1 week Ago By Susan Slusser, San Francisco Chronicle
Perhaps no one player exemplifies the San Francisco Giants' move toward stability and continuity more than Mike Yastrzemski. And through the first two weeks of the season, the faith shown in the longtime right fielder is paying off. Yastrzemski, 34, is the team's longest-tenured position player.
While his defense has kept him on the roster since breaking in with the Giants in 2019, he has been streaky from an offensive standpoint since his standout 2020 and solid 2021 seasons — frustrating for him, for the team and for the fans alike. That's why he's getting away from what he emphasized the previous three seasons, when he was following the sport-wide trend of chasing launch angles. "I felt like I got really, really good at pulling balls in the air, but it became kind of a kryptonite for me too, where it felt like that was the only thing that I could do," Yastrzemski said.
"There were a lot of ways to beat me in that sense, and I don't feel like that's the case right now." That sounds like an easy fix: just stop trying to pull everything. But between muscle memory and an ingrained mindset at the plate, it's actually something that takes vigilance and work.
"I'm constantly battling myself," Yastrzemski said. The results so far indicate that Yastrzemski is on to something. Going into a long road trip that opens at Yankee Stadium on Friday, he leads the Giants with a .
344 average and 1.055 OPS, both sixth best in the National League. At no point last season did Yastrzemski crack a .
250 batting average. He finished at .231.
"He has a little different approach and how he's looking at things," manager Bob Melvin said. "He's tracking the ball a little bit more. He's hitting the ball to left field, he's pulling the ball when he has to.
When you look at his numbers and when you get the kind of results that you're getting when you make a change like that, it gives you a lot of confidence." It also gave Melvin the confidence to put Yastrzemski in the lineup Wednesday against Cincinnati's Nick Martinez, after sitting Yastrzemski against Martinez the first week of the season. Entering Wednesday's game, Yastrzemski was 0-for-11 with seven strikeouts against the right-hander.
Melvin's decision was welcome, if unexpected. "Bob gave me the nod, and he told me, 'You got your boy,'" Yastrzemski said. "I was like, 'I'll go out there and do my best.
'" In an 8-6, 10-inning win in which the Giants trailed 5-0, Yastrzemski struck out in his first at-bat, lined out on a great play by Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz his second time up, then doubled against Martinez in the sixth as part of a four-run inning that brought the game back within reach. That was before the 10th, when Yastrzemski belted a homer into McCovey Cove, a two-run shot off Emilio Pagan that gave the Giants their third walk-off victory on the homestand and sent them on the road with a 9-3 record, second best in the majors. Yastrzemski's Splash Hit was pulled, of course, and that's still more than OK.
"That's his normal — you just react," hitting coach Pat Burrell said. "I'm sure he wasn't trying to hit a homer; he just hit it true." That's what will happen naturally when a good hitter gets hold of a pitch, so Yastrzemski doesn't need to force it.
The ball Burrell was most excited about was the lineout, a ball that had a greater than 90% chance of falling in, according to Statcast. "He's worked so hard, starting in the offseason, and I've heard him say, 'I don't need to be one-dimensional,'" Burrell said. "I agree.
He plays great defense, he runs the bases well, and he can hit the ball all over the goddamn park. I don't want to see him limit himself just to the bull's-eye." Giants pitcher Logan Webb pointed to Sunday's homer to left-center against Seattle's Bryan Woo as the drive that solidified that Yastrzemski is a more complete hitter this year.
"He was doing this stuff in 2020, 2021, driving the ball the other way," Webb said. "The homer the other day, that's exciting for him to see that he can do that. It's just getting back to not thinking anything about the ballpark or anything like that, and that can be scary at first.
" The next test for Yastrzemski will be to ride out the inevitable tough stretch; he was batting .280 in mid-May two years ago, for instance, and finished at .233.
Hitting the ball to all fields should help cut down any funks, though — it's much more difficult to retire a hitter who is willing to go with the pitch, rather than trying to pull pitches on the outer edge or at the top of the zone. And Yastrzemski, whose agreement in November on a one-year, $9.25 million contract was one of the first player decisions made by Buster Posey as president of baseball operations, knows the team will stick with him through the cold spells.
"It fits right into what we've been talking about as far as the stability here," Melvin said. "He's the longest-tenured player here, the ballpark fits him really well with how he plays right field here, he's had big hits in the past, and there's just a lot to like about Yaz here with the Giants. I think Buster did a great job in bringing him back, and he's getting rewarded for it.
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