Edwin Encarnacion knows what it takes to go from castoff to all-star. Can Justin Smoak follow that path?

By Gare Joyce in Dunedin, Fla.

Having undergone his physical, Edwin Encarnacion drops his bag in front of his stall. After 10 minutes of handshakes, shoulder bumps and clubhouse chatter in two languages, the media descends on him with the pressing questions of the spring. “What role do you expect to fill this season?” the lead interrogator asks. “How much time at first base? How often will Gibby pencil you in as DH?” It comes out as a single question, quite possibly in one long breath. “I’m going to be playing more first base,” Encarnacion says, his voice not much above a whisper, each word measured. “I’ve worked hard this off-season [because] I knew I was going to get more time at first. But I’m ready for whatever they need me [to do]. If they need more at first base, or if they need me at DH, I’m ready.”

Encarnacion’s answer is that of a veteran who knows his place in the game. A few stalls down from Encarnacion, though, with his back to the scrum but within earshot of the questions, sits a guy who might—might—figure large in the answers as the season plays out. How much wear and tear the Jays can spare Encarnacion in the field might ride on a 28-year-old who’s making his first visit to Dunedin; who hasn’t even introduced himself to Encarnacion; who’s trying to make an impression with management and blend into the clubhouse scenery at the same time.

Justin Smoak doesn’t watch Encarnacion’s inquisition play out or listen to his expectations for the season ahead. Unlike Encarnacion, Smoak doesn’t know his place with this team, or even if he’s going to get much of a shot to prove his worth. He sits on a stool, hunching over his phone, texting his wife, Kristin, who’s at home with their five-month-old daughter.

When the reporters break away from Encarnacion, they walk right by Smoak. He doesn’t take it as a slight. Smoak was put on waivers by the Mariners last fall and claimed by Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos, historically an aggressive shopper in MLB’s remainders bin. Anthopoulos bought out the option year of Smoak’s contract for $150,000 and then, with the team still controlling his rights, re-signed Smoak as a free agent to a one-year, $1-million deal, a mighty drop from the $3 million he’d have made if Seattle or Toronto had exercised the option. The switch-hitting Smoak is projected to be a piece in a DH-by-committee plan that allowed Anthopoulos to trade Adam Lind and his $7.5-million salary to Milwaukee. The move is supposed to not only cut costs but also give everyday players, notably shortstop Jose Reyes and Encarnacion, regular opportunities to leave their gloves in their stalls while keeping their bats in the lineup.

If the season unfolds as Jays management hopes, Encarnacion and Smoak will share first base, but by their appearances the two seem to share little else. Encarnacion is a 34-year-old native of La Romana in the Dominican Republic; Smoak is from South Carolina. Both were drafted by the Texas Rangers, but their paths to the majors have little in common: Encarnacion signed as a ninth-rounder out of a high school in Puerto Rico in 2000; Smoak was selected 11th overall after earning All-America honours as a junior at the University of South Carolina and, after some hardball negotiations that went right to the deadline, landed a signing bonus of $3.5 million. Encarnacion made his major-league debut as a third baseman at 22 with more than 600 minor-league games under his belt; Smoak had fewer than 150 before the Rangers rushed him to the majors at 23. Since opening day 2012, Encarnacion has 112 homers and his lowest on-base percentage was last year’s .354; Smoak has reached 20 homers once, in 2013, and his career OBP sits at .309.

It’s fair to say that the former is an elite player and the latter is promise unfulfilled. Yet no one in the clubhouse knows the uncertainty Smoak is facing better than Encarnacion. “I went through it, and it made me a better player and a better man,” he says.

The rise and fall and rise of Edwin Encarnacion is an oft-told story. The Cincinnati Reds traded for him in 2001, when Encarnacion was 18 and in single-A. Apart from management’s occasional quibbles about his work ethic, he made steady progress to age 25. With 26 homers that year, he looked like a fixture in the middle of the batting order for a decade to come, and the Reds compensated him accordingly. Maybe their enthusiasm got the best of them, because Cincinnati overpaid. That became clear to the team in 2009, when Encarnacion was approaching the Mendoza Line and was due to make $5 million the next season. The Jays wanted to get out from under a burdensome contract of their own, the $11 million due to third baseman Scott Rolen, and thus a trade was made: Rolen was a player the Reds wanted, and they’d part with prospects so long as Toronto took on Encarnacion and his albatross contract. Then-GM J.P. Ricciardi reluctantly agreed—he would have preferred not to be squeezed into taking on the Reds’ mistake. When Encarnacion’s struggles continued in Toronto in 2010, he was waived and outrighted to triple-A, dropping off the 40-man roster in June. Though he was recalled to Toronto in late summer, it looked like he was getting bum-rushed out of baseball. He was waived again after the 2010 season and then claimed off waivers that winter by Oakland, but the A’s decided not to sign him. The Jays offered Encarnacion a contract at a much-reduced rate, with token competition from Tampa Bay.

That would seem like enough rejection to break any player, with a supersized portion of insult left over. For Encarnacion, the experience was a crash course in humility. “I learned that you need to be focused and angry,” he says. “If you keep everything down…” here he puts his hands flat and makes a slow patting motion, tranquilo, “…and you try to be cool, it can be over. First, you have to know—it’s not working. When they say they don’t want you, you’ve got to change. Maybe on the outside I stayed quiet. Inside I changed. I had to make a move. I had to change my game plan. Before, I had confidence—too much. I thought I could do it all myself. In the off-season before, I took 100 swings a day—when I did something wrong, nobody said anything to me, nobody was watching and I couldn’t see what was wrong. [After the 2010 season] I knew I needed to work harder.”

Encarnacion enlisted the help of Robinson Cano’s trainer, former major-leaguer Luis Mercedes. He sought out help at the gym to improve his conditioning. Encarnacion didn’t need a fresh start so much as a reset. He didn’t need a recommitment—his commitment had been insufficient from day one. His view of the game changed when he stood on the brink. “Everybody thought it was over,” he says. “[They thought] ‘You cannot do it.’ I could do it, but not by myself. To change, I needed support. I needed [another set of] eyes to watch me. I needed help.”

Justin Smoak’s takeaway from his waiver-and-buyout humbling stands in sharp contrast to Encarnacion’s lessons. He didn’t change his workout routine during the off-season, didn’t even much consider it. “At times I’ve put too much pressure on myself to perform,” Smoak says. “I know what I can do, and when I see that I’m not doing what I’m capable of, it can get frustrating. When I played my best—in college and in the majors—the game came naturally to me. I have to relax and just get out there and have fun. I was expected to be a player [in Texas and Seattle], but now I can just go out and play without people having an expectation of me being one player or another.

“You see it in the best guys, that they just go out there and play like they’re having fun, like it’s Little League. You can forget that we’re playing a kid’s game. I’m doing what I dreamed of.”

Michael Saunders says he’s convinced that all Smoak needs is self-confidence—the confidence of management will come after that. “I think he can be a Gold-Glove first baseman,” Saunders says, offering an upbeat—though perhaps biased—scouting report. “He’s a big guy and has a nice swing. He hits the ball hard. He’s going to hit 20-plus homers this season.”

Maybe, though projections like these are better suited to prospects rather than 28-year-olds with their third major-league organization. Perhaps the Jays see some upside in Smoak’s home-road splits—he has been a more productive hitter out of Safeco Field, where Seattle’s perpetual 100-percent humidity crushes the souls of fly-ball hitters. “Any hitter would look forward to getting to hit in the Rogers Centre and the ballparks in the AL East,” Smoak says. “I think it’s going to be a good fit.”

Again, attach a big “maybe” to this forecast.

Whereas Encarnacion took his waiver experience as a splash of cold water, Smoak seems not to have been alarmed by Seattle letting him go. “I saw it coming last season, that I wasn’t going to be back with the Mariners, not with my contract,” he says. “It’s just business. You can’t be happy about it. I wish I had performed better. I tried to play through a quad injury last year and it probably hurt me, got to the point where I could hardly do anything. But you want to play, especially when you think you could be playing for your job.”

If you’re thinking that Smoak accepts the vagaries of the business side of the game a little too gracefully, understand that this is consistent with his history. When he was yo-yoing between Seattle and the Mariners’ triple-A affiliate, he kept a stiff upper lip about it. Former teammate Rob Johnson summed it up neatly when asked about Smoak’s attitude during that period. “He’s pretty even-keeled,” Johnson said. “Nothing seems to get to him.”

True then, and seemingly true now.

Saunders believes that Smoak has never needed to change his game—he just needed a change of scenery. “What separates every major leaguer who makes it from those who don’t is mindset, and this is the right place for Smoaky [to get it],” Saunders says. “The Jays claimed him. They wanted him and signed him back. When I was traded by Seattle, I could have taken it as a blow to my confidence, but really it felt like I was wanted here, that I was going to get an opportunity. I’m sure it’s the same for Smoaky.”

Edwin Encarnacion doesn’t know Smoak at all, but he does know about the fragility of the game. “This can all be over in a second,” he says. “You know this when you go to the minors and you get waived.”

Encarnacion also knows about his own vulnerability. He tied Mickey Mantle’s AL record for homers in May last season, but then went down with a quadriceps injury, the catalyst of the Jays’ earthward plummet after owning a six-game lead in the division. The team needs someone to share the workload at first, someone who would be an upgrade over Lind in the field, someone with less drastic platoon splits (Smoak is a switch hitter) and someone without Lind’s history of injury.

Smoak is sitting at his stall with his head down. He looks a little lost in thought while his new teammates chatter around him. Encarnacion thinks he has a pretty good idea of what’s going through Smoak’s head. “Sometimes this game is not easy,” Encarnacion says. “You have to keep your head up. You learn. You change. When I get a chance, I’m going to talk to him.”

Smoak will hear out someone who has been there and survived that.

Photography: Michelle Prata; Getty