The fall & rise of Bruce
There is more than a little symbolism in the fact that after Jay Bruce became a Met at the trade deadline last summer, he stayed in six different hotels. Because by the time his Mets season had ended, after a terrible August here followed by a better September, the Mets made no secret that they were trying to trade him. You got the idea, in all ways, that Bruce had just been passing through town.
“I understand,” Bruce was saying on Friday afternoon, several hours before his team would come all the way back against the Marlins for its best win of the season, “that people often create their thoughts based on first impressions. I was expected to be a certain player when I got over here and wasn’t. I had a bad month. Not a good time to have a bad month.”
He had a bad month, and didn’t look anything like the hitter he had been with the Reds. It wasn’t just a bad time to have a bad month, it was the wrong place to have a bad month, which means the big, bad city. Bruce wasn’t supposed to be Yoenis Cespedes. But he was supposed to be a difference maker as the Mets made their run. He ended up hitting eight home runs for the Mets over the 50 games here, but the batting average was .219.
Then, because the Mets were supposed to have too many outfielders – it sort of looked like they did until they didn’t – they spent much of the baseball winter trying to move him. Couldn’t find the right deal all the way into the spring, with the right partner.
But now Cespedes is hurt, and no one is sure for how long, and it is Bruce and Michael Conforto who have carried the Mets so far. Sometimes a player gets the chance to change the narrative on himself. Jay Bruce is in the process of doing just that.
The home run story of the New York baseball season is Aaron Judge of the Yankees, who has 13. If the Mets’ game against the Braves in Atlanta the other night hadn’t been rained out in the fourth inning, Bruce would have 10, because he had hit another one that night before the game was called.
He has nine homers, in half as many games as he played for the Mets last season, with 25 RBI and a batting average of .291 and an OPS of .985. When the Mets needed him to play some first base, he played some first base.
A lot has happened to the Mets so far this season. They’re still a half-dozen games behind the Nationals in the loss column. There is a long way to go, for everybody. You looked at the standings and the Mets have a grand total of one more loss than the Cubs, champions of the world.
There is still the chance, especially considering the state of the Mets starting pitching, that the Nationals could run away with the thing in the National League East by the All-Star Game. But for now, and even though Conforto has become a leadoff man, he and Jay Bruce are the heart of the order. And Jay Bruce, a half-season after becoming a Met, hits the way he always hit in Cincinnati.
“It’s one of the funny things about baseball,” he said on Friday. “There’s this intense, pinpoint focus on everything that is happening right now. But sometimes you gotta have a longterm view of things. You’ve got to use the long scope.”
Bruce said, “And it never hurts to keep the blinders on.”
I asked him if he is doing anything different this season and he offered what sounded like the simplest explanation in the world, even though it involved hitting a baseball real hard. He sounded the same way Daniel Murphy did this spring when I asked him what has changed for him as a hitter over the past couple of years.
“I am,” Jay Bruce said, “making a concerted effort to hit the ball in the air.” And said he was driving the ball to leftcenter more than he has in the past few years. He sure did that the other night in Atlanta, a 9th inning home run that turned a 9-3 game into 9-7 with two outs.
Somehow a guy who seemed like the most expendable Met after last season has become an indispensable Met in April and May. Who knows where the Mets will be when Cespedes gets healthy. Who knows where the Nationals will be by then. Who knows what is going to happen with Thor and Harvey and them, as what was supposed to be the best rotation continues to look like something held together with duct tape and prayer.
“We’re all keeping the blinders on,” Jay Bruce said. “It’s the same with the veterans in the room as the young guys. There’s not a lot of panic in here. Just a lot of fight.”
They fought last weekend against the Nationals after the Nationals had made them look very bad at Citi Field, winning the first two games of that series before the Nationals hit like it was a T-Ball game on Sunday afternoon. Bruce was still swinging away when it was 9-3 in Atlanta. Then they came back on Friday night after it was 7-1 for the Marlins in the top of the fourth.
He was supposed to be on his way to the Blue Jays last winter, or the Phillies, or maybe the Giants or the Rangers. He’s still here. Guy just passing through ended up staying. Guy they thought they were get- ting, so far, is the guy they’re seeing. Sometimes second impressions are the ones that last.