Mike Canan

Cam Schlittler says his mental coach will sometimes show him negative clips about himself right before he takes the mound, just to get him in the right kind of aggressive headspace “I had a tough one against Detroit. I’m 25, I’m active on my phone, so I don’t have to search or look that far to see whatever. It’s pretty easy.” “I have these meetings with my mental coach, Chad. He’s the best. He works with the Stars, the Cowboys as well. Very well-respected guy, and he’s been amazing for me.” “Before my starts, the last thing I do before I go outside, I’m dressed in my full uniform, and he plays a clip. It’s a different message each week. It could be random. One time it’s LeBron James or Kobe or Scheffler or whatever it is, some type of motivational clip just to get you in the right mindset. And then he throws a clip in from last week when I was in Tampa, which, one, I had never seen the clip. Two, he has no idea who the guy is. He just thought it was good to kind of get on that edge for a bounce-back start.” “It was a negative thing. So it was good. It’s not like I’m going out there thinking about this clip, but it’s like, you know, I’m locked in. I got my start. Like, I sucked last week. I’ve got to have a good one against the first-place Rays.” “I feel like it was more of a one-time thing. I don’t like the way that it was brought up online. I think it could have been better. But whatever he throws in there, I trust him, and it’s just to get me in the right headspace. If one or two times in the season he needs to throw something like that in there, I’m all behind it.” “Last year was super easy because no one had heard of me. I wasn’t some huge, touted prospect in our system. I kind of had to fight for that, and I came up like, ‘All right, I can just prove to everyone what I can do.’ That’s a great motivation.” “This year, the fans have expected me to go out there and perform well, so I’ve been trying to find a different mindset that can help me before starts to kind of get locked in.”