Baseball is a logician’s dream. There is a reason that advanced statistics took hold in baseball long before they started to touch any other sport. The game moves at a leisurely pace, and while there are certain physical realities that have something to do with that, the main reason for that is because there is so much thinking going on by so many parties.
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The pitcher, in concert with a catcher, is trying to identify what a batter might be expecting, all while trying to play away from his strengths. (On that note, today our Israel Fehr has an excellent piece on how Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin “reads swings” in order to see what a hitter is thinking and how he is feeling at the plate). In turn, the hitter, with the help of all of the data he and his team have collected on the pitcher, is trying to figure out what the opposition is trying to do to him, and prepare accordingly.
That is the simplest example of the sheer amount of thinking that goes on during a baseball game, but there is more involved: a manager tries to gauge when his starting pitcher is too tired to properly execute; a coaching staff places fielders in the spots where an opposing hitter is most likely to drive the ball; a base runner tries to read a pitcher’s move to the plate in order to possibly steal a base, and the pitcher tries to keep him off balance by varying his pace, or throwing over to first base. There are more examples.
In general, the less time that the ball (or puck or whatever) is in play in any given sport, the more thinking and strategy goes on. And while football likely matches or surpasses baseball in pure volume of strategy, so much of that sport is determined by an ongoing physical battle (particularly at the line of scrimmage). In no other sport does thinking have more to do with wins and losses than baseball. It is a sport that practically trains you that thinking leads to success.
On balance, as far as enduring life lessons go, this is a good thing. Better to think things through and evaluate something based on hard evidence than to just operate on whims and unexamined feelings. There are some situations, however, when thinking only gets you further away from an answer.
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On Friday night, the Blue Jays blew a 4-1 lead in the ninth inning in Kansas City, falling 5-4 to the Royals. Notably, closer Roberto Osuna — who had not blown a save since April 27 and had allowed just three runs in 23 innings since then (with a 31-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio) — did not pitch. This was abnormal, as he had not pitched the previous day and had not been through a particularly heavy workload recently. In addition, the Blue Jays’ second-most reliable reliever, Joe Smith, was on the disabled list.
After the loss, manager John Gibbons said that Osuna “was not feeling well” and declined to elaborate. (In hindsight, Gibbons was likely simply showing some admirable discretion.)
On Saturday, Osuna got into the details, to the extent that he was comfortable doing so.
“I just feel a little bit anxious, a little bit weird. I’m just not myself right now,” Osuna told reporters, including Sportsnet’s Arden Zwelling, in Kansas City, speaking through Blue Jays interpreter Josue Peley. “I feel great physically. It’s just more mentally.
“I don’t really know how to explain it. I just feel anxious. I feel like I’m lost a little bit right now. This has nothing to do with me being on the field. I feel great out there. It’s just when I’m out of baseball. When I’m not on the field, I feel just weird and a little bit lost.”
To be clear, neither the Blue Jays nor Osuna said that he had been diagnosed with anything in particular. The difference between feeling anxious and having an anxiety disorder is, crudely, the difference between sneezing and having a cold. That is not to minimize whatever Osuna is going through. It is only to say that we do not know what it is, and frankly, it’s our business only to the extent that Osuna decides it is. If it has only recently developed, chances are neither Osuna nor his doctors know precisely what the issue is. And for the moment, for our purposes, it should not matter. Between Gibbons’ and Osuna’s words, the pitcher is clearly not feeling like himself.
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In these situations, it is tempting for anybody who has had a history of mental health issues, particularly anything which can be classified broadly as anxiety, to conflate their own issues with Osuna’s. It is helpful to remember that everybody’s experience is their own, and only Osuna can really understand what he feels like at this given time. (I wrote about my own experiences back in January.)
Saying that, when Osuna spoke to the media on Saturday, there was something that made me and, I’m betting, anybody who has ever navigated the tricky beast that is anxiety, cringe in recognition. Osuna said that he was doing everything he could to get back to pitching as soon as possible, and he hoped to pitch that afternoon. (He did not, but there was no save situation, as the Blue Jays lost 3-2. He pitched an inning, recording three strikeouts and allowing one hit, in the Blue Jays’ 8-2 win on Sunday.)
“I wish I knew how to get out of this,” Osuna said. “We’re working on it. We’re trying to find ways to see what can make me feel better. But, to be honest, I just don’t know.”
Now, that is a perfectly relatable sentiment, and the Blue Jays’ staff should do everything they can to help Osuna to feel better — obviously. Depending on the nature of what he is dealing with, there are many things that might be able to help: prescription drugs, exercise, cognitive behavioral therapy, talk therapy, distraction, and the list goes on.
However, from my emphatically non-medical background, the thing that is going to help him most is the simple passage of time. It will help him contextualize whatever he is going through, and it will help whoever he is working with to better understand what he is dealing with.
And sometimes, time — and only time — is the thing that makes an episode of anxiety recede.
“I wish I knew how to get out of this” — that is the kick in the gut. Remembering my first few weeks dealing with anxiety, the most jarring thing was how it sped up my thought process. My brain was working at warp speed, going from one potential extreme solution to its precise opposite in no time at all, desperately trying to rid myself of this unfamiliar and viscerally unpleasant feeling. I lay on the floor for hours at a time — thinking, thinking and thinking — only digging myself deeper into a hole of confusion and despair.
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For those wondering why Osuna was not available on Friday, despite him saying that he feels best when he is on the mound, all I can say is that having my brain sped up like that was the most destabilizing thing I’ve ever felt in my life. I soon discovered that my work was a welcome distraction, and it helped me feel more like myself, even if it was only for a few hours at a time. Still, in the early days, focusing on anything but my uncooperative brain verged on impossible.
That is the cruelest facet of any mental health issue: The thing that you have always used to guide your decision-making is preyed upon, to the point where you might not be able to rely on it to help get you out of the situation you are in. Every moment in your life leading up to that point has taught you to lean on your reasoning; now, that ability to reason, or at least to have that reason take control of your thought process, has been compromised. There are scientific explanations for all of it, and yet they are rendered meaningless to a mind in which logic no longer is calling the shots.
Because logically, Osuna should be feeling great. He is just 22 and only a handful of people on the planet are better than him at his job. (Particularly passionate Blue Jays fans would argue nobody is a better closer than Osuna.) He is making $507,500 this year, and while that is a paltry major-league salary, it is a lot of money, with a lot more money likely coming in years to come, health-willing.
Based on everything our society places value on, Osuna is thriving.
The best thing that the Blue Jays can make clear to Osuna, and the best thing that Osuna can accept, is that it is not on him to figure this out. There might very well be no figuring it out, only anguished waiting for a storm cloud to pass. Or if there is more concrete path to feeling like himself again, it will not be Osuna — likely dealing with this for the first time in his life, with a foggy mind and probably a bunch of uncertainty and fear — who is going to be able to forge that trail.
“I’m just trying to follow directions with whatever the doctors and trainers here tell me to do,” Osuna said Sunday, noting that he felt better the last two days than he had previously. “Hopefully it’s going to get better.”
It is wonderful that Osuna chose to speak about this, not that he was obligated to do so in any way. It will help many people who have no idea why they are feeling the way that they are feeling, I’m sure. However, Osuna is going to have to embrace something very difficult, something I still struggle with eight months into my own issues: He has limited control over how he is feeling, and he might feel this way for a while yet. That will hopefully not be the case, but it is a very real possibility.
Generally, progress is not linear. And that’s okay.
