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By Joe Lemire

Jimmy Buffi has made his career in baseball. He earned a Ph.D. studying pitching biomechanics, worked as a senior analyst for four years with the Los Angeles Dodgers and now is CEO of Reboot Motion, the startup he co-founded to provide biomechanical analysis.

Before all that, the Rhode Island native was a lifelong lover of the sport. From that vantage point – baseball fan who helps protect pitchers’ health as a profession – Buffi has a unique perspective of the pitch clocks that are now universal in the minor leagues and seem to be imminently headed to the majors, likely as soon as the 2023 season.

“Selfishly, and personally, I kind of like it. I do feel like the time between pitches has gotten a little crazy, just as a fan of the game,” Buffi says, adding this important proviso:

“But we’ve got to make sure we are smart about implementing it.”

After experimenting with a tightly enforced pitch clock in the Low-A West League (just re-named the California League) last year, Major League Baseball mandated its use across all four minor league levels in 2022. After a pitcher receives the baseball, he has 14 seconds to deliver a pitch when the bases are empty. That limit is extended to 18 seconds with runners on, except at Triple A where they have 19 seconds. Hitters must be ready to bat by the time there are nine seconds left. Infractions are penalized with an automatic ball (for pitchers) or strike (for hitters).

The resulting changes to time of game has been nothing short of dramatic. According to data provided by MLB, the average length of a minor league game through May 11 was 2 hours, 35 minutes—that’s a full 28 minutes faster than the 3-hour, 3-minute average of minor league games without the pitch clock in 2021. (The clock went into effect on 15 April; games played in the 10 days prior averaged 2 hours, 59 minutes.) Violations of the clock steadily declined during April and May to less than one per game.

The potential catch to what is very welcome news for a sport cognizant of hastening its pace and duration of games is that speeding up pitchers could induce higher levels of fatigue, according to preliminary research on the topic. Fatigue is the No. 1 predictor of pitcher injury.

Mike Sonne wrote his Ph.D. thesis on muscle fatigue prediction and has studied workplace ergonomics extensively. Among his other projects was consulting on the design of assembly lines at Ford Motor Company and devising the appropriate number of rest breaks to prevent injuries.

When interest in a baseball pitch clock heightened in 2015, Sonne and co-author Peter Keir researched its effect through a series of computer simulations. They concluded, “This study has shown the implementation of pitch clocks, or enforcement of existing pace of play rules, will increase the fatigue accumulated in the forearm and elbow musculature and could jeopardize joint stability.”

That finding was published in the Journal of Sports Sciences in 2016, but Sonne says now that the premise is rather intuitive, too.

“It doesn’t require any machine learning or anything like that,” says Sonne, now the Chief Scientific Officer of 3MotionAI, maker of ProPlayAI. “You just think about, if you go to the gym and you do 10 reps and you shorten the time between the 10 reps, it’s a lot more tiring by the end of it.”

Later that year, a research group in Taiwan conducted a similar study but experimented with college pitchers instead of computer simulations. The study was admittedly small – only seven pitchers completed all three phases – but gave empirical, physiological evidence to the effects of pitch clocks. Each pitcher was evaluated for pitching performance (velocity and location) and muscle inflammation and damage (via blood biomarkers) when throwing pitches every eight, 12 and 20 seconds for seven innings.

Their results, which were published in the December 2016 issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, indicated that an eight-second pace was untenable, and there was also notable muscle inflammation lingering after the 12-second paced outing.

“Our data suggests that 20 is much better than 12,” says Donovan Fogt, one of the study’s co-authors and formerly a kinesiology professor before working as a scientist reviewer, vetting military research at Brooke Army Medical Center. He advises using the two completed papers as a guide to drive the study design of larger-scale research.

For years, MLB has had Rule 8.04 on the books, which mandates that a pitcher throw to the plate within 12 seconds of receiving the ball, although that, quite clearly, has not been enforced. That duration informed the design of the Taiwanese study, although the data is not apples to apples. In the experiment, a pitcher literally threw the ball every 12 seconds whereas the minor league pitch clock only starts after the pitcher receives the ball – either a return throw from the catcher or from a fielder if the ball had been hit into play.

Thus, in the minors, the average interval between pitches is inherently a bit longer. This is borne out in the MLB-supplied data that says the actual average time between pitches has been 18.8 seconds. The number of runs, hits and pitches per game have all been stable this year compared to last year – and, most importantly, so too have injuries.

“We monitor injury rates very closely at the minor league level, and we have an excellent injury tracking system that allows us to get some really useful information about the injury impacts of the different rules that we experiment with,” says MLB Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations Morgan Sword. “So far, we are one season and one month in, there’s no evidence to suggest that the timer is having a negative impact on pitching health.”

Interestingly, the Low-A West League – the only one with the strict pitch clock in 2021 – had “the lowest rate of pitching injuries of any of our minor leagues,” Sword says. “We’ll see what ends up being supported by the data, but there’s a theory that the quicker pace that’s forced by the timer prevents the max-effort pitching style, or at least mitigates the max-effort pitching style that is more common in today’s game and maybe contributing the more injury. So forcing pitchers to manage their effort level a little bit may actually have a positive effect on arm health.”

Pitcher velocities in the minors have been “pretty flat,” Sword adds, “and I guess that’s probably worth noting because they’ve been going up every year. We don’t yet have a ton of data to suggest a big change one way or the other.”

Under the terms of the new collective bargaining agreement, a Competition Committee consisting of six MLB-appointed members, four active players and one umpire will decide on rule changes. They can be implemented with as little notice as 45 days, but Sword pledges that the league is “cognizant that more notice is better than less notice on rule changes.”

The exact time intervals for the likely MLB pitch clock are not set in stone, either, with some calling for a relaxation of the limit.

“We’ve cut so much time from the minor league game that some games are being done in less than two hours now. And that’s good, I guess, but I would hope that maybe we can give the pitchers back a couple seconds because maybe we were too aggressive with the pitch clock, you know?” says Driveline Baseball founder Kyle Boddy, who spent the past two years overseeing minor league pitchers in the Cincinnati Reds’ organization. He adds, “At the end of the day, though, we do need to increase the pace between pitches, and I think the pitch clock is definitely a part of that weapon.”

Here’s how technology, data and innovative training can play a role in making sure it is implemented safely:

New training programs

“The body,” as Buffi recently wrote, “is great at adapting to what we train it to do.” Updated training will be the most important pillar of any new protocol.

“There’s a physiological limit where you can’t just do things rapid-fire over and over and over, but I do think that we could find a pace where, as long as the pitchers are training for that pace, they should be able to sustain that pace,” Buffi says.

The experts consulted for this story say pitchers should train with a clock for bullpens, simulated games and side sessions. Pitching and strength & conditioning coaches will have to adapt their throwing and training programs.

“You can plan for building athletes to face that requirement,” says Kinetic Pro Performance Founder Casey Mulholland. “What you’re building up for – and this is general workload principles – is you’re trying to get your body ready to handle the stimulus you’re going to face.”

When the minor leagues began implementing new pickoff rules in the minors last year, Boddy says the Reds coaches used their iPhone stopwatches in the bullpens to track pitcher delivery times. That data was then posted to keep every pitcher accountable in adhering to new standards. He believes proper game planning – such as presetting pitch calling sequences – can help, too. The introduction of the PitchCom system for sign delivery has been well received  by some pitchers and may be adopted by more going forward.

Pitch tracking 

Every minor league ballpark is outfitted with a pitch tracking device, whether it’s a TrackMan radar or Hawk-Eye camera system. These technologies provide a wealth of information. On the most basic level, they provide time-stamped pitch release times for monitoring pace. They also record pitch velocities, locations, movements and spin rates for tracking deviations in performance or signs of fatigue. Researchers can use these large datasets to track trends that may arise in either individual pitchers or the entire minor league system, both in the short term and longitudinally over multiple seasons.

Player monitoring 

Several on-body and camera-based technologies can provide insights into how individual pitchers are faring, both in training and in games. “You just need to manage it, you need to measure it,” Boddy says.

Driveline Pulse (née Motus) is an elbow-worn compression sleeve with a sensor that can track a variety of metrics related to pitching volume and intensity. The KP Sleeve, made by KineticPro Performance and Nextiles, is a newer option.

Many MLB clubs have multi-camera motion capture systems installed in their ballparks, such as KinaTrax or Simi Motion. These solutions provide their own biomechanics analysis dashboards and can be augmented with additional tools such as Reboot Motion. Outside of MLB venues, smartphone options such as ProPlayAI, Mustard and Uplift Capture are alternatives.

Deviations in mechanics, as measured by individual baselines, can indicate signs of fatigue.

“The way we do it at Reboot is for a selection of the metrics, we try to calculate a normal range as a function of pitch count,” Buffi says. “So then we try to see, as the game goes on, at any point is there a time when that person fell outside of their normal range?”

Fatigue Units

About a year after his research paper on pitch clocks published, Sonne set out to develop a metric to monitor the accumulated strain on pitchers. This new stat, called Fatigue Units, takes into account the number of pitches thrown in an inning, the type of pitches thrown, the velocity of the pitches and the interval of time between them. That is then aggregated across games and seasons, accounting for days of rest. Relievers in particular populated the Fatigue Units leaderboard.

“Some of these big relievers, I hope they can stay healthy, but they’re going to have to really monitor their workloads, and maybe it’s time to let off the gas a little bit,” Sonne says. “You can’t throw as hard as you were before.”

Mulholland has assessed pitchers’ warmup routines and discovered that too many guys go right from long toss to the bullpen to the first inning, causing the largest fatigue spike in the first inning. That’s an avoidable one. The other pratfall is the long inning in which a pitcher needs 30 or more pitches to escape a jam.

“You just want to be as efficient as possible as a pitcher, which might change the way some guys approach going into the game and pitching,” Mulholland says. “But you just don’t want to amass a lot of pitches in a short amount of time.”

Majors vs Minors 

“It’s possible that the rules in the minor leagues and major league shouldn’t be the same,” Boddy says. The objectives of the leagues are not completely aligned. Organizations want their players to develop winning habits and competitive instincts in the minors, but winning a championship is not of such primal importance as it is in the majors.

“At the end of the day, the goal is not to prevent all injury,” Boddy says of the minors. “The goal is to develop big league pitchers. And so how do you balance those things that are constantly at odds – giving them enough workload and enough stimulus to make them better and give them the opportunity to improve with not doing too much.”

Changes implemented in the minors typically take three to five years before they manifest in the big leagues, he adds. That lag is because pitchers build up stamina and durability over time. Boddy believes limiting the number of pitchers on a roster will help provide the incentive for pitchers to develop those physical tools and hopefully help quicken the pace of games by limiting pitching changes.

While minor league managers might be more inclined to let a pitcher work out of trouble for the sake of his development, Sonne doesn’t think a big league club would offer the same leash to its pitchers.

“The major league game is so different that, if the command goes, if the velocity drops, you may have more base runners, you may have more walks, you may have more pitching changes, and does it actually help?” Sonne says. “Are you going to get 20 minutes off of a major league game? I don’t know if I’m convinced of that yet.”

More research

“Generally speaking, it’s a reasonable idea, but there just hasn’t been enough research into it,” Boddy says, noting that there are several motion capture laboratories who credibly can conduct the appropriate studies on the topic and calling for a clear timeline of implementation.

“How do you individualize this?” Mulholland says. “I just don’t think we have enough data on it. And I don’t think it’s been to the point yet where players have really overly thought about it.”

For now, MLB is opting to study game data – with the giant sample size of 120 minor teams – through its injury surveillance database and the various pitch tracking systems rather than commissioning lab research, which has its own limitations when pitchers aren’t throwing with full game adrenaline.

And, of course, pitchers may not be the primary culprit to slow pace of games. Fogt wonders why the onus on speeding the game is placed on the pitcher. “When you think about all the screwing around that the batter can do – get into the box, get out of the box, get into the box, get out of the box – how can you blame the pitcher for that kind of shenanigans?” he says.

This article was brought to you by SportTechie, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SportTechie content in the field of athletic performance.

“I don’t know how common it is per se – there are moments when I regret it!”

By John Portch

Zach Brandon, the Mental Skills Coordinator at Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, tells the Leaders Performance Institute that he is currently studying for a masters in Organizational Leadership at Arizona State University.

“There is never a perfect time to begin a new course, but it’s been cool because it’s put me outside my comfort zone,” he says. “It’s very much more business and organizational leadership-driven, but the work and research I’ve been able to do as part of it, has enabled me to see and learn what people are doing in these other settings and where I think there is a lot of potential transfer or application to sports settings.”

One such example is the practice of job crafting. “In essence, job crafting allows staff to customize some of their tasks and responsibilities in ways that might be more meaningful and aligned with their personal values,” Brandon continues. “I find this practice fascinating because it creates opportunities for staff to develop range in their roles and positively impact the organization in ways beyond their traditional job description.”

The Diamondbacks’ Mental Skills Department has experienced job crafting first-hand. “Although our main responsibility is providing mental performance training for our players, we’ve been able to slowly expand our reach to other facets of the organization, including injury rehab, coach development, scouting, and business operations.”

The question of employee wellness is another that is influencing Brandon’s work in the clubhouse. He says: “Building a robust, systematic, and preventative approach to employee wellness requires that leaders address policies, practices, and perspectives in their organizational culture.

“Perspective begins with organizational values and addressing if, and how, employee wellbeing is prioritized in the culture. This requires that leaders and staff be intentional and progressive with their language surrounding mental health.”

He says it is important that coaches and leaders recognize that their personal wellbeing can influence those around them. “Research has even shown that coaches with elevated stress levels can negatively affect the mental health of their athletes. At the end of the day, coaches and leaders need to model how to appropriately invest in one’s mental health and wellbeing. ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ doesn’t work. Athletes and fellow staff will look to their leaders for guidance in these areas so it’s not something that coaches can afford to ignore.

“Ultimately, leaders play a pivotal role in showing those they serve that self-care isn’t selfish. In reality, supporting wellbeing and resilience for your employees is really a competitive advantage, especially with the ever-increasing uncertainty and complexity found in work environments, which often lead to stress. Leaders should aim to install comprehensive prevention strategies within their organizations rather than rely on reactive support as issues arise.

Brandon explains that it is important that coaches and leaders establish a safe and supportive environment for athletes and staff to discuss mental health – a key step to normalizing it. “Enhancing policies might include ensuring that staff have trusted and affordable mental health and wellbeing resources available to them, and their families, or opportunities for temporary flexibility as it relates to scheduling and the location of their work.” he says.

“Practices could include initiatives that strengthen peer-to-peer support, such as mentorship programs or community groups; promoting personal development, with continuing education and training as prime examples; and encouraging physical and mental wellness through initiatives such as meditation classes.

“Additionally, research suggests that athletes, particularly at the elite level, perceive coaches as less effective when stressed.”

Beyond leaders, Brandon argues that mental wellness needs to be ingrained into the fabric of an organization’s culture and not treated simply as a program. “It can’t just include initiatives where employees participate in exercise challenges, yoga or mindfulness classes or company-run social events – expecting staff to participate in activities and wellbeing initiatives outside of their normal workday is an inadequate approach to promoting mental wellness.

“I am interested in how you can promote those wellness questions within the margins. All of those activities I describe do influence a person’s wellbeing, but a significant portion of people’s daily stressors are a product of their actual work environment and the demands placed on them. In addition to these activities, organizations would be wise to identify the on-the-job stressors that staff experience and design resources, or support, accordingly.

“It’s been interesting to think about things from a more organizational and system-wide perspective. It’s not just the idea of how things apply with one particular team but across a collective organization. Most organizations want to develop resilience. We want to develop resilience too, not only within individuals but within sub-teams and the organization as a whole. Leaders are architects of organizational culture and, thus, play a critical role in cultivating resilience and wellbeing for those serving the organization.

“Learning about the role leaders can play in this process has been interesting and offers a valuable opportunity for organizations to invest in their people.”

Download the latest Performance Special Report, Staying Agile: Managing Disruption and Optimising Preparation During the Pandemic – detailing the work of the English Institute of Sport with its teams and athletes.

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A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

• Wellbeing needs to be woven into the fabric of your organisation. 

• Resilience should be perceived as a skill much like any other. 

• People are more likely to commit to initiatives they helped to create.

Wellbeing – not just a nice to have 

It is increasingly discussed in high performance circles and there is a growing understanding that a focus on wellbeing at an individual and team level should be the norm. As the Royal Australian Air Force [RAAF] pointed out in their Member Case Study Virtual Roundtable in 2021, when wellbeing was tied to high performance and organisations worked backwards from that point, personnel increasingly see the relevance and organisations witness greater engagement. Wellbeing is the foundation of performance and sustained high performance. 

Resilience is a leadership capability 

“The world is changing around us,” Lauren Whitt, the Head of Global Resilience, told an audience at last June’s Virtual Leaders Meet: Evolution of Leadership. “How do we navigate ambiguity? How do we remember and recall there is a great amount of certainty in uncertainty and there are these base things that we know to be true that we can continue to focus on?” 

She explained that there is a long-term plan at Google to build-in resilience as a leadership capability. “It isn’t a side bar campaign – it is being woven into the fabric of our senior leaders, our top leaders, our managers; it is being woven into the core of their training, their leadership capabilities. Our leaders need and must be intentional about how to be present, how to talk about the hard things in a productive way, but more than anything, how can they be resilient leaders helping their teams respond to stress.” 

Greater resilience = greater energy and better decision making 

Whitt’s wisdom is not limited to the world of Googlers, with England men’s Head Coach Gareth Southgate speaking openly on the Leaders’ Rules of the Game podcast last summer about the link between his resilience and his wellbeing. “What I recognise about myself is that if I feel in a good place, that my own wellbeing is in a good place in terms of sleep, exercise, then in actual fact I feel stronger to take those things on and less affected by it. If I’m not sleeping well and I’ve been travelling a lot, if I’m rundown, I’m not physically in as good a place, I find that can affect my mood a little bit more and then I’ve got to be careful with my decision making. I’m very aware of my own personal state and [I am] able to control that and react to that a little bit more and put things into perspective better as I get older.” 

Give everyone a say in developing your organisation’s wellbeing initiatives 

Zach Brandon, the Mental Skills Coordinator at Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks told the Leaders Performance Institute in July last year that he and his team have been intentional in seeking feedback around their work. “It can be hard to improve what you don’t or what you can’t measure,” he said. “If we’ve offered a session, a formal group session with players, very often we are trying to gauge their feedback afterwards. We’ll ask: ‘What stood out for you? What did you take from that? What remaining questions do you have? What did you feel might have been missing?’ We’re really purposeful with how we ask those questions and we try to include coaches as much as we can in not only being part of those sessions but in the design.  

“We track participation in sessions; who’s attending and how often. If we send digital content to players we keep track of its reach or the engagement. We solicit feedback and we try to be really purposeful in making sure that in doing so we know what’s working and what’s not with the players and coaches. We want to make sure that whatever we’re communicating with players, it aligns with their messaging. I think a big piece of our team culture is having a shared common language and alignment of mindsets.” Players and staff across the clubhouse feel they are being heard. Brandon added: “People are more likely to commit to things that they help to create.” 

By John Portch

The Toronto Blue Jays’ new practice facility, their $100m Player Development Center in Dunedin, Florida, is one of the first to feature a barbershop next to its clubhouse.

“But the key principle is that human-centred design,” said Angus Mugford, the Blue Jays’ Vice President of High Performance, when commenting on the addition. “We really were trying to think about the player experience; and areas that were not just functional but fun and enabled them to relax and connect with others.”

Mugford was talking to an audience at November’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at Twickenham Stadium in London. “It’s thinking with the end in mind, really thinking about people using that space, making sure they’re included in that process,” he continued, “and even if you’re not building a new facility that you’re thinking about [solutions] within your existing constraints. If collaboration is one of the key things you’re driving for, are there ways you can shift and move your environment to really maximise that?”

The Blue Jays have dotted the Player Development Center with QR codes that allow players and staff to provide instant feedback on their experience of their new facility. “Whether it’s putting QR codes and just doing a survey around your facility now and seeing what feedback people would give. You can get some incredible ideas that you may not necessarily generate, or an architect may not generate.”

As Mugford came offstage, the Leaders Performance Institute approached him to further discuss the topic of human-centred design, athlete empowerment and mental wellbeing.

Angus, how have you and Toronto sought to address the challenges of the pandemic and apply the lessons learned along the way?

AM: Something that we’ve learned is the power of design. You’re trying to surround the problem with all these key stakeholders and really trying to identify and define what it is. What is the objective and what are all the elements of that so that we can be a lot more intentional and driven about all the pieces that come together? Because goodness knows, sometimes when we’re in reactive mode, we spend half our time cleaning up the mess of our efforts in good faith, but if we do take more time up front and really think about designing solutions in a more thorough way, we get way better results. Certainly being more intentional; and human-centred design specifically has been a great tool in being able to do that.

Your relationship with control – how do you know when to delegate or take something on yourself?

AM: ‘Control’ is a great word, right. It’s so much better for your health and anxiety to have your finger on the pulse of everything, but empowerment is one of our core values at the Toronto Blue Jays, and as easy as it sounds, it can be incredibly difficult. But certainly the ability for any member of the organisation to feel like they have an impact and to communicate their voice is massive because the things that someone sees from a different perspective are often the best solution and a blind spot to someone like me who doesn’t see it from the trenches. So for us to feel safe and valued and feel that every voice contributes is really huge. Conversely, I think with empowerment it is easy to give people a lack of support, so I think a high challenge, high support environment is necessary. Empowerment with the right level of expertise and support is really important – and empowerment and low support can be a lonely and difficult place too. It’s a really complex area but we’ve seen the value of empowerment with stories like Harlequins’ and a lot of the great teams out there are listening or empowering their staff and players more.

How do you ensure that everyone in the build feels able to speak up and contribute to performance questions?

AM: I think the psychological safety is huge. That people are willing to put their hand up, that they are willing to be wrong, that we’re not going to be judged for saying something stupid, and I think also feeling a responsibility that their voice matters, that they have something to contribute, and people will listen even if the team doesn’t choose to follow. Great facilitation and great leaders make sure that everybody has a voice and has a stage to be able to share that. But safety and being able to do that and take positive risks is critical and hard to do.

How and in what ways are mental health and wellbeing part of the performance equation at the Blue Jays?

AM: Mental health and wellbeing has become heightened in terms of the awareness of people living through the pandemic; and while it’s always been there, I think people are more comfortable talking about it now because it’s affected all of us in so many different ways. And I think ‘mental health’ in itself is an interesting term because we often associate that with mental illness but we have mental strength and we have mental health all-encompassing around health; and making sure that we understand that continuum of providing the resources and making it comfortable for people to talk about an acknowledge. And that’s not just for players: I think that aspect for all of our staff is really important too. High performance is not often a balanced world. There’s a lot of time on the road, away from families and high stress. And I think that acknowledging that we’re human beings and physical and mental health are really important aspects that we need to focus on, provide resources for, and work on too.

In what ways is self-reflection a useful tool?

AM: Self-reflection is a critical aspect of learning, period. At the Blue Jays, we have a framework of prepare, compete, recover. And it’s amazing, both as players and staff sometimes, we’re really good at prepare, really good at compete, and terrible at recovery. The recovery is not just physical, it’s that mental aspect; making sure that we’re reflecting and learning, taking all of the positives and opportunities to get better, and that we’re also letting go and moving onto the next day. Being able to be fully engaged in the present and make the most of that. But without reflection, there is no learning; experience is really a reflection on experience that allows growth, learning and development.

By Bobby L Scales II

David Ortiz was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in January.

‘The Hall’ is the single greatest individual award that can be bestowed upon anyone in American professional baseball. The numbers he amassed over 20 seasons in Major League Baseball place him among the greats, and the joy of watching ‘Big Papi’ stride to the plate with bad intentions for opposing pitchers satisfied millions over the course of his career.

People will debate his greatest contribution to the game and if you pick up any one of the hundreds of articles written about him you will read that his personality and natural ability to lead are even larger than his physical stature.

I learned all this in person at Spring Training in 2007, when the impact he had on a certain 29-year-old journeyman minor league player kickstarted my journey in leadership.

Reaching your leadership ceiling

I am a big believer that leaders can be born but they can also be made in the sense that even if people have natural ‘born leader’ qualities the true height of that ability can’t be realized unless they continue to learn, train and exercise those abilities. Everyone is born with what I call a ‘leadership ceiling’. Whether that person reaches their leadership ceiling or not is dependent on a multitude of factors, such as, how influential can that person’s leadership be in a multitude of environments? Does a person have the requisite skill set to lead in any environment and most importantly can they activate those skillsets when it matters most? The best leaders on the planet exhibit a few crucial qualities regardless of who they lead.

At the Boston Red Sox’s Spring Training camp in late February 2007, I carried my bags into their clubhouse in Fort Meyers, Florida, and began to learn that Ortiz had those qualities in spades. I was heading into my seventh season as a professional, with my third club, and had yet to crack a Major League roster. Honestly, with my 30th birthday coming in October, I was questioning my time in professional sport.

Nevertheless, Spring Training can be a tremendous opportunity for younger guys or journeyman like me to make an impression on the coaches and decision makers. The second I walked into that clubhouse the place was different. There was a feeling of calm, easiness and focus on the task at hand: winning the World Series. This team was laser-focused on doing just that. This team was different too in that it was a very veteran clubhouse, including Jason Varitek, Manny Ramirez, Mike Lowell, Julio Lugo, Curt Schilling and, of course, ‘Big Papi’.

The origins of Ortiz’s nickname are rooted in American baseball culture. The most senior Latin leader in the clubhouse is referred to as ‘papi’, which loosely translated from Spanish means ‘daddy’. Major League teams and their affiliates will have rosters filled with players from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia and Curacao. They are signed between the age of 16 and 18 and usually start their careers in club-operated academies in the ‘DR’. The best will progress to the US where these young men are asked to learn a foreign language, assimilate to another culture and, oh yeah, play ball at a high level! On the flip side, you have a group of young American players who are yet to be exposed to Latin players.

What we know about human behavior tells us that people tend to assimilate in groups of similar people. Clubhouse culture in baseball is no different. In each of these groups – white guys from the West Coast, black guys, Northeast guys, Southern guys, the Latin guys – leaders tend to emerge from within these groups and, usually, these guys are comfortable enough in their own skin to bridge the gaps and pull people together. For the Latin players, the role of the ‘papi’ is crucial. With that moniker comes responsibility and, often, this man is not just the leader of the Latin players but a bridge to the coaching staff and everyone else on the team.

Intentionality and integrity

At Fort Meyers, I was assigned the number 76 – an awful number. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter but we all know it’s terrible. I would arrive at 5:30am for the workouts that typically didn’t get started until 9am because you never know what might happen. Lift, eat, sort equipment, adjust to any changes, whatever needed to be done. I remember the third or fourth day of camp at about 5:50am. I had just changed into shorts and a t-shirt and, out of the weight room having finished his workout, comes ‘Big Papi’.

‘Hey, what you doing here? It’s too early,’ he said in a deep voice with a heavy Dominican accent.

‘Papi’, I said, while pointing to the #76, ‘man, unless you’re early they forget about you!’ Part of me was kidding, part of me was dead serious. His answer was something that I’ll never forget.

‘Nah, you get invited to this camp, you have a chance to help us win a World Series and we gonna do that. Get your bat… let’s go hit!” He didn’t know me from the next guy but I was in that clubhouse and I had the same uniform on. At this point of his career he had been a three time all-star, a World Series champion and a World Series Most Valuable Player. At 6am he was changing his shirt post-gym workout and heading to the batting cage.

With his actions he was saying ‘we win things around here, this is how we work and you’re part of it’. This was his routine and he was going to do this whether I was in the building or not. I happened to be there so this was his opportunity to show me the culture in the building without saying a word. Leaders such as ‘Big Papi’ act with intention because they have a vision of where they see themselves and their club and a clear plan of how they can get there.

It spoke to his accountability too. Accountability and integrity are essential and connected, as it’s very easy to call for accountability in those you are leading. Holding people to account for their preparation, performance or work is easy – holding yourself to those same standards signals integrity. What are you doing when no one is watching you? Are you holding yourself to the same standard that you expect from those you lead? In world sport today, managers, coaches, or technical directors have a vision of what they want that culture to be but ultimately it must be player-led.

Bobby at the Boston Red Sox’s 2007 Spring Training in Fort Myers (Photo: Getty Images/Nick Laham)

Communication and personal connection

It was 6:10am and I was sat in the batting cage with Big Papi, and Wily Mo Pena (a massive prospect at the time for Boston) taking turns. While Manny and Wily Mo would hit, Papi and I were in deep conversation about all number of things. He’d ask: where are you from? Where have you played? Are you married? Do you have kids?

When he hit, I watched him work through his hitting routine, how professional it was, how detailed and demanding he was of himself, how he watched Ramirez work (Manny is a legend himself). After I had my turn he asked me questions about my approach and the things I thought about when I was at the plate: did I like hitting left-handed or right-handed better? He was asking me about my baseball journey, how I ended up signing with Boston? Where did I feel most comfortable playing defensively? How did I believe I could help the club? What did the administration tell me about the opportunity I had in the organization?

Papi wanted to know who he was working with. He wanted to know what I was about. His approach in asking me these questions made me want to answer them without hesitation. Additionally, this was a two-way street. I didn’t know him, I just knew what I saw on TV. This was my opportunity to find out, besides talent, what made this guy tick. What was his journey to this point? One of the core beliefs I have in leadership and people development is the player resides within the man: if you want direct access to the player you better know the human first. He had an innate understanding that people’s talents, whatever they are, shine the brightest when there is a level of comfort in the environment.

That day the #76 felt important – like I really did have a chance to impact this club. Remember, this is 2007 and we weren’t talking about psychological safety then, but that’s exactly what it was. There was an easiness about him that was contagious. I hit early with that group the next ten days and every day was just like this. We got into real conversations, and it was incredible.

The ability for leaders to connect with everyone is vital to that person reaching their leadership ceiling or simply just having leadership qualities. ‘Big Papi’ went all out.

Authenticity

About two weeks into camp, the exhibition games against other teams start and the biggest beneficiaries of these early opportunities are guys just like myself. And I played terrific.

Early one morning I was in the cafeteria and in comes ‘Papi’. ‘Oye [Spanish for ‘listen’], I see you, you playing your ass off,’ he says. He grabs a bowl of oatmeal and takes a seat next to me. ‘There is a guy in this clubhouse that come up for one game – one series to help us win the division.’ I remember sitting in my locker later that day thinking this guy is unbelievable. The level of professionalism in his preparation.  The respect he garnered not just from his play but also by how he treated his teammates, coaches and support staff.  Most importantly, he was REAL!!!

There is a saying in baseball: ‘just remember, you can’t fool the clubhouse’. People know when you are real and people know when you are phony. When you are in a leadership position and you are an imposter in any way, you will lose the group.

Later in camp, the big boys were playing five to six innings and then the subs entered the game. We were playing the New York Mets and I replaced Ramirez in the sixth. When those guys get out of the game, they get whatever recovery they need from the physio team, shower, then leave. Well in the top of the seventh inning I was playing left field and Lastings Milledge hit an absolute rocket down the line near the corner. I took off full speed, located the baseball and laid flat out to make the best catch of my entire 14-year professional career.

The catch that caught the eye of David ‘Big Papi’ Ortiz

At the end of the inning, I ran into the dugout and waiting on me at the top step in street clothes was ‘Big Papi’. He was watching the rest of the game as he was doing his recovery with the physio staff. When I’d made the catch he’d ran outside and was waiting for me at the top step. ‘Oye, that was unbelievable! I’m telling you, you gonna help us win something!’ When he’d first said that to me almost a month earlier, I’m sure he said that to put me at ease in the beginning of camp. Now, I had played well and he noticed. I believe in that moment he really believed ‘this guy really might be able to help us.’

Well, he wasn’t kidding the Boston Red Sox won something in 2007: the World Series and, believe it or not, they did it without me! I spent the entire season at Pawtucket, the Triple A affiliate. I had one of my best seasons as a professional and I never got called up. The younger version of me was crestfallen that I didn’t get promoted to the majors that year. The version that is writing this piece realizes the intellectual currency that I took from that experience. What I got was a six-week case study on what high level leadership really looked like up close.

Leaders connect on a personal level with those they lead. Leaders are vulnerable and transparent, understanding that authenticity in relationships is central to culture creation. Leaders realize they will accomplish nothing by themselves, and they need the contribution of everyone in the operation. Leaders make everyone in the operation feel like their contribution to the group is important. Leaders set the tone for what the standard is in the organization. Leaders do all these things and do so in different styles – we will cover that in later posts.

David ‘Big Papi’ Ortiz is a three-time World Series champion, a legend of the sport and now a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. I’m not going to pretend that I know him because I don’t. We don’t talk and I don’t have his number. Here is what I do know: Papi has influenced countless lives by modeling what real leadership looks like. For me, that makes him a Hall of Fame leader.

Bobby is one of six Leaders Performance Advisors, a group of leading performance thinkers providing more subject expertise to our member-only content and learning resources. To find out more about all our Performance Advisors, click here.