How To Get Better
The simple thing that isn't so simple.
This newsletter is so simple, I mean literally so simple.
It is one of the most important things you will ever learn, and you can translate it into any part of your life.
It is preached to you every single day in professional sports, but you see it completely ditched at the youth levels.
It is called the “Process Oriented Mindset”
Truthfully, I understand why it's kind of forgotten at the youth levels. It is harder to know exactly what is good or bad, and the quality of the sport leads to a lot more leeway in regards to talent identification.
“Hits” can be really vague, as the 3rd baseman’s mom is the scorekeeper. The strike zone is brutal (it needs to be, otherwise the whole game would be walks). The quality of defense behind you is never good (it shouldn't be, they're kids). And everything gets lost in translation when you pitch 3 innings and give up 5 runs, even if they didn't hit the ball out of the infield more than once.
The first step to becoming “Good” is to know what is actually “Good”.
For pitchers it comes down to really monitoring two things:
“Do you throw the ball in a way that is hard to hit”
And
“Did you throw the ball in the strike zone”
These things don’t show up directly in the box score, even “walks” can be deceiving as the hitters at lower levels will swing at anything.
Even while no method is perfect, you are able to tune out a lot of the noise if you stick to a more controllable plan if you pay attention to these two things.
How do you measure them? Well this is where we get more complicated, truthfully I don’t think K:BB is a perfect measure of how you threw the ball, but it's a whole heck of a lot better than trying to decipher 34 different stats from each outing.
In pro ball, we would monitor: First Pitch Strikes, K:BB, and hard/weak contact.
That is professionally, a level that is incredibly predictable and leads to pretty consistent outcomes relative to the youth game.
Now that you know what is good, you can focus on trying to do the thing that is good.
Instead of trying to do calculus in your head about “how to properly pitch” to a lineup of 10 year olds, you can focus on what really matters:
Throwing good pitches over the plate.
So the next time the ball doesn't leave the infield for 3 innings but you give up 4 runs, you don't need to pay attention to that.
Did you throw strikes? Did you throw pitches that were good enough to strike players out?
Yes? Sweet, good job.
No? That’s okay, you are 10. We can try and see why that was and correct the mistakes for the next time you go out there.
When you simplify the game, it's really easy to pay attention to what matters, because you have less clutter.
Make things really simple: in the offseason we are going to focus on throwing the ball harder and for more strikes.
Better than making things complex: We are going to try to become a better and more successful pitcher by doing things that will lead to success in the future by being better.
There is nothing “wrong” with the second sentence, but rather it makes everything so complex that you don't know exactly what you are supposed to do.
There are some instances where you should get really complex, but the time is not youth sports.
Kids are pretty smart, and they know how to do things when they are specifically told what to do.
The issue is usually kids don't know exactly what they are supposed to do, they are already going 100 miles per hour while they are out there, so trying to simplify everything is a huge factor in helping them get better.
Being process oriented opens a ton of possibilities for athletes, it allows them to have a better understanding of when they are off the rails and need to correct, but it also offers them some reassurance when things aren't going their way.
That's it
Be process oriented, and keep trucking.
This is the way.
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Good Luck
John