Pillar’s bat is finally catching up to that golden-tinted glove
The Blue Jays have come to take his defence for granted; his improvement at the plate has been a pleasant surprise
It was late last June, and Kevin Pillar was once again struggling to adjust to the big leagues. Lifted for a pinch hitter — with his parents in the crowd — the Blue Jays outfielder briefly lost his cool in the dugout, tossing his bat and jawing with manager John Gibbons.
He was shipped back to Triple-A Buffalo that night.
These days, Pillar refers to the minitantrum only as “the incident,” but he recognizes it as a turning point in his development, when he was forced to confront his weaknesses in order to salvage his career.
"That was a scary time,” the 26-year-old admitted this week. “I didn’t know if I would ever be back in this clubhouse.”
Humbled, but determined to make the most of the demotion, Pillar put his head down and got to work, primarily focusing on his plate discipline and being a more patient hitter.
Granted, the season isn’t even two weeks old, but so far the adjustments Pillar made midway through last year are paying off. He has arguably been the Jays’ best all-around player, averaging more than a hit a game while playing spectacular defence. His wall-climbing, home-run banditry against Tampa was just the latest example.
Through Wednesday’s games, Pillar leads all outfielders with seven defensive runs saved, according to Fangraphs.com, and he is one of only six outfielders in the league thus far to make a catch deemed “remote” by Inside Edge Fielding — meaning the play had a less-than-10-percent chance of being made. “The way he’s played the first week and a half, you should give him the Gold Glove right now,” pitcher Mark Buehrle quipped.
But Pillar’s defence has never been in doubt. The question was always what he was doing at the plate, and that’s where he’s showing the biggest improvement.
A career .322 hitter in the minors, Pillar could barely hit his weight when he was first called up to the big leagues in 2013. The first half of last year wasn’t much better, as whispers of the dreaded “Quad-A” label — reserved for players too good for Triple-A and not good enough for the majors — grew louder.
That was the context in which he was sent down last June.
“I went down there and focused on taking big-league at-bats and really working on my plate discipline,” he said. “Really slowing every thing down, allowing the ball to travel a bit more, making better judgments before I swung.”
In the past, Pillar says, he would swing at basically every pitch he could reach. Last season, for instance, he swung at 43.7 per cent of pitches outside the strike zone, the ninth-highest rate in the majors among hitters with at least 120 plate appearances.
If he was going to be successful in the big leagues, he knew he had to be more selective.
“Before I was trying to get hits on every pitch. If it was close I was trying to hit it,” he said.
“Now I understand the process of putting together a professional, major-league at-bat, whether it’s the first pitch or whether it’s 0-2, 3-2, whatever the case may be, I’m better aware of the strike zone, I’m better aware of my strengths and weaknesses as a hitter.”
After spending two months in the minors following “the incident,” the Jays recalled Pillar in late August. He didn’t tear the cover off the ball upon his return, but he did show a marked improvement in some key areas. He shrunk his strikeout rate from 26.8 per cent to 21 per cent and boosted his batting average by more than 60 points while hitting for more power.
This year has seen even more improvement. His11hits are one back of Jose Reyes for the team lead, and he has just three strikeouts in 34 trips to the plate. These are extremely small sample sizes, of course, but it’s clear Pillar’s adjustment is paying dividends.
“He’s doing now what he did in the minor leagues every year,” Gibbons said.
Pillar did make some mechanical adjustments to his swing: he lowered his hands and adjusted his leg kick to improve his timing. But he says the most important change was in his mental approach.
“The more and more I’ve stood in the box in the major leagues I understand that no matter how good pitchers are in the big leagues they still make mistakes,” Pillar said. “And I’ve learned, just by watching some of these great hitters in here, that they capitalize on hitting mistakes. The guys make their money by hitting the pitcher’s mistakes and I think that just comes with being a little more selective at the plate.”
Gibbons will have a tough decision to make when Michael Saunders returns from injury later this month. The 28-year-old was projected to be the starting left fielder before he tore his left meniscus at the start of spring training, and he was expected to bump either Pillar or Pompey out of the starting lineup whenever he rejoined the team. With both youngsters playing well, Gibbons might have to find a way to share playing time between all three. A 32nd-round draft pick who signed as a college senior for $1,000, Pillar has always had an underdog’s mentality.
“I don’t think when they drafted me they expected me to be here,” he said. “That was something I never lost sight of. If they gave me an opportunity I would make the best of it. I could work myself up. As long as they gave me an opportunity to play all I could control was how hard I played and how much work I put into the game.”
Gibbons pointed out after Wednesday’s game that this is the first time in Pillar’s big-league career that he’s had the chance to play on a regular basis. He’s making the most of the opportunity, but isn’t taking his early success for granted. At some point pitchers will adjust again to him and then the test will be how well he responds. For now, however, he’s trying to stay within his patient approach.
“It’s a long year and you’re going to make a lot more outs than you do hits in this game,” Pillar said. “But as a hitter the thing you can control is the pitches you swing at and how hard you make contact.”