Kenny Flermoen · Founder & Academy Director, Mind Game Baseball Academy
This academy is called Mind Game Baseball for a reason.
Not as a slogan. Not as a marketing angle. Because in 21+ years of coaching players from tee-ball through Division I, the single biggest difference between players with similar physical tools has almost never been mechanics. It has been what happens in their head between pitches, whether they understand the game they are playing, and whether anyone ever took the time to teach them that side of it.
Most youth baseball programs do not. They teach swings and throws and fielding positions, and those things matter enormously. But the player who has all of that and no mental framework for the game is a player with a ceiling they will not understand and a coach will not be able to explain, because the missing piece was never named.
The Mind Game is the name for that missing piece. This page is its framework.
What The Mind Game Is
The Mind Game is MGBA's coaching framework for everything that happens between pitches and between plays — the mental, situational, and psychological skills that determine whether a player's physical tools actually show up consistently under real game conditions.
It is not sports psychology borrowed from a textbook and pasted onto baseball. It is not breathing exercises and positive affirmations. It is a specific, coachable set of skills built from two decades on dugout benches and infield dirt, organized into two connected pillars that every MGBA player develops alongside their physical game.
The Two Pillars
Pillar One: The Psychological Game
How a player manages their own mind, in the moment, pitch to pitch.
This pillar covers the emotional and psychological skills that determine whether a player's mental state helps or hurts their performance. Confidence that is built from preparation, not pretense. The ability to reset after a mistake without carrying it into the next play. Body language that communicates stability to teammates rather than broadcasting doubt to opponents. A pre-pitch routine that puts a player in the same mental state before every pitch regardless of what just happened or what is at stake.
These are coachable skills. Not personality traits some players have and others do not. Skills built through specific, repeated, age-appropriate instruction, the same way a swing is built.
Read the full chapter: The Mental Game of Baseball: What It Is and How to Coach It at Any Age
Pillar Two: The Situational Game
How a player understands and thinks through the game itself.
This pillar covers the knowledge, decision-making, and strategic awareness that separates a player who is playing baseball from one who is just executing instructions. Knowing the count, the outs, and the runners before every pitch. Having a real approach at the plate rather than just a swing. Locating pitches with intent rather than just trying to throw strikes. Reading a hitter's swing and using that information on the next pitch. Making good decisions under pressure because those decisions were made before the pressure arrived.
This is what most coaches call baseball IQ. At this academy, we call it The Mind Game, because it belongs to the same system, built and coached deliberately rather than hoped for over time.
Read the full chapter: The Mind Game: Why Most Youth Players Are Never Taught to Think the Game
Why These Two Pillars Belong Together
The psychological game and the situational game are not the same skill, but they reinforce each other in a way that makes it impossible to fully develop one without the other.
A player who is emotionally composed but has no situational understanding will be calm in the wrong position, relaxed with the wrong approach, unfazed by a mistake they did not understand well enough to learn from. A player who understands the game deeply but cannot manage their own psychology will freeze under pressure, carry mistakes into the next play, and perform below their actual knowledge level when it counts.
The Mind Game is the system that builds both, in sequence, by age, with coaching language specific to the positions and situations where each pillar matters most.
The Position Chapters
Every position on a baseball field calls on both pillars of The Mind Game in its own way. The following chapters break down what that looks like position by position, with the specific coaching language, age-appropriate instruction, and real scenarios that make the concepts usable on an actual field.
These chapters are written to be read in sequence, but each one stands on its own for players, parents, and coaches who are focused on a specific position.
The Catcher's Mind Game
The catcher is the only position on the field with two psychologies to manage simultaneously: their own and the pitcher's. This chapter covers what it actually means to call a game with real reasoning, what to say on a mound visit in the thirty seconds that matter, how to own a passed ball and communicate stability to a rattled pitcher, and how to build the kind of trust with a pitching staff that makes everyone around you better.
Read the chapter: The Catcher's Mind Game: Managing a Pitcher, Calling a Game, and Owning Every Pitch
The Pitcher's Mind Game
No position is more exposed than the mound. A pitcher's mistake is isolated, visible, and immediate, and the next pitch is coming in twenty seconds regardless of how the last one felt. This chapter covers the most important distinction in pitching: a bad pitch is an event, a bad inning is a choice. It breaks down the physical reset between pitches, what body language broadcasts to the next hitter, and how what a pitcher needs from his coach changes from 9 years old to 16.
Read the chapter: The Pitcher's Mind Game: The Loneliest Position and How to Coach the Mound
The Shortstop's Mind Game
The shortstop carries the highest pre-pitch decision load of any position player on the field. Before every single pitch, a shortstop has to know the count, the outs, the runners, who is covering second, where every infielder needs to be, and where the ball is going if it comes to him. This chapter covers the full pre-pitch checklist, why communication is half the job, when the right play is not to throw, and how a shortstop's Mind Game raises the defensive floor of every player around him.
Read the chapter: The Shortstop's Mind Game: Why the Infield Captain Has to Think Before Every Single Play
The Third Baseman's Mind Game
Third base gives a player less reaction time than any other infield position, and more specific pre-pitch responsibilities than almost any other. This chapter covers why mental preparation converts reaction into anticipation at the hot corner, how the bunt game is won or lost before the batter ever squares around, the throw decision on slow rollers, and how a third baseman owns the third base line and recovers from hard errors faster than any other position has to.
Read the chapter: The Third Baseman's Mind Game: Reaction, the Bunt Game, and Owning the Hot Corner
The Center Fielder's Mind Game
Center field is the outfield captain position, and it carries the most organizational responsibility in the grass. This chapter covers the pre-pitch process specific to center field, why the first step is a mental skill as much as a physical one, how to call the ball early and direct the outfield as a unit, depth management by situation and hitter, and the mental recovery after a ball gets through the gap. A center fielder who is thinking before every pitch turns three individual outfielders into a defensive unit. One who is not leaves an organizational vacuum the corner outfielders cannot fill.
Read the chapter: The Center Fielder's Mind Game: The Outfield Captain and the Art of the First Step
The Corner Outfielder's Mind Game
The corner outfield is the most mentally isolating position on the field. This chapter covers the most undercoached challenge in the outfield: staying mentally present and physically ready across long stretches of inaction so that when the ball finally arrives, the player is sharp rather than caught drifting. It also covers playing the wall with spatial confidence rather than fear, foul territory decision-making, the cutoff man system and when to throw through versus hit the relay, and the pre-pitch throw decision that separates corner outfielders who change innings from ones who let runners advance.
Read the chapter: The Corner Outfielder's Mind Game: Staying Sharp, the Wall, and the Throw That Changes Games
The Hitter's Mind Game
The at-bat is where every pillar of The Mind Game converges in one place, on one player, in real time. This chapter covers what an at-bat actually looks like when a hitter is thinking it right: building an approach before the first pitch, adjusting that approach pitch by pitch as the count evolves, reading the pitcher during the at-bat and using that information on the next pitch, resetting after a bad swing without carrying it into the next one, and building on a good at-bat without getting complacent. The at-bat is not one swing. It is a sequence of decisions, and the hitter who understands that competes at a level their mechanics alone do not explain.
Read the chapter: The Hitter's Mind Game: What an At-Bat Actually Looks Like When You Are Thinking It Right
More Chapters Coming
The Mind Game Framework is a living document. New chapters are published regularly as the series develops. Chapters currently in development include the hitter's at-bat, the outfielder's read and decision-making, and the team-level Mind Game that determines how a roster performs under collective pressure.
Follow the blog to read each new chapter as it publishes.
How The Mind Game Is Coached at MGBA
The Mind Game is not a separate program at this academy. It is built into every lesson, every evaluation, every camp session, and every practice. A hitting lesson that addresses only mechanics and never addresses the player's approach at the plate is an incomplete lesson. A defensive session that covers fielding fundamentals but never requires a player to process the situation before the ball is hit is missing the part that will cost them in games.
Every MGBA coach is trained to coach both pillars. Not because every session becomes a psychology workshop, but because the questions we ask, the language we use, and the way we run drills are all designed to develop the full player, not just the physical one.
What that looks like in practice:
Before every defensive rep in a session, the situation is announced and the player calls the play before the ball is in motion. After every significant swing in a hitting session, the question is not just what the mechanics looked like but what the approach was and why. When a mistake happens, the immediate response is a brief acknowledgment and a physical reset, not a correction, because the correction belongs at practice, not in the thirty seconds when a player needs to clear their head and get ready for the next pitch.
These habits, built through consistent, specific, age-appropriate coaching, are what The Mind Game looks like on a real field. Not a concept. A practice.
For Coaches and Parents
The Mind Game Framework is written for coaches and parents as much as it is written for players. Because the adults around a player shape that player's mental game as much as any drill does, usually more.
A coach who responds to every mistake with visible frustration is teaching a player to fear failure. A coach who asks questions instead of giving answers after every play is building the situational understanding that no amount of drilling alone produces. A parent who keeps the car ride home safe after a bad game is contributing to a player's mental foundation in a way that no private lesson can replicate.
We have written specifically for parents in the piece How Parents Can Actually Help Their Kid Get Better at Baseball Without Overstepping. That post, alongside the chapters above, gives coaches and parents the same framework the players are being taught, so everyone around the player is pulling in the same direction.
The Larger Vision
I will say something directly here that I do not say everywhere.
The chapters that make up The Mind Game Framework are the most organized body of coaching work I have built across 21+ years on a baseball field. Every concept in this framework has been tested in real dugouts, with real players, across every competitive level from tee-ball to Division I. The language has been refined over thousands of conversations with players at every stage of development.
The plan, eventually, is a book. Not a theory book. A coaching book, written in the same voice as every chapter on this page, built for the coach who wants to understand the mental side of this game at the level it deserves. The chapters here are the foundation of that manuscript. They are published here first because the players and families in this community deserve access to this material now, not when a publisher decides it is ready.
When the book exists, this page will be where it started.
Until then, the framework lives here, grows here, and gets used here.
Start With the Foundation
If you are new to The Mind Game Framework, start with the two pillar posts. They establish the full system before the position-specific chapters build on it.
Pillar One: The Mental Game of Baseball: What It Is and How to Coach It at Any Age
Pillar Two: The Mind Game: Why Most Youth Players Are Never Taught to Think the Game
Or if you are a player, a parent, or a coach focused on a specific position, go directly to that chapter.
Book a lesson or evaluation to see The Mind Game coached in person and find out what it means for your player's specific development path.
Kenny Flermoen is the Founder and Academy Director of Mind Game Baseball Academy, based in North Augusta, SC. He brings 21+ years of coaching experience from tee-ball through Division I, a B.S. in Sports Management, and a Master's degree in Coaching and Athletic Administration from Concordia University-Irvine.
The Mind Game Framework is a living document. New chapters are added regularly.