Mark Teixeira Liberation weekend occurred May 18-20 in the Bronx.
He didn’t start any of three games against the Reds that weekend, but this is about what he put to an end. Which were all attempts to alter his hitting approach — a message he delivered in a manner not familiar to his reputation.
Teixeira projects milquetoast, a Clark Kent-like blandness. You can’t imagine him raising his voice in furor, and this has nothing to do with the nerve damage that was found on his vocal cords. Even Teixeira admits he “tries to make everybody happy” — perhaps never more than in agreeing as a hitter to go the other way.
Until he took My Way as his anthem. His anger and frustration crested as trying to finesse the ball to the opposite field led to regular weak contact. So the batting average everyone hoped would rise didn’t, and he also lost the power and production associated with his game.
Using hitting coach Kevin Long as the main conduit, he channeled his inner Howard Beale. He sternly issued an organization-wide communiqué “to the many voices around here” that he was mad as hell and he was not going to take the ball the opposite way any longer.
“I had a moment where I had to tell everyone I am who I am,” Teixeira said. “I am going to swing hard, strike out a bunch and pull stuff.”
In other words, he was going to be Mark Teixeira. Which he remembered had always been a pretty productive thing to be.
After all, he has the longest active streak with eight straight seasons of at least 30 homers and 100 RBIs. However, he absorbed the criticism for an average that had dwindled from .308 in 2008 to Yankee years of .292, .256 and .248 last year. The switch-hitter seemed the latest to become pull-centric after being seduced by Yankee Stadium’s short right field porch.
Which played into the hands of defenses that could now over shift into more precise positions based on computer-generated spray charts. If Teixeira did not hit it over the fence, there was a pretty good chance a defender was standing where the ball went. Think: If LeBron James only drove right, even his scoring would suffer greatly as defenses would know to play just half the court.
Teixeira, though, argues “we won a lot of games when I hit [his old] way.” He believes the power/run production had great value. And then Reggie Jackson offered his take to Teixeira that went something like this: “My whole career people always expected me to do more. In baseball, what you do is never viewed as good enough.” And this was Mr. October, a Hall of Famer with 563 homers.
“That made me realize I was never going to please everyone and I had to take a step back and do what has been successful,” Teixeira said.
Or as Joe Girardi said: “I appreciate that he tried to change and use the whole field. But [pulling] is who he is. That’s his DNA.”
The before-and-after results scream that Teixeira was as correct to return to his comfort zone as Derek Jeter was last year when, in midseason, he scrapped a style designed to have him pull more and immediately had success going back to his inside-out approach.
Yes, Teixeira is annually a slow starter and that was exacerbated this year by an infection that led to sustained coughing and, ultimately, the damage to the vocal cords. Still — explanations or not — Teixeira was at .226 with a .665 OPS, five homers and 20 RBIs through 38 games in which the Yanks were 19-19.
That led to not starting those three games against the Reds. Teixeira has played 29 games since, including last night when he went 0-for-3 and drew a walk that started the Yanks toward a four-run seventh that led to a 4-3 victory over the Mets. Since his return to the familiar, Teixeira is hitting .298 with a .405 on-base percentage, a .592 slugging percentage, seven homers and 20 RBIs. And the Yanks are 21-8.
“I am one of those who believes the game is more physical than mental,” Teixeira said. “Guys retire because they can’t do it physically any more, not because they can’t do it mentally. And it was physical with me. I was not taking good, hard swings — and that is not me. It wasn’t working.”
So Teixeira turned retro. He went My Way rather than the opposite-field highway. He found the power in his voice and — not coincidentally — his swing.