Cincinnati Reds’ Joey Votto Copes With Anxiety Disorder
Submitted by Imaginary Diamond Blog
The Cincinnati Enquirer reports
on the struggles of players dealing with stress-related problems in the context of young Reds first baseman Joey Votto. He and St. Louis Cardinals’ shortstop Khalil Greene have both been placed on the disabled list recently to deal with social anxiety, according to the Enquirer.
This is a very real disorder, one that can greatly impact a player’s on-field performance. Essentially, these players are succumbing to pressure and seeing all their failure scenarios just a little too vividly in their heads. It’s not impossible to overcome, though, just look at Kansas City Royals pitcher Zack Greinke as proof of that.
Baseball, as you’ll hear quite often, is a game of failure. In a hitter’s case, it’s about failing more than twice as often as he succeeds. And once that seed of doubt is planted in his head, a hitter like Votto may not be the same again.
Confidence plays a huge part in consistently hitting Major League pitching. A hitter must trust his eyes to recognize pitches, trust his hands to be quick through the zone, trust the fact that his last failure won’t repeat itself. Anything less than a deep, unshakeable believe in oneself makes the job infinitely harder to do.
Votto’s manager Dusty Baker believes that social anxiety will only become more prevalent in baseball. Younger players are under more stress now than ever, with more of a financial burden and more scrutiny from fans, bloggers and media outlets.
From a fantasy perspective, what exactly does a psychological disorder mean for Votto moving forward? Without knowing exactly what it takes to overcome it, we have a hard time knowing how he’ll go about rebounding when he returns from the disabled list. A player of Votto’s stature, though, must be plugged back into the starting lineup immiedately as fantasy owners hope for a quick return to health.
