Author: Noah Winslow

Nobody comes to the field everyday with 100%. You’ll show up feeling sore, tired, mentally exhausted, all of which are just the reality of the situation. Those feelings are not going to go away, but the moment you start listening to yourself you fall into trouble.

When you listen to yourself, you listen to how you feel or the negative thoughts that go through your head. Your brain’s purpose is to protect your body from reaching the point of failure, meaning that your mind wants to give up well before your body. To do that, your mind will tell you whatever it can to make you want to shut down. This should sound familiar to all of us, thinking back to situations where we’ve had to really push ourselves physically. If you’re getting near 100 pitches of a tough outing, on the back end of a summer double header, or maybe in the weight room during a hard workout, thoughts like, “I’m too tired,” “I’ve lost all feel for my mechanics,” “there’s no way I’m going to hit this pitcher,” “there’s no way I can get one more,” or “this is too hard” can creep into your head.

These are all negative thoughts that you hear when you listen to your body. Now, the moral to this story is not “just don’t listen to those negative thoughts.” The truth is that everybody has those bad, negative thoughts. Every athlete deals with them and you’ve probably dealt with thoughts like this playing other sports. You won’t be able to stop them because they are a part of the natural thought process. Like I said earlier, your mind is doing it to protect you.

Instead of trying to ignore them, our goal should be to acknowledge them. Be aware when you are having those thoughts and tell yourself that you don’t want to listen to them. Imagine if those thoughts in your head were another person, constantly telling you all of the negatives right to your face. Would you want that person around you? If they were telling you you can’t handle the pressure, you can’t execute that pitch, you can’t make that play…you would want to punch them in the face.

So why would we want to let those thoughts and feelings take over our mind? We don’t. After acknowledging them, we want to make sure we switch our mind from listening to talking. Too often we get caught listening to how we feel, listening to what already happened, or listening to that negative voice in our head trying to hold us back. In those moments, try talking to yourself. 

Switch your mind’s focus to the present with productive thoughts, focusing on your cues, positive affirmations, and things that you can control. Talk to yourself with such conviction that you truly believe what you are saying. Tell yourself that you are the best until you believe that you are the best! Tell yourself you can execute that pitch, you can field the next ground ball, you can hit this pitcher, even if you have missed the last 10 pitches or ground balls. 

Talk to yourself in whatever intensity you need to give yourself the energy to execute the task at hand. For some, it might be soft and relaxing. For others, it might be intense with a ton of expletives. Those intensities might change depending on the situation and the moment. It’s important for us to understand what we need to execute the very next task at hand, one pitch or play at a time.

Everybody’s subconscious mind, when they listen to it, will have negative thoughts. Your job is to differentiate the listening from the reality of the situation. The reality is that your present mindset is completely in your control. When you can flip the switch from listening to the negatives and talk to yourself about the great potential of the opportunities ahead, you’ll truly be able to maximize your skills.

Over the past few months, I’ve made it a habit to listen to at least two short, mental game podcasts per day. I’ve been able to learn about new concepts, listen to other’s experiences and find different ways that the podcast’s message could be utilized. Recently, a concept came up in two different podcasts that I’ve never heard before, but it just made sense to me. It’s called the MOOMBA Disease, which stands for “My Only Obstacle May Be Attitude.”

The biggest obstacle for yourself may be your attitude…what does that even mean? Your attitude is an active decision you make, no matter how unruly or tough of a circumstance. If you have a game in February when it’s 35 degrees with 20 mph winds, it’s really easy to let the cold weather get the best of your attitude. Thinking about how cold it is only magnifies the discomfort and negative thoughts, letting the environment take control of your attitude.

If you are somebody whose attitude is easily affected or if you are unaware when you have a bad attitude, you are putting yourself at a massive disadvantage. A bad attitude negatively affects your effort, emotion and minimizes your potential output. It doesn’t allow you to think clearly, and defaults you to making decisions and taking actions out of frustration.

Having a bad attitude is also contagious. You know what it’s like being around somebody who sulks for multiple innings after making an error or striking out. You don’t want to be near that person because their energy just drags you down with them. Instead, you want to be around people that are uplifting, that will push you to be your best and not pull you back. So why would you want to be that person with a bad attitude?

Your potential is truly only as strong as your attitude. Zig Ziglar, famous author and motivational speaker, once said, “your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” Your abilities (aptitude) could be second to none, but that is not the determining factor of your success. Strong aptitude combined with a poor attitude hinders how far and high you are able to go. It’s not until you remove that obstacle that you will be able to unlock your potential.

The key to maximizing your attitude is being able to hold yourself accountable and have the self awareness to know when you are losing control. Knowing that obstacle is there is a huge part of the battle, as many players need to have it pointed out to them. Once you have self awareness, you need to hold yourself accountable and take the actions to bring your attitude back within your control.

There are times where it is tough to have a great attitude. So imagine how hard it is to compete against somebody that does have a great attitude. Going back to our cold weather scenario, it’s already tough to play when it’s 35 degrees and windy. It’s even harder to play in those conditions if your opponent is excited to compete and confident in their abilities. Your opponent has now removed that obstacle and has a clearer lane to success. Again, your attitude is something you can control and have a direct impact over, so why forfeit its effectiveness to a force out of your control.

MOOMBA…My Only Obstacle May Be Attitude. There are already so many obstacles along the path to success. To battle the dreaded MOOMBA disease, realize the obstacles you are imposing on yourself and find ways to actively remove them. I challenge every player who’s reading this to buy into your attitude and practice building awareness so when the pressure is high, you are ready to bring your best self! 

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If you’re interested in listening to short (2-4 minute), daily, mental conditioning podcasts, here are the three I highly recommend:

1. Increase Your Impact with Justin Su’a | A Podcast for Leaders
2. Success Hotline with Dr. Rob Gilbert
3. Mental Performance Daily with Brian Cain

Racing your siblings to the car, playing board games, seeing who can get a higher test score, fantasy football…competition is in everyday life. Everyone and their mother says they enjoy competition. However, there is a clear difference between those that like it purely for the result (winning) and those that truly have a passion for competing. These are the fake competitors versus the true competitors.

The fake competitors are the ones that want to compete when they know they can be successful putting in minimal effort and have a clear advantage over their opponent. As long as things are easy, they want to compete. We all know of players in Little League, high school and even college who can just show up, shut everybody down and leave. 

However, once adversity hits them and their natural talent can’t support them, they crumble. They give up a few hard hit balls and everything unravels. Their confidence goes away, they lose control and the only way to make it stop is to take them out of the game. While these players have the natural talent to succeed at one level, they’ll watch as others slowly pass them until they don’t have the talent to compete and quit.

The true competitors are the ones that pass them. True competitors love competition, even if the odds are stacked against them. They want to continue competing when they’re down big in a game, when they’re playing a tough opponent and when they’re clearly outmatched. While these situations may seem extremely hard to win, the fact that there is even a slight chance to do so makes it worth the effort. 

As a coach, it is fun to see these qualities play out. You can see which players will give the effort when you’re down 6-0 in the 2nd inning versus the best team in your conference. You see who folds first and who doesn’t stop fighting until that last out is recorded. You see who  fights until the competition is actually over.

Anybody will admit it’s hard to be a true competitor all of the time, especially against the biggest challenges. If you want to transition from being a fake to true competitor, or become an even better true competitor, you need to learn how to compete all of the time. You have to play hard no matter the situation, no matter how much you are losing or how miserable the competition is. To compete all of the time, you have to find those smaller battles to compete for. 

You are not going to make up a big deficit with one swing, but you can move yourself in the right direction with it. A true competitor will break down the game into mini, controllable competitions that allow them to chip away at the large competition. They focus on executing a single pitch, getting ahead in the count, fielding the ground ball coming at them. This removes the distractions and negative thoughts that could come in competition. It directs their focus to beneficial tasks and confines their thoughts to what can help them succeed.

Breaking down the game is essential to use all of the time, not just when you are playing a tough team or losing. As a pitcher, focusing on one pitch at a time and executing that plan is what gets you into a “groove.” If you miss a few pitches or walk a batter, avoid letting the game unravel by refocusing your mind to the small competition. True competitors are great at finding and re-finding those “groove” states.

Coaches want to put the best competitors on the field. They want the players who will fight when it’s tough and rise to the occasion. If you want to be that true competitor on the field, learn to compete all of the time by attacking the small battles. There is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.

If you want to play at a high level, you have to watch professional or college baseball. It baffles me to hear that players who aspire to be the best don’t watch the best. Like many kids, I fell in love with baseball by watching Major League Baseball because I admired the best of the best. My love for watching the game evolved with my baseball IQ, going from admiring to mimicking to analyzing.

I grew up watching the Boston Red Sox, since my t-ball team was the Red Sox, and the Washington Nationals once they came to town. Dustin Pedroia and Ryan Zimmerman were my favorite players in the league. I even had metal lunch pails with their faces on them to collect my baseball memorabilia. Both players were absolute studs but they grabbed my attention for different reasons.

Pedroia was an undersized middle infielder who took the world by storm winning Rookie of the Year and MVP in back to back years, leading his team to the World Series. I loved his grittiness and the impact he had on a winning team. On the other hand, Zimmerman was developing into the face of a new franchise, setting his mark early in his career at a stadium only 20 minutes from where I lived. I admired both of them and since they were on different teams, I got to watch twice the baseball with that spirit. They helped drive my passion to play baseball at such a young age.

As I got into my early high school days, my pure admiration for players started to shift into thinking about how I could be like them. Bryce Harper was my guy when he broke into the league around my 8th grade year. His passion, grittiness and hair-on-fire intensity paired with his elite talent made me want to figure out how I could do what he did. I tried to replicate his intensity and tendencies at the plate, mimicking his stance, the intensity of his swing and even rocking with one batting glove just because he did it. I wanted to find the things he did well and incorporate them into my game. He was the beginning of me wanting to analyze major leaguers to aid in how I played.

I really laid into the analysis during high school and college as I dedicated myself more to pitching. When Max Scherzer signed with the Nationals, I had easy access to watch the best pitcher of the time work every five days. At face value, people would watch him for his elite competitiveness and his nasty pitches, but I wanted to learn more. I watched his sequencing, his approach, how he held runners, when he’d empty the tank and everything else I could pick up.

To learn from the best, you have to watch with a sense of curiosity that digs deeper than what the average fan pays attention to. By flipping on the television, you have a front row seat to watch the best movers. These are the players with elite pitches, that make elite plays and have elite swings. How are these players so damn good? There are so many nuances to pick up on in an MLB game. The action of the game doesn’t tell the entire story.

How do they prepare? Watch their first step on defense, their approaches in the field and at the plate, their between pitch routine. How do they create their focus? How do they make in-game adjustments? Watch the catcher’s pre-pitch movements and set up. Watch the adjustments the fielders make based on the hitter or the game situation and how they communicate. Watch the hitter’s preparation in the on-deck circle. Watch how long the pitcher holds with runners on base to keep the base runner uncomfortable.

If you play baseball but think it’s too boring to watch, you just don’t know what you’re looking for. There’s a massive learning opportunity in watching a game. You don’t have to pay for a lesson or work with a coach to gain this information. It stems from your curiosity in figuring out how you can take what the best of the best do and apply it to your own skill set. 

Sports performance anxiety has always been a part of my life but I really didn’t understand how much of an impact it had on me. I dealt with it in some form throughout my high school experience but was never pushed to a point where it became overwhelming. However, once I got to college, my performance anxiety on the field took to a whole different level. It ended up being a bigger challenge than I ever expected and took a lot of learning and mental development to work through it.

In high school, I thought it was completely normal that every time before a test or a game (especially when I pitched) I was shaking with nervous energy. I feared being handed a test and knowing nothing, or going out on the field and getting absolutely rocked. However, the shaking and those negative feelings weren’t really a big deal because I usually ended up doing well. 

The shaking and the anxious thoughts felt like they went away right after I threw the first pitch because that gave me a stroke of confidence immediately. I was an honor roll student in the classroom and performed well on the mound. I faced Division 1 and pro-level talent consistently in high school and competed toe to toe with all of them. I didn’t really need to take the time to understand why my mind and body acted that way when I had to perform because I was able to just figure it out. 

College was a whole different ball game. I started off my freshman year strong in the fall. I made multiple starts on the mound in inter squads, throwing 4-5 innings each time showing my potential to earn a solid number of innings as a freshman that spring. The competition was higher across the board and I was stepping up to the challenge well. 

However, everything changed when I came back in the spring. It started off with some rocky bullpens that felt plain weird. Then, when I stepped on the mound for inter squads, that shaky feeling of anxiety would not go away. I was not even close to the zone, the ball felt completely foreign to me and my confidence was nowhere to be found. I remember one instance when I was throwing to live hitters with the batting turtle around the hitter at home plate and all I was thinking was “don’t throw it over the turtle.” It even got to the point where I was questioning my abilities just throwing with a partner.

My confidence was completely shot and throwing a baseball was a mental struggle every time. I felt like everybody’s eyes were on me. Every small mistake I made pushed me farther and farther away from touching the field. I tried to fight through this struggle by doing the same thing I did in high school. Nonetheless, I was never able to throw that first pitch that gave me a stroke of confidence. I kept trying that same strategy over and over because it was all I knew, which ended up wasting almost a year and a half of my collegiate career.

To get over my performance anxiety, I had to truly examine what it takes to be a strong competitor even when success was lackluster. It took longer than I would’ve liked to gain that confidence back, but there are a few keys that I picked up to overcome this battle. 

The first was understanding that one singular outing doesn’t make or break you. I put so much weight on myself when I threw to hitters or off a mound. I was so focused on having a good result that I didn’t even realize that what I was doing was merely the process. While there are times that pitching is a result (such as games), I had to understand that a majority of my work was a process. Processes aren’t achieved overnight and I had to trust that even my bad days were part of my development. This realization, along with conversations with my coaches and teammates, loosened me up in lower-pressure situations, like long tossing and bullpens, giving myself those moments back.

My second key was hammering home positive self-talk and actually believing it. My negative internal conversations were tailored around stuff such as “don’t miss the strike zone” or “don’t hit the batter,” aka the worst-case scenarios. I had to change my phrases to those that were built around confidence and success, practicing them and executing them immediately when I got into a game. As a reliever, the leash is extremely short, so I had to find a way to relax my mind and instill confidence with positive self-talk before I threw that first pitch. My phrases centered around reinforcing that I had fantastic preparation and that I was better than any hitter that came up to the plate—also sprinkling in a few expletives to get me fired up. 

The third and most important key was to figure out what mentality worked best for me. Pitchers like Max Scherzer look like they’ll rip your head off. Then there are pitchers like Stephen Strasburg, who looks so stoic and relaxed but can kick up the intensity when needed. Pitchers need different levels of intensity in order to maximize their performance. I originally tried to be the “bulldog” type because I loved the intensity of competition, but that didn’t benefit me at all. I was too uptight on each pitch and it increased my negative emotions when I didn’t execute or get the result I wanted. 

I found that my perfect mentality was being as relaxed and loose as possible, allowing myself to get comfortable with the game or performance. Once I got comfortable and gained the confidence, then I would kick it up a notch, thrive on the confidence, and ride the emotions. I needed to give myself time to build confidence in the first few pitches so I could utilize it later in my outing, as opposed to expecting perfection immediately and letting my disappointment that I wasn’t perfect drive it. This was by far the biggest realization that helped me improve my on-field performance and understand truly how to compete far past my college playing days.

Working through my performance anxiety was a very tough battle and it took a lot more than the keys I discussed. Tools like understanding the importance of breathing, creating release points on the field, and implementing mental imagery were also important factors in improving my performance. Struggling to perform certainly wasn’t an ideal situation to be in. But it forced me to truly learn about the challenges in the mental side of sports. Sports performance anxiety is real, so don’t ignore it because it may not go away on its own.

_{Photo by Jason O. Watson/Getty Images}

In order to be an elite competitor, you have to hate losing more than you love winning. Everybody has heard that phrase before and seen what those elite competitors look like in games. Max Scherzer, Lance Lynn, or Clayton Keyshawn come to the top of my mind when I think about those types. However, truly “hating to lose” is rooted in your mentality and the way you train off the field, not just how you compete between the lines.

I translate “hating to lose” as not being content with inadequacy. At its bare bones, losing comes at the cost of a lack of preparation, focus, or skill, all of which can be controlled. If you truly hate to lose, you have to hold yourself to a standard that fights any inadequacies in your skill set. Creating this standard all starts with how you train and prepare for competition. If your bat is too slow through the zone, you work on creating a more efficient bat path and you get in the weight room. If you made a few errors on backhand ground balls, you take the extra reps to regain confidence in that play. 

Holding yourself to that standard is what promotes growth and develops you into a better ballplayer. The most destructive mindset you can have after a loss is being content or letting it “roll off your shoulders.” Not only does it allow you to be satisfied with the poor habits you repeat, but it takes away from the satisfaction of truly working for a victory and overcoming a weakness. You limit yourself from reaching a goal or your true potential.

In order to promote the appropriate growth and build the mindset of hating to lose, you need to incorporate competition into training. This is how elite athletes build their competitive drive, giving them the tools to withstand high-pressure situations. You could go head-to-head with another teammate or simulate competition by holding yourself accountable for executing certain tasks. You could compete in the weight room, in taking ground balls, in a bullpen, or anywhere else. While the stakes are lower in these style competitions than in a game, you’ll build that drive and desire to impose the appropriate level of focus to avoid losing. This training will prepare you for high stake competition. 

When translating this mentality of hating losing to a game setting, it’s important to understand that winning doesn’t give you a free pass to be content. Of course, you are allowed to enjoy victories, but a win could give you the false belief that everything is perfect. Even in a victory, there are still areas that require improvement and must be recognized.

You could go 2 for 4 with a game-winning hit, but you weren’t picking up the left-handed pitcher’s slider and swinging over it. While you picked up a multi-hit game and won the game, there are still areas to improve upon. Again, you can celebrate the strong performance because there was work put in that paid off, but you have to be able to realize the weakness and have the urge to attack it.

Hating to lose is a lot more than being mad when another team beats you. It’s about having the inner drive to outwork your competition. Everything can be viewed as a win and a loss. While the best competitors don’t necessarily think of everything as winning and losing, they know how to train, eat, sleep and perform like a winner. They aren’t pleased with anything less and challenge themselves to learn from their losses. 

So my question to you is what loss have you recently experienced and what can you learn? Trust me, there is one.

Your relationship with baseball heavily depends on the love that you put into it. We discussed different ways to show your love for baseball in my last blog post (link here). As you grow and strengthen your love for the game, the game will reciprocate that love back to you far beyond your playing days through those additional experiences that others, who didn’t put the work in, will not have. 

Baseball’s biggest way of reciprocating its love will be through the lifelong values it provides you. First, baseball will help you build a work ethic that translates to parts of life not even remotely connected to the game. It takes an immense amount of time, focus, and intent to continue your playing career. By prioritizing extra reps, focusing on your strength training, and spending more time around the game to watch and study it, you will grow a strong worth ethic that you will hold yourself to on and off the field.

That work ethic grown through baseball will make you more effective and dependable in your career, hobbies, family, and anything else you wish to pursue. Even the smallest things, like making a meeting on time, are positively impacted by your baseball experience.

The game will also teach you other very important lessons along the way. It will teach you to be patient, appreciate the moment, and that failure is a part of life. For example, controlling what you can control is the biggest lesson I took away from baseball, as uncontrollables can fog up your mind as a pitcher. Realizing and judging my actions based on what I can control brings me peace in my life on and off the field. 

 As a pitcher, I could throw a perfect slider on the black and still end up giving up a double. I had to give myself slack in those moments when the result wasn’t there but I executed my controllables to the best of my abilities. It taught me how to control my attitude, actions, and effort, along with developing healthy affirmations when the results don’t line up with the controllables.

Along with the lifelong values, the game will provide memories that will last a lifetime. The time you spend with your teammates and coaches on road trips, bus rides, rainouts, early morning lifts, late January practices or late nights in the hotel is priceless. If you ask any former college baseball player, they’ll tell you their college memories hardly come from the games or the stats they accumulated. They’ll remember the personalities of their teammates and the time they spent with them outside of the lines.

Your work ethic, the lessons you learn, and the memories from your playing days are all ways the game will love you back as an individual, shaping you to be a strong, well-rounded human. But, in my opinion, the most important way the game will love you is by impartingthe perspective and love for the game that you can share with the next generation. 

While it was really hard to leave my playing career behind, it has been so rewarding coaching athletes of all ages on how they can love the game. At the youth level, it’s showing them the fun and joy the game presents by just being around it. It’s about creating a base love that they can build upon as they progress into their teenage years. For the high schoolers I coach, it’s teaching them the nitty gritty of the sport: how to compete, communicate, respect each other, have confidence, and all the intangibles it takes to play at the next level.

Do you need to be a coach to share your love for the game with the next generation? Of course not. Parents, relatives, volunteers and others can be a positive influence. Young aspiring baseball players are very impressionable. Seeing a college or high school athlete who sets a good example of how to love baseball could positively impact their desire to love the game.

In the end, baseball is a balanced relationship: whatever you put into it you will get back.  You don’t have to be a player that earns All-American accolades, plays professionally, or gets a significant amount of playing time in college. If you give he game the love it deserves (as discussed in the last post) will grow into a powerful relationship that will last a lifetime.

When you look around at your teammates, are you sure that each one of them is there because they love baseball? The answer is probably yes! Most of them started playing the same way you did: their parents wanted them to play multiple sports and signed them up for tee ball or Little League. They continued to play because they loved the game as much as the game loved them. However, as years passed some teammates stopped playing. Not because they stopped loving the game, but because they didn’t love the game enough.

Teammates stop playing baseball for many reasons. They might love another sport, hobby or activity that ends up trumping their desire to play baseball entirely. Or they might totally fall out of love with the game and just remove themselves from baseball. These two reasons are driven by the realization that there are better options for them outside of baseball. This is completely fine. Looking back on my own experience, very few of my Little League teammates ended up quitting  for those two reasons. However, the most devastating reason people stop playing is because their love for the game doesn’t mature with the challenges the game presents as you get older.

Baseball loves everybody unconditionally. It wants to provide opportunities for you to continue playing for a long time. But, in order to reciprocate that love, you have to give more and more. If you compare the junior varsity to the varsity level in high school, there’s no doubt that kids on both teams love baseball. But you can tell the difference in the type of love that is given by the players that succeed.

Like any relationship (because loving baseball is a relationship), you have to put in extra time with an intent to grow the love. So how do you do that?

You show your love by having intent when you are throwing, hitting, fielding or working on any skill. By having a plan and focus when you are putting in extra work, as opposed to just taking reps for the sake of taking reps. You show your love by working out and getting stronger, both in-season but especially in the off-season. You show your love by spending more time around the game, whether it be pre/post practice reps, watching baseball or studying the game. Give yourself as many options as possible to get better each day, even if you don’t have access to a field.

 Do not be the guy that is “happy to be there.” That guy only shows up to practices and games. That guy will throw or hit every now and then. That guy will only think about baseball when it’s on the calendar. That guy will only love the game when it is convenient.

The guy that is just “happy to be there” will only get as far as his natural talent will get him. There are guys like that at the high school and even college level, and they may have loved the game enough to get there. However, once you accept that complacent mentality and choose to stop working to grow your love, you really miss out on what the game can give you.

If you strive to play college baseball and beyond, you have to love the game more than your teammates, friends and opponents. As your career advances, you’ll run into others that love the game just as much as you do and want to take everything that the game will give them. In order to succeed, you have to challenge yourself to continue showing and improving that love until you can’t anymore. If you continue to love the game the way it loves you, it will reward you as long as you wish to play and well after you hang up the cleats. It will reward you with a lifetime of love, memories and friendships that wouldn’t have been possible without baseball.

So, ask yourself, how much do you love baseball?

My main focus this year when working with my high school pitchers was getting ahead early and often. At every level of baseball, the worst innings usually happen when the pitcher falls behind in counts or walks hitters. This is especially true at the high school level, where pitchers tend to either get too picky with their spots or have trouble making adjustments to get back in the zone. To combat this issue, I attacked it from two different angles: emphasized the importance of early strikes and adjusted how our catchers set up.

In college, we charted a statistic called “2 by 3s,” which is how many times the pitcher threw two strikes in the first three pitches. Combined with tracking first-pitch strikes, these two stats are great indicators of how aggressive our pitchers are early in the counts. In my opinion, the 1-1 count is the most important in an at bat because of how swayed the hitting statistics are based on the result of the following pitch. When looking at Major League Baseball data, that advantage is significant.

The graph below shows the batting average (BA), on base percentage (OBP), and on base plus slugging (OPS) after 1-1, 1-2, and 2-1 counts in the MLB during the 2021 season. After a 1-1 count, there is a .165 difference in OBP and a .302 difference in OPS. In a 1-2 count, a hitter’s BA drops to .169, which is 75 percentage points below the league average. The OPS difference stands out the most, as it shows that when the pitcher gets ahead, there is a lower chance that the batter reaches base and a lower chance the batter hits the ball hard/reaches via an extra base hit. Statistically, the 1-1 pitch is the most significant as the OPS difference is the greatest out of any single pitch, even beating the 0-0 pitch by over 90 percentage points.

No matter the significance, this trend is present across all counts. But the significance of getting ahead early is prevalent as it decreases the risk of falling behind later in the count. With these statistics in mind, I challenged my pitchers this year to be fearless in getting two strikes in the first three pitches. That did not mean throwing pitches down the middle so they don’t miss the strike zone. I wanted them to be confident in their ability to work the inner and outer half of the plate.

However, I noticed that we were still running into issues of pitchers falling behind because they were not getting calls when they missed their target by small margins. Pitchers were getting the ball inside, which is a challenging location to be comfortable with as underclassmen, but were still missing too far inside or missing up in the zone. While the pitchers were being aggressive, maybe the catcher’s setup wasn’t maximizing their potential to get strikes on missed locations. 

An article by the Baltimore Sun discusses how the Baltimore Orioles’ catchers have been setting their initial target up down the middle of the plate this season as opposed to starting at their desired location. The whole idea was to get their pitchers ahead in the count and not focus on nitpicking their strikes or being too perfect. With this adjustment, the Orioles’ strike percentage had increased to 52.9% over the first two weeks of the 2022 season, which was the highest in the MLB and a higher percentage than any season for the Orioles since the beginning of the Statcast era in 2008.

This setup benefitted MLB pitchers because a lot of those arms have fastballs in the mid to upper 90s and plus off-speed pitches. Rather than pitching to corners and trying to be perfect, they would let the spin of the pitch work over the plate. Their pitchers still found themselves inducing weak contact, and getting swings and misses. While our high school pitchers don’t possess the tools of pro pitchers, high school hitters don’t have the tools of pro hitters either. By throwing a strike over the plate, there’s a higher chance a high school hitter will still get themselves out. 

With that in mind, I implemented a variation of what the Orioles did with our catchers. I had our catchers setup with their outside knees on the black so their entire body frame was on the plate, whether that be on the inner or outer third of the plate. That way we were guaranteed to get strikes within the frame of the catcher, the catcher could effectively reach the strike across the plate to steal missed spots, and, with a high school strike zone, we could still get calls on pitches just off the plate. When we got to two strikes, I allowed our catchers to expand and “get a little greedy.”

By combining the catchers setting up on the plate with our pitchers focused on being aggressive in the zone early, we achieved the results we were looking for. We were getting a higher percentage of first pitch strikes and 2 by 3s from our pitchers. While we were hitting our intended spots a little more, our misses were generating more strikes.

The comfort of getting those strikes allowed our pitchers to be more aggressive with their pitch usage. Many high school pitchers rely on throwing first pitch fastballs to get ahead and that’s what high school hitters expect. Building our pitchers’ confidence that they could get ahead early opened them up to trusting their off-speed pitches earlier in counts, or even a good fastball inside. There were very few times that our pitchers threw first pitch off-speed pitches that were hit hard. A majority of them were either taken/swung through for strikes or were weak contact.

Once they got ahead, I wanted our pitchers and catchers to be greedy and get their outs right away. They needed to go after the hitter with competitive two strike pitches, as opposed to the staple elevated fastball that sails too high (great pitch in theory, but not practiced enough to execute properly). Instead, they threw competitive off-speed pitches in the dirt or off the plate, and even tried to put guys away with fastballs just a little more outside. The combination of us getting ahead early and a high school umpire’s tendency to give at least a ball off the plate, allowed us to execute fastballs out of the zone to get our outs.

My number one goal with any pitcher is to set them up to be confident when they step on the mound. Confidence is built in preparation and past success. By emphasizing being aggressive in the zone during mound work/pre-game bullpens, they prepare themselves for success. Once they execute working ahead in counts consistently and feel comfortable doing so, they gain that confidence. Overall, these tactics increased our pitchers’ confidence so they could continue to be aggressive outing after outing.