Please Get Your Talk About "Overthinking" Out Of Trevor Bauer's Face

Cleveland Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer is fairly active on Twitter, and fans who tweet questions at him often get responses. Yesterday, one fan asked Bauer what he probably thought was a pretty innocent question until he got an eight-tweet rant in response.

Bauer's actually making a very good point here. "Overthinking" is one of those hollow descriptors that fans and pundits constantly reach for when they can't come up with a better way to explain why a player is struggling. Try to think of how many times you've heard a color commentator say something like, "Well, Chip, I think the biggest problem with him right now is that he's just overthinking it" when a slumping star comes to the plate. That's meaningless! And the best sign that it carries no truth value is that no one has ever applied it to a player who's doing well. You can imagine someone saying, "Bauer is doing well right now even though his arm slot has dropped a little below where it should be ideally." You absolutely cannot imagine anyone saying, "Bauer is doing well right now even though he's overthinking." That's because it's just a sound people make when they have no real analysis on offer.

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