It’s easy to know when major league baseball is beginning its new season; baseball articles dominate the sports page with new hype on new players and dreams of a big year. In essence, we hear the same words and the same expectations and of course we will typically get the same or similar results. There may be some fluke exceptions, but they are relatively rare.
Why is this so? The answer is simple: baseball keeps repeating itself with the same practices as they have been doing for the last one hundred years. Baseball teams hope they drafted or purchased the best players and hope – in some cases, expect – them to produce without getting injured. Everything else remains the same! They keep doing the same thing year after year but keep expecting the results to be different.
For example, baseball teams still do not do any scientifically-based skill analysis to determine if the players are executing their skills in the most effective manner. But yet, this is the key to every player’s performance. If they have difficulty in their skill execution they go back to hoping that the player will soon work it out. It is not uncommon to read about a pitcher who “lost” his slider or curveball and hopes he will find it this year. Teams should be embarrassed to even have a player make such statements in public.
Some clubs boast that they have a fantastic farm system that develops great players or has great players in it. However, do the players become great because of the training, or in spite of the training? More often than not it is the latter because the players simply play more and more games in the minor leagues. The players do not undergo effective teaching and coaching in regard to their technical skills and physical abilities.
When will major league baseball learn that it is possible to improve a player’s skills and abilities and to prevent injury? For some reason they still believe in the myth that all abilities are innate and that they cannot be improved. This is why recruiting and buying players is so important; they don’t know how to improve the player’s performance. If they did, buying a high-level player would not be necessary.
Baseball teams still do not do any specialized strength and explosive training that is the key to improving performance and to the prevention of injury. These exercises duplicate the same neuromuscular pattern – motor activity – that the athlete undergoes in execution of his skill. They develop strength in exactly the same way as it is displayed in execution of the skill. This is why these exercises are so effective in not only enhancing the player’s performance, but also in the prevention of injury.
Baseball now has better trainers and physical therapists to work on injuries but no one who can assist the players in the prevention of injury – except to have them play less. Teams still hope that the players will not get injured and consider it as “part of the game” if they do. But as they should have learned by this time, hoping is not effective in the prevention of injury. Small-market teams complain that they cannot compete with the big money teams when it comes to buying or retaining top players. This is very true if this is the only way you can develop a good team. But even paying top dollar for some of the top players does not ensure a winning team. Players must still be closely looked at and their performance constantly tweaked.
Many of the top players more or less “retire” after signing multi-year big-money contracts. It is rare to see one of them improve after signing such contracts. Most show a dramatic decline over the years. This is understandable since the contracts do not call for continued great performances.
But if teams believed in the proven concept of improving player performance, and took steps to improve their player’s technical skills and physical abilities, they would not be concerned with having large payrolls. It does not take a rocket scientist to determine which players they should buy when you have unlimited funds. It does, however, take someone with a scientific/analytical mind to analyze the player’s skills and make the corrections needed and to prescribe specialized exercises to not only enable the corrections but to enhance the skill. For more information on how player performance can be improved see Build a Better Athlete.