Craft coaching Phils on mental side of game

Mickey Moniak is in the middle of the Phillies’ most scrutinized position battle this spring. Everybody is watching.

He has played well through the first half of Grapefruit League games. In fact, statistically, he has played better than anybody competing to be the Phillies’ center fielder. But Moniak’s numbers might not matter in a couple of weeks, when the front office finalizes its Opening Day roster. He remains a dark-horse candidate because he probably needs more time to develop in Triple-A.

The reality of Moniak’s situation could consume him. It might consume many.

He offers a different perspective.

“Our new mental skills coach talks about controlling the three feet around you,” Moniak said recently at BayCare Ballpark in Clearwater, Fla. “Controlling what you can do for yourself. You know, maybe I’m a bit of an afterthought to some people. But at the end of the day, it comes down to controlling my three feet, getting in the cage, making sure I’m in the weight room, really focusing when we’re doing outfield drills and getting good work in, instead of going through the motions, so when the game comes, I have good ABs. Controlling those three feet -- that’s the key for me right now.”

The Phillies believe there are more stressors on players today than ever -- where else can somebody have a bad day at work, pick up their phone afterward and read messages from hundreds or thousands of strangers who feel compelled to tell them how awful they are? -- which is one reason why they expanded their mental performance department this offseason. Ceci Craft is its new director. She served in a similar role with the Indians from 2014-19. Before and after her time in Cleveland, she spent a combined seven years as a mental performance coach for the Army’s special operations soldiers at Fort Bragg, including the past year, when she led a team of 14 cognitive performance coaches.

Her past work with Special Forces and the Indians brings instant credibility to the role.

“These are two groups of people that have chosen to dedicate themselves to something that, at times, sadly, comes before family, right?” Craft said. “A soldier will deploy with a pregnant wife or with a sick child, and they will still get on the plane and go overseas. A baseball player has three to four days of paternity leave. And they will leave a sick child to go on a road trip. And that’s what we expect of them. That’s what they’ve been asked to do. From a family dynamic standpoint, it’s there. From the pressure standpoint, it’s there.

“Principally, I would say performance and the want to get better and work are the same. The consequences are out-of-this-world different. But I think it’s amazing, when you bring these two populations together, there’s a lot to talk about. One of the things I found a lot of joy in is bringing the special forces guys, the Green Berets that I used to work with, together with athletes and those conversations. I think they find a lot of shared space.”

Craft is the one who told Moniak and others at an introductory meeting last month to focus on their three feet.

Her words carried weight.

“Special Forces, their job is life or death,” Moniak said. “Our job is baseball. As hard as it may be, it’s never going to be life or death. The fact that she goes into the minds of those guys and can try to relate it to baseball is something that's exciting for me.”

***

Since Craft’s introductory meeting, players and coaches have popped into her office, which sits in a hallway leading from the parking lot to the clubhouse at BayCare Ballpark. They might chat about the latest “Daily Mental Rep” email the department sent that morning. The email might be a short video, like Steve Kerr talking about overcoming his fear of failure by watching Michael Jordan play. It might include a “challenge for the day,” which relates to the morning’s message: “Accept that failure is part of greatness because it’s a sign of full commitment.”

Phillies manager Joe Girardi invited Craft and mental performance coordinator Hannah Huesman into the dugout for Grapefruit League games. In the middle of the action, Craft and Huesman can see and hear how players respond to their performances on the field. Conversely, players can see Craft and Huesman and talk, if they want.

At the very least, they can build trust, which is a new step in the right direction for the department.

“I think her messages are delivered extremely well and I think players will gravitate toward her,” Girardi said of Craft. “Our game is a team game, but the reality is it’s an individual game. No one can really help you hit. No one can help you throw a pitch on the outside corner or field that ground ball and make a quick decision. Those are all things that you have to do. There is so much failure in this game that I think being able to deal with that and staying in the right frame of mind and being mentally prepared every day is extremely important.

“I think players can relate to [her work with the Army], especially since she worked with the Indians. Sometimes players seem to relate well to the Special Forces guys for whatever reason. And I think there are some reasons. They’re the elite of the elite.”

Craft spent six years with Special Forces before she joined the Indians. There she honed her craft and style.

This is not soft-talking Stuart Smalley-type stuff.

“Soldiers will give you very candid feedback because they either feel it’s going to work for them or not,” Craft said. “I think you learn to get to the point. I think you learn not to waste time and not to dance around things. I think that serves very well with this population, too. The thing I’ll hear is, stylistically, 'You’re really different. You don’t sugarcoat. You cut to the [crap] very quickly.' And it’s real. It’s not about my ego, right? I tell the guys, 'I’ve got super-thick skin. There’s nothing you’re going to tell me that a soldier hasn’t. Just tell me whether or not it’s working and we can adapt that. But I don't know what’s happening in your head.' So I need the player. The player is a very active part. I can’t work magic. I didn’t get issued fairy dust with my diploma. So they are very active in that process. And I think candid conversations have to be there. If anything, the soldiers probably really helped me develop that stylistic component of how I do work.”

***

Craft sees a department that teaches a Phillies Way of mental performance as players move through the system. The five-person department has staff at the team’s academy in the Dominican Republic, so it is possible.

“It should feel like a strength program or any other program where they’re passing through different coaches,” Craft said. “But that there’s a Phillies Way of progressing. Same thing you find in strength, conditioning, hitting and pitching, we’ll have on the mental performance side.”

But what is the Phillies Way?

“You hear from the start that baseball is a game of failure,” Craft said. “One of the things that I found that I think is unique to this coaching staff is the way that we are training and practicing prepares you for failure. I think there can be a tendency to know that the game is so hard that we want to be thoughtful or careful about our early work or our preparation. Sometimes I think that can leave the player having an easier start and then getting on the field and facing someone like Aroldis Chapman, a 99 mph fastball, or a nasty slider from a guy like Andrew Miller. I think what the data is saying is we're going to do something incredibly hard at 7 o'clock. We need to be training in a way that builds that toughness, builds that resiliency, builds that ability to handle that challenge all day long. I would say on the mental side, it's looking at how do we equip human beings to handle failure, to handle tough moments? I love the idea that mental performance should be on the front end before anything goes wrong, because then you have the ways to handle really tough things.”

A big thing in educational literature at the moment, Craft said, is fixed mindset vs. growth mindset. Fixed mindset is being born to do something. Either we are capable or we are not.

Math, music, baseball, whatever.

“Growth mindset is this concept that we grow every day when we put in effort, intention and work,” Craft said. “But that failure is going to be a natural aspect of that in order to get better. Are we willing to push to the point of failure? Can we tolerate that? Because that’s how we get better every day. And so we’ve talked a lot about that as a coaching staff. Can we as a coaching staff sit with the failure of pushing that hard to get better every day? Because it's not the game tonight in Spring Training, it's the game that is midseason, end of season heading into playoffs. We have to be able to tolerate that and push at that level and train at that level.

“We talk about playing baseball, right? And ‘play’ is a great word. If we’re not careful, they end up working baseball every night. And that makes it very mechanical. That makes it full of a lot of stress. That really impacts how someone works. If they can ‘play’ baseball at night, you see a different level of performance. There’s stuff that all rolls into itself. But I would say it’s self-criticism, and them wanting to be great for the club, them wanting to be great for their fans, their family. That’s a hard burden to carry.”

Craft hopes to make those burdens feel more manageable. Sometimes it starts with something simple, like focusing on the three feet around them.