Not every mindset survives a season.
That’s the core idea behind this episode — taking the player types we laid out in Episode I and running them through the real pressures of baseball: benchings, demotions, slumps, injuries, money stress, mixed messaging, burnout, and leadership failure. What shows up quickly in Billy Lanford’s answers is that there is no magic fix. He goes back to the same critical elements: identity, self-awareness, routine, discipline, and environment. Remove the noise, and his message is simple: pressure does not create a player as much as it reveals what was already there.
When the season starts, everybody gets tested
9inningnomad: Last week, we talked about a few player prototypes — the talent, the nomad, the grinder. Now we can put them through the stress test, when pressure is applied. What changes mentally with role volatility, a benching, a demotion? What do you usually see?
Billy Lanford: This is where, when we get in season, they’re the same guy because you’re in season. Everyone comes from different backgrounds, has different adversities, and different things they go through, but when you get in season, there’s this old cliché. Chance Sisco and I were just talking about it this past week: if you don’t like your innings or don’t like your at-bats, play better.
To me, that goes back to the mental side of the game. What are your routines? What are your habits? What are you doing that’s taking you away from that max potential? Because you’re always here and we want to close the gap. But if you’re not closing that gap, then you’re walking away, so to speak.
And that’s where it is a choice. Yeah, demotions are tough, or benchings are hard, or you get a day off, and a guy goes four for four, and he’s in the lineup the next day and then he has another good day. That’s baseball. Wally Pipp, right? You don’t want to get Wally Pipped.
I think that goes back to how you're training your mindset in the offseason. What’s your training look like? What’s your belief system? What are your standards? What’s your foundation? Because those things are going to happen. They happen to all of us. They happen to you in business, and they happen to me in business.
It’s not how you react. A lot of guys react because they’re weak mentally, just being honest with you. They react and go off the rails mentally, and then they want to change a bunch of stuff with their stance or what have you. But at the end of the day, if you’re sound in who you are, you roll with it, and you realize, I’ve got to play better. I’m not saying playing better is that simple, but the mental side of it is that simple, where you stay in your routine, you stay in your disciplines, you stay in your habits, and then you allow it to take you to the next opportunity. A demotion isn’t the end of the world or a benching isn’t the end of the world.
I was benched in high school. It may have been the best thing for me, looking back at that time in my life. It’s not the worst thing in the world. It feels like it at the time, but it isn’t. We go back to the first episode: identity. Who are you, and how are you going to respond?
“A demotion isn’t the end of the world, or a benching isn’t the end of the world.”-Billy Lanford
Self-awareness has to meet belief
9inningnomad: How important is self-awareness when a player is trying to survive that kind of pressure?
Billy Lanford: I truly believe that to be successful, you have to be a little bit delusional. You’re going against the grain of what society says. I think when you’re looking to build anything — a company, go far in sports — you have to be a little bit delusional, but I think you also have to be insanely self-aware of your skill set. That’s why self-awareness and self-assessment are so important to me.
If you don’t have a plus arm and you’re an outfielder, it doesn’t mean you can’t play at the next level, whatever that next level is for you, but it means you’re going to have to do these other things really well while trying to build that up. Maybe you can hit for power. Maybe you can run. Maybe you’re a great fielder. You have to then build those skills.
I think that fine line is really accepting your skill set, building on it, the weaknesses and the strengths, but also not giving in and staying delusional. Until you can be brutally honest with yourself, you have no chance of being a high performer. No chance. I don’t care if it’s baseball or business or anything else.
Slumps do not just test performance — they test the environment
9: What about slumps and public pressure from the outside? What matters there?
Billy: It goes back to the environment, all this stuff goes together. That’s why having the right people around you is vital. If anyone is taking me away from where I want to go, they’ve got to go; they don’t fit. If you take a 24 - 25-year-old, it’s a lot harder. Some of these relationships you’ve had for years. Some of them are family. Some of them are coaches. It is hard, and I get that, and I empathize with that. But if you’re going to get to where you want to get to, you can’t hang on to dead weight.
At the end of the day, they have to figure it out on their own, no matter who’s around them. Even if Jesus was sitting here as a hitting coach, they have to figure it out because I can’t get in there. I’m still only getting so much because I’m not getting all the self-talk. I’m not getting everything when they’re away, and what they’re thinking when they’re sitting in their apartment. I’m not in those conversations with themselves, so they have to get it. They have to fight through it themselves, and they have to figure out where they have to go.
But I think being there as a guide, as a support, as somebody who empathizes; I get it, it sucks, it’s hard. It’s not an excuse either. It’s part of the ebbs and flows of baseball; let’s see what the cycle looks like. What’s your history? If your history is you’re a streaky player, you’re a streaky player until you prove otherwise. Once again, self-awareness. This is actually normal for you. That’s how I try to come at guys. What’s your experience? What’s your life experience?
If you’ve always hit .350 and now all of a sudden you’re hitting .200, that’s a whole different conversation. But for the most part, baseball is a long season. You can’t look at a week or a day. To freak out when a guy doesn’t hit for a week is just silly. It’s baseball. That’s probably what you’ve done your whole life, especially if you’re a pro ballplayer or played high-level college baseball. Who you are is already there. Let’s analyze that, the self-awareness piece, and say, oh yeah, this is pretty standard for me. You’re going to work out of this in the next two or three games, and then you’re probably going to go through it again in three weeks until you break that cycle.
There is no magic bullet
9: You said people want the magic bullet without changing anything. What do you mean by that?
Billy: I think people want, truly - and this is ballplayers, this is people in general - they want the magic bullet without changing anything. And it’s not a reality. If you’re doing XYZ in or out of the stadium and it’s keeping you from your max potential, you’re never going to see that max potential until you change these things. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care how much you hit. We all have to change behaviors in order to get to where we want to get to. We all do, I do, you do. It doesn’t matter who it is. But I think a lot of people run from that. They want the accolades. They want the promotions, but they don’t want to do the dirt, the grime, the hard stuff. I know I’ve been there. I’ve tried to escape it too. And it never works having one foot in, one foot out. It never does. It only takes you so far.
“Some of them are family. Some of them are coaches. It is hard, and I get that, and I empathize with that. But if you’re going to get to where you want to get to, you can’t hang on to dead weight.” -Billy Lanford
Injury disrupts more than the body
9: What about injuries? Do you see differences in how players handle those mentally?
Billy: Injuries are a whole different thing. Injuries are terrible. Your body’s in fight or flight. Typically, with an athlete, especially, it’s in a fight. So you’re feeling that. You’re constantly tense. Your central nervous system’s going crazy. Your body’s trying to repair. You try to rush it. I don’t think it really matters if it’s a big league guy or a grinder. I think that’s more of the makeup. You have that gamer who just wants to get back out there, so they’ll play hurt, maybe when they shouldn’t. I grew up where you played no matter what. Unless you can’t walk or can’t throw, you’re playing. But then you have the other guy who’s like, until I’m 100 percent, I’m not playing.
I think the mental side of it takes you away from the game because your routines have to change, your habits have to change, because you’re not going to the ballpark doing the same thing. And if you don’t replace those, then bad habits start. You just sit and binge-watch. You feel sorry for yourself. I’ve been through it, and it’s not fun.
I had an arm injury, and literally, I was in the basement watching For Love of the Game. The lights were off, I was living at home, and my mom came in, and I’m sitting there with tears streaming, and I’m like, “Just leave me alone. Get out of here,” because I felt sorry for myself. I wasn’t doing what I love to do. So if you don’t replace those disciplines or do the thing, if you have an arm injury, it doesn’t mean you can’t go do some leg workouts or get on a bike. You can do something to keep moving yourself forward. You have to replace a routine with a routine, or you’re going to replace it with something else.
“You have to replace a routine with a routine or you’re going to replace it with something else.” -Billy Lanford
Opportunity is built behind closed doors
9: How much do routines and habits actually shape opportunity?
Billy: We create our opportunities. They’re not luck. I don’t want to get all woo-woo with the law of attraction and things like that, but we do. We attract where we’re going. Things are created behind closed doors. They’re not created out in public. It’s not created when you get to the ballpark. It’s what did you do before you got to the ballpark. That to me, absolutely.
There are some good players who put up good numbers who aren’t moving on. I don’t want to say 100 percent of the time because that’s not accurate, but I bet 90 to 95 percent of the time it’s because of what they’re doing behind closed doors. We see them, and we’re like, man, they’re good players, but maybe their max potential is way over here. We’re seeing a really good version on the field, but maybe off the field it’s not so great. I know that in my own life, when I’m off privately, it will catch up to me publicly. It does to all of us.
Money changes the temperature
9: What are some of the aspects of earning money or contract instability? What have you seen with that? Some guys may never play again, some may not know where they are playing next.
Billy: Indie ball is weird because you’ll have a clubhouse with big leaguers who have made money, or first-round guys who had a big signing bonus, and then you have guys making fourteen hundred a month or sixteen hundred bucks a month. So yeah, it’s an interesting place. Money is the number one reason for divorce, right? I think it’s the number one reason guys don’t follow their passion long enough. We had one retire, a really good pitcher, big upside, young, 22, 23. But they’re like, I’ve got to work, I’ve got to get a job. That’s life.
And that’s where, to me, if you wanted it bad enough, you’d find a way. Especially in today’s world. There are ways to make money. But it’s like, if you really want it, you’ll figure it out. Most people grow up where this is what you do: graduate high school, go to college, and go get a job. I don’t knock it, but if you wanted it, you could figure it out, or you would ask people and figure it out.
Our offseason’s almost seven months. You have a long time to work in the offseason and, as you said, if you wanted it, you can work two jobs. There are things you can do. Don’t get me wrong, I get all that. Things are more expensive. But that’s where discipline comes in. You can eat beans and rice. You can still get your nutrition, still get what you need, and put in the work. But that’s a sacrifice. There’s always the money stuff that comes up in anything in life, though, and you either choose to follow your dream or you choose to let your soul die, is how I look at it.
Mixed messaging can break a player fast
9: How damaging can coach conflict or mixed messaging be for a player?
Billy: Yeah, absolutely. I won’t get into specifics, of course, because I don’t want to sell anybody out, but from a coaching staff, you have to be aligned. You have to have that circle of trust with your coaching staff, and your manager has to put out what the culture is going to be, and the coaches have to know what to hold accountable. Values, core values, culture, what the organization wants. Your coaching staff has to be on the same page because if not, absolutely, if I go up and tell a kid X and you tell him Y, it’s confusing.
That comes from a strong manager, especially in baseball. You walk into a clubhouse, especially at the professional level, the manager, Skip, is everything. He is captaining the ship. And if that’s not a strong presence, then the coaches have a really hard time doing their job. Everything else is going to falter. No doubt about it.
Leadership decides whether things hold together
9: When people talk about bad clubhouses or broken organizations, does it usually come back to leadership?
Billy: Oh, it always goes back to leadership. No different than in business. If you are the manager, the CEO, the head coach, whatever it is, and your team or your organization is not flourishing, it goes back to you, no matter what. Even if you think you’re doing everything right, because you’re not, or you would be doing well.
Leadership is the loneliest place in the world because you’re going to have to do things that people aren’t going to like. They’re not going to understand. But also, if you’re a good leader, you’re looking at the whole situation and they’re looking at one piece of it. You may have to be willing to release guys and sign new guys. Releasing somebody could be the best thing that has ever happened to them in their life. But we look at it in the moment as the worst thing in the world. It’s not. It could be the best thing ever. But it’s all your perspective.
“It always goes back to leadership.” -Billy Lanford
Going full bore all the time is not the goal
9: What is the risk of going maximum overdrive all the time and burning yourself out?
Billy: I don’t like grinder culture. I’m not a fan of it. Yes, you have to work hard, for sure. But I like intentionality. And sometimes intentionality means eighteen-hour days for a little bit, and sometimes it means two hours a day. Sometimes it means okay to step back. You have to know when you have to put in the extra work and when you have to pull back because those can be, you know, you can go in and put in extra work for a week or two, but then if that’s hurting you on the field, you’ve got to know, okay, I’m taxed. I’m tired. So I need to pull back. If you don’t know yourself, none of the skills that we talk about matter because you’re just going to go full bore and burn out.
That, to me, once again goes back to having the routines and the habits that are helping you get to where you want to get to. Because if you don’t have that, you have no basis for what is more work or what is less work. Without a routine or habit, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t have the thing you have to do every day, if you don’t have that, there’s no basis for anything because you’re just a leaf alone in the wind. Do something.
“If you don’t have the thing you have to do every day… you’re just a leaf alone in the wind.”-Billy Lanford
The human comes before the athlete
9:Where does identity ultimately connect back to performance for you?
Billy: I think identity in our culture, especially with men, is tough. We have no initiation process into manhood. I had a wonderful father, and I know even how much I struggled. So I think culturally it’s tough to become a man, and the world’s throwing all kinds of crazy stuff at what a man should be or what masculinity is. I think that’s a big conflict. But I think everyone, including myself at times, needs those checks. I don’t think they’re bad. I actually think they’re great. I have four or five guys in my life who give me that when I need it or check in when they don’t hear from me for a little bit.
With the guys, I think those things are great, and they’re more of check-ins. It’s really trying to bring out who they desire to be or who they see themselves being, and work through that more than anything else. I want you to improve in your sport or in baseball. But at the end of the day, I want you to be a great person. So baseball for me, as much as it’s number one, in many ways it’s secondary because I know if you’re becoming a better person, you’re going to play better baseball. I tend to gravitate more toward the human and not just the athlete.
Thoughts…
What makes this conversation work is that Billy never turns pressure into a fake, macho speech about toughness. He keeps bringing it back to reality: habits, awareness, standards, leadership, routine, identity. That is the stress test. Not whether a player can sound confident when things are going well, but whether his core can withstand the forces of the game. Surviving a season is not just about talent. It is about what that talent is built on.
Episode III drops next Monday…