RACE MILESTONE FOR HAMLIN?
Denny Hamlin, who has the pole position heading into Sunday’s Dixie Vodka 400, has a chance to win his fourth race at Homestead-Miami Speedway for the track record.
Denny Hamlin was happy to see his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Christopher Bell break through last week in Daytona.
Bell won his first Cup Series race in 38 tries making him the second consecutive first-time winner to open the 2021 season.
“It’s great for our organization,” Hamlin said last week after finishing 11th on the Daytona road course. “The more competitive cars that we can have in the Toyota stable, the more information that we can share, and it will be good information. It’s very, very difficult, as we know, in our sport to have four cars that are all very good and competitive. Certainly, I believe that we can have that this year.
“It’s already starting off really well.”
While Bell now knows what victory tastes like in the Cup Series, it’s old hat for Hamlin at the Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Hamlin, who has the pole position heading into Sunday’s Dixie Vodka 400, has a chance to win his fourth race on the South Florida track, which fresh,” Ng said last week. “I think that’s one thing that we’ve got going for us. We’re going to have a pretty nice lineup as well when we head into those American League cities.” would give him the most Cup Series victories in the track’s history.
The race on the 1.5-mile track begins at 3:30 p.m. and will be televised on Fox. After hosting 1,000 military personnel and family members last year in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s race will have a 20 percent capacity crowd.
Hamlin won last year’s race at Homestead after leading for 137 laps to secure his third career win at the track (2009, 2013, 2020). With a victory on Sunday, Hamlin would surpass
Cooper has accepted the fact that this is his path to playing time this season and is taking advantage of the opportunity to show
Greg Biffle (2004, 2005, 2006) and Tony Stewart (1999, 2000, 2011) for the track record.
Hamlin is the current points leader and 12 points ahead of Joey Logano in second and 21 points ahead of Kevin Harvick. Logano will start second on Sunday followed by Bell and Harvick.
Logano won at Homestead in 2018, clinching the Cup Series championship that season.
Kyle Busch, another of Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing team
Denny Hamlin, who has the pole position heading into Sunday’s Dixie Vodka 400, has a chance to win his fourth race at Homestead-Miami Speedway for the track record.
once again that he can be a reliable threat in the lineup.
“Last year, I gave them a taste of what I can do when healthy,” said Cooper, who had career-best marks in on-base percentage (.353), slugging (.500) and OPS (.853) in 34 games during the shortened 2020 season. He missed 24 games early in the season after testing positive for COVID-19 “... But you’ve got to make adjustments. You can’t just rely on what you did the game before or the week before.
“Every at-bat is your job. There are young guys coming for your job and people around the league coming for your job. I take it personally.”
Now, Cooper has no ill will toward Aguilar or Duvall. He called Aguilar “a big, fun-loving guy who keeps the energy up that was a big addition last year” and embraces the competition for playing time, especially knowing the value all three bring to the club despite there being just two starting spots for them on a daily basis.
“You don’t get to the big leagues by just getting a position and thinking you’re going to stay there,” Cooper said. “I think everybody comes into spring wanting to get a job. It’s been no different for me.”
CHANGING HIS ROUTINE
Cooper has played just 40 career games in the outfield, 31 of which came during the 2019 season and the other nine during his limited action in 2018.
After playing exclusively at first base and designated hitter a year ago, Cooper knew he had to change up his usual offseason routine in an effort to be prepared to play multiple positions.
So back home in California, he focused more on cardio and yoga and less on weights. He visited with the Los Angeles Lakers’ podiatrist, Howard Liebeskind, upon the recommendation of friends in the NBA, MLB and NHL.
The goal: Be as nimble and flexible as possible.
And, of course, stay on the field. Cooper dealt with a calf strain and a hamstring injury the last time he played in the outfield in 2019. He missed 25 games early in the season due to the calf strain and the final 15 games of the year because of the hamstring injury.
How does he feel heading into 2020?
“The best I’ve felt since my early 20s leg-wise,” the 30-year-old Cooper said, “so I think the changes that I did this offseason hopefully continue to show as I move between first base and outfield.”
COOPER THE SLUGGER
But while his alternating positions in the field is the story line, it’s Cooper’s bat that will keep him in the lineup.
Cooper’s a career .281 hitter with 21 home runs, 78 RBI and 77 runs scored. Of his 162 career hits, 53 — 32.7 percent — have gone for extra basis. His .460 slugging mark during the past two seasons ranks second on the Marlins to third baseman Brian Anderson (.467). His .353 batting average on balls in play since 2019 trails only catcher Jorge Alfaro (.359) and super utility player Jon Berti (.358).
During the shortened 2020 season, Cooper ranked in the 95th percentile in the league for expected batting average (.304), the 87th percentile for expected slugging
(.521) and the 71st percentile for exit velocity (90.1). He had a career-low 22.2 percent swing-and-miss rate over his 133 plate appearances, bettering the 23.4 percent mark he had in 2019. Both of those are better than league average (24.5 percent).
He also has a knack for hitting line drives (33.7 percent in 2020 and 29.2 percent for his career, both above the MLB average of 25.7 percent) and rarely pops balls up (3.1 percent, four percentage points lower than the MLB average of 7.1). He also hits to all fields (31.6 percent pull, 37.9 percent straight, 30.4 percent opposite field for his career).
Cooper credits a few mechanical adjustments — namely sitting on his back hip which allowed him to better control his swing — for his improvement at the plate in 2020.
“I realized there’s a lot more space for me as a hitter sitting on my back hip than I realized,” Cooper said. “... Last year was really eye-opening probably to people in this organization, people around MLB how hard I hit the ball. You can go online and read all those analytics things that everyone talks about now, but I just felt like there were a lot of pitches I hit last year down and in, up and in. The exit velos were a lot harder. That was the progression I made. ”
Cooper now hopes to show them the next level of his game. Cooper said he merely views 2020 as a “good stepping-stone” for what he can offer. He knows there’s more in the tank and hopes to show it over a full season — regardless of where he plays in the field.
“People have different terms of what a good hitter is,” Cooper said. “To me, a .280-.290 hitter with 25 to 35 homers is a very useful player and that’s a very attractive player to a lot of front office and analytic guys.”