Tellez turns full attention back to playing baseball

Around this time last year, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said of all the players in the organization’s system, first baseman Rowdy Tellez was the closest to being ready for the major leagues.

He might as well have slapped Tellez’s face on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Instead of shining at tripleA Buffalo, Tellez had a trying season, finishing the 2017 campaign hitting .222/.295/.333 with six home runs and 56 RBI in 122 games.

The year before, he hit .297/.387/.530 with 23 dingers in double-A and was considered the Jays’ first baseman of the future.

But last season was troubling for more than just his struggles at the plate. Tellez, 22, spent the year worrying about his mother Lori, who was diagnosed in December 2016 with Stage 4 melanoma. Lori spent the summer in hospital. To make matters worse, Tellez’s grandmother, his mom’s mom, died during spring training.

“It’s hard. It’s your parent, it’s your mom,” Tellez said. “For anybody to go through something like that it’s going to be hard on them. But I learned from it and learned how to handle what goes on (both) on and off the field and it’s only going to make me stronger.”

As the start of the 2018 Grapefruit League schedule begins, Tellez seems to have the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders. He walks around the Dunedin Stadium clubhouse with a smile on his face.

He feels great because he stuck with an off-season fitness and training regimen devised by the club’s high-performance department and, even better, because his mom is out of the hospital.

“She’s doing a lot better,” said Tellez, whose six-foot-four, 220-pound frame looks stronger and leaner than last season.

“She’s up and around. I talk to her every day. Just to see her happy with where her hair is at and talking about how excited she is about going back to work and starting to drive again, it’s a very comforting thing.”

Tellez hopes that with a clear mind, more strength and superior fitness, he’ll bounce back from last year’s performance. He said he learned a lot from the travails of 2017.

“I learned how to handle failure,” he said.

Despite the down year, Tellez is still considered a blue chip prospect (he is ranked the No. 11 prospect in the system) and the club is hopeful he’ll step in for Justin Smoak some day at first.

Tellez believes his offence will come back naturally and he takes great pride in how far his defence has come.

“It’s been a lot better,” he said. “I came into being a Blue Jay being a horrible (defensive player) and hating taking ground balls and hating defence. And now it’s like I wake up every morning and I can get my work done without having to worry about it. It has definitely changed.”

Tellez makes no bones about the fact defence is the part of his game that needed to be addressed if he wanted to reach the big leagues. But thanks to hard work — with a lot of input from Smoak — he’s getting there.

“I knew I was a bad defender,” he said. “It took time, countless hours, just playing defence.”

Tellez said he picks Smoak’s brain every chance he gets.

“How to be loose on defence, how to field ground balls with your feet. He’s a phenomenal defender and that’s one thing I’ve always wanted to be,” Tellez said.

Tellez said their personalities jive.

“His hair tells it all,” said Tellez, with a laugh. “It’s all over the place.”

Gibbons has no doubt Tellez will bounce back.

“I love him as a player. He’s got a lot in there, man. I think he’s going to be a big run producer in the game, I really do,” Gibbons said.

“He did have a tough year last year and then he was dealing with some off-field stuff. But the guy can hit. And he’s turning himself into a pretty good defender. I think he’s going to have a good, long major-league career.”

Tellez said the goal this year is to stay even-keeled at all times.

“I want to be the same teammate every day,” he said. “Don’t let the good days make you a different player and don’t let the bad days make you a different player.”

He also plans to stay in close touch with his mom, of course.

“She’s better and that gives me piece of mind,” he said.