8 Lessons I Learned On My Journey To Professional Baseball
Wisdom from my baseball journey that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
1. Hard Work Does Not Guarantee Success
You could work hard, grind all you want, but that does not directly translate to the success you hope for. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as people make it out to be.
Along your journey to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve, there will be moments where you have to just flat out show up and win. You’ll face big decisions and moments where you have to perform under pressure. There are the situations that will determine your destiny.
Now I will say, hard work and preparation certainly helps prepare you for these moments. In fact, in many endeavors, hard work and careful preparation is definitely necessary, even if it doesn’t guarantee success.
I’ll use myself as an example for pitching. Being able to pitch at an elite level against elite talent requires a year-round, carefully-planned and executed training plan. This is honestly a prerequisite to being a professional baseball player.
However, just because I ‘put in the work,’ that does not guarantee I will go out on the field and pitch good. I still have to show up and perform when it counts; when there’s stakes and consequence. My training simply puts me in the best position to do that, putting the odds more in my favor so to speak.
This really does apply to anything in our lives that is consequential. Say you’re in business trying to work out some type of deal or sale. You can do all the research and preparation you want but if you’re stuttering, lack confidence, and are unimpressive when you actually meet the client, all that preparation goes out the window.
Same goes if you’re a student with a big exam coming up. Go ahead and use all the best study methods, log an exhausting amount of hours in the library, and use all the available resources. If you show up to exam day, when the pressure starts to hit, and you’re sweating bullets and can’t think straight, then it’s going to be much harder for you to succeed.
Work hard and prepare SO THAT you show up when it counts.
2. You’re Competing With Lots Of People: You Have To Find An Edge
I show up to the training facility every day in the offseason and there’s hundreds of other pitchers doing some variation of the same program as me. And while different training facilities and different teams might have their own specific methods they believe are best, for the most part everyone is checking the same boxes.
Every pitcher has a throwing routine, a weightlifting & conditioning routine, a mobility/recovery routine. Doing all of that does not make you inherently special.
So how do you find an edge if everyone does the same things?
As I mentioned, while you might see people following the same roadmap, the details may vary. An easy differentiator from the masses is to find the methodology that you believe gives YOU an edge. For example, I train at the place I train at because I believe the coaching is the best I can get for me.
Let’s say you were trying to sell a new product. Every business has a marketing strategy. The goal isn’t just to have a marketing strategy for the sake of having one, but rather to create the best possible unique strategy for your brand.
But even then, if you think you have the optimal methodology, you still have competition. Odds are there are others like you who followed the same path to arrive at the strategy you did. Like I said earlier, I show up to the facility to train every day with pitchers ranging from college to the Major Leagues. We all have training programs that are at least somewhat similar. How do I separate myself amongst them?
You need to have focus and intention behind everything you do. Whatever training plan, strategy, or methodology you have, execute it better than everyone else. That is what I noticed from training amongst other elite pitchers.
3. Don’t Expect Things To Just Happen To You: Create Your Own Luck
Everyone wants to succeed. Everyone wants to win. Everyone wants good things to happen to them. Few are willing do what’s necessary to achieve that.
If you are not currently succeeding/producing as you stand right now, then it is very unlikely that the outcomes you dream of will just come to you out of thin air. I use the term ‘create your own luck’ because I don’t really believe in luck. You can just make yourself seem ‘lucky’ to everyone else if you do what is necessary to improve your odds of success.
To do this, you will have to change your habits, take risks, and make tough decisions. I earned my opportunity in professional baseball because I took risks, changed my environment, changed my habits, and bet on myself. This opportunity did not just randomly fall into my lap, I did what I needed to do so it felt that would inevitably get this opportunity.
4. If It Was Easy, Everyone Would Have Figured It Out
When I decided that I wanted to be a professional baseball player, I just googled how to do it and simply followed those steps.
Just kidding.
There is no ‘formula’ to achieve your dreams. If you are trying to do something that is extremely difficult, desirable, and competitive, it is impossible to know exactly how you will get there.
There’s going to be times where you should follow the mainstream consensus.
There’s going to be times where you should be bold and different.
There’s going to be times where you should acknowledge your ignorance, put your ego aside, and trust other peoples’ advice.
There’s going to be times where you should just listen to your gut.
There’s been things in baseball where I trust other people to help me figure things out and others where I make decisions entirely on my own. Don’t just follow the mainstream path that everyone else takes, but don’t just be different for the sake of being different either.
Your unique ‘formula’ for you to succeed is going to look slightly different from everyone else, so don’t worry about what theirs looks like. While there may be some overlap, what’s going to propel you to greatness is not the same as anyone else. That is part of your unique ‘edge.’
5. Why Stress When You Know You Are Going To Win
Whenever I go to an MLB game with friends, I watch the pitchers and think to myself “I can do that,” or “That’ll be me someday.”
Same thing when I would see a friend or someone I knew get drafted or signed to an MLB team: I always thought “My turn next.”
When you really believe in your heart, even when nobody else does, that you are going to achieve something great, then you really can’t be bothered with worrying too much. Are there still times where things are worrisome, difficult, and stressful? Absolutely. But generally speaking, once I started to really feel like momentum was on my side, I realized there is no reason to worry if you genuinely believe you are going to succeed.
It’s a constant feedback loop that leads to sustained success. I was confident I was going to pitch good because I had such a big vision for myself. I would then be able to go out and pitch great because that confidence kept me calm and focused. Then that success in turn fueled the fire, made me even more confident, and the cycle continued.
6. The Best Bounce Back From Failure Very Quickly
That perpetuating confidence feedback loop I just mentioned? Well sometimes a wrench gets thrown in it and completely throws you off. Even the best deal with this from time to time.
The key is how you respond.
I experienced this first hand in my transition from a reliever to starting pitcher this season. Being a starting pitcher in a lot of ways is like being a quarterback. The outcome of one side of the game rests in your hands, and you can easily swing the outcome of the game depending on your performance. You also only play once a week, so every time you’re out on the field you need to make it count.
Some of my best performances on the mound this year came the week after my worst games. Every once in a while, if I didn’t have my best performance out there, I would be itching all week to get back on the field and prove that it was just a lucky day for them. I was hungry for redemption.
The team was also counting on me, they didn’t care how I did the week prior. ‘We lost your last start? Oh well, it’s over, we need you to win this next one.’
Everyone will fail at some point. These moments can either be opportunities to learn and make adjustments, or they can break you and lead to a downward spiral. It’s very easy to feel confident when things are going your way. But when you do eventually fail, it’s up to you to decide whether you use failure as a tool to grow or let it completely destroy you.
7. You Do Not Know When You Will See The Fruits Of Your Hard Work
My opportunity to sign with the Phillies came shortly after showing I could hit 98 mph on the mound. It was less than 2 weeks between when I did that and when I signed the contract. What a rush it was, with so much unfolding in a short amount of time.
Even though it seemed like everything transpired so quickly, I have been training every day for months without knowing where I would be playing next season. I just woke up, day after day, and did what I needed to do, slowly building myself up over time.
There were times where I sat in my apartment alone thinking about the future, longing for an opportunity, wondering when I would get my chance. Then everything I ever wanted transpired so quickly.
The point of this story is that you do not know when your hard work will pay off. There could be very long stretches with little to no reward for your efforts. These are the times that will test you, and many will break. For some it takes months, for others it takes years. It depends on what you’re trying to achieve.
I’m not the first to talk about this important lesson, as I’m sure many of you have heard the term ‘trust the process.’
If you are reading this, I would encourage you to not give up on your dreams so long as you have a chance. Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel seems so far away it’s barely visible, but I promise that it is worth it. At the very worst, if you see something through to the end, and you do not get the reward you initially wanted, you will still benefit in ways you can’t anticipate.
8. You Need To Visualize Your Success
My Dad instilled this practice in me very young, as early as my Little League days. He would always tell me to close my eyes and visualize success before games. This is something you see elite athletes of all sports doing all the time.
Nowadays I take this even further. Not only will I sit down and have visualization ‘sessions,’ I also just tend to visualize success all the time throughout my day: on a bus trip to a game, driving, sitting on the couch, honestly everywhere.
Some might call this obsession, but honestly this is the level of visualization it takes to be the best and to completely transform. Like I said earlier, you can’t just wait for things to happen to you out of nowhere.
The success you are trying to achieve should be at the forefront of your mind all the time. If you can whip up the image in your head that easily then it is so much easier to take that vision and make it real.
However, sometimes people struggle to turn that vision into reality, or maybe they struggle to visualize success altogether. That is why I created the Transformation Playbook, a tool for people to create a roadmap for their dream life and grand vision. This is something I currently use, and have used variants of in the past to make my dreams feel much more real, tangible, and attainable. It has helped me cut out distractions, overcome the things holding me back, and focus on what is important to me.
This resource isn’t for everyone: it’s an exercise in a way, mostly for those who have big dreams for themselves but haven’t attained them just yet. I’ve gate-kept this strategy for a long time but I finally decided to share it with all of you.