First Pitch: White Sox at Rangers

I don’t think players struggling is as simple as trying or not trying to do well. I’m surprised that I find myself in such a small minority in thinking this is complex because it seems life teaches us this over and over.

I’ve never done anything in my life that required special skill or ability like athletics or art or music or writing. I think in those fields effort is not nearly enough like it is for most of the fields we work in. Beyond needing talent, I think athletes/artists also face a huge challenge of getting in the right head space. I think finding the right balance between pushing yourself and not pressing must be incredibly hard and when you lose that balance due to injury or time off or whatever I think it must be incredibly hard to get back.

We see hints of this even in our regular lives doing things that are much easier to do than play major league baseball. I went to a selective graduate program where everyone admitted clearly had the ability to do the work expected yet fewer than 1/3 of the students admitted finished (and it was not financial issues as everyone admitted had a tuition waiver and stipend). I remember talking to classmates who were flailing and almost everyone of them seemed to missing that sweet spot between pushing themselves and not pressing. Many of them who were pressing seemed paralyzed by the pressure they put on themselves. Many of those students were constantly being told to push harder and I don’t think it helped them one bit. I think the same thing happens for MLB players but in a situation that is much less forgiving of pressing.

The common theory seems to be that Anderson, Moncada, Grandal, and others may have suddenly become lazy and uncaring after working intently to get the level of success that set our expectations so high. I think it is more likely a combination of health and pressing. I don’t know how to fix it but I do have concerns that the current coaching regime is not well-suited to fix it.