about adapting to make sure a player isn't staring at the ceiling of his hotel room at 3 a.m.
And in case you haven't been following the news this year, 2020 has created more than a couple challenges, so the ability to adapt is essential.
Without games to draw from, mental skills development became even more important this year. Holliday and his staff worked to help players cope with what is happening to them and in the world, to help manage stress and make sure players weren't becoming complacent. Even if everyone was away, the goal was still for players to get better. They just had to roll with the punches.
“Often times, you think precision would be the goal. I want to be perfect, I want to be precise,” Holliday said. “But when you don’t really know what’s going to happen and you’ve got uncertainty thrown at you 24/7 in this environment, we really wanted guys to be more adaptable to situations. To be able to respond to whatever the demands of the game and the demands of the environment throw at them.”
The department had to adapt this year as well. Mental strength coordinators Tyson Holt and Andy Bass were full-time members of the Pirates’ clubhouses in Pittsburgh and Altoona, Pa., respectively. Holliday led a group with the draft picks and the undrafted free agents they picked up.
Holliday’s gang would meet weekly on Zoom. Meetings would usually start with reviewing the “homework,” or what they took away from videos that featured athletes and experts talking about stress and competition. It's a newer approach by Holliday, who used to teach these subjects like it was a class. This way, players would be the ones driving the discussion and forming their own opinions. While they couldn't go out and compete in a game, those on the call could share their experiences and take ideas from others.
“We talked about other sports as examples, but it all came back to the competition, how to reduce stress, contain the nerves” draft pick Logan Hoffman was telling me. “But all of them were related to baseball.”
The calls were done originally out of necessity but might have sparked some innovation going forward. In the past, some players check in throughout the winter, but there wasn’t as much group instruction during those months away.
Now, with a new program and Zoom at their disposal, they can still teach during the offseason. It will be months until they see if anything translates to a pitcher’s mound or batter’s box, but one of the goals of these exercises is for their everyday well-being. To help manage their stress while parenting, driving or even playing video games. That can carry over in an indirect way.
“I would say in the past we weren’t as good at using the offseason,” Holliday said. “What it [2020] showed me this is we could be a lot more progressive using this downtime. The beauty of the offseason is you can work on developing your mental skills while working in a very low stress environment. You’re not expected to produce results every night like you are in the regular season. We can develop these skills, these techniques without having to use them immediately.”
MORE PIRATES
• During the regular season, most of the younger prospects in the Pirates’ alternate training site in Altoona were hitters rather than pitchers, partially because of injuries to the major-league staff and the belief that at-bats are harder to replicate away from home than innings pitched. Towards the end of camp in September, the Pirates did add Quinn Priester to the Altoona roster, but he wasn’t supposed to be alone. Brennan Malone was also invited, but got held up in the COVID-19 protocols and never pitched there. Malone did get some live at-bats in the development camp Bradenton, Fla., so he did get some in-person instruction before the year was over. Just not as many as expected. -- Stumpf
• One of the main challenges facing Pirates’ prospects this offseason will be trying to get at-bats during the winter after being away from game situations all year. If there is one player who doesn’t have that problem though, it’s 17-year-old outfielder Solomon Maguire, who is back in his native Australia, where it’s summer. The Australian Leagues are about to get started, so he will be able to get some more live reps before being invited to minor-league spring training in 2021. -- Stumpf
STEELERS
• Ben Roethlisberger and Vince Williams are expected to play Sunday against the Bengals -- provided they pass their remaining two COVID-19 tests without a positive. The first will be today. The second comes Saturday morning. That would clear Roethlisberger and Williams to return for the Steelers' walk-through practice late Saturday morning. The walk-through, which is typically about a half-speed practice that lasts between 30 and 45 minutes, will likely be tweaked by the Steelers this week to allow Roethlisberger, in particular, to throw the ball around a little more. He's been good in the past when not necessarily practicing much during the week. And that's the expectation for the Steelers this week. Making the walk-through a little longer and more like a real practice could be what is needed to get him ready to play this week. -- Dale Lolley on the South Side
• When the season began, I was asked for a prediction on something regarding the Steelers' season. I predicted the team would get 65 sacks this season, which would be nine more than the team record of 56 set in 2017. They are right on pace for that with 32 thus far. But there are some other team records that are threatening to be broken this season, as well. Roethlisberger has 18 touchdown passes, putting him on pace to break his record of 34 set in 2018. The Steelers also have scored 235 points in their first eight games, putting them on pace for 470. The team record is 436 set in 2014. -- Lolley
• Eric Ebron has taken over the team lead for penalties called against him this season with 5 for 40 yards. Ebron has been called for holding and false starts twice and offensive pass interference once. Joe Haden is second with 3 defensive pass interference penalties and one illegal contact. Chuks Okorafor and Minkah Fitzpatrick are tied for the third-most penalties called against them with three each. Ebron's five penalties leads all tight ends, while Haden's four penalties are tied with a number of players for fourth at cornerback. As a team, the Steelers are tied for 10th fewest in the league with 43. Their opponents have been called for 51, which is tied for 10th-most in the NFL. Despite leading the league in sacks and quarterback hits, the Steelers have benefited from just five offensive holding penalties. Just four teams have had fewer called against the opponents. But that's no recipe for success. The team that has benefited from having the most holding penalties called against their opponents? The 0-8 Jets with 16. -- Lolley
PENGUINS
• There still is much uncertainty about the 2020-21 NHL season, including how many regular-season games actually will be played. The only thing that seems clear is that it will be fewer than 82, the number each team contests during a normal season. There is certain to be debate about the minimum number of games needed to make the regular-season standings legitimate, and Jim Rutherford points to history to suggest the total might not be as high as many project it to be. "A number of decades ago, the schedule was 50 games, and that was it," he said. "Then we went from 50 to 60 to 70 to 72 to 80. There was one point in time when the league operated under a 50-game schedule, and they all thought it was legit then." -- Dave Molinari
• Todd Reirden had a pretty good run during his two seasons as head coach in Washington, winning a pair of Metropolitan Division titles during the regular season. The Capitals lost in Round 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs both seasons, though, which led to Reirden being fired a few months ago. Shortly thereafter, the Penguins hired him as an assistant, and he believes the time he spent running Washington's bench will serve him well in his new job (which is one he held previously for four seasons as a member of Dan Bylsma's staff). "And experience, good or bad, is only going to help you," he said. "Success as an assistant is something I've been able to accomplish in the past. Then, getting a head-coaching opportunity was obviously great lessons learned, good and bad. It's about continuing to evolve as a coach and doing whatever I can to help our players improve and help our staff in whatever way I'm asked to do that. I think I can lend more to some of those discussions (than I could have) without having this experience (in Washington). I certainly think that has made me a better coach." -- Molinari
• The Penguins seem optimistic about the long-term potential of winger Jonathan Gruden, who was acquired from Ottawa in the Matt Murray trade, but still haven't decided where his development would be best served this winter. He is eligible to play for the Penguins' American Hockey League affiliate in Wilkes-Barre, but also could return to the Ontario Hockey League's London Knights as an overage player. "We're talking about that now," Rutherford said. "There's a case to be made that going back (to London) and playing an overage year would be good for his development." Gruden had 30 goals and 36 assists in 59 games with the Knights last season. -- Molinari