We Suck, Now What...

Author

Cindy Bristow
February 10, 2025

Table of Contents

Total Reading Time: 6 minutes

Opening weekend is over and now the adjustments happen. In this issue we’re looking at how to figure out what adjustments to make, and how to handle them.

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We Suck, Now What…

This might be a little dramatic, but I’m guessing some form of this statement raced through your mind this past weekend. And while it might have some truth to it, it doesn’t have to be permanent or fatal.

These first couple of weekends are meant for Discovery, Experience and Exploration. You were able to learn a lot about each of your pitchers, and they learned a lot about you.

But let’s get back to the part about you thinking “we suck” (or some version of that). Things like nerves, injury, and newness no doubt played a role this weekend, but what’s vital for you is to get to the bottom of the issue instead of generalizing or emotionalizing the result.

So let’s dive in to a process that will help you analyze your outings no matter how they end up. This 4 Step Process will serve as a roadmap to take you away from the emotion of the last outing and toward the solution for your next.

  1. OBSERVATIONS - Shrink things down to their smallest element. This step is critical, and yet it’s the easiest one to get wrong. The emotion you felt, or the impact in the moment were BIG things. No doubt they contain the real issue, but they’re too huge to clearly expose the problem so you need to get the microscope out and shrink it down to the essential element.

    Let’s say your pitchers hit a ton of batters this weekend. That’s the big problem, but when you shrink it down, you discover that that 90% of the batters hit were LHH. Now you have something specific versus big and vague and emotional.

  2. DETAILS THAT CONTRIBUTED - This step can use Data, or observations, or both, but you want to get down to what led to your microscopic observation in #1. You know that the problem was your staff hitting LHH, so in this step figure out things like: did all of your pitchers hit lefties, or just a couple? Of those certain pitchers, was it their pitches or your pitch calling against these lefties?

    Get granular in this step. Figure out what led to your Observation.

  3. KEY LESSONS LEARNED - Once you figure out what contributed to your staff hitting so many lefties, you’ll know your lessons learned - things like: Megan needs to face the LHH, or I need to better anticipate when the LHH are coming up and take Angel out if it’s a leverage situation. Your lessons learned need to be specific, and while they might seem simple, or obvious, they’re vital to solving this problem this coming week.

  4. STEPS GOING FORWARD - So how are you going to practice this solution, and better prepare yourself and your pitchers for this same situation next weekend? What situations can you create this week to isolate this situation and better prepare everybody when it happens again. And it will happen again.

This all might seem like a lot - like it will take forever and you’ve got to hurry up and scout for next weekend and organize your bullpens. I get it. But all of this takes about 5 minutes of really clear thinking. 5 minutes that will make a massive impact in your ability to solve this problem as the season goes on. Good Luck!

NOTE: These are things I combined from something the military calls an AAR, or After Action Report, with something called the ACE Helix, that’s detailed in the book, The Art of Clear Thinking by Hasard Lee.

Keep Your Binoculars In Your Own Dugout

After watching the opposition this weekend, or scrolling through social media or TV, it’s easy to look at the other teams and think “yea but they’re doing it”, or “How come they can do that?”.

Something I learned a long time ago was unless you’re looking at the other teams for a tactical reason - keep your binoculars in your own dugout.

Looking at their uniforms, or their behavior, or their ability to do something you can’t …these are all things that will distract your focus and probably just bum you out. Instead, use your eyes to notice they’ve started crowing the plate, never swing at the first pitch or have lost their plate discipline and are swinging at everything.

Using your binoculars to look tactically at our opponents, and teaching your players how to do the same thing, will give you information that helps you win games instead of simply getting bummed out.

I Hope you enjoyed today’s Curveball Chronicles Issue. If there’s something specific you want to read about send that to me at [email protected], or text me at (813) 368-2048

See You Next Week!