For the past 5 years, I have shown this graphic to our high school age baseball players:

I try to convey that “to be exceptional, you need TO DO exceptional things”. Sure, talent helps. Luck sometimes plays a role.  But, in my experience, the most exceptional people are not the most talented. There are always more talented people around. Talent or luck do not separate exceptional performers from the pack.

What makes people exceptional is that they combine strong talent with hard work, enthusiasm, commitment, and a strong mental make-up. That combination makes people exceptional — in any chosen field.

Most of these elements that lead to “exceptionalism” are CHOICES that individuals have the FREEDOM, CONTROL and RESPONSIBILITY to make. Being exceptional is a CHOICE. To me, that is an inspiring, positive and very American outlook on life.

My personal goal is to help young men learn to be exceptional — whether it is in baseball, academics or professionally. This is a core part of the Gamers baseball program.  In the Gamers program, it is OK to be ambitious, to have goals, to work hard and try to become the best you can be. No apologies required.

The post below was made in 2012.  I am still hearing some of these “mis-perceptions”, so I have revised and re-posted below.

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Over the past weeks, several parents and players have asked me about certain things that have been posted on discussion forums and/or said by individuals regarding the Gamers program. So, I thought that I would just address them in a blog post.

Incredibly — 8 years ago now, I interviewed Brendan Sullivan from Headfirst Baseball about select baseball and academics.  Great insights for any HS player that want to play college baseball.

Click Here to listen.  It is a about 20 minutes long.

I spent the weekend looking at baseball through the lens of “measuring team performance”.  There are a lot of individual measures in baseball to tell a player how well he is doing.  Team measures, other than Wins/Loses are a lot harder to come by.

So, I am looking for some measures that look into the heart of a team.  Does the team play hard and have the guts, courage and tenacity to compete.  Nothing new here, but these are the measures that come closest for me (and pretty much directly relate to wins/loses, but are a lot more controllable to players):

Win 3 innings =>measures tenacity and persistence.  John Wooden uses the term “intentness” for this.  In a 7 inning game, if you win 3 innings, you will win 90+% of the time.  If you don’t win the 3rd inning, it is up to luck.

But, inside of the “Win 3 innings story there are several subplots:

Prevent/Achieve a BIG Inning => string a series of Quality At Bats together to score 3 or more runs in an inning. From a defensive standpoint, prevent BIG innings by limiting walks, errors and extra bases (cutoff men, passed balls) and making routine plays.  It takes courage to step up and limit damage after the other team scores.  Weak team roll over and let 2 runs turn into 4.

Shutdown Inning => put up a zero immediately after we score.  This is about focus and not letting up.

Answer Back Inning =>the other side of the Shutdown inning … answering back by scoring immediately after the opponent scores.  This measures guts and courage to respond.

Extend the Lead Inning => this is adding on runs to an existing lead.  Often over-looked, but goes hand in hand with winning 3 innings.  This measures tenacity and persistence.

These are all team measures and provide a view directly into the heart of a team.

Four phrases comprise 90% of my coaching of hitters during games”

Be aggressive

Let the ball travel

Attack the inside half

Keep your head still

I probably stay each of the above phrases 10+ times per game.  Here is how these phrases all stick together:

Through 11 games this fall ….

When we put the ball in play to the pulls side, we are hitting .259

When we put the ball in play up the middle or oppo, we are hitting .456.

That is a really big range — 200 points of batting average.  Most pitchers are throwing fastballs away and off speed.  We cannot try to pull these pitches.  If we do, we will hit .260 or less.  Instead, if we take an up the middle/opp approach, we will hit .460.  Eventually, if we keep hitting the ball oppo, pitchers will make adjustment and start pitching us inside.  The we have them where we want them.  But, if we keep rolling over on away pitches, we will never see inside pitches — pitchers will just keep pounding us away.

So, extending the work from 1-Pitch Warrior, this is how the 16 Blue team has done so far this weekend:

Which Gam                   Game1  Game 2    Game 3

Shutdown Inning              2           3                1

Big Inning                        0            1               0

Answer Back                   1            1               0

Extend Lead                    2            2               0

Game Score               5-2W       16-2W       2-3L

There is a lot to this regarding how a team competes during the game.  It a good measure of tenacity, intensity and focus.

Can we put a zero up after we score?

Can we strong good At-Bats together to create a Big Inning?

Can we answer back with a run after the opponent scores?

Can we extend the lead once we get it by adding on runs?

It is like turnovers and offensive rebounds in basketball.  A direct measurement of competitive tenacity.

I have been doing some reading of the “1-Pitch Warrior” material at http://www.1pitchwarrior.com.

The approach has a lot of overlap with the Gamers approach, including:

QAB — Quality At-Bats, to measure hitter performance (instead of batting average)

First Pitch Strikes – our target is 67%

Overall Strikes – our target is >60%

Defensive Walks + Errors – less than 5 is target

Win three innings (if you do this, you win 90% of games)

In addition to these, 1-Pitch Warrior talks about some other team based measures such as:

Shutdown Inning — putting up a zero after your team scores

Big Inning — scoring 3 or more runs in an inning

Answer back inning — scoring immediately after the other team scores

Extend lead inning — score to extend the lead, adding on insurance runs

I like these measurements because they reflect the competitive ebb & flow of the game.  Coach Dehmer has the same crazy stats as me — if you achieve just three of the above in 7 innings, you will win 90% of your games.

Going to start adding those to the Gamers vocabulary.