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The Brad Lidge Syndrome

By Stefi Kaplan
Posted Monday, August 20, 2007

Yes, these guys are supposed to be tough. These guys get paid millions of dollars and are supposed to be the elite baseball players in the country. So we expect a lot from them, as we should. But all the talent and in the world and a weekly paycheck with more zeros than most of us will see in a year (or a lifetime!) can't fix a wounded psyche. This is generally a problem with pitchers more than hitters, because the pitcher often has the unique ability to single-handedly lose a ballgame for his team, whereas one hitter's at-bat rarely determines an entire game (cue the conversations about Carlos B in the NLCS…).

Mental toughness is of utmost importance for a quality pitcher, especially a reliever. The ability not to unravel in a key spot has less to do with ability and more to do with keeping focus and calming the nerves. When a pitcher is on the mound about to throw a crucial pitch, his own mind is his worst enemy. Sometimes having great stuff is simply not enough.

There seems to be a pattern in baseball where a pitcher, after giving up a crucial (and potential season-ending) homerun in the postseason, endures a less-than-stellar start to the following season. This was certainly the case with Brad Lidge, who suffered a monumental collapse after surrendering the mammoth homerun to Albert Pujols in 2005. Lidge has not been the same since and has lost his role as a closer, his confidence and his command on the mound. If there was ever a case of a guy with great stuff losing his head, Brad Lidge is the perfect example.

I fear that two of our beloved Mets relievers (ok, maybe not so beloved…) are suffering from a less severe case of the "Brad Lidge Syndrome." The bullpen was the linchpin of last season and Aaron Heilman and Guillermo Mota were huge reasons for that. He's not like Schoeneweis, who is affected by the booing at Shea. Watching Mota pitch, you can see that he still has pretty good stuff and he can dominate at times. So I don't blame the steroids entirely either, because if you actually watch him, he doesn't look all that different from last year, when he had filthy stuff. But I'm becoming convinced he just lacks the mental toughness to rise above those nagging postseason memories.

So how do we fix these guys? There is a lot of potential in that bullpen, but potential doesn't win championships. And are we confident in either of these guys in a big spot in this year's postseason? I mean, I realize that these two are very different pitchers and we can't just lump them together because they happened to implode in the same postseason series.

If there is an answer, it has to lie in Rick Peterson, the psychological guru of the NY Mets. Peterson can work magic with a guy's psyche (see Perez, Oliver). Pitchers are going to give up big hits. Pitchers will lose games. The important thing is maintaining that level of confidence to endure the bad loss, shake it off and bounce right back. Heilman has been particularly good at doing this over the course of the season, but there is a whole other element involved when that mistake happens in the postseason. You can't bounce right back, because you wont pitch in a game again for six months.

Those two guys could also stand to learn a thing or two from Billy Wagner. Sure, Billy implodes on occasion, just like every single other pitcher, but Billy generally shows the ability to bounce right back, often in the same inning, and keeps giving his team the chance to win games. Billy is the ultimate gamer and his confidence level is steady no matter what he does on the field. Case in point: Billy was the other Mets reliever to surrender an optimism-crushing homerun to an unlikely Cardinals hero in that same series (and in the same game as Mota). Billy had to endure the aftermath of that crushing blow all through the winter. But did Billy exhibit the regression characteristic of Brad Lidge Syndrome this year? Well, considering he is having a Cy Young-caliber season, I'd have to say it had the opposite effect. If possible, Billy looks even more confident after that postseason blunder.

Watch and learn, boys, watch and learn. It seems to me that Brad Lidge Syndrome is a curable disease, or at least it better be if we expect these guys to succeed in the 2007 postseason. But right now, I wouldn't want Guillermo Mota anywhere near the mound in a postseason series, so it seems he has got a long way to go in fixing his mindset. Paging Rick Peterson...

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You can also catch Stefi at her blog You Can't Script Baseball in addition to her weekly column at Flushing University.

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