SI Daily Cover: In a Time of Uncertainty for MLB, Mental-Skill Coaches Take Center Stage

SI's Emma Baccellieri discusses the role of mental skills coaches in Major League Baseball.

Transcript

00:00As Major League Baseball continues to assess potential ways to return to the field, a lot

00:07remains uncertain.

00:08And in today's Daily Cover, Emma Bocciolieri examines the question, how do you prepare

00:13players when you don't know when or how they'll be playing again?

00:18Emma, you point out how mental skills coaches have become so much more prominent in baseball

00:23recently.

00:24And how would you describe the role of a mental skills coach?

00:27Yeah, so we've seen a lot of teams add these in the last five or 10 years.

00:31And really their job is to do everything that a strength and conditioning coach that a physical

00:37trainer would do for a player's body to take that same kind of work and apply it to his

00:42mind and his mental skills and his emotional approach to the game.

00:48So everything that can be focused or confidence, you know, meditation, things like that, that

00:55can help a player kind of stay centered and just be able to have his mind in the best

01:00place needed to be able to execute what he wants to do between the lines.

01:04They take care of all of that.

01:07And having a resource like that must be hugely important at a time like this when so much

01:12remains uncertain.

01:13Yeah, absolutely.

01:16You know, a lot of mental skills coaches right now say that it's really kind of showing how

01:21the skills that they would normally be teaching them, they can work just as well for life

01:26as they do for baseball.

01:27So things like setting routines, meditating, kind of being mindful, being really in touch

01:36with your emotions and how you're feeling and processing uncertainty.

01:41All of that, you know, that's stuff that they've been taught in the context of baseball.

01:44But right now, I mean, for baseball players, but really for just about anyone, it's really

01:49powerful as a tool to kind of navigate the uncertainty that everyone's going through

01:53right now.

01:54Absolutely.

01:55S.I.

01:56MLB writer Emma Botulieri, thank you so much for the time.

01:58Thanks.