With two big games for Phils, Herrera back to being his old, joyous self | Mike Sielski
The centerfielder has a unique approach to dealing with adversity and to playing baseball in general. All the Phillies can do is let him be himself.
From the batter's box to the stretch of green he patrols in center field, Odubel Herrera appears at all times to play baseball with an airy bliss about him. A particular game's contexts, situations, strategy seem to have little bearing on his actions or demeanor. People are more likely to measure one of his post-home run bat flips than they are the home run itself. He bops around the field and the clubhouse to a samba beat that only he can hear.
Because Herrera had been in a long and severe slump - he batted .183 with a .452 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in May - Phillies manager Pete Mackanin benched him three times in a recent four-game stretch in an effort, Herrera said, to clear his head. The surprising aspect of this move was the operating presumption that Herrera's mind was cluttered. Apparently, though, it was.
"Obviously, when you go through a rough time, it's frustrating, and sometimes, you have to let that frustration out," Herrera said Sunday through an interpreter, after the Phillies' 9-7 victory over the San Francisco Giants. "But I know what I'm supposed to do. I know what I need to do better: just be patient and stay positive."
The fruits of that approach, finally, have begun to arrive. Over his last two games, both of which were Phillies wins, Herrera had four doubles, a home run, and six RBIs. None of those five extra-base hits was cheap. Each was a crisp line drive or deep fly ball. His season has been underwhelming - a .234 batting average, an OPS under .650 - and his struggles, like those of Maikel Franco, have contributed to the Phillies' descent to the floor of the National League East. The Phillies, now 19-35, weren't supposed to be great, but they weren't supposed to be this bad, and Herrera certainly was not supposed to produce at the level of a Punch-and-Judy hitter.
Maybe now, he'll start to be who he was supposed to be. Maybe now, he'll be the hitter whom the Phillies signed to a five-year, $30 million contract extension last offseason, the hitter who in spring training agreed that yes, indeed, he did have the ability and the desire to win a batting title.
He flashed that promise Sunday during his seventh-inning at-bat against lefthanded reliever Josh Osich. The first pitch that Osich threw him was a 79-mph slider that started inside, near Herrera's letters. Fearing the ball would hit him, Herrera threw his hands up, as if he were LeBron James tossing powder before tipoff, only to have the pitch break down and over the plate for a called strike. He swung at and missed another slider, this one in the dirt, putting himself in a 1-2 hole, before slashing a 97-mph fastball to the left-center-field gap for a run-scoring double, tying the game at 7.
The entire sequence was indicative of what Phillies hitting coach Matt Stairs, in spring training, had said he liked most about Herrera's approach at the plate: that he doesn't give ground to a lefthanded pitcher. Was it the sign of a hitter who had found himself again? The Phillies have to hope. Either way, there doesn't seem much that anyone other than Herrera can do to influence the course of the rest of his season. He will be who he has been.
"I've always said he's unique," Mackanin said. "He's human, and it affects everybody differently. I think Odubel is the type of person who doesn't let it bother him. He's frustrated, but he just continues to do his thing. It's almost like he knows he's going to hit, and he's just waiting it out.
"That's the thing about managing. When you manage a team, you manage the coaches, the players, the owners, the front office, the fans. You have to manage a lot of people, as well as each individual. You have to know how they're made and what button to push and which button not to push. That's the job. The job is to keep everybody motivated."
For Herrera, that motivation might come from any number of places: his status as a Rule 5-pick-made-good, his rise into an all-star outfielder who wants to maintain that same measure of excellence throughout his career, the pride of his parents and in his Venezuelan heritage. Whatever the source, it manifests itself in the joyful, almost-childlike idiosyncrasies everyone sees.
On Sunday, for instance, when he cracked a solo home run over the center-field fence in the fifth inning, he laid his bat gently on the ground - no flip. He had learned a lesson Saturday, he said.
"I thought I had hit one out of the park and flipped the bat, and it didn't go out." He laughed deeply, as if the losses hadn't piled up and the benching had never happened. With Odubel Herrera, sometimes the only thing you can do is stand back and let the bliss be.
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