The 2007, 25th round draft pick has played on two championship teams (with the 2008 Burlington Bees and the 2010 NW Arkansas Naturals) and is currently one win away from another one with the Omaha Storm Chasers.
The 26-year-old designated hitter/first baseman was the Idaho Falls Play of the Year in 2007 and he won the Triple Crown (.335 / 29 HR / 98 RBIs) for the Naturals in 2010. He had another great season for Omaha in 2011 (23 HR and 100 RBIs), earning the right to represent Omaha at the PCL All-Star game this summer and he was named to the All-PCL team.
Unfortunately for him, he’s stuck behind Billy Butler and Eric Hosmer at the big league level and it doesn’t look like he’s going to get his shot with the Royals. All year long he has told media that until he gets to the big leagues, he feels like he has something to prove. On Monday, before the Chasers worked out at Werner Park for the PCL Championship Series, he spoke with Omaha Baseball 360 about his season and the position he finds himself in.
You’ve played on two teams that have won championships and now the Chasers are playing for one. I’m guessing it never gets old?
It’s why you play the game. You play to win. I’ve been to the playoffs with every team I’ve played for in professional baseball. That’s the goal to start the year – to go to the playoffs and win the championship. That’s what it is about.
Minor league fans don’t typically get to see clubhouse celebrations after a team wins the division or conference like they do when a major league team does and they may wonder if minor league players get as excited about it, but you guys had a lot of fun celebrating both the division and conference titles.
You play to win and if you don’t have that winning attitude [here], what makes you think you can do it at a higher level? You’ve got to embrace the situation you’re in, whether it be somewhere you want to be or not. It’s not up to you. You’ve got to go out and just play the game hard and try to win for the team you’re playing on and then you celebrate when you succeed.
You won the Triple Crown last year. You are accumulating all kinds of awards. You are behind a logjam at first base in this organization and there’s nothing you can do about not getting called up to Kansas City, but you still keep producing. At the end of the year, the organization and/or you will have a decision to make about next season. What is your mindset right now about where you are in the organization?
All of this is just part of the game of professional baseball – leaving the decisions up to somebody else. I don’t ever want there to be an excuse on my part to not be called up. I can’t control the decision-making, but I’m not going to let my game spiral downward because then you give them more of a reason not to call you up because you’re not playing well. So, all you can do on your end is just play as well as you can and make it as difficult as you can for them to not call you up. My job is just to go out and perform and whatever happens, happens.
You started off the season red hot, then you went through a slump, and then you got back into the groove – squaring up the ball really well. What type of adjustments did you make to get back on track?
That’s all baseball is, you know, this is my first year in Triple-A. There are major league veterans all through this league, so that’s all this game is – being consistent and making adjustments. Guys are smart. They’re not stupid. They’re going to look and see what you’re doing and make an adjustment to you.
We play a lot of the same teams – Oklahoma City, Memphis and all those guys – quite a bit and in the months of June and July they got to know us and figured out how to get me out. It was my job to just react to that – to figure out how to get on base and get hits.
It wasn’t one thing I did. It’s just repetition. It’s going from at bat to at bat, game to game, asking myself, “What did they do last time?” When you face guys more than one time, you ask yourself what he did last time to get you out and then you start looking for stuff.
Baseball’s a fickle game. Some days you hit the ball hard and you get nothing out of it and some days you don’t hit the ball hard and you get four hits. You just keep plugging away. It’s repetition.
You’ve been a pre-game show guest with Mark Nasser a couple of times this season and in both interviews you said you still felt like you have something to prove. Do you still feel that way?
Absolutely. I mean, I’ve never been in the big leagues. What more do you have to prove than that? I can do all I can do in the minor leagues now, but the main goal of every baseball player is to get to the major leagues and until I reach it, I still have a lot to prove every time I step on the field.
