Smoak isn’t letting ‘grind’ get him down
Take a look at the contenders for next month’s all-star game and you won’t find any Blue Jays in sight.
That’s a far cry from this time last year, when Toronto fans were in the throes of the Smoak the Vote campaign to send Justin Smoak to his first mid-summer classic. In the end, the native of Goose Creek, S.C. — hitting .294 with 23 home runs and 36 RBIs at the break — leapfrogged Eric Hosmer of the Royals to become the American League starter at first base.
There’s no such buzz this summer. The 31-year-old remains a key part of the offence with nine homers, 35 RBIs and a team-high 46 walks heading into the weekend in Los Angeles.
But his .763 OPS is down by more than 100 points, and his batting average dipped as low as .225 on June 17 after an ugly 1-for-45 stretch against the Yankees, Orioles, Rays and Nationals.
“I went through a two-week stretch there where it was just a grind,” Smoak said before the current series against the Angels. “Every day’s a grind, no matter if you feel good or you feel bad. It’s not easy, but I feel like for me it’s more (mental). I start getting quick, and getting fast that makes me slower. When I try to slow things down, that makes me quicker … Always searching, searching, searching.
“I feel like my goal is to go out there and have good at-bats. If I have good at-bats through 600 at-bats or whatever it is.”
Smoak remains a durable contributor — having missed just seven starts in 2018, three of those for the birth of his second daughter in May — and an elite fielder with just one error in 535 chances at first.
Being left-handed, Smoak says, there are only so many positions he can play: “First base or the outfield, and I’m not fast so I’m not going to play the outfield, even though I did play it as a young guy.”
Teammates tease the six-foot-four Smoak about his lack of foot speed, but not his flexibility.
“I’m naturally loose, kind of like hyper-mobile,” Smoak said. “My hips and joints were naturally loose ... like stretching, I don’t really have to do. For me, it’s for like soft-tissue type stuff, massage, just to keep my joints and stuff from locking.”
Does it get harder as he gets, um, further into his career? Smoak laughs.
“Yeah,” he said. “I wish some of the stuff I do now, I was doing when I first got to the big leagues. It took me a while to figure that out.”