Why Failure Is Important For Prospects
I tweeted a link earlier this week to an article in the Providence Journal with quotes for various big league executives about how the gap between Triple-A and the big leagues is widening. The thrust of the article is that the step from dominating Triple-A as a top hitting prospect to performing well in a big league debut is even steeper now than in the past. Gregory Polanco, Javier Baez, Jon Singleton, Michael Choice, Kolten Wong, Jackie Bradley, Jr, Will Middlebrooks, Xander Bogaerts and the late Oscar Taveras were all examples from just this past year that fit the description. While these struggles can be blamed on plate discipline or mechanical breakdowns, they nearly all fall under the larger umbrella of mental toughness.
While I hadn’t heard about a MLB to Triple-A gap widening before, the underlying issue behind it keeps coming up in my Evaluating the Prospects series, with my recent Reds list a prime example. In the report for #1 prospect RHP Robert Stephenson I said, “This year was a struggle for Stephenson as he hadn’t really failed before…” in the comment for #3 prospect LF Jesse Winker I mentioned, “Winker has never really failed before,” and for #7 prospect CF Phillip Ervin I summed up his disappointing 2014 campaign, “Ervin got into some bad habits at the plate early in 2014, getting too pull-conscious and was forced to deal with the first failure of his career.”
It’s a theme that came up earlier in the series and with some top pitchers. In the Diamondbacks list, their #1 prospect RHP Archie Bradley had what some called a lost 2014 season because he “had never been hurt and basically hadn’t failed in his baseball career,” and while I didn’t use this phrasing in the Astros list, an executive with the team said former #1 overall pick RHP Mark Appel was embarrassed at some level about his struggles in 2014, the first failure of his career. It also comes up in backwards-looking reviews of established big leaguers. When talking to a Reds’ executive for their list, he mentioned that Jay Bruce experienced his first failure in the big leagues, which is quite rare, and that it defined his career in some ways.
I’m sure you can imagine the ways in which mental toughness is important to player development; specifically for hitters, failure is a huge part of the game and many top prospects haven’t experienced it in any form when they enter pro ball. Beyond that, the humility, openness to coaching and improved work ethic that comes from working out of a funk are things that players refer back to for their entire career, on and off the field. The timing and duration of these struggles often dictate whether the problem can become a teachable moment.
Every exec I’ve asked so far has agreed that if they could push a button to make a power pitching prospect throw in the upper-80’s just long enough that he wouldn’t fall apart mentally, learn to pitch without his best stuff, and then regain his velocity, that they all would do it. The art of development is learning how much a player can handle, sometimes walking him into a tough spot but helping to guide him out of the abyss while being careful to let him do it on his own.
Kiley McDaniel has worked as an executive and scout, most recently for the Atlanta Braves, also for the New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates. He's written for ESPN, Fox Sports and Baseball Prospectus. Follow him on twitter.
“Every exec I’ve asked so far has agreed that if they could push a button to make a power pitching prospect throw in the upper-80?s just long enough that he wouldn’t fall apart mentally, learn to pitch without his best stuff, and then regain his velocity, that they all would do it.”
Worked for Madison Bumgarner for sure.
Could this be part of the Orioles’ development strategy with their prospects (e.g., Bundy) to get them to stop using their cutter for a time? I always assumed that was an injury-related strategy; but there may be more to it.
The Pirates are pretty notorious for taking pitches away in the minors and forcing them to throw the fastball to work on command instead of letting guys like Gerrit Cole blow throw the lineup with stuff minor leaguers can’t touch. Organization sometimes put guys on quotas too where pitchers might need to throw X change ups or hitters might need take the first pitch.
I doubt the Orioles would take a weapon away in the majors to teach a guy.
The White Sox limited Carlos Rodon’s slider usage in the minors this past year partly to further work on his change up, but I’m sure part of it is making sure you have multiple ways of getting people out.
I think all teams try to be process- rather than results-oriented as they work prospects through the minors. It’s easier for blue-chippers like Bundy, who can fail a little bit and still be on track to the big leagues: most guys probably don’t feel like they can afford to ‘work on things’ and suffer a downturn in their performance. I think with pitchers, many of them have one or two pitches that grade as good pitches, but they often need to work on others so that they can have a full arsenal when they face advanced hitters. In Bundy’s case, the Orioles wanted him to work on fastball command and his change-up, feeling like the cutter is a ‘feel’ pitch that can come later once he establishes those other things.
I also wonder if there isn’t some statistical method of tracking this phenomenon. I am guessing that would be hard: one man is toughened up by failure, and another needs to maintain confidence as he establishes himself, so there is probably no formula for success.
Bundy’s cutter was to get him to succeed without it and be forced to develop his CB and CH. Rodon’s was due to heavy usage both IP-wise and slider specifically–he’ll be throwing it often again in 2015. The Pirates do it to make their pitchers learn FB command, particularly in the first full season after signing there are hard limits on off-speed pitches (75% minimum FB usage, I believe).
And none of these are to push the player towards failure, it’s actually to develop higher level skills at less competitive lower levels, so they don’t fall on their face in the big leagues–the failure that can sometimes derail a career.
I’ve always wanted to find a way to measure the ability to make adjustments quickly and players need to struggle to do this. I know makeup tries to do this.
Do scouts ever note prospects making changes from game to game and adjusting?
My people were telling me Ken Phelps.
” I have never failed, i just found 10,000 ways that don’t work”
Then the conclusion we should draw about Kris Bryant, someone who has had no struggles at all to speak of, is one of pessimism, no?
Well he did walk back to the dugout over 28% of the time in AAA after having ‘failed’ to put the ball in play . . .
Not to forget Bryant’s 64.7% Contact % which was 7th worst in the Pacific Coast League.
But it’s nothing to worry about.
After all, Javier Baez had a Contact % of 62.9% which was 2nd worst in the Pacific Coast League and he made plenty of contact hardly striking out at all in his MLB debut this year.
Oh wait … Never mind … Back to your scheduled programming
The explosion of video and multiple scouting reports have to be a part of this. No one in the minors exploits your flaws. Working on fixing the flaws has also got to make a players make up become of importance when drafting and scouting a player. Convincing a 17 year old to change is not an easy task.
*of more importance than it already is.
The sixth tool might be hugely underrated. Joe Panik had some knocks in AA, but actually has hit 300 pretty much everywhere he’s been (and that sub par performance in the Eastern was injury related as well as low babip). Then he went and hit in the show, while the flashier prospects struggled mightily, Panik handled major league fastballs. This is very similar to another middle infielder, Brandon Crawford, who has struggled more with hitting, but was similarly not a hyped prospect.
Bill James has a similar theory–that if you push younger players to face off against advanced competition early in their careers, they learn to make adjustments early on and become stronger players in their end state as a result. He applies this specifically to Cuban players, because in Cuban baseball there is apparently less formal separation between the various teams and leagues.
For every 100 players that might benefit one of them, the other 99 will fold under the pressure. And who knows, maybe a handful of those 99 would have been quite good had they been given the appropriate amount of time to develop whilst playing similar competition.
Citation? That seems a pretty bold assertion.