Focus on the Process, Not the Outcome (Your Results Will Follow)

One of our strongest players had just started hitting home runs. You could feel it the moment he stepped into the cage that week; he wanted another one. There is a look a hitter gets when he is trying to make something happen instead of letting it happen. He had that look.

So we didn't talk about home runs at all.

Instead, we talked about one simple thing: hit a line drive over the second baseman's head. That was it. Not hit it far. Not swing harder. Just a line drive, low and controlled, right over the bag at second.

When a hitter tries to hit home runs, he overswings. He pulls off the ball early. He gets tight through the zone. Ironically, all of that effort produces less power, not more. But when the thought is a line drive, the body stays relaxed and on time. The swing stays through the ball instead of around it. And relaxed, through-the-ball swings are exactly what produces the results everyone is chasing.

During that tournament, he hit one of the farthest home runs I had seen from a player his age. When he came back to the dugout, he yelled at me: "All I thought about was a line drive over the second baseman's head!"

He trusted the process. The process gave him the outcome.

This is one of the hardest things to accept in baseball because we are obsessed with results. Batting averages. Home runs. Strikeouts. Those things matter. But they are the output of a process, not the thing to chase directly.

A .300 average means a player fails seven out of ten times and is considered elite. The game is built on accepting that outcomes are not fully in your control. What is always in your control is how you prepare, how you approach each at-bat, and how quickly you adjust when something stops working.

In practice, this looks like:

Setting process goals instead of outcome goals. Not "I want to hit .350." Instead, "I want to keep my head down through every swing this week." Not "I want to throw harder." Instead, "I want to finish down my front knee on every throw."

Evaluating effort and execution, not just results. Did you compete the right way? Did you stick to your approach? A well-executed out is better preparation for the next hit than a lucky one.

Moving on faster when results disappoint. Time spent being frustrated that the outcome wasn't what you wanted is time taken away from adjusting and improving. Acknowledge it, find the one thing to fix, and move forward.

Trust your process. Stay in it long enough. The outcomes have a way of showing up when you stop chasing them directly.