Tai Peete is anchored as a Mariner

The start to his minor-league journey hasn’t always been smooth, but Peete is learning the improvements he most needs to make are on the mental side of the ball

Tai Peete stood on the field after the March Spring Breakout game surrounded by reporters. He’d gone three-for-three on the night, with maybe the most impressive hit of the night: a 110.6 mph rocket that traveled 422 feet, batting left-on-left against celebrated Reds prospect Tugboat Wilkinson.

It was a big night for Peete, who sometimes finds himself an afterthought when national prospect writers discuss Seattle’s loaded farm system. While switch pitcher Jurrangelo Cijntje has been a media sensation and fellow 19-year-old Colt Emerson has seen his prospect stock rise sharply, Peete has scuffled to find consistency in full-season ball, hitting majestic home runs —including a two-grand-slam night—but also striking out at an elevated rate. It’s caused Peete to fully embrace the mental side of the game, the weight of which he says he underestimated as a young player.

“If you asked me two years ago, I’d say it’s a physical game,” Peete told reporters, standing on the field after his big night. “But now I’ve completely changed the way I think about it. I talk to my little brother and say, hey man, dude. It’s not what you think. It’s not going out there and playing every day, that’s not the hard part. The hard part is wanting to go out there and play every day. The hard part is just wanting to do it again, and again, and again.”

These comments might be jarring for someone who considers playing baseball a dream job, or those who claim they’d play for free. But for Peete, it’s about falling in love with the boring or more routine aspects of baseball, or even embracing the struggle:

“To clarify, it’s about whether we want to learn more about it, to dive deep into the actual mental side of baseball. We always want to play baseball, right, but do we want to take the time to critique the small things, to master the small things over and over and over, to try to get one percent better every day? That’s where wanting to get better comes in as a factor. You want to come to the field. You want to learn today. You want to take something out of the day. Doing the things that no one sees, the people on social media or the fans, they don’t see that side of baseball.

Baseball’s hard. You don’t see when we go home later that night, we’re going through the same thing. We’re watching constant film. We’re not seeing anything different. You’re in a slump or a drought and you have to go out and do the same thing the next day with little confidence. That’s where it comes in: wanting to go, wanting to work through it, wanting to figure it out.”

In addition to trying to master his approach at the plate, Peete has been dealt an additional challenge. With a logjam of infield prospects, the Mariners decided to try the uber-athletic Peete, drafted as a shortstop, out in center field, a transition he says is going smoothly.,

“I feel like I can cover a little bit of ground,” said Peete with his trademark dry humor. “I feel like I have a little bit of athleticism on me.”

“I feel comfortable out there. I’m just working on the fundamentals, talking to Mike Cameron, and doing the small things. I think that’s the biggest thing about being in center, making sure I’m doing it right.”

Doing the small things consistently and correctly has been a theme for Peete, who has added lean muscle to his frame, looking even taller than his listed height of 6’3”. Peete is pleased with his physical conditioning; the part of his game he’s intent on improving is his mental conditioning.

“Most of my player plan wasn’t physical, honestly. I’m in a great spot, I’m in great shape. It was more, carry yourself as a pro. And a lot of it was being comfortable with higher levels and more situations I’m in, more fans and more pressure, being able to handle that. That’s a big part of the player I’m trying to become.”

To do that, Peete is trying to set a daily routine that he can build off and keep consistent as he moves up levels. So much of baseball is beyond a player’s control, but he can control his daily routine, from stretching to arm care to what time he eats breakfast. “Giving 100% effort is non-negotiable. Being on time, being a pro, being a good teammate. That stuff is controllable. And that’s where I try to excel my own game.”

“There’s times when it definitely gets frustrating. I need a knock, I need a hit, and it’s a line drive straight to the defender. But I bet the next week you hit that same pitch and it’s a hit.”

Peete credits the growth of his understanding of the mental side of the game to Mariners mental skills coach Kellen Lee. He has weekly calls with Lee over the season; short check-ins, maybe 15-20 minutes, but Peete calls them “unbelievable” as far as keeping him on track.

“Since becoming a pro, Tai has been diligent with diving into the mental side of the game,” said Lee. “He has a unique blend of confidence while he also continuously looks for ways to improve. He has committed to an incredibly intentional routine that he trusts to make him better and prepare himself to compete with confidence consistently.”

The Mariners, appropriately, teach their prospects to have an “anchor,” a mental cue, which Peete says he learned from Lee and Modesto’s hitting coach Jordan Cowan. “The organization just hammers that, about having the anchor spot,” said Peete.

An anchor can be anything – a morning routine, a way of structuring one’s day, a mental cue, a throwing progression or series of reps on the field or in the cages. For Peete, he says he does try to stick to a routine that starts with how he wakes up—“I’m not a morning person; just being able to get up out of bed is a blessing for me,” he says—with a prayer each morning that builds on the page of Scripture he’d read the night before. But primarily, he says his anchor is the mantra “damage low.”

“That’s just my mental cue when I’m at the plate and I’m not feeling my best. As long as I damage low here—there’s a lot that goes with that term in my head. I say ‘damage low,’ for some people that might mean ‘ground ball.’ But for me, that applies to my balance, to where my hands are, that applies to what I’m looking for, my approach. So it’s all that in two words, and I know, this is my anchor here. So I can go off from that and try something new, but if it fails, or I don’t like it or it’s not for me, I can go right back to my anchor spot.”

Having that anchor spot has allowed Peete to be curious about his development and take calculated risks made not from fear (for example, “I have to fix this hole in my swing”) but curiosity (“what happens if I…”). Being willing to take risks like that requires a healthy relationship with failure, something that can be complicated with the expectations that come with being a top prospect.

Peete says he looks to fellow prospect Cole Young as an example of how to control the prospect hype, praising Young’s consistency and ability to be the same player every day regardless of the results on the field. But at the same time, he recognizes that, just as he’d never be able to replicate anyone’s swing because he doesn’t know what their thought process is in the box, he has to find his own way of controlling the outside noise.

“Failure is very important because it gives you that anchor spot, that spot where you can reach out and try something new, and if that doesn’t work, if you fail, you can go back to your anchor spot, what you know you’re good at. But being able to take a risk and try something new, I path away from my anchor, I fail, 0-for-10, it didn’t work. I’m able to go back to that anchor, to go back to what I was doing before.

“But if I didn’t have an anchor, if I didn’t have anything to rely on, I’m just kind of drifting off. And that’s something where a lot of guys, a lot of players—including myself—we can get lost in that. We can get lost in the drifting off and not being able to find that spot back home, that’s where failure can eat us up. You don’t want to fail, but you have to fail in this game; baseball is a game of failure. So just being able to get through failure and conquer that spot, so you know where you can get back to, where your anchor spot is.”

The Mariners give their prospects a notebook to record answers to specific questions raised in their player plans— “it’s pretty cool,” says Peete, “it’s this little notebook with a trident on it”—which provides another kind of anchor; a tangible reminder of the players they were a year ago, and what that player prioritized or thought.

“If you’d have asked me yesterday, do you feel different, I would say no. I feel like I was the same person yesterday, two days ago. But five months ago? A year ago? I’m a completely different person. So it’s great, knowing I feel the same, but if I look back at some of the things I did last year, some of the answers I had written down in my player plan, they were completely different. So I can tell that I’m growing as a player.”

“It’s cool seeing that progression. Things don’t affect me as much as they did when I was 17, 18 years old, getting frustrated with small things. But now I know, these skills take time to build. This is going to take time. It’s not a one day thing.”

“Tai deserves all of the credit for this growth,” said Lee. “I’m excited to see where he can take himself in this game.”

Peete has a seven-year-old brother who also plays baseball and wants to be just like his big brother, tagging along to events and going to games to watch Tai play. Peete has had to resist the urge to pass his learning on. “I want to tell him so badly, just like give him shortcuts. Like, ‘hey man, don’t do this, we don’t do this in the pros.’ But he needs to go through his canon events, so he learns the things he needs to learn.”

That’s a process that’s still ongoing for the big brother.

“I’m just trying to figure out, how can I be my best self? It’s my tomorrow character. What I’m thinking tomorrow is where I want to strive to be today.”

“Tomorrow character” sounds like something the Mariners mental skills department preaches; is that where he got that?

“You like that?” He grins delightedly. “I just made that up. Just off the dome.” He taps his temple and flashes that big smile again.

Peete has a chance to step into his tomorrow character tonight, as the minor league season kicks off for Everett, where Peete will face tougher pitchers at the High-A level than in Modesto, as well as Funko Field’s postage stamp-sized outfield. But he won’t be going it alone; he’ll have his anchor in tow.