28 Jun 2023
ArticlesIn the second of a two-part interview, Hector Morales, the Pirates’ Director of International Development, delves into his work addressing those limiting factors.
“That’s what I call it. This confidence is just based on the people that are around you where you are,” says the Pirates’ Director of International Development. It is not uncommon for recruits from places such as Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico and the Dominican Republic to be the best player on their youth or school team. In those surroundings, they may be the best.
“But then that competence dissipates and goes away as soon as you step up to another cohort, where there’s a group of people who play better than you; and this is the first time you’ve seen this so it’s a culture shock sometimes.
“One player said to me once ‘my uncle lied to me – he said I was the best he’s seen’. I said: ‘He didn’t lie to you – you’re probably the best he’s seen, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t better arms out there’. I always tell the players, ‘if it’s too easy for you now, then your competition’s not here’. You shouldn’t be saying to yourself ‘I’m the best’ you should be saying ‘where’s my competition at because they’re not here? Where are those people who are going to give me the run for my money?’
“We’re never that good. There’s always somebody out there who can change our perspective”.
Morales spoke at length about bridging the cultural and development gap between Latin players and US players in part one of our interview. He also spoke of the practices that underpin the club’s approach at their Dominican Summer League academy in El Toro. In this second and final part, he delves further into some of the limiting factors that can affect Latin players and how he and his colleagues seek to address those.
“I still think that the biggest challenges we face are unrealistic expectations that things can go fast, that’s it’s like highlights,” says Morales, echoing the observations of some youth coaches across the globe.
“They were raised on highlights, they don’t see the games any more. If you asked, I’m pretty sure in soccer it’s the same, if you ask them, ‘do you see the full length of the game so you can understand the game?’ They’ll tell you ‘No, I saw the goal. I saw this pass or this tackle or I saw the red card’. They’re used to the 15-second or 20-second bite and they expect that their development will be the same.
“If you’re thinking that things should be fast – and elite level performance takes time – then there’s an immediate disconnect on satisfaction and effort and other things because it’s taking so long and you think you’re not progressing the way you should be”.
Morales adds that while smartphones have transformed all of our lives (“they dictate our moods and what we do”) the younger generation are “even more comfortable communicating this way, which has taken a toll on the social aspect of things”.
Compounding these factors, in Morales’ view, is the role of these young players’ agents. “They are overly protected,” he says. “They want their agents to fight their battles for them. There’s no longer this coach conversation. It is now ‘I will have my agent reach out to you. My agent will talk to you now’. ‘I’m talking about development, I want to talk to you’. ‘Talk to my agent’.
“It’s that [lack of] nurturing, not being able to solve problems and deal with an adult, to reach a potential opportunity to do something differently. Those are very big limitations we’ve got to train our young athletes for and prepare them for. ‘If you’re expecting X then let’s have a conversation because we need to reframe your expectations’. It’s interesting and a good challenge to have, I believe, the more the realistic the expectations, the better for the kids in the competitive environment”.
Morales explains that the players’ parents or guardians remain influential in their children’s lives, but it is the ‘buscones’ – a Dominican term for local agents – who pedal young players to visiting major league scouts and often have the most influence on the player.
“When you ask the players who’s the person they trust the most, they’ll tell you that person. They’ll give you the name of that person. That’s still the case,” he says. “This is one of the key elements I’m focused on. Who does this person trust? What’s their ‘why’? It is constantly evolving but we’ve got to stay on top of that so we can help them and they can feel connected”.
The Dominican academy’s roster of mentors perform a significant role in this regard. A player is assigned a mentor at the academy who checks in regularly to discuss the player’s development.
“I normally select former players who have been through the stages the players are going to go through in transition,” says Morales. “So they’ve been there, understand the challenges of going to the next level. They can sell it through emotional and personal connective stories of what it was like for them to go through those transitions. And there are a lot of times where guys didn’t make it all the way through, or their career ended early or their talent got to a certain level, but they always dominated the mental game whether in college or if they played for the Pirates. They did everything they needed to do and they controlled everything they needed to control and they were engaged in trying to get better but their talent met its ceiling.
“The next requirement for a mentor is that they want to be in baseball or find a way to get a career in baseball. So they are here for two reasons: to mentor players and also open their own understanding of what the potential opportunities are out there for them so they can continue to have a career in the game”.
As we wrap up the interview, the Leaders Performance Institute asks Morales for his hopes for the future in baseball development in this part of the Americas.
“I still have a ways to go to get all the players to understand all the components that influence performance,” he says. “At the elite level, when you have a bunch of people whose talents are the same, there at elements of the head and heart that get in the way, there are elements of nutrition and recovery. I’m still struggling to get them to understand this because I’m breaking the paradigm of ‘I’m only being looked at because of my tools so far’”.
He elaborates on that last point. “No scout in any sport goes to a player and says ‘talk to me about your sleep, talk to me about your recovery strategies. How do you prepare? What are your routines to ensure that you are eating well?’ They’re just looking at their capacity to dribble the ball, their capacity to hit, how hard the arm can throw and move. They’re looking for the fundamental raw tools.
“So now I’m trying to get the player to go from ‘I was valued, paid and given a bonus before this one thing and now you’re telling me this is not the only thing that matters, that everything else in here matters so I can be the best athlete I can be’. So it takes time. You finally get a nutritionist in there last year and now these players are understanding how to assess themselves and the importance of having one-to-one sessions with a nutritionist. We’re talking about the mental game all the time and we do mindfulness practices twice or three times a week during camp so they can practise and study, so they can find the opportunity to be in the moment.
“Some still do it with hesitation. They say ‘I don’t need this’ and then until I get video and show them what happened with this particular play ‘I guess I wasn’t paying attention’, ‘oh, so those mindfulness things we talked about – you might need it, you might need to practise how to focus and be in the now and in the moment’. So how about giving that a try now that you have proof they do need it because multiple times in the field it’s proven that they cannot focus very well.
“It’s a battle. And the next stage of this is for them, once we’ve nailed this down, is for them to understand the analytics and the things that we know are important so they can begin to understand how to address those challenges and how to make changes and how to adapt. And one that’s always in the forefront for me is to ensure that they don’t go back home without any one to change what they have going forward, because the natural tendency over time as they go home for the off-season and they see their old coaches who say ‘that’s not what we used to do here. This is the way you used to it. Keep doing it this way’. Because they trust this person they show up back at the academy worse than when they left because we have moved them forward in development and now they have gone back to something that they were doing before because they didn’t have the tools to say ‘no, my team’s metric of success is this way and they taught me to do this and I’m going to continue to do it this way’. They’re too young to tell an adult figure with authority that they can’t use their advice.
“I want 80% of my guys to go home and say ‘no’”.
It takes time, but Morales, the Pirates and their young recruits are on the right path.
