Pinkney’s improved mental approach helps him find success at Rutgers
Terriers and Junior National Team alum Hugh Pinkney (Etobicoke, Ont.) has worked hard on his mental approach to the game and that has helped him excel on the the field with the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. Photo: Rutgers Athletics
March 22, 2023
By Christian Lazar
Canadian Baseball Network
Hugh Pinkney learned to let go on a baseball field and the freedom of that headspace is serving him well with the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.
The 6-foot-2, 185-pound catcher from Etobicoke, Ont., chosen as the pre-season’s BIG10 freshman of the year, has played in each of his team’s 18 games thus far, batting .250/.345/.319 with eight RBIs and 16 runs scored.
Pinkney went hitless in his first series with Rutgers, going 0-for-11 with three walks and in years past, he would have let that get to him. Instead, he shook off that weekend in which “I got a little sped up and I got a little in my head,” and recovered to go 5-for-14 the next.
He's kept hitting since.
“Once the first hit came, I felt my body kind of ease up and I was like, ‘OK, I know who I am. This is what I do,’” said Pinkney. “As soon as that happened, I think everything became a little easier.”
The ability to make that adjustment comes from his days with the Terriers of the Canadian Premier Baseball League.
Early in his time with the club, he found that “the mental side of the game was really tough for me, because I wanted so bad to be good. But I wasn't doing the proper things, so I’d get really frustrated, and that was a big, big problem.”
Jeff Sharpe, the U15 head coach for the Terriers, noticed that about Pinkney during the backstop’s first two seasons with the program.
When things didn’t go well, he was “very hard on himself, very afraid to make mistakes, would easily get down on himself,” said Sharpe.
It took the lowest point of Pinkney’s career – when he was cut from the 2020 CPBL all-star team and felt like he’d fallen off the radar – for him to start shifting his mentality.
“I took that mindset of OK, you don't believe in me, I'm just going to work my butt off and show you that I'm good,” he explained. “So it kind of just took a little bit of pressure off being the best and kind of trying to more prove it to myself.”
Sharpe saw the shift in Pinkney during the 2021 season, describing him as a “very positive, very confident” player “never worried about making mistakes.”
A year later, the San Diego Padres drafted him in the 17th round but he ended up going to Rutgers instead, earning the conference’s pre-season freshman of the year honours along the way.
“It was definitely cool recognition,” Pinkney said, “but for me, I try not to take that and put expectations on myself. I'm going to be me and I'm going to do my best every day.”