Farm director Andy McKay turns attention in Mariners’ system to mental skills

Setting a Mariners franchise record for winning percentage across all levels and putting each of their seven minor league affiliates in the playoffs would seem to be a tough year one act to follow, but for Mariners farm director Andy McKay, winning is important but not the top priority.

“The winning in the minor leagues is important, but the goal of the minor leagues is not to win minor league championships. The goal is to provide Scott (Servais) and Jerry (Dipoto) with as much depth and flexibility as humanly possible,” McKay said.

McKay has made it clear before that winning can be a part of the equation in the farm system, but it is the process that takes center stage. In 2016, the winning reinforced the process, and that reinforcement couldn’t have come at a better time as the development staff introduced new organizational philosophies and set player expectations.

“We did get lucky,” McKay pointed out last week. “Some key guys buy in fast and we got off to a really good start in the minor leagues. Things that we were putting forth to our players, we got immediate positive feedback on. It doesn’t always work that way.”

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Setting a system and culture is a multi-year process, and after Year 1 under McKay, the Mariners appear to have a solid foundation for player development in place. In Year 2, the focus for McKay will be to find ways to simplify and reduce, or “make the book smaller,” which is what they are teaching in the minor leagues.

“Getting better looks like creating more clarity, having players really understand the system even better,” McKay explained. “Having coaches speak a more common language, more seamless transitions throughout levels.”

For 2017, the player development staff is being beefed up with each affiliate to receive an additional coach in part to better the “teacher/student ratio” in the minors. Three mental skills coaches, two of which will focus on the minors, have also been added to the organization. This is where I think things could get interesting.

In Year 1 we saw philosophy changes that were measurable. “C the Z” led to the Mariners leading the minor leagues in strike zone differential. Productive team plate appearances (PTPAs) were clearly defined and tracked. We could measure just how much a prospect like Tyler O’Neill used the entire field in 2016 as compared to years past, and we could find ways to tie all of this to the win-loss records as well.

But what about the mental side of the game?

McKay came to the organization with an extensive mental skills background. It is clearly his passion in the game, but coming out of Year 1 it is hard to point to a footprint in the organization as being the mental skills philosophy. The process is ongoing and I believe we will see and hear more about the approach to the mental side of the game in the minors in 2017.

In an appearance on the Mariners Hot Stove Show on 710 ESPN Seattle Tuesday night, McKay pointed out an area where the focus will be intensified.

“Seasons come down to a few games, and games come down to two or three pitches. There’s that moment of truth, where in that two to three seconds that a pitch is about to be thrown, it comes down to what is going on in that player’s mind at that time,” he said.

McKay then laid out the three things that determine who wins that pitch.

“Is that player properly trained? Mentally is that player able to slow himself down and let the training take over? Is this player motivated to help his team, or is his mind on something else?”

We saw the training in Year 1 with work approached in a different manner, including training at game speed in the minor leagues. Being a team-first player is also something that was emphasized in the minors and tracked through PTPA’s. What happens in the 15 seconds between pitches, however, is a more complex aspect of the game to tackle. It also is arguably the most mental.

“Slowing the game down and turning off your mind so you can go from a thinking person to a reacting person and doing that every 15 seconds, that is a challenge,” McKay said.

To that end, in addition to the specialists that have been added, McKay said that coaches are being given tools to coach more to the mental side of the game.

“The body always follows the mind, and if we are training the body without the mind we are spinning our wheels,” McKay said.

What this looks like in 2017, both in teaching and practice, remains to be seen, but there is little question that it is a priority. And if McKay and his staff are successful, then sometime in the not-too-distant future when a minor leaguer arrives in Seattle, the mental side of his game taught to him by the Mariners will be just as identifiable as what can be measured by the numbers.

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