Do You Have Fragile Self-Confidence in Baseball?

Baseball confidence is an important mental game skill for all players to learn. Some baseball players struggle with fragile self-confidence. You have fragile baseball confidence when your confidence changes each moment depending on how you are playing in the game. Do you have to get a hit in order to feel confident or make a good play? Or do you lose confidence after you strike out or make your first errors?

When you have fragile baseball confidence, you tend to doubt your ability when things don’t go as planned. You might question your ability to pitch a fast ball in the strike zone. Or, you might wonder if you can beat the opposing team.

Fragile self-confidence isn’t real self-confidence. Real self-confidence is stable and doesn’t change from moment to moment depending on the game situation. When you have real baseball confidence, you aren’t questioning your ability after making mistakes or losing a game. You believe in your ability to execute the task despite previous results.

Jason Marquis, Colorado Rockies pitcher, commented on fragile self-confidence.

“When you start struggling, you doubt yourself a little bit. That’s not a good thing. You’re out on the mound not trusting your stuff, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, instead of going out there and grabbing the bull by the horns and going after them,” Jason Marquis said.

Marquis suggests that you have to take control of your confidence. This means that you are responsible for your confidence. One way to take control of your confidence is to develop your confidence from practice instead of your immediate performance.

Many baseball players gain confidence from their immediate performance such as getting a hit or making a play. Your immediate performance should not be the only way you develop confidence. You won’t always play perfectly or win every game. If you base your confidence only on your immediate performance, you’ll be more likely to lose confidence after a poor performance. To help you develop a stable level of confidence, you’ll want to develop your confidence from years of practice and play.

Your baseball psychology tip is to base confidence on long-term success, not immediate results in a game. For example, you should base confidence on your practice and preparation instead and years of experience in baseball.