Baseball is back, but things have changed. Maybe you’ve noticed.
Remember when the notion of a National League DH, playoff expansion, and pitch timers made baseball traditionalists spit out their Cracker Jack? How quaint.
We just spent three months cheering on marbles and watching the world’s greatest athletes play video games. The best sports all quarantine was probably a toss-up between the Jordan documentary and The Floor is Lava on Netflix. None of this stuff really ever came close to the methadone we required to get us through the tough times. Are we the same sports fans we once were? I’m not sure. I’m scared.
I used to instinctively turn on ESPN whenever I picked up the remote. Now, I wonder — how did the hosts on all those debate shows consistently have opposite opinions from one another on every single topic? How many of Stephen A. Smith’s “quite franklies” were (gulp) never quite frankly at all? I never pondered these things before. I never had to. I just let the morphine drip. I see clearly now — well, technically my vision’s a little blurry due to high cholesterol, since the country outlawed exercise and Chester Cheetah became my certified emotional support animal.
It’s been a long strange trip, but today, Major League Baseball is back. We could argue the merits of the new rules ad nauseam, but I’m not really interested in all of that. As I try to project the 2020 season, and maybe put in a few futures bets, it’s not the added baserunner in extra innings, or the DH tacked on to NL rosters that is moving my needle. Rather, what has me curious is what has been taken away from the game:
YOU!
With no fans in the stands, ballplayers will find themselves playing real-life baseball in long-forgotten conditions. They’re facing a kind of quiet they probably haven’t experienced since those inconvenient weekday Little League games, when the only crowd consisted of the carpool parent with a thermos of Tito’s, and that weird guy, Brian, who didn’t have a kid on the team.
We don’t know what to expect, but neither do the players. Save for a few semi-minor tweaks to the formula, the physical nature of the game remains unchanged. Between the foul lines, it’s still baseball. Between the ears is something completely different.
When the owners and players finally came to an agreement and laid out the groundwork for how the 2020 season would be played, I quickly developed a theory. In short, my guess was that batters, compared to pitchers, would have a major advantage because of a perceived lighter load psychologically.
We often, mistakenly, think of the battle between pitcher and batter as a boxing match, man-to-man. The problem with this is that one side is playing mostly offense while the other is playing mostly defense… and it’s not who you’d instinctively think.
Pitchers generally dictate the action. They decide and execute the pitch, while the batter plays defense, reacting on the fly to what’s literally being thrown at him. In my estimation, it’s not an equal load.
There is a lot of build up to a pitch and pitch sequence. There is the decision, the windup, and the execution, and it all takes time and consideration. Batters, meanwhile, have less than four-tenths of a second to react to all of that action. I simply don’t think that’s enough time to get psyched out by the periphery.
Stadiums are going to be eerily quiet. Sure, they’re talking about pumping in noise, but that is even weirder. And I’m not sure whose idea the fan cutouts were, but clearly MLB is in the pocket of Big Cardboard. It’s like they’re so desperately trying to make things seem normal that they just end up making them so freaking weird. Like a really bad toupee.
Anyway, I’m just a dude with a Communications degree, an absurdly cute new quarantine puppy, and a heart of gold — I’m no expert. So, I asked one.
I posited my theory to Bill Cole, the first person in the world to be awarded a Bachelor of Science in Sports Psychology, and a pioneering leader in the field. He is the founder and President of the International Mental Game Coaching Association and has coached or consulted thousands, including Olympic champions and record-holding professional athletes in over 100 sports. He is kind of a big deal. That is why I need him — because if this idea has any legs, I might just throw a few bets on offense for the 2020 season.
Q: You’re the expert, I’d love to know your thoughts on this. It just seems to me,
instinctively, that pitchers will be carrying a heavier burden. What do you think?
Cole: Interesting thesis. Here are some angles, all of which I encounter in my mental game coaching on a regular basis. The key with mental game coaching is that it is a custom approach. Everyone reacts differently.
[With a new, very quiet atmosphere with no fans]
Some pitchers may relish this, at least the ones who get distracted by fan sights and sounds… or take fan trash talk personally.
Some pitchers may simply think, “this is like practice, so I’ll just proceed that way, methodically, calmly.”
Some pitchers may find it too sterile, boring, and demotivating.
Some pitchers may get up in their heads too much, since there are fewer people to observe in the seats to pass the time between pitches, and it’s too quiet for their tastes.
Whatever a pitchers take on it, they need to be a professional, and rise above the conditions.
Q: In your estimation, what are the new challenges facing batters?
Cole: The batter looks out to the pitcher and sometimes past the pitcher pre-pitch, but fans or no fans, he really only has to react to the pitcher, since his visual gaze past the pitcher is so diffuse that any fan movement in center field has little to no effect. The batter is “watching a predictable movie” as the pitcher moves. So a lack of fans does not really change that “movie.”
Q: What do you expect will be new challenges for pitchers?
Cole: The pitcher, in contrast, looks past the batter, catcher and umpire in a normal game with fans and has potentially distracting movements, colors and sounds to mentally block out. Now, with those fans removed, his visual field is simpler and quieter. In effect, he’s looking at a relatively calmer, almost sterile visual field. In comparison, the pitcher is “looking at a photograph,” the barely moving batter and the still catcher and umpire. That results in less visual distractions for the pitcher.
Q: Thesis be damned, who do you think benefits most from these new conditions?
Cole: With no more moving and unpredictable visual field of fans in the background for both batter and pitcher, I’d say the pitcher may benefit the most.
It’s been a common theme during this pandemic — “TRUST THE EXPERTS.”
Clearly, Cole and I differ on the final point, but here’s some spin that makes us both right:
Cole and I agree that batters will have a closer to normal experience than pitchers. I also agree with his assessment that, with fewer distractions, pitchers will have a much cleaner field of concentration than they did before. If a batter’s conditions remain unchanged and a pitcher’s conditions improve, it is only logical that pitchers would outperform batters. But, we can’t predict how players will react to change. The best we can do is estimate the effect on a case-by-case basis, making educated guesses on each pitcher’s psychological archetype.
Are there more psychologically fragile pitchers in Major League Baseball than not? Hard to figure. Chaos Theory tells us that complex systems can have vast and unpredictable reactions to simple change (at least, that’s how my simple brain has come to understand it). We don’t know how pitchers will react, but we do know the quantity of change is undoubtedly greater for the pitcher.
Maybe I’m rationalizing a failed hypothesis. But, if I’m going to put money on the outcome, I’m taking predictability over chaos each and every time.
Like a stubborn Trump/Biden twitter poll voter, I am bending the facts to fit my preconceived notions.
I’m betting on offense this season.
(Me losing sports bets… some things never change.)
[Bets I like: regular season doubles, 20.5; OVER (-160). Regular season home runs, 19.5; OVER (-190). Regular season highest batting average, .344; OVER (-165). Over .399 batting average (+600). No regular season no-hitters (-210). Odds via Bovada.lv]
Special thanks: Bill Cole, MS, MA, at SportsPsychologyCoaching.com and MentalGameCoach.com.
