It was nothing mechanical, strictly mental, Travis d’Arnaud insisted.
So when the Mets sent the 25-year-old catcher down to Triple-A Las Vegas in early June to help him mend a batting approach that saw him change his swing as often as his socks, d’Arnaud went with the proper frame of mind.
“Nothing mechanical. All mental. Clear my head. Keep things simple and just remember hitting the ball hard is good,” d’Arnaud said.
“I looked at it as I had work to do to get back up here. After it happened, I stepped aside, looked myself in the mirror and had a conversation with myself. Accepted it for what it was, kept my head up and went down and worked.”
The results speak for themselves.
With his sixth homer of the season, a two-run shot in the seventh that provided welcomed insurance for Dillon Gee’s return to the mound, d’Arnaud made it 12-of-13 games he has delivered a hit since his return from Vegas. And it helped make Gee’s first appearance since May 10 a 4-1 victory for the Mets, their season-high fourth straight triumph.
In those 13 games, d’Arnaud is hitting .300 (15-of-50) with three homers. He went down hitting .180. Obviously, what happened in Vegas did not stay in Vegas.
“You can either go down there with a bad attitude, you’re frustrated,” manager Terry Collins said. “Or you go down there with the point, ‘I’m going to get better.’ He went down there and got better.”
Which Collins anticipated.
“What we’re seeing now is everything everybody [said]. I’ve got some great friends that I’ve had for a long time in this game and they all said, ‘This kid is going to hit and he’s going to hit for power,’ ” Collins said.
Like Wednesday.
“I just was trying to do some damage,” d’Arnaud said of the shot off Ervin Santana that gave the Mets a home run in a club-record ninth straight game at Citi Field. “If I got out, I got out. If I hit a double, I hit a double.”
And if he hit a homer, he showed Collins’ pals knew what they were talking about.
When he was demoted, d’Arnaud said he sat for two hours with the Las Vegas staff. Keep it simple, they said. Clear your head, they said. He did and the results have impressed — his first game back, June 24, included a 3-run homer.
“That was really cool,” d’Arnaud said.
“When I was here before, I would change my swing all the time and focus so much on mechanics compared to the solid approach that would work,” d’Arnaud said. “Now, I just clear my head and I don’t have a mechanical swing any more. I just swing the bat and wherever it goes, it goes.”
And on Wednesday, it went deep over the wall in left.