Tip: One Way To Advance In Baseball

Baseball players are constantly evaluating how they performed on the field. Players become obsessed with trying to figure out what went wrong and how to change before the next game, next at-bat, or the next inning. One thing that I find players rarely ever doing is focusing on what went right.

Here’s an example: Denny plays in a game where he goes 0-4 with 2 strikeouts and two rollovers to the shortstop. For the next few days between games, he obsesses over not chasing after breaking pitches late in the count and hunts fastballs early in the count. The next game he plays, he goes 3-4 with 3 doubles to the right side of the field and one strikeout. Again, over the next few days, he focuses on not chasing after breaking pitches to get rid of those pesky strikeouts. In his third game, he goes 0-4 with 4 rollovers to the shortstop. He thinks, no strikeouts, success! But is it?

What Denny didn’t think about, like most players, was what he was doing in the second game that allowed him to get 3 hits? Sure, he accomplished his goal of not striking out in a game, but while doing so, he ignored what he did correctly to get 3 extra-base hits in a single game. Denny will likely spend the next few days now trying not to roll over to the shortstop and enter the next game striking out again and repeating the cycle.

If you’re a player or parent of a player reading this, I’d like to offer a suggestion to you. Look back on your last handful of performances and think about your best game. What were you trying to do in those at-bats? What pitch were you looking for? What did you focus on throughout the game? My last question to you now is, can you repeat what led to that success?

High-level players are very good at identifying both what they did well and what errors they need to amend. They rarely sacrifice what brings them success in order to try to fix what's holding them back. Try this for the next couple of months and track your successful days to help piece together what makes you a good baseball player versus only focusing on what made you struggle and watch the results start to pile up.