Scuffling Pillar makes adjustments on and off the field
Between a slur and slump, Kevin Pillar is in a hard place.
Just don’t suggest that the emotional trauma of the former is in any way responsible for the latter.
“I don’t think traumatized is the right word. Obviously it affected me. But there’s no correlation between what happened and my performance on the field, between what I said and what I’ve done since.
“It’s just a coincidence of timing. I don’t use it as an excuse for what I’m going through on the field right now.”
Well, maybe. Although, to a Blue Jays clubhouse observer, Pillar has seemed uncharacteristically low-key since a homophobic insult hiccupped out of his mouth back in mid-May — which stunned and mortified him more than anybody else because he can’t recall ever uttering such language before. But he did it in full lip-reading televised coverage after, in Pillar’s assessment, he’d been quick-pitched by Atlanta reliever Jason Motte, the (non-gay) target of his f-flip, and not the common four-letter AngloSaxon F-word.
For which a deeply distressed Pillar unreservedly apologized, accepting without quibble a two-game suspension meted out by GM Ross Atkins, who flew to Atlanta expressly for the purpose of handling the situation.
Now, Pillar isn’t remotely homophobic. It’s telling, though, that in the heat of the moment his subconscious pulled out a scornful, hurtful taunt. Which suggests – and Pillar is hardly alone in this – how deeply embedded is the subtext of sissifying, as a sneer, in sports.
Naturally, Pillar was crucified by the social media mob. Though not in any head-bashing way by most LGBTQ activists and community groups, who took the high road and treated the incident as an educational moment.
“It’s still out there,” says Pillar. “I still read things on social media. Every time I see something negative which relates to what happened it still affects me and I still think about it. I know every day I move forward it’s something that’s further in my past, and eventually it’ll be so small in my past that most people, including myself, will hopefully forget about it.’’
In those stormy days right after, Pillar — while vowing to learn from his mistake — found comfort and solace in baseball, when he returned to it.
“It had been real tough for me and my family.” KEVIN PILLAR STRUGGLING SINCE BAN FOR HOMOPHOBIC SLUR
“When I got back to playing, it was in Baltimore, my life got back to normal,” he insists. “Obviously my teammates that know me real well … that’s a safe place for me. Because it had been real tough for me and my family.’’
This other family, the Jays clubhouse family, gave Pillar an emotional boost. Simultaneously, however, the player who’d been blazing the ball went into a downward spiraling funk.
From hitting .301 in April to .252 in May to .190 through June, this past week removed from his leadoff spot — now occupied (again) by Jose Bautista — and even given a day off by manager John Gibbons in the hope, combined, it would ease the anxiety-loop in Pillar’s head.
“Looking back the last few weeks, we decided to move him out of there and let him catch his breath a little bit,” Gibbons said the other day. “It’s been a battle for him, you know. That’s always been a point of focus with him, where are we going to hit him? He always wanted to be the leadoff guy. We gave him a couple of opportunities. It didn’t work. This year it was working and then he scuffled a little bit, the last couple of weeks. So I thought, his mind has got to be racing.”
Or stuck in the rut of his own flailing and waning confidence.
“I worked my butt off this offseason to put myself in the situation where I could campaign to lead off,” says Pillar, who earned that status out of spring training, leading off in 58 games. Last season, leadoff also coveted but turned into a failed experiment, as he hit only .198 in 21 games with a .231 OBP.
“For a while it was a really good thing and I was getting on base a lot. I was hot. I was doing exactly what I thought I was capable of doing.
“But when I’m not getting on base, I’m not helping anyone. I’m in support of (Gibbons) making changes and doing what he feels is best for this team.”
Not hitting, not walking, not getting on base — Pillar and the others up top the order — has sent shivers down through the lineup, with few runners to bring home off the jack-power of Justin Smoak. Pillar has done a commendable job of sucking it up. A dismal acquittal on Tuesday in Arlington — brutal strikeout with the bases loaded — seemed like the nadir point. He’d gone 0-for-10 and 3-for-28. He was even bungling a few approaches on balls hit to him in centre, losing his Superman luster.
“I expect to go out there and I expect to be perfect every day, I expect to make all the plays. But the reality is, I’m a human being and sometimes I get bad reads. I actually hope people expect me to be perfect because that’s what I expect of myself.”
At the plate, though, he’d turned into a mechanics mess, as if forgetting all the mantras he’d embraced about patience and sticking with the plan.
“As a younger player, as a guy that wants to prove a lot of things to a lot of people, naturally when you go through struggles you go up there and you start chasing results, as opposed to just allowing the process to take over. It’s easy to look back and say I trusted it. But at the same time I was getting results. When the results aren’t showing up, you go out there and you start searching for them. It changed the way I was taking my at-bats. I got a little bit sloppy with my pitch selection.’’
Relegated to sixth in the batting order on Thursday, Pillar looked more like the Pillar of April and early May with a single and a muscular double.
“I had a good month (in April) but that doesn’t necessarily translate to having a good year,” he says, albeit fervently wishing so.
“Trust me, I’m learning more about myself than I did in the first month and a half.”