White Sox' mental performance coach helps players find balance, strive for consistency

Provided

 MINNEAPOLIS — People ask the question often about the White Sox’ clubhouse: What’s it like in there?

It’s Cristian Guzman’s job to know. And that job — mental-performance coach for a 6-23 team — comes with unique challenges.

“The game is hard,” Guzman, the first person to serve in this role for the Sox, told the Sun-Times recently.

Keeping the big picture in mind — that baseball is a boy’s game inhabited by grown men paid handsomely to play and coach — lightens the darkness for all involved. And for the most part, the Sox’ clubhouse has remained upbeat. Quiet postgames aside, it was like that even before a sweep of the Rays last weekend provided a ray of sunshine.

That said, several Sox players are enduring poor individual starts, some veterans are trying to squeeze a few more months out of their established careers, and some first- and second-year players are in the intense phase of trying to carve out a niche.

They know there are lifelong fans who pour their emotions and money into the team. The scrutiny gets heavy. There’s daily pressure and stress, even if it is a child’s game.

Broadcaster Steve Stone said that when he was pitching for the Sox in 1977, he talked to general manager Roland Hemond about the psychological aspects of baseball, and they agreed it’s about 75% mental. Stone suggested to Hemond that the Sox hire a mental-skills person. It didn’t happen, but Stone was thankful to have had his own system for dealing with the mental side of the game.

“Your mind does control your body,” he said. “And when your body, for whatever reason, isn’t good enough, you have to let your mind take over.”

Guzman, who previously worked in mental-skills capacities for the Mets and Mariners, travels with the Sox and wears a uniform. After a start like this, having him around could be money well spent. Sometimes he approaches players. Sometimes they come to him. Some don’t at all.

“It’s trying to meet guys with where they’re at for what they need,” Guzman said. “Most guys know themselves pretty well to be able to ask them a couple questions and they can self-correct pretty quickly. I try to teach being who they are and playing within the skill set that they have.”

When accomplished players such as first baseman Andrew Vaughn, catcher Martin Maldonado and outfielder Andrew Benintendi — until he broke out of a slump in a big way over the weekend — are part of a team batting .207/.274/.313 entering Monday, you can bet that manager Pedro Grifol or hitting coach Marcus Thames will say they’re “trying to do too much.” It sounds like a mechanism to lessen pressure, but perhaps it’s true.

“That’s probably the biggest piece [of what I do],” Guzman said, “so guys can stay consistent with themselves and trust what they’re doing. This game specifically, over the course of the year, short runs don’t say as much [about] what they’re capable of doing. Some guys will start to search and try to do more than is needed, or do less than what is needed, so it’s trying to find that balance of who are you, what works for you and building on the strengths they have, so they can stay consistent.”

Grifol and his coaches have conversations all the time about balancing the physical with the mental. Sometimes they’re brief, in the dugouts. Others are behind closed doors.

Grifol said Monday it weighs on him knowing his players and staff are working as hard as they do while being rewarded with so few wins. He knows the game is hard enough, so he’s not going to encourage an unhealthy work environment.

“People think: Go in there and flip a table or something like that,” he said. “What are you going to flip a table for? For effort? They’re giving us everything they’ve got. It’s just not happening for us right now.”