Golf return fore my own good: Yo
ATLANTA — Someone please get Yoenis Cespedes a nine-iron. The Mets slugger, who gave up golf to concentrate on the season, is considering going back to the links, his old, reliable slumpbuster. After knocking the game-winning single in the Mets’ 5-3, 12thinning win over the Braves at SunTrust Park, Cespedes said that he has yet to figure a way out of his start-of-the-season slump.
“One of the things I did before when I was in a slump was playing golf, I tried to get out of my slump,” Cespedes said through the team translator. “I said this season, I wouldn’t go to play golf. So one of the things I am doing right now, that I didn’t do before is watching the videos. That is something I am doing different right now, but unfortunately things aren’t going so well.”
Before Cespedes’ single to score Robert Gsellman from second base, the slumping slugger had struck out a career-high tying four straight times. Cespedes said he still feels his timing is “lost” at the plate. He is hitting .208 with 34 strikeouts in 77 at-bats this season.
Still, he has had three gamewinning hits so far. So when he stepped to the plate in the 12th, he wasn’t looking at the hole the Braves had left him in right-center field. He didn’t feel he could aim. “I wasn’t noticing that. I struck out four times in a row before that,” Cespedes said. “I just wanted to hit the ball and that is what I did.”
Despite his struggles this season, it was his sixth RBI that has given the Mets the lead. But Cespedes said he is still considering picking his clubs back up.
“It wasn’t a promise, I went to play golf in the morning and came to play baseball in the afternoon. I stopped doing that during the offseason,” Cespedes said. “But I am considering it.”
Cespedes said that golf helped him with the mechanics of his hands and shoulder at the plate, besides being something that would let him relax before taking the field.
But Cespedes’ golf game became a lightning rod of controversy among Mets fans in 2016. General Manager Sandy Alderson called Cespedes’ obsession with the game “bad optics” during the 2016 Subway Series.