“The most unlucky left-handed hitter on the planet right now,” Maddon declared after Heyward lined into three outs to cap an 0-for-5 performance Sunday in a 6-5 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Prior to Sunday’s game, Heyward hit safely in his past five games to raise his batting average to .247, and that occurred after Maddon dropped Heyward from second to sixth. Heyward was 8-for-17 during his hitting streak and continued to hit the ball with authority Sunday.
“By putting him in the sixth spot, he feels more free to experiment,” Maddon said. “That’s a good thing. In the No. 2 spot, he was trying so hard to get on base for the other guys that he might not have been as assertive as he needed to be.
“It’s more of a freedom of his approach in the sixth spot. He’s a guy you want to hit at the top of the order, based on his ability as a base runner to score runs.”
But Heyward was in a malaise for the first three months, prompting Maddon to make a change while Heyward made an adjustment at the plate that’s worked so far.
“You see more balls in the air right now, and that’s a big part of the adjustment,” Maddon said.
Part of the delay in making adjustments was that Heyward, 26, hasn’t experienced a slump this long in his first six seasons with the Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals.
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” Maddon said. “It’s true for all of us. In baseball, from the time in the minor leagues, most of the time you’ll talk about permitting a player to fail before you build him back up.
“I want them to do it their way. Adjustments he had made in the past that he gotten away. That new normal feels comfortable. Sometimes you have to sacrifice comfort for function, and that’s the point you eventually have to get to.”
Heyward finished the first half with a .243 batting average with four home runs and 28 RBIs.
No comments:
Post a Comment