Mets taking a mindful approach
Team has created baseball’s biggest ‘mental-skills’ staff
Few people have done as much to push baseball’s front-office revolution over the last quarter-century as New York Mets general manager Sandy Alderson. During his tenure with the Oakland Athletics, Alderson hired Billy Beane and turned him on to the idea that much of the game’s conventional wisdom was hooey.
Alderson has also been at the forefront of a new approach to player psychology. With the A’s, he hired Harvey Dorfman, one of the game’s earliest gurus. Now, with the Mets, Alderson is building one of the biggest “mental skills” coaching staffs in baseball.
The Mets began rethinking their approach three years ago after longtime team psychologist Jeffery Foote left the team. Under Foote, the club ran a fairly standard employee-assistance program, similar to what many companies offer rank-and-file workers. If a player was dealing with depression, anxiety, or addiction, Foote offered confidential counselling and helped to arrange treatment.
His successor, Jonathan Fader, who had been working with the team at the minor-league level, put a greater emphasis on providing help with the everyday stress of baseball and persuaded the Mets to hire more staff.
In two years, the team has nearly tripled its mental skills staff to eight. After Fader left last year for a consulting job with the NFL’s New York Giants, his job was split in two: Will Lenzner took over duties with the major-league roster while Derick Anderson oversees the mental-skills staff.
Mets coaches work with players at every level, from the major league club to the academy in the Dominican Republic.
“We have a position coach at every affiliate. We have a pitching coach at every affiliate, a hitting coach,” Mets assistant general manager John Ricco says, “so why wouldn’t we have somebody who’s helping the players with the mental side of the game?”
Baseball can test even the most resolute minds. (This might be the place to note the Mets have long tested the mental state of its fans, and this season has offered no relief.) The sport combines public performance, intense competition for employment, and profound isolation. Baseball’s most essential roles are solitary: one batter and one pitcher at a time. And failure, at least for hitters, is the norm.
Under this crucible, even routine plays can suddenly become crushingly difficult. Yankees hall of famer Yogi Berra may have botched the math, but he wasn’t wrong when he said, “Ninety per cent of the game is half-mental.”
The big question — Is it working? — is impossible to answer. Sometimes, Anderson says, a player seeks help for a problem and shows immediate improvement. Usually the link isn’t so obvious. If mental-skills coaches help even one player, it’s probably worth it. Baseball’s margins are slim. The difference between average and all-star can be a couple dozen hits over a season. The entire mentalskills program, Ricco says, costs less than $1 million a year.
“In the context of what we spend on putting this team out there,” he says, “I think it’s definitely money well spent.”