Weird ideas? Creativity? MLB player Mark Canha believes they are crucial to success

New York Times

10-05-2025

Editor's Note: This story is a part of Peak, The Athletic's new desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Peak aims to connect readers to ideas they can implement in their own personal and professional lives. Follow Peak here.
I love creativity. I think about it, talk about it and obsess over it. But as you'll read below, it's not a word I associate with baseball.
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Unlike basketball, football or soccer, baseball, at least on the surface, appears to have fewer moments of spontaneity or improvisation. And its static, repetitive nature — pitcher vs. hitter, on repeat — makes it far easier to measure and analyze.
So when I stumbled across a quote from veteran outfielder Mark Canha about creativity in baseball and its importance to achieving success in the sport, I was surprised and intrigued.
Canha is 36 years old. He has played 11 years in the major leagues with six different teams, including the Kansas City Royals, his current team.
I wanted to talk to Canha partly to see if my perceptions about baseball were off. I've long lamented the fact that baseball's highly quantifiable nature makes it less fun to argue about, but maybe I'm just thinking about it wrong. (To be clear, I love baseball.)
Mostly, though, I wanted to talk to Canha about creativity, a word we both value, a passion we both share. As I was hoping would be the case, it turned into a conversation with ideas that resonate beyond baseball.
I stumbled across this old story that one of my colleagues, Marc Carig, wrote in which you talked about creativity and said: 'It's a word that people don't ever use but should be used more when it comes to baseball — and sports in general. Creativity is what makes athletes great. If you can tap into that, I think it helps with your work.' Explain that to me.
Somebody said that to me once and it just resonated. It was an old teammate, Rob Brantly. He was showing me this drill one time that he does in the batting cage, where he puts the ball on a tee and he'll hit with his eyes closed. I was like: 'Why are you doing that?' And he goes: 'Because I can feel my swing more and it unlocks the right side of my brain, which is my creative side.'
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That really resonated with me. I'm a hitting nerd and I'm obsessed with my swing and hitting. I've never liked it when I've been in a cage with a coach and they just suggest a drill and then you just start doing a drill that somebody suggested and you probably don't even know why or understand it. You're not getting an understanding of the concept. You're just doing work for the sake of doing work.
I've learned to create my own drills because you have to have your own unique understanding of what you're doing. I just like creating that stuff myself. It's more fun for me. It's more engaging. I've just adapted that kind of mindset into my work.
That's a lot, I know.
No, no, it's super interesting. The reason it struck me — and I want to hear if you think I'm wrong — is that creativity is about the last word I associate with baseball.
I would disagree, just because I've seen it myself. The best players in the game are the most creative-minded. They're the least analytical. They're not always the smartest people, but they're so creative in their process and it's all part of the self. That's what makes them great.
Give me an example.
Yesterday, I heard Mike Lorenzen talking about pitching mechanics with Daniel Lynch in the clubhouse. Mike has the locker next to mine. They were just talking about something really specific and subtle, so of course, my ears perked up, because I'm fascinated. They're talking about this little mechanical thing that probably no coaches are talking about. No one who teaches baseball is probably talking about what they're talking about because it's so weirdly specific to Mike and what he's learned over the years.
Little stuff like that I'm fascinated by. You know that nobody could have taught him this. He just had to figure it out for himself. He's sharing it with Daniel, but just because Daniel got some information from him, he now has to take that and translate it into his own language so he can use it in a way that is on his own terms so it works for him.
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At the end of the day, it's such an individual journey. Unless you're actively thinking in pursuit of creativity and are obsessed to that level, I just don't think you can be good.
Do you think someone can teach themself to be creative?
I do. You have to be in love with something enough and care about it enough to put in the effort and think outside the box.
You have to love what you're doing, and that's the funnest part, for me at least. You have to enjoy the work. For me, it's not enjoyable unless I'm tapped into it on a level and language that no one else can understand. If I'm doing someone else's thing, that's their language.
You can't just take something that somebody else says at face value and just slap it on yourself. I don't think it works that way.
The reason I don't think of creativity with baseball is because baseball, to me, seems so mechanical. I lowered my hands this much or I moved over on the mound that much. Tell me why I'm wrong.
You're thinking about the mechanics of the game. Rotational mechanics that everybody has to have. In a way, you're right, but at a deeper level, there's a difference. You have to teach sound rotational mechanics, and in order to teach anyone anything, you have to make the information relatable.
That's where the creativity lies: Making the information relatable.
What I'm trying to say is teaching mechanics is not easy because there's an execution part of that. Just because somebody is telling you exactly what you should do and they're supposedly an expert in the craft — like a pitching or hitting coach — doesn't mean they're going to be able to get you to execute. It's your job to figure out how to execute. Therein lies the need for creativity.
What we're actually talking about in some ways is the power of a good teacher. I'm sure anyone can relate to the difference between a teacher who puts up slides and a teacher who creates an avenue for you to want to dive in more. Did someone do that for you?
Gosh, that's a good question. I don't know. I don't know where I got the ability to do that. I think a lot of it was just honestly learning the hard way.
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I'll admit that when I was a younger player in the minor leagues, I was a lot more analytical. I was super analytical. You could say to a fault. Just because I cared so much and I wanted to be good. I had the drive. I wanted to be perfect.
When I was coming up, I think I had a tag on me: He thinks way too much. He has crazy ideas. He thinks he understands the game better than we do.
That led me down a path to where I think a little bit more about what I'm doing and think a little differently. I realized, at some point, that I'm going to have to do this on my own. I just had no choice but to think about the game the way I am. I wasn't the most talented person in the room. I just had the drive and wanted it so bad. And I think when you have the drive and you enjoy something, you just force yourself to figure it out.
I had a lot of great coaches and people who helped me along the way and taught me stuff. But being creative? I don't know. I guess I have to credit Rob Brantly with that.
Do you have any interest in becoming a coach?
Not really. I think I would like to coach kids or something. But I don't know if I'd like to coach adults. Baseball has too many stubborn people.
That's why I was asking: What would you do differently to embrace this individualistic, creative approach?
If I were another player being coached by me, I would tell myself to F off (laughs). But I think the best instructors say the least things and are mindful and pick their words carefully.
It's so hard to be a hitting coach because I feel like one sentence can send a guy down the wrong path, and I would be afraid, as a coach, to say the wrong thing. I would pick my words very carefully and convey that there needs to be an understanding that the player has the responsibility to go on their own journey.
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To go back to the drill Rob Brantly was doing: Is there value in an instructor showing people strange and unorthodox things? A lot of it might not stick, but is there value in creating that environment for a spark to happen for someone in an unusual way?
For sure. Here's a good one. One time we were in the batting cage and our hitting coach was just underhand flipping us the ball from 10 feet away. We're just hitting like every other day. Somebody came in and leaned on the light switch so my coach flipped the ball and in the middle of the flip the lights went out.
We were all like, 'Whoa, whoa!' I was like, 'Wait a second. Let's just leave them off. Let's hit with the lights off.' My hitting coach looked at me and said, 'Yeah, that's a good idea.'
We could barely see, but it was interesting. We all struggled at first. You mishit the first five or six, but then your body kind of reorganizes itself and all a sudden you start barreling balls. Your brain gets thrown a curveball and then you start realizing and feeling things because your vision has been taken away. You start to realize: Oh my gosh, I'm not balanced, I can feel it.
People use the word routine a lot. Everyone has a routine. Routine, routine. I think it's easy to fall into a trap of just mindlessly working day in and out with no inspiration, with no emotion, with no right-brain stuff. I think it's dangerous. You have to keep your fun.
I think when you do weird stuff like that with the lights off in the batting cage, every once in a while something in your mind clicks and you start to see a problem from a totally different perspective. It seems to kick something loose. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but I've found that to be true in my field.
One hundred percent. That's what it's all about. You've got to keep it interesting. You've got to take all the angles.
The funnest part is that there's always new stuff to do. I think it's well-documented that you perform better or work better when you're having fun. You have to make it something that's fun.
You said once, 'I like people who are weird and talking to people who are strange and have different ideas. I like to embrace that.' Why?
(Laughs). It keeps it interesting. I like to be stimulated in conversation. I like people with big, bold personalities. I think I have a big, bold personality and I love it when people match that energy or have their own wild energy.
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I love talking to weird baseball people about hitting. If you've got weird ideas, I want to hear them. Just because I think it's so interesting how people can think about things in so many different ways and all be successful at the same time.
Does baseball need to embrace more unorthodox, weird, strange ideas?
Yes. Definitely.
We have analytics now and that's great. There are a lot of good things that come out of analytics. But you just can't slap that on the game and that be the end-all, be-all. Baseball is an imperfect art. There are so many feels and instinctual plays that analytics just cannot bottle up.
You have to have creative people in the building who are competitive and have the drive. I think teams understand that. There has to be a healthy marriage.
What advice would you give on how to foster a creative mentality in their personal or professional life?
Be in love with what you're doing. To the point where it's a hobby and an obsession and something you really want to be good at, and when you're not good at it, it upsets you.
To understand if you really love something, if it goes to crap, does that hurt you on a deep level at your core? It should be a passion. And if you have the passion, that's the first step. If you're constantly figuring out how to do this one thing, the mind power will get you there eventually.
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Jamie Squire / Getty Images)