The Mental Game

Experts say that baseball is the most challenging sport mentally for an athlete. Teams in the MLB are starting to recognize this.

 In 2018, well over half of the teams employed a “mental skills coach,” according to USA Today. There is an old quote from baseball legend Yogi Berra that says, “baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical,” and this seems to be the case/


Renowned mental coach Allen Jaeger wrote a piece for Elite Baseball Performance. His reasoning behind baseball being the most mentally challenging is that he claims there is more dead time than in any other sport. In football, there is a 40-second play clock before the ball has to be snapped, and in basketball, the shot clock is only 24 seconds. Thus the more time for anxiety to set in and mistakes to be harped on leads to dramatic drops in performance that can last weeks or longer.


The numbers support this hypothesis. A 1993 study of hitting streaks revealed that the streakiness of one batter has little to no correlation with another batter. The study reads, “on 501 plus-500-at-bat records over the four seasons from 1987 to 1990, has failed to find convincing evidence in support of wide-scale streakiness. In fact, the evidence is more in line with a model of randomness.” 


Between expert and mathematical analysis, it is easy to see why some consider baseball one of the most mentally taxing sports an athlete can play.

Comments

  1. Emma HowardFebruary 17, 2023 at 12:04 PM

    I might not know much about baseball, but this is really interesting. I used to shoot archery and the idea of downtime causing stress explains a lot of what I experienced. Also, if someone shot badly at a tournament, they might struggle with it for weeks afterward.

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