Spring Training Dreams
I’ve always been fascinated by people, their psychology, what drives them and trying to understand them. Adan Canto
March 27, 2024
Diamond Dust #2
Perhaps the most famous meeting in the history of Baseball was when Branch Rickey met Jackie Robinson in 1945. Rickey, part-owner and also the General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, interviewed Robinson for over two hours to try to determine whether Jackie was the man who should break the odious “color line” that had stained the game basically since its inception. But it is also obvious that Rickey wanted to know if Jackie Robinson’s psyche was as well suited for the game of baseball as it was for integration. In many ways, Rickey’s entire career was an exercise in such amateur psychology. Branch Rickey was always fascinated by how a player’s personality affected athletic performance. This is also an interesting subtext to the recent book Moneyball that has been lost in all the hoopla about applying modern business analysis to baseball. The very sad core of the book is how Billy Beane’s psychological makeup made it difficult for him to apply his natural athletic gifts to playing baseball. He should have been a superstar. He was not. Psychology both giveth and taketh away. One of the wonderful things about Baseball’s Spring Training is that hope springs eternal. And all this hope is usually some type of applied psychology. Young players make mental adjustments. Older players train harder (or not) to stay young. Pitchers adopt new pitches and strategies. Hitters come up with a new plan. Whole teams either change their course or double down on a strategy that works (or does not). In Spring Training, all dreams are possible before the rubber hits the road of the actual season. In Spring Training, you can watch the psychology of the game and its players unfold before your eyes.
The Tao of Ohtani
Of course, the biggest story of the Spring was Shohei Ohtani. His move from the Angels to the Dodgers reinforced the impression that he was completely in control of every aspect of his life. Ohtani basically wrote his new contract himself. He then presented it to those teams that he was considering. In the end, he choose the Dodgers, the logical choice. The contract maximized the chances for Ohtani to be on a winning team, get to the play-offs, and finally be part of a World Championship team. Ohtani has always been presented by his handlers as a baseball savant. Baseball was his life. Everything he does is part of his goal to be the best there ever was (shades of Roy Hobbs). During the Spring, it was announced that he had gotten married. The careful reveal of his wife and even the name of their dog was totally on message. Ohtani was completely in control. Psychologically, it seemed like Ohtani was just a freak of nature. There was no messiness in his life, no loose ends. Everything was carefully considered and perfectly planned. And then the illusion crashed to the earth. His personal interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, got caught paying 4.5 million dollars to a bookie! There were only two real possibilities. Either the interpreter was running bets for Ohtani or the interpreter had embezzled the money from Ohtani. Fortunately for Baseball, it appears that the disheveled* Mizuhara stole the money and that Ohtani is not some modern day Pete Rose. But the carefully constructed media image of Ohtani has almost surely been ruined for good. He may be more of an idiot savant than a baseball buddha. Like most people who put all their energy into a single pursuit, other skills are seriously lacking (like the ability to judge people). It will be very interesting to see if Ohtani psychologically sublimates all this. In other words, he puts all his disappointment and energy into the one thing that has always rewarded him. If so, I predict Ohtani hits more than 50 HRs this year, breaking the Dodger’s single season team record.
*Every time I’ve ever seen Ippei Mizuhara, I always wondered about his hair. Was this a common Japanese hairstyle? Did he know it looked like he had never meet a hair stylist? Why was he so disheveled looking? But then my conscience would remember the old saying: “Never judge a book by its cover.” And I would feel slightly bad. But perhaps there is some truth in stereotypes? Can a stereotype even become a stereotype without any truth at all?
Some Players to Watch in 2024
But Ohtani and the Dodgers are hardly the only Spring Training daydream that is available. There is his teammate Mookie Betts’ transfer from the OF to 2B and then shortstop. Mookie has a reputation for being one of the nicest guys in baseball.* If he has the uber-competitive gene of most top athletes, Betts keeps it well hidden. But his position transfer actually revealed it briefly. When he was signed by the Boston Red Sox in 2011, Betts originally played second base (and some shortstop). But the Red Sox soured on Mookie as an infielder. By 2014, the year that he debuted in the Majors, Betts was just an outfielder. With his position switch back to the infield, Mookie revealed that he has always resented the Red Sox’ judgment of his infielding skills. It will be interesting to see who is right, the Red Sox or Betts. My money is on Mookie. Many great athletes are driven by grievance. It will also be interesting to see how Bryce Harper’s resentment of his contract works itself out. In one of the stranger storylines from 2024 Spring Training, Harper announced his desire to rework his contract [330 million dollars over 13 years]. With the top baseball players now making up to 42 million dollars a year, Harper is obviously feeling that his 25 million plus per season is inadequate. Of course, if Harper injures his back tomorrow and can no longer play, all that money is still going to be paid to him. And Bryce Harper has, shades of Don Mattingly, a history of back issues. His team, the Phillies, has done the right thing and basically ignored the demands of their best player. Harper’s response to Philadelphia’s refusal to engage was fascinating. He stated that he would remain productive deep into his 40s and was worthy of a raise. Both Betts and Harper now carry their resentments into the 2024 season. Unless injury unfortunately interferes, they are also both primed psychologically, like Ohtani, for great seasons.
*A woman that I know meet Mookie Betts out on the town when he played for Boston. She is an attractive woman and was studying dentistry at Tufts. She had no idea who Betts was (she began a conversation with me by asking: “Have you ever heard of this guy?”). She told me that he was a perfect gentlemen, talked about his long time girlfriend, and then paid for her and her friends’ drinks and hors d’oeuvres.
Some Things to Anticipate in 2024.
The psychology of Spring Training is all about anticipation. Which pitchers will take a step forward? Spencer Strider unveiled a new curve ball. Will he become the modern Sandy Koufax or Nolan Ryan? Yoshinabu Yamamoto is here in the Majors. Will he be the star that he was in Japan? Tyler Glasnow announced that his elbow actually felt good for the first time in years. Will he be able to pitch for a whole season without falling apart? The San Francisco Giants are giving the 100-mph flamethrowing-reliever Jordan Hicks a chance to transition to a starting pitcher. Will Hick’s new splitfinger pitch allow him to become the ace of the SF staff (or even just a good starter)? But there are negative anticipations too. Which pitchers will blow out their arms? Is Gerrit Cole going to need a Tommy John procedure? Will Kodai Senga’s shoulder heal? Of course, pitchers are far more volatile than position players. Among the position players, Spring Training is even more of a fresh start. Will Bobby Witt Jr. and Julio Rodriguez take yet another step forward from superstars to legends? Will Juan Soto, finally in his walk year, recover his Ted Williams type mojo and receive a long term contract? Will Cody Bellinger recover his 2019 MVP type form, have another good season like 2023, or sadly turn back into the pumpkin that he was from 2020 to 2022? Will Vlad Guerrero Jr. reverse the downhill slope of his career before he turns into the next Prince Fielder? Will Anthony Volpe be able to change his swing from a home run uppercut to a line drive machine gun? Will rookie Wyatt Langford rampage through the Majors as he has through the Minors? Will Joey Gallo hit more than .200 far away from the lights of Broadway? And on down the line to players that not only the biggest baseball nerd knows. When Spring Training finally ends, the answer to all these questions starts.
Teams have Psychology too
Of course, there is also the group psychology of the team itself to consider. Last year, the New York Yankees’ season was swamped by injuries and under-performance. But the institutional memory of the Yankees almost demands excellence. Will this group identity be enough to overcome their lost season? In other words, will the fact that they did not rise to what was expected cause them to work harder as a group to rebound? Giancarlo Stanton is probably the weathervane of this particular speculation. It will also be very interesting to see how the Yankees traditional rival, the Boston Red Sox, play out the year. The Red Sox have decided as a team to do the minimum to compete, hoping to just a catch a wave of over-performance to make a play-off run. During the off-season, it seemed like the Red Sox matched perfectly with free agent pitcher Jordan Montgomery. They needed pitching. Jordan’s wife attended college in Boston. But the BoSox just could not pull the trigger. No reason why was given. Was it because Montgomery’s conditioning will remind you of David Wells’ physique? But how does this affect team morale? Indications are that the core players of the Red Sox know the team is non-competitive from the top. It seems like this season for Boston may be much worse than is being projected [somewhere between 78-82 wins]. But the most interesting group psychology experiment for the 2024 season is being conducted by the St. Louis Cardinals. Ollie Marmol, the team’s manager in 2023, ran the Cards into the ground with a series of poorly thought-out personnel decisions and conflicts. Rather than firing Marmol, the Cardinals oddly doubled down by extending him. In the long history of Baseball, there are many examples of managers that lost control of their clubhouses [most famously, Ossie Vitt and the 1939 Cleveland Indians and Vern Rapp and the 1978 St. Louis Cardinals]. If the Cardinals collapse in 2024, will they finally fire Marmol?
Conclusion (or Play Ball!)
Watching the drama of applied human psychology play out on the field is one of the many joys of Baseball. But sometimes this psychology ends up playing out over the course of several seasons or even an entire career. For the 2024 season, the Atlanta Braves placed a bet on two potentially brilliant change-of-scenery moves. They traded for a young Jarred Kelenic, who had cracked into pieces under the pressure to be a superstar in Seattle, and old Chris Sale, who had broken apart from the workload of being Boston’s ace. Atlanta, already loaded with stars and superstars, obviously believes that, with all the pressure to be the leader of the pack removed, Kelenic and Sale can thrive. Only time will tell if this strategy turns into filet or dogfood. Of course, sometimes it is already clear if something is already just dogshit. Anthony Rendon, perhaps unwisely made it quite clear early this Spring what he thought about Baseball as an avocation. Long story short, Rendon said that he only played the game for the money. The Angels must have been thrilled. Rendon signed a seven year contract that runs from 2020 to 2026. The first four years, 2020 to 2023, have simply been brutal with Rendon usually injured, unavailable, and hostile. It will be a total miracle if, in the last three years from 2024 to 2026 (in which Rendon is making $38,571,479 dollars per year), he improves even one iota. It would be interesting to know how Branch Rickey, who loved Baseball with a religious fever, would have dealt with such a player. You could probably make some good money if you could place a bet that Rendon immediately retires when his contract is up in 2026. But Baseball will not care. By that time, we will know far more interesting things like whether Oniel Cruz and (his cousin by last name only) Elly de la Cruz, have transformed into the National League answer to Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani.