Noah Syndergaard recently said something that immediately got my attention:
“I just want my identity back.”
After bursting onto the scene as one of the most electric pitchers in baseball, Syndergaard has spent the last several years dealing with injuries, mechanical changes, declining velocity, and eventually the yips. He has worked with some of the best mechanical minds in baseball, and according to Syndergaard, almost all of them found something different that needed to be fixed.
I think that may be part of the problem.
In this episode of the Baseball Dads Podcast, I explain why I would not start by trying to repair Noah Syndergaard’s mechanics or quiet his mind. I would start with the part of him that took a late-blooming, unrecruited kid and turned him into one of the most intimidating pitchers in Major League Baseball.
Kafka called it “the indestructible element in oneself.”
That part of Noah Syndergaard is still there.
And if you can reconnect him with it, then you can begin making the physical, mechanical, and strategic changes he may need as the pitcher he is today.
He doesn’t need to be tamed.
He needs to be unleashed.
Timestamp Highlights00:00 – The Noah Syndergaard quote that stopped me: “I just want my identity back.”
01:45 – Why I stopped coaching only mechanics and started looking for the heart of the player.
03:10 – Remembering “Thor”: what made Syndergaard one of the most electric pitchers in baseball.
04:35 – Injuries, mechanical fixes, and how becoming hyper-aware of his delivery contributed to the yips.
06:15 – The part of Noah Syndergaard’s story I never knew: he was an awkward, bullied, late bloomer who received no college offers.
08:00 – How does an unrecruited late bloomer become a top-of-the-rotation pitcher for the New York Mets?
09:35 – Why Major League Baseball is not simply populated by the most physically talented players alive.
11:00 – The heart, guts, sacrifice, and mentality required to pitch at the highest level, especially in New York City.
12:30 – Why Syndergaard cannot be reduced to velocity, metrics, mechanical positions, or movement patterns.
14:00 – “There is nothing about Noah Syndergaard that should be tamed. Noah Syndergaard should be unleashed.”
15:15 – Kafka’s “indestructible element in oneself” and the part of Syndergaard that refuses to quit.
17:00 – Why I would not begin by trying to quiet his mind or control his psychology.
18:30 – What happens when an athlete performs beyond what his conscious mind and physical capabilities seem able to produce.
20:00 – The problem with specialists: if you go to a carpenter, every problem eventually looks like a hammer and nail.
21:15 – Dwight Gooden as one of baseball’s greatest examples of the indestructible element.
23:00 – How Gooden reinvented himself after losing the dominant fastball that originally made him great.
24:30 – Syndergaard may have to become a different pitcher, but that transformation has to begin from strength rather than fragility.
26:00 – Why evaluation, constant mechanical awareness, and endless corrections can suffocate the very qualities that made a player great.
27:30 – The work I want to talk about more: mechanics matter, but baseball is drowning in information about mechanics while almost nobody talks about what makes players great.
29:00 – Final thoughts: reconnect the player with the indestructible element inside him, then set everything else free.
16 mins