Everybody wanted Tarik Skubal. At the 2026 MLB trade deadline, it became clear that the Detroit Tigers would be trading the two-time Cy Young Award winner, and the list of teams lining up to make offers was long. The Dodgers won the sweepstakes (don’t they always) and Skubal went to Los Angeles.
However, there was a time when the line of teams hoping to sign Skubal was only one. When he was a senior in high school, Seattle University was the only college to offer Skubal a scholarship to play baseball.
Skubal’s origin story begs the question. How do you keep your confidence when almost nobody wants you?
The question of confidence was the subject of a GameChange podcast in which performance mindset coach Dr. Michael Brown was asked how someone can gain confidence. He talked about it coming from within. Brown said, “I can’t give you confidence, and I can’t take away your confidence. But it’s easy to say that because if I’m feeling a lack of confidence, I can say, ‘My coach took it away from me.’”
Brown’s take is interestingly the same as Skubal’s father, Russ Skubal’s opinion on confidence. He told an ESPN writer, “Everybody talks about building up kids’ self-esteem. The way I see it, self-esteem comes from the word self. You have to believe you’re awesome yourself. Nobody can do that for you.”
The ESPN story takes a fascinating twist when, during interviews for the story, the writer, Tim Keown, begins to realize that Skubal’s childhood baseball career closely overlapped with those of his own kids. Incredibly, they figure out that Skubal played on the same all-star baseball team as Keown’s kid.
Even though Skubal was good enough to be on an all-star team as a kid, he wasn’t so good that everyone remembered him. A series of texts to players and coaches from the team revealed that a kid nicknamed Chewy got picked to pitch a game over the future two-time Cy Young winner. When asked about it, Skubal laughed and humbly replied, “I bet Chewy deserved it.”
Skubal was an underdog from the day that he was born. He was born with a clubfoot on his left leg and had surgery as an infant. Skubal’s father recalled that the condition never impeded Tarik from playing. “He never told a coach he couldn’t run because his foot hurt. To me, it’s the most inspirational part of his journey, and the inspiring part is that you can take any weakness and make it a strength.”
It’s a telling story because that early struggle is very likely what created the source of confidence that Skubal later exhibited when only one college coach believed in him. He knew that he had overcome a condition that would have stopped most kids from playing sports, much less making all-star teams. So, a kid named Chewy is picked over me; no problem, I’ll keep trying. College scouts don’t see much in me; that’s ok, one does, and I’ll make the most of that opportunity.
As Dr. Brown explained in the GameChange podcast, if you are letting someone else, like a coach who doesn’t see your talent, take away your confidence, then you are making “confidence a circumstance outside of me that I have no control over, versus a choice, a series of choices that I make to actually grow in confidence.”
It is actually pretty simple. Your choices can help you grow your confidence. What are those choices? Here are seven.
- Courage: Choose not to let fear of failure stop you from trying.
- Work: Choose to do the work to get better.
- Baby Steps: Choose to take it one step at a time and not expect to be great instantly.
- Accept Failure: Choose to understand that you will make mistakes, and that’s ok.
- Don’t Give Up: Choose to keep trying when it gets hard. You can choose to be gritty!
- Don’t Compare: Choose to grow at your own pace, not the pace of others.
- Celebrate: Choose to feel good about the victories (small and big) on your journey.
