ST. LOUIS – Santiago Espinal spent the first 2½ months of the 2022 season turning his off-season vision for himself into a reality. Stronger thanks to a gruelling workout regimen, confident in his plan once in the batter’s box, he did damage at the plate, batting .298/.350/.451 through June 15, earning enough notice that when Jose Altuve had to withdraw from the all-star game, the Toronto Blue Jays infielder took his spot.
But a late June dip, in which he batted .158/.213/.211 for a couple of weeks, led him to waver in his approach. Even after he recovered heading into the all-star break and joined the sport’s best in Los Angeles, “a little bit of my (confidence) went down because of that,” he says. The conviction in his plan never returned. He batted .258/.329/.315 the rest of the way and his average exit velocity of 86.1 m.p.h. ranked in the bottom seven per cent of the league.
“Mentally, I wasn’t there,” says Espinal. “I was like, ‘I’m going to get on this plan,’ and then when I got to the plate, I was like, ‘Nah, man, this isn’t working, I’m going to change it.’ In the beginning of the season, I was like, ‘This is what I’m doing, no matter.’ But you know how baseball is. You change. You look for stuff. And that’s what happened.”
This season, as he adjusts to an evolving three-man job share at second base with Whit Merrifield and Cavan Biggio, the 28-year-old is once again locked in on a plan in the batter’s box, determined to not allow circumstances to tempt him into freewheeling his approach.
Part of that will be not chasing results to secure playing time, something that won’t be easy with the Blue Jays for now trying to match up in determining how to somewhat evenly split playing time between the talented trio.
Over the weekend in St. Louis, for instance, Merrifield got the nod against Miles Mikolas in the opener, Biggio started against Jack Flaherty in the second game while Espinal was at second in the finale against lefty Jordan Montgomery, with Merrifield shifting over to left field. In an ideal world, one of them takes the job and runs with it, but for the time being, the thinking seems to be Merrifield on days where baserunning and contact take priority, Biggio against righties vulnerable to lefties and Espinal against southpaws and when elite defence is required.
Espinal is still wrapping his mind around the situation, saying, “I’m trying to stay mentally ready and when I get to the plate, be me, there’s nothing else that I can do, nothing else that I can control,” but it’s not easy.
“I didn’t even know it was going to be like this, to be honest,” adds Espinal, who played in 135 games last year. “Looking at the situation and stuff like that, it’s hard to get used to it. But at the same time, I’m going to keep doing me, doing my work and being ready for whenever my name is called.”
Key to his success is staying locked in on his plan and pulling back on his natural inclination to search for and attack any weak spots. He didn’t change anything in terms of his swing or set-up at the plate over the winter, instead focusing on avoiding the mindset that contributed to his drop-off last year.
“I don’t know what it was that I was like, ‘Man, I don’t think this is working,’” says Espinal. “I was like, ‘OK, I’m looking for this pitch,’ the pitch doesn’t come on and I’m changing my plan. I was not trusting myself enough to actually to get what I want. This year, it’s more like, it doesn’t matter if that pitch doesn’t come, it doesn’t matter if the result doesn’t come, I’m going to stick to that plan and make sure that at the end of the game, I stick to my plan the whole time.”
Helping him on that front was his winter work with now-former teammate Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and his brother Yuli, who preached consistency, a message that was reinforced once he got to spring training and started chatting with Victor Martinez, the longtime slugger newly hired as a special assistant to baseball operations. They all pointed to the same things hitting coach Guillermo Martinez had been telling him.
“They helped me out a lot on mentally, be ready, be on time,” says Espinal. “Then I saw Victor and that was a whole different vibe. He’s like, ‘Why don’t you just stick to your plan 100 per cent? This is what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to commit to it. You’ve got to stay with it.’ With Guillermo, it was the same thing. He’s like, ‘Seeing you every day playing from the beginning of the season to after the all-star game, it wasn’t the same thing, everybody saw it. Your plan was changing.’ I would tell Guillermo in the dugout, I’m going to do this. But when I got to the plate, it was something else. Basically different conversations with different people and different perspectives, but it helped me out a lot.”
The trick, of course, is in applying that help, and for the time being, at least, the opportunities to do that may come only sporadically. With conviction in his plan, Espinal feels he’s on the path to consistency, mentally ready to face any situation.