After years of trying to fight it, I've recently given in to the idea that slumps are simply a part of baseball. There's no avoiding them and they hit you when you least expect them- no one is immune.
I've seen guys follow career days with 0 for 20 stretches. It's amazing- and it happens overnight. How can you go from being so relaxed and confident, to literally feeling helpless in the batter's box? Yesterday you couldn't miss the barrel, every ball was hit hard- today, you'll take a foul tip to reassure you that your bat doesn't have a hole in it.
But that's baseball- it's a game of failure, and even Hall of Famers made an out more than half the time. It's a player's mental toughness- his ability to bounce back from failure- that will dictate how his career goes. And in the minors, the mentally weak do not last long.
In college, when the occasional slump reared its ugly head, I always had enough on my plate to distract me from whatever lack of success I was experiencing at the moment. Go to any college in the country and you'll find your fair share of distractions- most of these can hurt your game, but sometimes in baseball, a distraction is just what you need.
