Gordon: Selectively Dominating

Alex Gordon hasn’t exactly been tearing the cover off the ball so far in the Cactus League, so I had to wait until he had his first really solid game, in terms of the “traditional” stats before brining this up.  He went 3-for-3 yesterday with his first extra base hit of Spring Training, so I figured no is as good of a time as any.

Alex appears to be making a conscious effort to be patient at the plate this pre-season.  I read some comments by Ned Yost in the past week that said everything about Alex’ swing and approach looked good, but he appeared to be just a tick behind in his swing to that point.  Perhaps there’s a fine line between patience and “slowness,” but it’s clear that Alex is thinking about something in there.

Now, we’re talking about a very small sample size here, so I’m not going to get too carried away.  While Alex has never been bad at drawing walks, he’s been exceptional at it to this point in Cactus League play.  He’s drawn 9 walks already, which is three times what any other Royal has drawn so far.  In fact, his 9 is good enough to lead BOTH Spring leagues to this point, and he’s done it in about 2/3 the number of plate appearances as many of the leagues’ starting position players.

Alex has struck out 6 times, which is second-most on the team.  But we know he’s going to strike out—that’s what he does.  And being patient and looking for pitches to hit isn’t necessarily going to make that better—he may even look at 3^rd strikes more often than he did before.  But I think an Alex Gordon looking to swing only at pitches he can handle (and as we know, there are MANY he cannot handle) is going to be a lot more valuable player to the Royals, or to anyone who may end up with him at some point in this season.

We’re going to need to start seeing a little more pop pretty soon.  I’m not nervous yet—he has just as many extra base hits as Billy Butler does so far in camp, and you know Billy’s going to be good for 55-80 of those in the season.  But Alex is going to strike out a lot more than Billy will, and he also has a heck of a lot more to prove.  Perhaps finally getting a 3-for-3 day will break the dam a little for him—who knows?

I’ll be watching with great anticipation (again, or still, or whatever—sigh).