A BONAFIDE BLUE JAYS HITTING MACHINE IN MAY
After a slow start, Toronto second baseman Travis has been on an offensive tear, writes Rob Longley
It’s the same in just about every stadium in Major League Baseball: Step up to the plate, look up and the big screen scoreboard reveals all.
For Toronto Blue Jays second baseman Devon Travis, it was difficult to stomach for much of the first month of the season, especially when the first digit beside the decimal beside his batting average was a zero.
“It’s bold, man and it’s right there staring at you,” Travis said. “It was tough. I wouldn’t say tough to believe that it was going to come around, it was just tough in the sense of walking to the plate and looking at the scoreboard, seeing what you’re hitting and knowing that you’re not helping the team win, offensively.”
The glare is a little less now as Travis has been a valuable bat in the Jays’ offensive resurgence.
That attack is about to get another major boost in the form of third baseman Josh Donaldson and shortstop Troy Tulowitzki returning to the lineup when a three-game weekend series against Texas begins Friday at Rogers Centre.
After an April to forget, Travis’ bat has come alive with 14 doubles in his last 20 contests and an American League best 16 extra-base hits in May. And there’s more: His average has also ascended to .238 and he has a nine-game hitting streak going.
With all that action, a healthy Travis has become a key weapon at the top of manager John Gibbons’ order, hitting right behind red-hot Kevin Pillar. So what has changed? “I think it’s a combination of things, confidence is one. And with success comes even more confidence,” Blue Jays hitting coach Brook Jacoby said.
“But prior to the streak he’s in now, he was hitting the ball good. He wasn’t having any luck.
“To his credit, he stayed after it, kept his head above water and turned it around.
“He’s always hit, so it was just a matter of time. You can get frustrated when you hit the ball on the screws and you don’t have anything to show for it. But again, mentally he stayed after it and it turned around for him.”
Overall, it was a slow spring for Travis as he missed the first handful of weeks of Grapefruit League action while recovering from a knee injury. When the hits weren’t coming early in the real games, he leaned on his teammates for support.
And now that he’s producing consistently and with authority, Travis is benefiting from a real positive mindset rather than the feigned confidence he tried to trick himself with when he was scuffling.
“You’re always a little more confident when you’re going well. It’s the biggest thing in this game,” said Travis, who ended April batting a meagre .130 for the month.
“What the good ones do that I see, when they’re going good or bad, they still believe. They still walk up to the plate with that thought process that the pitcher fears them more than they fear the pitcher. If there’s one thing I learned throughout this process, you’ve got to keep that fire.”
Eventually, Travis put aside whatever mental blocks were associated with his knee injury.
There were some technical adjustments as well, as Jacoby acknowledged, though tinkering at the major league level is usually minor.
“There are no big overhauls, really, for any of our guys, not just him,” Jacoby said.
With Travis, Jacoby helped adjust his positioning in the batter’s box, getting him to stand a little further from the plate to put the athletic hitter in a more comfortable spot to attack the ball.
And attack it he has. At 5-foot-9, 190 pounds, Travis doesn’t have the classic slugger’s build — but don’t let that fool you.
After hitting just three extrabase hits in April, he has hit two out of the park in the past three games, plus the glut of doubles.
“He’s got some power, he can drive the baseball,” Jacoby said.
“He’s got some whip in there for a smaller guy. When he finds the barrel, the ball is going to go somewhere.
“I think his approach, his ability to hit the ball the other way, really helps. His first year up here, guys were really impressed with his approach at the plate.”
Travis is just one of the keys in the Jays offence coming to light recently. The hope now is that it continues through a 10-game homestand beginning Friday against the Rangers.
“I definitely think that this is an offence that is contagious,” Travis said. “Hitting’s contagious. We feed off one another and we’re all just looking forward to keeping that going.”
He was hitting the ball good. He wasn’t having any luck. To his credit, he stayed after it, kept his head above water and turned it around.