When Kyle Wright struggled early in his career, he couldn’t escape baseball. Even while watching TV at home, his poor outings ran through his mind. Then he would head to social media, where he would see even more about his hardships on the mound. His performances stuck with him.
He just didn’t feel right.
“It’s just really hard to disconnect,” Wright said, “if you don’t know how to do it, really.”
Credit: Atlanta Braves
Credit: Atlanta Braves
After one of his rough starts in the 2020 season, Wright met with the Braves’ athletic trainers. In a big meeting with them and other team personnel, everyone looked at how Wright could change his routine or make adjustments to feel better and pitch better.
Then and there, as Wright recalls it, head athletic trainer George Poulis brought up an idea: The Braves, he said, had Zach Sorensen, a mental skills coach who might be able to help Wright in a different way than simply fixing his mechanics or improving his pitches.
Two years later, Wright is one of baseball’s breakout players, someone who has executed a turnaround that has turned heads throughout the organization and the game. He has finally realized his potential. His demeanor is different. He looks confident and in control, and has dominated.
He might be Sorensen’s biggest success story thus far.
Sorensen has helped Wright learn to evaluate his outings and move on, develop effective routines, and more. By taking control of the game’s mental side, Wright has freed up himself to do what he loves: pitch.
“That’s when it becomes a game,” Wright said. “You’re competing, you’re having fun. And that’s why I feel like all of us first started to play this game when we were young, is you enjoy competing, you enjoy having fun, you enjoy winning.”
Since the Braves hired Sorensen in February 2020, his work has benefited players at all levels of the organization. They say Sorensen – a former big leaguer – takes a measured and logical approach to conquering the mental aspect of baseball through various tools and philosophies backed by his experience in the sport.
‘He kept the light at the end of the tunnel’
Earlier this season, Jake Higginbotham, a Double-A pitcher in the Braves organization, had to straighten out his mechanics. He battled to get every out. His stuff wasn’t playing as he expected. It was a roller-coaster ride, one he wonders how he would’ve handled without Sorensen’s guidance.
“He kept the light at the end of the tunnel,” Higginbotham said over the phone. “Because sometimes when you’re going through those struggles, it’s really, really easy to just think about, ‘Man, I might never get back to where I need to be.’ That was a pretty frustrating time.”
Through conversation, and with strategies, Sorensen helped Higginbotham stay positive enough to continue showing up to the ballpark every day to make those adjustments. This attitude allowed Higginbotham to actually enjoy going to the field, even when the results weren’t what he wanted.
Without Sorensen, Higginbotham believes he would’ve been bogged down with his struggles. Instead, he capably battled them and has worked to turn around his season.
J.J. Niekro, who began this season in Low-A, met Sorensen last summer in North Port, Fla., when Sorensen introduced himself to the entire draft class. Niekro and Sorensen talked, then they set up an appointment.
Then they went to work.
“He really, really gave me a great foundation of a routine, but not overboard,” Niekro said in a phone interview. “Because I always tend to overthink – be very logical, very analytical – and he gave me a very logical, yet simple routine.”
Sorensen does this in a few different ways.
Well, Better, How
“Well, Better, How” is written on the top of each page in the journal. Below it, there are three sections that read like this:
“What did I do well?”
“What do I want to do better?”
“How am I going to do it? (What is my 14:24)”
Three numbered points – 1, 2 and 3 – are under the first two. The third section has space for writing thoughts to that question.
This is Sorensen’s mental performance journal, which includes a daily “Well, Better, How.”
“Well” is for what a player did well that day. “Better” is for things that could be improved. And “how” is for writing how that improvement could be made, plus outlining how to use the daily 14 minutes and 24 seconds – which is 1% of a day.
“Just to get my thoughts on paper so I don’t have to think about them while I’m trying to go to bed – essentially because it’ll keep me up if I don’t get them out of my brain and put them on paper,” Higginbotham said.
“He wants you to analyze yourself every day, whether it’s the best outing you have, the worst outing you have,” Niekro said.
The mental performance journal allows players to evaluate their outings and apply what they learned in the future. “It’s a good way of compartmentalizing the day and being able to move onto the next,” Higginbotham said. For example, the “how” section, Higginbotham said, is not only used to determine ways to improve on the negative but also to focus on repeating the positives.
“When you're in control of what you need to be, then you just get to go out, compete, see how many outs you can get, try to win a ballgame. I think that's a huge part of it because it just gives you that freedom you need."
Then there’s the Habit Tracker app, which has players list elements of their lives – the habits – they want to become regular parts of their routine. You can check off these habits once they are completed each day. Sorensen can be friends with players on the app, Niekro said, and can reach out to help them at any time.
Higginbotham used the app for a bit but has since stopped because those things are now part of his routine. His routine includes making his bed, eating breakfast, listening to Sorensen’s daily podcast, and calling his wife and parents.
“I think it just removes the anxieties and the uncertainties,” Higginbotham said of his routine. “For me, I think a lot.”
‘Once that outing is over, it’s over’
Oh, man, here we go again.
This is what often went through Wright’s head when he would begin to spiral during outings. He used to find it difficult to let go of his bad outings, simply because it’s easier to ruminate on the bad ones.
That’s where Sorensen comes into the picture. He has helped Wright on the field (more soon) but also off the field.
“I think off the field, is once that outing is over, it’s over,” Wright said. “And that’s whether it’s good, bad, indifferent, whatever it may be. I think that’s something that, as a baseball player, you have to be able to disconnect with your outings, whether they’re good or bad, and being able to move on. How can you learn from that outing – whatever it was – good, bad? And how can you then take it with you throughout the week?”
Said starting pitcher Tucker Davidson, who began working with Sorensen last year: “I think if you have a bad outing, you can kind of look at the positives more than just only the negatives and be like, ‘Well, you did this, this and this extremely well, but we still need to work on this because this is what you did poorly.’”
Sorensen teaches a “Red Light-Green Light” technique that helps pitchers reset themselves on the mound. Each stoplight color, from red to yellow to green, represents a pitcher’s mental state. Green is when everything is going smoothly, yellow is when he might begin to struggle and red is for when things are going poorly.
And regardless of how successful a pitcher is at handling the in-game situations, there is one constant: When the outing is over, it’s over.
“When you’re at the field, you’re a baseball player,” Wright said. “When you leave, you’re not.”
Routines that get results
Last year, Sorensen and Higginbotham met in Double-A Mississippi’s dugout. Higginbotham had recently suffered an injury that eventually kept him out for a few months. Frustrated and discouraged, the pitcher wondered about his future.
That’s when he and Sorensen began working together. Since then, Higginbotham has become the next player to believe in Sorensen’s work.
Thus far, Sorensen has impacted players at each level of the organization. He’s taken an individualized approach with each of them because, in his line of work, there is no one-size-fits-all method.
“I think Zach’s really good at what he does because he approaches it with a level head and he approaches it from a place of experience,” Higginbotham said. “Everything that he preaches to us or talks to us about, he’s been through himself. He played at the highest level. He accomplished the goal that all of us have set out to accomplish after we get drafted, so he understands the mental hurdles that it takes to overcome and get to where we want to be. … And he approaches things with a level head, there’s never any panic. He’s always calm.”
Niekro is having a great season so far. A couple of the younger guys, he said, have observed his success and have asked about the mental performance journal. “Why are you using that?” they ask. “Who do I talk to so I can get that?” Sorensen has already impacted the Low-A clubhouse.
“I think during spring training, my body felt really, really good, and I think a lot of people’s do because they come in from the offseason, they’re fresh,” Niekro said. “We’re I think a month and a half in, even two months in now with spring training out of the way, and I still feel that freshness, and I think it’s from the mental routine, really, because I know exactly what I need to do every day, I know exactly the amount of rest I need to get. And if I didn’t have that routine established, I definitely wouldn’t be as successful.”
‘It just gives you that freedom’
Not everyone uses the mental performance journal or the Habit Tracker app. Different players will, of course, respond to different tools and mindsets.
The careers of Wright and Davidson and Niekro and Higginbotham will vary. They may never intersect.
But all are connected through this: They have embraced mental performance as part of their jobs, and all agree it has changed them.
“When you’re in control of what you need to be, then you just get to go out, compete, see how many outs you can get, try to win a ballgame,” Wright said. “I think that’s a huge part of it because it just gives you that freedom you need.”
