It's fine for players to not show up to Spring Training in the best shape of their lives
At the start of every Spring Training, the baseball community spends many hours looking at photos of players as they arrive and searching out quotes about their offseasons. The goal is to determine which players are "in the best shape of their lives" and which are not.
Because baseball players are athletes, it has long been taken for granted that being in the best shape of one's life is an inherently good thing. A player who is in the best shape of his life has had a good offseason while a player who is not has not adequately prepared for the upcoming season.
But, we may be witnessing the start of a movement:
#SFGiants pitcher Drew Pomeranz said he gained 15 pounds on purpose this offseason. Said he was eating too clean last year.
— Kerry Crowley (@KO_Crowley) February 25, 2019
“Carrying a little extra fat around, it’s important for guys."
Now, Drew Pomeranz alone does not constitute a movement, but the game would benefit if this were the start of one.
It all comes down to one question. When do you want players to be at their best?
The answer is not when pitchers and catchers report in mid-February. It's not at the start of the Grapefruit and Cactus League schedules. And, it's not even Opening Day.
You want players to be at their best at the end of the season and in the postseason.
That’s very hard to do if you’re already in the best shape of your life in February or March. It’s nearly impossible to be at your best for six straight months. If you’re training for an October marathon, you don’t want to be ready to run it in March. How many New Year’s resolutions last six months? Not many.
The point of Spring Training is in the name. Training. Spring Training is where you get in shape for the regular season. If you’re already at that point when you show up, you’re not doing it right. Ryan Braun recognizes that:
Ryan Braun won’t play in Cactus League games until next week, Craig Counsell said. It’s by design. Braun prefers his Spring Trainings be short and sweet.
— Adam McCalvy (@AdamMcCalvy) February 26, 2019
Braun has the benefit of knowing he’ll be on the Brewers’ Opening Day roster, so he doesn’t have to prove anything during Spring Training. All he has to do is prepare for the regular season and, given the expectations of his team, the postseason as well. It’s telling that he has chosen to do less playing to achieve that goal.
But the benefits of arriving at Spring Training under-fit – not yet in the best shape of your life – aren’t just physical.
Perhaps lost in the Pomeranz quote above is his confession of eating too clean in 2018. He may mean that he wasn’t eating a sufficiently balanced diet, but I suspect he’s referencing the mental toll of being so focused on his diet on top of a 162-game schedule. Even one of the best hitters in baseball knows that it can be good to not think about baseball all the time:
The baseball season is long, and teams have games nearly every day for seven months, including Spring Training. When the expectations are for players to give 100 percent every day, that’s a psychologically demanding stretch. If a player goes full #NoOffseason to be in the best shape of his life when he reports to camp, that adds even more to that demand.
The benefits of vacation and time off on productivity have been proven over and over again. Just because they play a game for a living doesn’t mean that professional burnout goes away.
So, while it definitely sounds good to hear your team’s star arrived at camp in the best shape of his life, that doesn’t mean there’s reason to be worried about the players who haven’t matched that standard. Perhaps while others are burning out in September and October, they’ll be rounding into form. It’s about being in the best shape of your life for the most important games of your life. Those are in October, not March.
