Three Errors, One Systemic Failure: Ronny Simon and the Missing Piece in Player Development.
Ronny Simon’s tearful exit after three errors in four innings during the Miami Marlins’ 8–6 loss to the San Diego Padres on May 27, 2025, is being framed as a bad night for a rookie. But it was something deeper—a glimpse into the failure of the developmental system that got him there.
Simon’s breakdown wasn’t just about errors. It was about an entire industry that teaches players how to field ground balls and hit sliders, but too often fails to equip them with the emotional tools to stay afloat when the lights are brightest and the moment spirals. The weight of those errors—each one compounding the last—revealed a young player caught in a storm of stress, shame, and spiraling self-doubt, with no clear lifeline to pull him back.
Across Minor League Baseball, young athletes are trained, refined, promoted—but not always supported. There’s too little emphasis on nervous system regulation, mental skills, and somatic readiness. Too little time and too few resources are dedicated to teaching players what to do after failure—how to breathe through a moment like that, how to recover one pitch at a time, how not to unravel. The system assumes that if you’re good enough to get there, you’re good enough to survive there. But that’s not development. That’s abandonment.
Development doesn’t stop at the edge of skill. It should extend to the self—how players relate to stress, recover from mistakes, and show up when the game gets cruel. The minor leagues, with their grueling schedules, low pay, and relentless pressure to perform, amplify the need for emotional resilience. Yet, many organizations lag behind, offering sporadic mental health workshops or generic sports psychology sessions that rarely address the body’s role in processing stress. This oversight leaves players like Simon vulnerable, not just to failure, but to the kind of public unraveling that can define a career before it starts. If we want players to withstand that kind of moment, we have to start long before the error happens.
Miami Marlins’ rookie Ronny Simon exits the game in tears.
Prevention Is Preparation: Training the Nervous System Before the Lights Come On
It’s easy to look at Ronny Simon’s night and ask, How can we help a player recover in the moment? But the more important question is: How do we train players so the moment doesn’t own them in the first place? Somatic practices aren’t just recovery tools. They’re preventative. They strengthen a player’s baseline resilience long before the error, the crowd, or the collapse. Like applying primer before painting, doing somatic work upfront allows everything else that comes along with training and competing to land better in the mind and body.
Just as athletes build physical strength to prevent injury, they can build nervous system resilience to prevent emotional unraveling. Somatic training—yoga, breathwork, mindfulness, and trauma-informed modalities like brainspotting—helps players rewire their stress response. The body learns how to stay regulated, even under pressure. Not immune to stress, but responsive rather than reactive.
Daily breathwork sessions, even five minutes before or after practice, train athletes to modulate their physiology on command. Exercises like box breathing (inhaling, holding, exhaling, holding—all for four counts) teach players to maintain composure during long at-bats, between pitches, or in pressure situations with the game on the line. Over time, these become automatic—a kind of physiological muscle memory that kicks in when adrenaline spikes. For example, the Seattle Mariners’ High-A affiliate in Everett has implemented daily breathwork for players, with coaches reporting fewer instances of players “losing their cool” during high-pressure games.
Yoga enhances proprioception and interoception—the ability to sense body position and internal states. This matters more than it seems. A player who’s attuned to the subtle signs of rising tension (shallow breath, clenched jaw, tight shoulders) can intervene early—stretch, reset, breathe—before the body tips into panic. Yoga also builds tolerance for discomfort, a crucial skill in a game that demands it. For international players like Simon, who may face cultural isolation or language barriers, yoga’s non-verbal nature can be a universal tool, fostering connection and self-awareness without requiring fluency.
Mindfulness, practiced regularly, increases cognitive flexibility and focus. Players learn to notice their thoughts without being consumed by them, to witness the mind’s chatter without chasing it. This awareness allows them to reset between pitches, release past mistakes, and stay locked into what matters now: the next play, the next breath.
Even brainspotting, typically reserved for recovery, can be used proactively. Pre-season sessions can uncover and release hidden emotional blocks—past traumas, performance fears, identity burdens—that would otherwise surface during high-pressure moments. For a player like Simon, whose journey included multiple trades and the pressure of representing his Dominican community, addressing these burdens early could lighten the emotional load. A player who’s processed their story in advance is less likely to be ambushed by it on the field.
The goal isn’t perfection. It’s preparation. Somatic practices create a nervous system that’s adaptable, not brittle. One that can bend under pressure instead of breaking. In a sport where every moment is magnified, that flexibility is the difference between staying in the game and falling apart under its weight.
Somatic Practices in the Moment of Failure
Imagine Simon after that first error—a misplayed grounder, the ball slipping past his glove, the crowd’s murmur cutting through the stadium. His heart rate spikes, his breath shallows, and the amygdala, the brain’s alarm system, floods his body with cortisol. In that moment, the game becomes a blur of noise and pressure. Somatic practices could have offered him a way to anchor himself and reset.
Yoga-based techniques, such as diaphragmatic breathing or a quick grounding pose, could have helped Simon regulate his nervous system on the field. By taking 10 seconds to focus on slow, deep breaths—inhaling for four counts, exhaling for six—he could have lowered his heart rate and calmed the fight-or-flight response. A subtle grounding stance, like pressing his feet firmly into the dirt, could have reconnected him to his body, countering the mental spiral that often follows a mistake. He might have visualized his breath as a wave, washing away the error and recentering him on the present play. These practices, rooted in yoga’s emphasis on mind-body integration, are simple but powerful tools for staying present under pressure.
Mindfulness could have further supported Simon by redirecting his focus from the error to the present moment. A brief mindfulness exercise—focusing on the feel of his glove, the sound of the crowd, or the rhythm of his breath—could have helped him interrupt the cascade of negative thoughts (“I’m failing, I’m not good enough”). For instance, silently noting “error, let it go” while focusing on the texture of the dirt could have anchored him in the now, preventing the first mistake from bleeding into the next. Mindfulness trains the brain to observe without judgment, allowing players to acknowledge a mistake without letting it define the next play. In baseball, as in life, what you do next is everything.
While brainspotting is less feasible mid-game, its principles could inform a quick reset. Simon could have been trained to find a neutral focal point—like the outfield wall or the pitcher’s mound—and hold his gaze there for a moment to diffuse emotional intensity. This technique, inspired by brainspotting’s use of eye positioning, could have helped him step out of the stress cycle and back into the game. Had Simon been trained in these practices, he might have had a fighting chance to stay composed after that first error, potentially preventing the subsequent mistakes that led to his exit. But these tools require consistent training, not just a one-off seminar. Minor League Baseball must integrate somatic practices into daily routines—pre-game warm-ups, dugout rituals, or even in-game resets—to make them second nature.
Processing the Aftermath: Post-Game Recovery
The game ends, but the weight of those errors lingers. Simon’s tearful exit suggests not just in-the-moment distress but a deeper struggle to process failure in a high-stakes environment. Here, somatic practices could have been transformative in helping him metabolize the experience and protect his mental health moving forward.
Yoga offers more than physical flexibility; it’s a practice of emotional release. A post-game yoga session, even a short 15-minute sequence of restorative poses like child’s pose, pigeon pose, or legs-up-the-wall, could have helped Simon release stored tension in his body. Trauma and stress often lodge in the muscles and nervous system, manifesting as tightness or restlessness. Gentle movement paired with intentional breathing could have helped Simon process the shame and frustration, creating space for self-compassion. For example, a guided sequence focusing on hip openers could have helped release the emotional weight of the night, as the hips often store stress tied to fear or failure.
Mindfulness practices, such as guided meditation or journaling, could have supported Simon in reframing the narrative of that game. A 10-minute body scan meditation—focusing on each part of the body while noticing sensations without judgment—could have helped him release the emotional residue of the night. Alternatively, a structured journaling exercise, prompted by questions like “What did I learn from this moment?” or “What can I control next time?”, could have shifted his perspective from failure to growth. Writing just three sentences about what went well that day, even unrelated to the errors, could have helped Simon reconnect with his strengths. Mindfulness fosters resilience by teaching players to see setbacks as temporary, not defining.
Brainspotting shines in post-game recovery, particularly for processing intense emotional experiences like Simon’s. In a session with a trained therapist, Simon could identify a “brainspot”—a point in his visual field where the distress of the errors feels most intense—and use it to access and release the underlying emotions. Brainspotting targets the subcortical brain, where trauma and stress are stored, helping players process events that feel overwhelming. For Simon, whose errors were witnessed by thousands and likely amplified by social media scrutiny, brainspotting could have helped him process the public nature of his failure, reducing its lasting impact. A session could have helped him unpack the shame and fear of failure, reducing the risk of carrying that emotional weight into future games.
A Systemic Failure, Not a Personal One
Ronny Simon, a 25-year-old infielder from the Dominican Republic, earned his shot the hard way. Signed by the Cubs in 2018 and traded multiple times, he worked through five minor league seasons, posting a .283/.356/.429 slash line with 10 home runs and 56 RBIs in Triple-A in 2024. He wasn’t gifted anything. He earned the moment he got.
That moment should’ve come with a stronger system behind him—one that didn’t just get him ready to succeed, but one that made space for him to fail and keep going. The minor leagues are a pressure cooker: long bus rides, meager salaries (often less than $20,000 a year for low-level players), and the constant threat of being cut. Add to that the cultural and linguistic challenges faced by international players like Simon, who may navigate homesickness or the pressure of supporting family back home, and the need for robust emotional support becomes undeniable.
Some organizations are starting to address this. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Seattle Mariners, for example, have integrated mental skills coaches and mindfulness programs into their minor league systems, with players reporting improved focus and resilience. But these are exceptions, not the rule. Most MiLB teams lack the budget or prioritization for comprehensive mental health and somatic training programs, so players are left to find these resources on their own. A 2023 survey by the Minor League Baseball Players Association found that only 40% of minor leaguers felt their organization provided adequate mental health resources, and even fewer had access to trauma-informed or body-based approaches like yoga or brainspotting.
This isn’t just about Ronny Simon. It’s about the hundreds of players grinding through the minors, carrying the weight of their dreams and the fear of failure, often without the tools to navigate either. Somatic practices aren’t a cure-all, but they’re a start—a way to bridge the gap between the body and mind, to help players stay grounded in the moment and resilient in the aftermath. MiLB organizations can take a first step by hiring somatic coaches or partnering with local therapists trained in brainspotting, ensuring every player has access to these tools—not just the prospects with big signing bonuses.
Simon deserved more than a shot—he deserved a system that taught him how to breathe through the storm, metabolize the pain, and keep showing up with courage. Not just for one game, but for a career.
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If you’re an athlete or team ready to build the kind of resilience that lasts beyond one moment or one season, reach out. I bring 15 years of experience across every major sport—NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB/MiLB—helping athletes train their bodies and nervous systems, recover from pressure, and unlock sustainable performance. Let’s build something that holds up under the weight of the game.
Metta,
Drewsome.
