The yips in baseball is a sudden, unexplained inability to make accurate throws. A player who has thrown thousands of routine balls without thinking twice finds that the skill simply stops working. The ball sails wildly, bounces short, or freezes in the hand. It’s not a slump or a bad day. The yips can persist for months, years, or an entire career, and the condition sits at the intersection of neurology and psychology in ways that make it uniquely difficult to treat.
How the Yips Work
The yips fall into two categories. In some players, the condition is a form of focal dystonia: involuntary muscle contractions that fire during one specific task. The same way a writer can develop cramps that only appear while holding a pen, a baseball player can develop muscle misfires that only show up during a throw. This type is linked to overuse of the same set of muscles through years of repetitive motion.
The second type is purely psychological. About 43% of baseball players with throwing yips report that anxiety about throwing the ball triggered their symptoms, based on research published in PLOS One. In these cases, the player becomes so self-focused and consumed with the mechanics of throwing that the automatic motor pattern breaks down. A skill that was once unconscious becomes painfully deliberate, and the harder they try to control it, the worse it gets. “Choking” under pressure is a related phenomenon, but the yips go further. Choking is temporary. The yips can rewire a player’s relationship to the skill entirely.
Many players experience both types simultaneously. Anxiety worsens the dystonic symptoms, and the physical misfires generate more anxiety, creating a feedback loop that’s extremely hard to break.
What It Looks Like on the Field
The hallmark of the yips is repeated wild throws that can’t be caught by the target. In research settings, the condition is defined as wild throws persisting for more than one month. Players describe freezing mid-throw, sudden jerks or twitches during the release, and a general feeling that their arm “won’t listen.” The ball may fly ten feet over the first baseman’s head on a routine grounder, or skip in the dirt on a throw that should be effortless.
What makes the yips so disorienting is their specificity. A shortstop might make spectacular plays on difficult chances but completely lose control on easy, routine throws where there’s time to think. The more straightforward the play, the more room there is for the mind to interfere. Warm-ups and practice throws often feel fine, but the symptoms return the moment the game situation adds pressure.
Famous Cases in Baseball History
The condition is sometimes called “Steve Blass disease,” named after the Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher who was one of the best in baseball in 1972 and then, with no warning, lost the ability to throw strikes. In the 1973 season, his ERA ballooned to 9.85. He walked 84 batters in just under 89 innings while striking out only 27. His performance that year, measured by wins above replacement at negative 3.9, remains the worst single season by any pitcher in the modern era. He never recovered and retired shortly after.
Rick Ankiel’s story followed a similar arc. A 20-year-old pitching prodigy for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2000, Ankiel threw five wild pitches in a single postseason inning and never regained his control on the mound. After years of trying to fix the problem, he disappeared from the majors entirely in 2002. His solution was radical: he reinvented himself as an outfielder, returning to the big leagues in 2007 and playing several more seasons. Ankiel’s case became the most visible example of how the yips can force a complete career reinvention.
Chuck Knoblauch, a Gold Glove second baseman for the Yankees, developed a throwing problem so severe that routine tosses to first base became adventures. He eventually moved to designated hitter and left field before retiring. More recently, in 2025, Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe drew comparisons to Knoblauch after his error total spiked and he began making poor throws on routine grounders, including a flip to second base that sailed wide and a hesitant throw on an easy play that extended a game into the ninth inning.
How Common Are the Yips?
The yips are not as rare as their dramatic reputation suggests, but they’re not widespread either. A study of Division I collegiate athletes found that about 5% of baseball players had experienced the yips during their athletic career. Across all sports in the study, 13.2% of athletes reported experiencing the condition at some point. The actual number could be higher, since many players don’t report the problem or attribute it to a mechanical issue rather than recognizing it as the yips.
Certain positions are more vulnerable. Catchers, shortstops, second basemen, and pitchers all make high-volume throws under pressure, which creates more opportunities for the condition to take hold. But no position is immune. The yips have appeared in outfielders, third basemen, and even first basemen on return throws.
Treatment and Recovery
Because the yips have both neurological and psychological components, treatment varies depending on what’s driving the problem. For the anxiety-driven type, sports psychologists typically use cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness training, and mental imagery exercises to help players stop overthinking and return to automatic movement patterns. The goal is to quiet the conscious mind’s interference with a skill the body already knows how to perform.
EMDR therapy, originally developed for trauma, is gaining traction as a treatment for performance blocks in athletes. Research on professional golfers with performance anxiety found that EMDR-based interventions reduced anxiety levels and the distress associated with past athletic traumas. While most of the published research involves golfers rather than baseball players, the underlying mechanism of treating the emotional charge attached to a specific motor task applies across sports.
For players whose yips are rooted in focal dystonia, the approach may include altering throwing mechanics to bypass the specific movement pattern that triggers the involuntary contractions. Some players change their arm slot, their grip, or their footwork to create a “new” throwing motion that doesn’t activate the same neural pathway. This is essentially what position changes accomplish. When Rick Ankiel moved to the outfield, he was still throwing a baseball, but the motion and context were different enough that the dystonic pattern didn’t follow him.
Recovery timelines are unpredictable. Some players work through the yips in a few months with the right psychological support. Others, like Blass and Knoblauch, never fully overcome the condition. The players who recover most successfully tend to be those who address the problem early, before the anxiety feedback loop becomes deeply entrenched, and who have access to both mental performance coaching and mechanical adjustments from their coaching staff.