TheHurl

My playoff streak is over. I am no longer going to call my first child Covid!

Nice little article in the Athletic. All part of the Jays movement towards focusing on the holistic approach to player development...specifically on ingraining the mental side of performance as an integral part of coaching! By John Lott Mar 11, 2020 In spring training 1986, Phil Cundari was rehabbing from elbow surgery following his first pro season in the Oakland A’s system. The tall righthander had just turned 22. A year earlier, on his way to a 1.74 ERA for his college team, he’d been full of hope. Since the surgery, unease had set in. Shortly after he reported to camp in Mesa, Arizona, Cundari met Harvey Dorfman, a former high-school teacher, basketball coach and baseball writer who was gaining notice in a new career: sports psychologist. The A’s had hired him. Dorfman called himself a mental skills coach. What struck Cundari first was that Dorfman did not discriminate. Big-league star or obscure minor-leaguer, they were all the same to him. “Harvey worked with everybody,” Cundari recalled. “He’d be in spring training and he’d be available to all players and coaches. He just had a special way about him in working with players and gaining their trust relatively quickly, and helping them, as he always said, ‘to get out of their own way.’ But he also did much deeper work than that.” Dorfman and Cundari hit it off. “Harvey and I had a relationship that turned into a mentorship.” Dorfman would go on to make a name for himself over a long career as a sports psychologist. And the mentorship that started in 1986 led Cundari to write three new chapters in his own career. First, he became a psychotherapist. That was deliberate. Next, a decorated college coach. That was by accident. And now, a minor-league pitching coach for the Toronto Blue Jays. That, of course, was perfectly logical. Cundari, 56, is the new pitching coach for the Class A Lansing Lugnuts, a full-season team playing out of Michigan’s state capital. He is a rarity, a pro coach who practised psychotherapy in a clinical setting before making his mark as a college coach. The Blue Jays did not make a fuss about his hiring. His was one name among many in a press release announcing the Jays’ new and returning minor-league staff for the coming season. But in one sense, his hiring nudges the Jays further toward their goal of making mental-skills coaches and uniformed coaches equal in each other’s eyes. Despite widespread acceptance of mental-performance coaching in baseball, many traditionalists consider it subordinate to the work of a uniformed coach. A few old-school types still liken it to a fire alarm, to be broken only in an emergency. Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro addressed that issue when he spoke at the 2018 conference of the Association of Applied Sport Psychology in Toronto. The Jays view the practice of mental-performance skills in the same way they regard batting practice – as part of a player’s daily routine, Shapiro said at the keynote session. Their goal is “true integration,” where mental skills are “just as important as swing mechanics, just as important as pitching mechanics” in the process of improving a player’s performance, Shapiro said. Nobody is asking Cundari to wave that flag. But in a low-key way, he did just that in the college game, and as players pass through Lansing on their way up the ladder, they’ll deal with a coach who routinely brings a holistic approach to his work. Mental coaching is not new. “We’ve been doing it for quite some time,” Cundari said, “but I think the level and the focus of the way it’s going to be done in the future will create another performance edge with our players.” Cundari was born in Italy, but his New Jersey roots run deep. He grew up in New Jersey after his parents brought the family to the United States when he was 10. Eventually, he coached at two New Jersey colleges: 17 years at his alma mater, Seton Hall, then two at Rutgers. Over the years, he forged a robust reputation – he was collegiate pitching coach of the year in 2011 – but was unwilling to leave home for the pro game until his son and daughter finished high school. “Family has always been at the forefront,” he said. This year the timing was right. He put out the word that he was available and heard from several clubs. He picked the Blue Jays. They liked him for his unusual skill set. Not only had he played and coached, but he also had 10 years’ experience as a licensed psychotherapist, counselling both amateur and pro athletes. “Phil has a strong mental performance background, and he’s got a ton of experience as a pitcher and as a pitching coach. All of those things will help make us better,” said Gil Kim, the Blue Jays’ player development director. “It’s not always just about the data and technology. We’ve put a lot of focus into a development process that’s holistic and player-centric, where we can utilize every resource and angle towards improvement.” Cundari was ripe for a move. “The college game is a beautiful game, a great game,” he said. And he was proud of his record with undrafted high school pitchers who came to Seton Hall and Rutgers. (Twenty-eight of his pitchers advanced to pro ball.) But in recent years, recruiting and NCAA red tape consumed 70 percent of his time, he said. He yearned to spend more time coaching, in an environment rich in human and technical resources. “The pro player can spend as much time with a strength coach as he wishes, and speak to the nutritionist regularly, and sit down with a pitching analyst for as much time as needs, and he can spend time with the pitching coach going over video and in-game performance,” he said. “That’s all available at (the pro) level. At the college level, it’s become a lot more challenging for the coach and a program to do those things. That’s one of the upsides of coaching a pro player, the amount of time you can spend with the player to help him in all areas. And that’s the way a player right now would rather work.” There was a time when Harvey Dorfman’s name turned up often in baseball stories. An engaging character who once donned a uniform and dispensed advice in the Marlins’ dugout during games, he was the most prominent of the early baseball psychologists. Roy Halladay carried a dog-eared copy of one of Dorfman’s books throughout his Hall of Fame career. Quoted in a 2015 Baseball Research Journal article about Dorfman, Dustin Pedroia said, “He’s the kind of guy who can figure out your personality in five seconds.” And in a recent story I wrote, former Blue Jays’ pitcher Todd Stottlemyre credited Dorfman with helping him turn his life around after the 1993 World Series. Dorfman was just getting started in his new career in 1983 when he was introduced to legendary scout Karl Kuehl, who was running Oakland’s farm system. Kuehl had long been intrigued by sports psychology and had developed his own theories. He and Dorfman hit it off. Dorfman became a consultant to the club, later a full-time staffer. Three years later, Cundari arrived in the A’s spring camp. “Harvey was available, straightforward and realistic,” he recalled. “He was quick to help you focus and redirect you to a more positive and optimistic outlook. He guided you to act with more ownership in your goals and development. One of his favorite questions (was), ‘What are you going to do about it?’” Just as it had interrupted the start of Cundari’s career, an arm injury ended it after four seasons in 1988. He had topped out in Double-A. As he pondered the next steps, Dorfman’s muse remained close. He had always wanted to work in a “helping field,” he said, and learned that a degree in social work could lead to a clinical practice. He returned to Seton Hall, finished his undergraduate degree and earned a master’s in psychiatric social work. But before he started his clinical practice, he received his first offer to coach – in Milan, Italy. Communication with pitchers there would not be an issue. Cundari speaks fluent Italian, and he had gone back to play in Florence for two summers while in college. This also would be a summer job. He was eager to accept. “I figured it would be my last hurrah in baseball before I worked in the real world,” he told an interviewer for a story published in 2012. Not only did Milan give him his first chance to coach pitchers, but he also spent time with the Mediolanum sports psychology team, noted for its work with soccer players. Then he came home and hung out his shingle. Dorfman remained close. “We would speak frequently,” Cundari said. “And he was instrumental in me beginning my practice and how to go about doing that as well.” During his post-grad internships, he had worked with recreational and competitive athletes who struggled with mental health issues and substance abuse. After launching his practice, he focused on building mental performance skills in professional and amateur athletes, including many who attended Seton Hall. That connection proved valuable in 2001 when the school’s pitching coach job became vacant. The head coach asked him to fill in until they could find a permanent replacement. “It was supposed to be a one-year thing,” he said. It turned into 17. Pitching and psychotherapy dovetailed in his new job. He could relate to everything his pitchers were experiencing because he’d been there, and he understood how to help fix a mindset as well as an arm angle. “It was just very organic to work with the players on the mental game as well as all the other developmental areas,” he said. “It all happened very naturally.” Eventually, so did his job with the Blue Jays. Dorfman, who died in 2011, was a pioneer in sports psychology and its most famous practitioner. He never claimed to work miracles. But his results spoke for themselves. He worked for three major-league baseball teams, two of which – the A’s and Marlins – awarded him World Series rings. Near the end of his career, he consulted exclusively for the Scott Boras Corporation. In a Collegiate Baseball story about his coaching award, Cundari listed some of the techniques he took from Dorfman and used in his mental-performance coaching: Accept no excuses. Stress the importance of concentration, courage, and goal-setting. Urge players to write every day in a training log to develop a routine of self-examination. Encourage pitchers to follow the same mental routine before each pitch. Breathe. Relax. Concentrate. In moments of stress, fall back on your routine. Coach players not only to visualize success but to go back and visualize their failures too. “Mentally, I feel you recover much quicker if you can visualize your failure and then visualize fixing it,” Cundari said. Quoted in his Baseball Research Journal profile, Dorfman listed three qualifications for a good mental-skills coach. “Obviously you have to know psychology, what’s inside people’s heads,” he said. “Two, you have to be a communicator. You have to be able to talk to players in their language. The third thing is, you have to know the game.” The Blue Jays believe Cundari checks those boxes. As a result, the pitchers in Lansing will likely hear some Harvey Dorfman stories this summer. Cundari will make sure those lessons aren’t lost.

Jim arguing with Grant is the second best outcome to come from COVID-19 (after Disney closing)

Jim I know you are new to the league, but we don't talk about the inferior leagues in the DDL chat.

Brinsion Nunez Choi For AllDay and myself. I will message JG

I am not getting mail notifications right now for some reason. Took a shot on Brinson

hoping for....betting on. It's all the same.

if you give me 8 to 1. I'll put $10 down that you advance the same number of rounds as me

Where does that rank in the Jays Parents hall of fame. Ahead of Lind's Mom's medical assessments, but behind Rick Litsch PM'ing Jays fans who didn't like his son.

I know. Hero is more like it.

Dominican surgeries are just pick an area and whatever you get to first you remove it.

I am half kidding. I had quite the rant the other day on a Jays Journal article about calculating the probability of them making the playoffs within 2 years. The "data" was looking at 10 years of the top 5 farms and how many of them made the playoffs within three years of being ranked in BA's top 5. It had over 300 Facebook shares. The content you guys are putting out is not garbage, and I find it frustrating. And I agree with P2F if you churned out articles every day the quality wouldn't be there. And of course if I promote your content, it would be negative pro-bono as I'd continue to be a $5 a month Patreon. I threw King in there as he'd actually be good at it.

Have I mentioned how frustrating it is to see Jays Journal churn out s*** every day and get thousands of views and shares. King and I should come on as your content managers.

Now that it is buried in the rules. I don't mind if you add my phone number as the best method to reach me. Text, not calls!

Negative draft time. Once again i am getting the fastest drafter award

In my defense here i got a poorly worded message saying If EZE wants the big Wague it is his. Note: Nick was just trying to keep the draft moving by saying i was about to be on deck. I just didn't read it that way

I went homer. Waguespack

Trade to announce. I have traded pick 34 and 92 for picks 50 and 70 with The Bad Guy

JG messaged. I'm out of players I want. So I'll throw darts

Scherzer is a top 100 SP. 4+ WAR guy. Semantics top 5, but top 100 SP.

Yeah 11-1 to win the NL pennant just isn't good enough juice though. Barely 4 to 1 to win the NL East as 4th favourite is weak too.

That one's been done. Sorry, need more bold! But really it's going to happen so I'll allow it.

Always wanting more...

Monte Harrison. Have not messaged next!