It was only about a month into his big league tenure when Orioles rookie Jordan Westburg got a memorable piece of advice from 10-year veteran Aaron Hicks.
Westburg had just rocketed a pitch down the third base line in the ninth inning, with the Orioles trailing the Los Angeles Dodgers 10-3 on July 18. For a moment, after his feet crossed the bag at first, he contemplated sprinting for second. But he thought better of it, and stayed put.
With the Orioles so far behind, the play would prove virtually meaningless. The O’s lost by that same score just a few batters later. But the play meant something to Hicks.
“After the game, Aaron Hicks came up to me and he was like, ‘Hey, man, our style of baseball is aggressive here. I think you should have gone for it,’” Westburg said.
For an Orioles team packed with young big leaguers, those tidbits of guidance will perhaps become even more important — particularly when they come from the few current Orioles with postseason experience, like Hicks.
With the team set for its first postseason appearance since 2016 on Saturday against the Texas Rangers at Camden Yards, only six Orioles have any playoff experience. Hicks, who was released by the New York Yankees and picked up by the Orioles in May, has the most playoff appearances, with 30 games under his belt and a combined .216 batting average and .325 on-base percentage.
Backup catcher James McCann and second baseman Adam Frazier, both of whom were signed this past offseason, are the only other Orioles position players to have seen playoff action, with a combined eight games.
“I’m very grateful for guys like him and McCann and Frazier to show us the ropes as position players who have been there, done that,” said Westburg, who made his major league debut June 26.
In sports psychology, there are two schools of thought when it comes to the best way to get ready for a big game, said Dr. Mark Aoyagi, a psychology consultant to MLB and NFL teams.
The first school? Treat a playoff game like any other. Avoid stressing yourself out by thinking of how important it is.
“The bases are still 90 feet, the mound is still 60 feet, 6 inches,” Aoyagi said. “It’s all the same, and so you just approach it the same.”
But Aoyagi finds himself more persuaded by the second school.
”The other approach says: Basically, there’s no way to prepare for the big game. And so rather than trying to have everything be the same, you just train for any eventuality,” Aoyagi said. “You could feel fine, but you could also feel chaotic. Or you could feel tired or you could be sick.
“The idea is to train in such a way that regardless of how you end up feeling, thinking, how your body is on that particular day, you’re still going to be able to perform to the best of your capabilities,” said Aoyagi, who is also a professor and co-director of sport and performance psychology at the University of Denver.
Stephany Coakley, a certified mental performance consultant who has worked with professional and Olympic-level athletes, recommends athletes prepare a kind of ritual to ground themselves in the present, rather than worrying about the outcome of a game.
“It’s imperative that they use whatever techniques that they have to come back to the present moment, whether it’s like tapping into their breath, taking a deep breath or doing their reset: taking their hat off or flipping their glove,” said Coakley, who also serves as senior associate athletic director for mental health performance and wellness at Temple University.
There is also another noteworthy remedy to stress in sports, said Dr. Brad Hatfield, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Maryland, who has focused his research on sports psychology.
Laughter.
Hatfield said he recalls speaking with a group of high school baseball coaches, and one of their most common questions was what to say to a young pitcher struggling on the mound.
“And I told them to keep it very simple — and even to tell a joke,” Hatfield said.
Across the Orioles clubhouse, everyone has their own strategy for staying cool. For outfielder Anthony Santander, it’s taking a moment to pray before games. For reliever Jacob Webb, another recent addition to the roster with a few games of playoff experience, it’s focusing on his breathing during stressful situations.
For 25-year-old rookie reliever DL Hall, it comes in the form of a mantra, of sorts.
”It’s all about — I always say — not running away from the storm. Everything is a storm — all the extra, outside noise,” Hall said. “Instead of trying to run from it, you just kind of embrace the storm. It’s going to come either way.”
With an average age of 27.9 years, according to ESPN, the Orioles’ current roster sits close to the middle of the MLB pack.
But only one team remaining in the playoffs is younger: the Philadelphia Phillies.
The Rangers are the second oldest, with an average age of 30. The Dodgers are first with an average age of 30.5.
Several of the Orioles’ best players are in their early 20s and set to make their postseason debuts.
That includes 22-year-old infielder Gunnar Henderson, a leading candidate for the American League Rookie of the Year, who is also the only player on the roster born in the 2000s.
It also includes 23-year-old pitcher Grayson Rodriguez, who cruised to a 1.80 ERA in his final six starts of the season, following a brief demotion to the minor leagues after beginning the year with an ERA above 7.00.
Some young Orioles, like Henderson and Rodriguez, bypassed college ball to sign with the team, but others gained postseason experience there, including 25-year-old star catcher Adley Rutschman.
In the 2018 College World Series — as a sophomore — Rutschman helped lead the Oregon State Beavers to the championship, setting a record for the most hits in the series with 17.
To win the championship that year, the Beavers defeated the University of Arkansas, where Orioles rookie Heston Kjerstad, now 24, played outfield. Kjerstad was named to the All-Tournament Team as a freshman.
But postseason games in the majors are different.
And veteran Kyle Gibson, one of three Orioles pitchers with a postseason resume, said the conversations about how to prepare for key moments have begun already.
Before the Orioles played the Tampa Bay Rays, their closest division rival, at Camden Yards in mid-September, Gibson reminded his teammates not to overemphasize the moment.
”We sat down, and I said: ‘Listen, everybody is going to come in here and make this to be the biggest series of the year,’” Gibson said. “The biggest series for us is going to be the first game in the playoffs that we play.”
Yet, when those games finally arrive, the message might change.
”As these young guys get closer to it, and get in the moment, I know the other veteran players are just going to be telling them: ‘Hey, yes there [are] more consequences for losses, but at the same time, the game is still the same. And if you make more of it, it really kind of gives you just the chance to put too much pressure on yourself.”
On the advantages of age in baseball, at least one mathematician has run the numbers.
In 2017, Kennesaw State University professor Joe DeMaio published a paper that tracked the average age of World Series-winning teams, compared with the major league average. The results don’t exactly bode well for the Orioles.
DeMaio studied the most recent 39 World Series-winning teams, separating them into two categories: batters and pitchers.
Twenty-eight of the 39 teams had an average batters’ age that was older than the rest of the majors. When it came to pitching, 30 of the teams were older than the league average.
And not only were World Series-winning teams older than the average — they were often significantly older, ranking in the top 25% of the league.
But DeMaio has a message for hopeful Orioles fans in Baltimore:
“For the Orioles fans out there: Don’t hate me. Don’t send me hate mail,” he joked. “That’s why we play the games.”
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