Baltimore Orioles: The Ideal Baseball Personality Type

May 6, 2014; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; Baltimore Orioles starting pitcher Miguel Gonzalez (50) in the dugout against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

A majority of the players on the Baltimore Orioles have what I would consider to be the ideal baseball personality type. What is that? Is there really such a thing?

Certainly every profession has a type of personality that naturally best fits the tasks that come with that line of work. An engineer needs a logical, problem-solving, task-oriented person to attack the challenge of project design and fulfillment. An entertainer or musician is best possessed of bold and outgoing people skills and a comfort zone with being in the spotlight.

Is there such a thing as a perfect baseball personality?

It could be argued that a baseball player is in need of both of those skill sets – being at once in need of fine self-control and a logical approach when things are going well or going poorly, along with an ability to do it in front of thousands of people in a stadium and even millions at times by broadcast.

The common denominator is an ability to control emotions by not getting overly excited by the size of the platform when things are going well, yet also able to manage the fear and anxiety when one of your infielders dropped a one-out double-play grounder with runners on first and second. Instead of getting you out of the inning, you now have the bases loaded with David Ortiz coming to bat at Fenway.

Maybe the key and operative word here is to say that a successful baseball player needs “focus” – the disciplined ability to either be naturally oriented toward a controlled execution of the next task, or the ability to channel raging emotions and energies into the performance of the next necessary detail.

Examples of the two ends of this continuum may be starting pitchers Miguel Gonzalez and Bud Norris.

Gonzo is by nature (in my view) the perfect baseball personality. He is steady and unruffled; little that happens will fluster him. He is not going to look much different whether Jonathan Schoop turns the double play in the illustration above, or if he muffs it. The rather emotional flat-line personality often plays well in the sport of baseball – providing it does not muffle a genuine desire to compete and excel.

On the other hand, Norris is a power plant of internal energy and emotions about to explode. There is no hiding the intensity of his competitive spirit. The raging energy within him is obvious in every interview. And you may not want to actually read his lips when he gives up a home run; but you may also not want to be the next guy who has to step into the batter’s box against him after that happens.

It seems to me that the harder task is that of the Norris personality. Tens of thousands of screaming fans along with the fixated gaze of dozens of TV cameras should sufficiently arouse the quiet competitor within even the most mellow of personalities, like Nick Markakis for another example. The same scene, however, only exacerbates the opposite type, making it doubly the challenge to channel the energies productively.

So consider the list of natural baseball personalities on the Baltimore Orioles: Matt Wieters, Chris Tillman, J.J. Hardy, Zach Britton, Ryan Flaherty (if he has a pulse), Caleb Joseph, Ryan Webb and Brad Brach. To a bit lesser extent we could add Chris Davis, Wei-Yin Chen, Darren O’Day, and David Lough.

I didn’t add Brian Matusz to this list. Though his personality may be much of this type, he strikes me as off the charts in a different direction of nervous fear running amuck just under the surface.