Parks car show, trucks into camp all business
PORT ST. LUCIE — There was no three-wheeler with his uniform number emblazoned on the front, no Lamborghini. Yoenis Cespedes did not “arrive,” at Mets camp Saturday wearing a cowboy hat or riding a horse. In fact, the Mets slugger has been around here most of the winter, working with the team’s strength and conditioning program, pulling up in a relatively normal for a Florida rancher’s white pickup truck.
Cespedes seems to be saving the flash for the bright lights on the field this year.
Saturday morning, Cespedes shrugged off what became his spring training car show last year and embraced the tranquility that came with his new fouryear, $110 million deal.
“Yes, having that really gives me a sense of calm,” Cespedes said through a Mets translator. “Knowing I am no longer year-to-year and my home is here with the Mets for the next four years, I am able to prepare and focus better.”
And that is what Cespedes has been doing as he slipped in and out of the complex in his albeit oversized white pickup truck the last couple of months. He spent time working out at the team-approved Mike Barwis training facility, trimming down and strengthening his legs. “He looks tremendous,” hitting coach Kevin Long said. “He came into camp in much better shape this year than he did last year. He’s in great shape.”
Even with a slow start to his spring last year and a nagging right-quad strain which he played with for much of last season, Cespedes’ game was flashy. He hit 31 home runs, drove in 86 runs, hitting. 280.
“He is a special player,” Asdrubal Cabrera said. “He changes a lineup. He has so much talent. And people don’t realize, but he works hard. He works hard for his team.”
Working with Long and assistant hitting coach Pat Rossiter has made Cespedes an even more dangerous hitter in his time with the Mets. Last spring, Long and Rossiter showed Cespedes chasing fastballs high and out of the strike zone. Then they challenged him to refine strike zone.
“He was surprised when he saw the data and the video,” Long said. “He said that (the high fastball) was absolute poison for him. And then he went and changed it.”
Cespedes drew a career-high 51 walks and struck out 108 times in 479 at-bats, a career-low rate.
That is the Cespedes that Long knows, not the guy that was rumored as he bounced around in his first few years in the league to be a diva and difficult. The hitting coach said that the idea Cespedes would slack off because of the long-term deal was ridiculous.
“That’s a bad, bad rap. That’s a nasty reputation because it is so far from the truth,” Long said. “He takes more swing in the cages and works harder than anybody I have.”
Long called Cespedes a blue-collar worker and said the rancher’s pickup truck was more fitting than the flashy cars he was driving the year before. Terry Collins spent a couple of hours last week getting to know Cespedes a little better as they played golf with Mets COO Jeff Wilpon. He came away impressed with the slugger’s golf game and his sense of purpose.
“He knows he’s the guy on this team and he’s going to run with it,” Collins said was the impression he came away with.
And how far Cespedes’ runs with leading the Mets offense is how far this team will go in 2017. He may be carrying the offense, but he’s not weighing himself down with pressure.
“I don’t think it’s a sense of urgency. This is however, what every ball player ultimately wants to get, is that World Series ring,” Cespedes said. “I think as long as we stay healthy with this team, we have a really great chance of achieving that.”
And that is seemingly what Cespedes is focused on this spring. “Last year that just sort of happened, because it happened. I didn’t really plan that,” Cespedes said with a shrug.
“I don’t think my focus was ever not on baseball. Last year with the cars, that was just something off the field. I think the second I was on that field, my focus was on baseball and it will continue to be.”