Simple hitting advice works as well now in the Analytical Age as it did 60 years ago.
Mets second base prospect L.J. Mazzilli is proof of that.
One year ago, Mazzilli was drafted in the fourth round by the Mets. He has been making steady progress but was not hitting the ball as well as he is capable of hitting to start the year at Single-A Savannah.
Here’s where fate, food, family and a baseball icon all intersected.
His dad, Lee Mazzilli, who played 10 years with the Mets, went to visit Yogi Berra near the middle of May.
“I brought Yogi some food, you know, bread, cheese, prosciutto,” Maz told The Post recently.
While they were eating, Yogi, 89, asked, “How’s your son doing?”
Mazzilli told him L.J. was going through some “bumps in the road” at the plate, and that is when Yogi offered a classic Yogi-ism.
“If you see it, hit it. If you don’t see it, don’t hit it.”
When Yogi speaks, you listen to the Hall of Famer, a three-time MVP who was an All-Star 15 straight seasons with the Yankees during his 19-year career. Yogi played on 14 pennant winners and 10 World Champions, more than anyone else in history.
Maz was soon on the phone with L.J. passing along the Wisdom of Yogi.
“If was great advice, ‘If you see it, hit it. If you don’t see it, don’t hit it,’” L.J. told The Post by phone this week. “Amazing. I don’t know how Yogi comes up with these things but it’s so true. It really simplified everything for me.”
Did it ever.
Mazzilli, 23, said he was hitting around .230 when he got Yogi’s advice. He was at .292 earlier this week. During a 21-game span, he hit .403 with a .495 on-base percentage. He is also quick to credit Savannah hitting coach Valentino Pascucci, who played briefly with the Mets and Montreal Expos, played in Japan for Bobby Valentine and owns 281 minor-league home runs.
“He really has great advice, like telling me to stay tall in my swing,” Mazzilli said. “In some ways he reminds me of my dad and nothing seems too hard, the way he explains it. I’m just going to try to keep hitting the ball hard and see where it takes me.”
“L.J. is really doing well,” said J.P. Ricciardi, the special assistant to Mets general manager Sandy Alderson. “He’s really starting to heat up. We really like his bat. We got some good kids.”
Mazzilli was a fourth-round pick last June out of the University of Connecticut, signed by Art Pontarelli.
Another one of those “good kids” is last year’s top Mets draft pick, first baseman Dominic Smith, who bats left and throws left, and has tremendous skills around the bag.
“Dom is an incredible first baseman,” Mazzilli said. “I think he is going to win the Gold Glove someday and to see what he is doing already and he is just going to turn 19, it really is amazing.”
Mazzilli has the bloodlines and the bat to make it to the majors relatively quickly.
His father is proud of how far his son has come. Even though Lee Mazzilli is a former major-league player and manager — he played a season with the Yankees during his 14-year career — he said he is just like any other dad when it comes to seeing his son do well.
“I’m proud like any other dad whose son is on his way in his career,” Lee said. “L.J. gets it. He’s always been a humble kid. He’s been around some tremendous players growing up — Derek Jeter, Robbie Cano, Brian Roberts. He knows how to handle himself, and for me and my wife, it means so much when people tell us that L.J. is a good kid.”
A good kid who is smart enough to take Yogi’s simple, but effective advice to heart and to the plate.