Great put Doc.
To add some kindling ...
I am a pianist. Been playing since I was 6. Been performing on stage routinely since age 11. I'm not world class, but I'm pretty darn good. What I know from my musical endeavors is this: You "think" your way through practice. The underlying purpose of practice is to learn a piece so well that when it comes time to perform, you don't have to think at all. I can tell you from a LOT of personal experience that the less thinking on stage, the better performance. A great performance flows through you - it doesn't come out of you.
Additionally, in 1988, I won the Starfleet Battles National Championship. SFB is a strategy board game based on Star Trek ships with a 300 page rule book -- we're talking TONS of thought involved -- chess-level variations with a vastly more complex set of moves available. But ... in '88, when I went on my run ... BEFORE I went to the tourney I did a ton of analysis, review of games, developed game plans for every possible opponent I might face. But, in the moment, it was all reaction. For 4 days I operated almost entirely on instinct. I'm sure with your chess background you understand the concept of "feeling" a multi-move combination exists before actually seeing it.
I believe, in MLB baseball, it is simply impossible for hitters to "think" their way to success. You can game plan. You can scout. You can work on any number of mental aspects of the game during practice. But in game, it all moves too fast. You cannot possibly succeed, (IMHO), if you are spending time (even nano-seconds) "thinking". Thinking during a pitch is death. Thinking between pitches can be helpful -- but the ultimate success/failure is, IMO, training your body to react appropriately to the minutia.
Ackley was NEVER shrill in college. He and Seager were nearly identical hitters ... except Ackley had a better eye. When Ackley was drafted, I said I expected a glide path toward success ... first would come a good OBP ... he would walk a lot. Then his average would come up ... then he would add power. His minor league progression:
'10 - West Tenn: .263/.389/.384 -- (126 patience and 121 ISO)
'10 - Tacoma : .274/.338/.439 -- (64 patience and 165 ISO)
'11 - Tacoma: .303/.421/.487 -- (118 patience and 184 ISO)
But his MLB results
'11 - .273/.348/.417 -- (75 patience and 144 ISO)
'12 - .222/.298/.327 -- (76 patience and 105 ISO)
Something isn't right. If you look at his career HR numbers on BBREF. In 2011, three (3) of his 6 HRs came on 3-ball counts. In 2012 ... of his 8 HRs, ZERO are on 3-ball counts, and only 1 was on a 2-ball count. My belief is that Ackley is getting INSTRUCTION that is hurting. Here are his count splits last year and this:
Batter ahead: 1.000 - .749
Even count : .710 - .576
Pitcher ahead: .544 - .524
I think he's being "taught" shrillness.
Mike Schmidt, for about the first ten years of his career, got a boatload of boo'ing in Philadelphia: "They just want to spank me so I'll try harder and do better," Schmitty said with a wan smile one day. Y'ever notice, when an athlete is performing badly, our flinch reaction is to go get a hickory switch and give him a good lickin'. Bear down out there, you little pansy.
We don't always grab hickory switches, throw AA batteries onto the field, or jeer. Sometimes we're more civilized about our bitterness and we indulge only in
- Booooo'ing, Chone Figgins for striking out (think about it)
- Yowling, for Ichiro to be moved down in the order
- Pounding our spoons on the table, demanding that Justin Smoak be sent to AAA
- Blogging our little alter egos out, calling for Brendan Ryan to catch some splinters in his gluteus maximus
Of course there are times that our calls for a player's demotion are rational, such as whenever Dr. D does it .... Justin Smoak was getting to be a serious issue. But you know whutuhmean.
Ask Bill ran this little snippet:
Bill: It seems to me--based both on what I can imagine and what I've read/heard--that there are 4 things that influence the year-to-year variability in a single player's performance: actual current level of ability, health, luck, and desire/commitment/focus. My own hunch is that the last of these 4 is both regularly underrated and from time time wildly overstated. What is your view? And can you see any way to isolate and/or quantify it? Or any views on whether & how management (or teammates) can affect it? JohnAsked by: wwiywAnswered: 8/4/2012We've worked hard to learn to measure the luck components, and we've made some progress. I would guess that, at the major league level, more players struggle because of over-commitment, excess desire, than because of a lack thereof. Anxiety, tension, over-correction. ...these things are major blockages to success in baseball. Baseball is a read-and-react sport. You have to learn to relax and play the game. When players have bad years, it is very often because they're trying to hard and working too hard.
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That read-and-react point has legs. Or neurons. Or something. I was kind of wondering where Bill came up with this, because for everything else he is, I hadn't thought he'd competed at much...
Dr. Daniel Amen is the world's leading researcher on brain imaging - one thing that he has found is that when a human being is under pressure and feeling frustrated, an attempt to concentrate will actually result in less brain activity. Well, yeah. Your thoughts flow most freely when? When you're dreaming... In speed chess, where each move is made in 1-3 seconds and complex strategies have to be executed, we're in a read-and-react context. Some Grandmasters, such as Lajos Portisch, have fallen asleep during play...
Same in kendo. In swordfighting against a better opponent, you gotta be loose. Your pulse might be 70 or 80 even though you're exercising. Well, theirs might; mine never was. O'Sensei, the father of aikido, made this one of his Four Golden Principles. Relax.
Timothy Gallwey, author of The Inner Sport of Tennis, was ultra-relaxed when he offered thoughts to his disciples. "Where was your foot on that groundstroke? Is that where you prefer it?" John Wooden might never have raised his voice a single time in a UCLA championship season. Coaching isn't about making demands. It's about convincing your athletes that they are capable, and it's about delivering information that actually changes the game for them.
In the absence of information, we coaches yell. If we don't have light, we offer heat. Darren Oliver came into the game one time and walked a lefty hitter. Lou Piniella came out and chewed his keister, right there on the mound. "I called you up here to get lefties out, kid. Not to walk them." Guess why my man Lou didn't choose instead to propose a technical idea to Oliver.
Do you think that baseball coaches, baseball writers, and baseball fans would react differently if they got this? That Dustin Ackley has been too shrill, not too chill?
Comments
With so many of the batters underperforming, I think at some point you have to look at instruction being an issue.
I love that you incorporate eastern thought into this. Since this is a thing I have been doing over the past two years in my own life.
This is actually very helpful information for me in regards to how I need to handle personal relationships. Thank you for the post!!
Books I would personally recommend to mariner players and anyone is.
Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns
The power of the subconscious mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy
The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill
These authors have other great books. Everything comes down to how we think and our attitude towards are circumstances.
It seems mariner fans myself included have such a negative attitude toward are team it projects and manifests itself into reality.
Give a bit of flavor as to their own backgrounds. I didn't know you had been a musical *prodigy.* Knew that you did some recording. And the miniatures championship is no small matter either (I was a Chainmail / D&D GM).
Awesome to get the 3B camera angle on "being in flow" during competition. As far as thinking during competition ... do you agree with Nicklaus, that during action you can keep 1-2 key ideas in mind as you're performing? A basketball player might be able to stay in flow as well as be thinking, "now these guys are going to crash the glass, so look for a quicker outlet pass."
In fact studies about "The Zone" seem to emphasize that idea of having 1-2 very very simple ideas that you're improving on during action... in performing, perhaps "play the silence" or somesuch"?
Any guesses as to what, specifically, they're telling Ackley that is counterproductive?
Not even necessarily that there's any big negative going on. Perhaps it's simply a failure to let them know "this guy likes to throw inside when he's 2-and-0" or that kind of data. Of course all MLB teams have the grids on that, but some are a step ahead of the other dugout.
Yes it's possible that "collective consciousness" (the empty stands and whatnot) impose a vibe. If an entire city expected SSI to fail, with film at 11 every night, that would flavor my performance too :- )
There is positive inertia and negative inertia, psychologically. Tom Wilhelmsen's curve ball can go a whale of a long ways towards reversing negative inertia....
My best guess is that he bought into the "you are our #3 hitter" junk. His swing got long and he got overly agressive.
The best thing they can do for Ackley is reinforce at every opportunity that he's the lead off guy. No ambiguity. Let him Jeter his way into a larger role for the offense.
For 10 seasons now we've had bad or awful offenses. That's with tons of different managers and coaches. The root issues are 1) Safeco Field sapping hitters confidence and changing their approach and 2) a lack of elite, established hitters who can carry the load so the young hitters don't press. If we fix Safeco and bring in a proven, top-tier hitter in his prime we would see radically different results with the current players.
I do agree the coaching aspect is somewhat unrealistic. Jack Z did come from a Brewers org. that's developed some of the best hitters in the game - Fielder, Braun, Weeks, Hardy, Lawrie, Hart, etc. Unless he had no clue how the minor league system was working back then, he should have had a plan on developing these hitters and targeted coaches willing to work with his plan. For whatever reason, the system Jack Z got from the Brewers isn't working here.
1. Is it Safeco? Maybe, but that's a whole different discussion.
2. Is it the lack of "top-tier" talent in their primes? In theory it sounds right - with Pujols and Kendrick in the line-up, Trout and Trumbo don't have to focus on being hero. But I disagree on that happening in reality. If you watch an Angels game, everyone knows Trout (and even Trumbo) is the hero and the star, not Pujols. They're the TnT Angels, not the Pujols Angels. Both those guys own that team. 2005 was a good example - the M's pick up Sexson and Beltre in the off-season, two huge "top-tier" talents. But that didn't stop the 24 or younger players - Reed, Lopez, Betancourt, Morse - from completely busting. It didn't help Choo not hit like absolute crap in his call up.
I think there should be a slight paradigm shift - it's not that elite hitters "protect" the young hitters so they don't press. It's that winning teams, regardless of the hitting talent around them, create and environment that's easy to relax in so young hitters don't press.
That's easier said then done.
Rather than abstractions, a specific example (even one example) such as Trout and Trumbo vs Pujols is a good add to the discussion.
Agreed too that the macro question is: how do you put "unproven" hitters, with their careers at stake, into a loose and self-assured frame of mind? A #4 hitter might help with that; Zduriencik seemed to think so. ... as you point out, the question is moot for Trout (and maybe Carp and Seager). There are a lot of roads to Rome.
Adding to the complexity of the question is that Zduriencik believes in a Beane-style 13-to-make-9, with players "proving that they've earned it." This creates a situation in which a Mike Carp, for example, has to publish or perish as it were.
If it were me, I'd be looking at Cool Papa's offseason approach: a rainmaker #4 hitter, a revamping of Safeco, and some young hitters who will then have 500-1000 ML at bats behind them...