Get well soon, Ryan O'Hearn
2020 Spring Training games were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is midsummer and it’s weird that we still don’t have baseball games to watch at this moment. However, baseball will be back later this month. Spring training 2.0 (summer camp) just began last week.
Spring training games in March just seem so far away. Before all the games were suspended, there were some players who were really hot in the spring.
Kiner-Falefa wants to bounce back from the sophomore problem, before MLB spring training games were suspended, he had 14 hits in 15 games. Paul DeJong also heated up early in the spring, he collected 13 hits in 11 games. The 2019 all-star hit a career-high 30 home runs and 136 hits last season. Meanwhile, Ian Happ, the Cubs’ first round pick in 2015, had a hot spring. In 10 games, he already had 13 hits and 2 home runs.
Whit Merrifield had a good start in the 2018 spring. He finished the season with 192 hits and 45 stolen bases, both led in MLB. Pete Alonso showed his ability in the spring training games last season and earned a spot on the Mets opening day roster. Carlos Santana returned to the Indians and did have a good start last season. He was selected to the all-star game for the first time in his career.
Orlando Arcia had 8 hits in the spring training, 5 were home runs. It will be very interesting to see how many homers he can hit in this short season. Does he become a home run hitter? The 2019 season was very disappointing for Ryan O’Hearn, he hit only .195 with 14 homers in 105 games last year. However, O’Hearn did show his power and blasted 5 long balls this spring. In 2018, O’Hearn had 12 homers in 44 games. Maybe 15 home runs in 60 games are possible for a healthy O’Hearn? Franmil Reyes had 37 long balls last season and he had 5 in the spring. He looked ready for the new season and prepared to make an impact on the Indians lineup. He’s a key player to watch in the summer camp. Cody Thomas hit 5 home runs to let people know there’s another Cody in the Dodgers. He was not on the 40-man roster. But he’ll be on the Dodgers' player pool with an impressive spring.
Yonder Alonso blasted 7 home runs in the 2018 spring training and hit 23 home runs in the 2018 season, the second most in his career. Ian Happ had 7 homers in the 2018 spring training, but he didn’t maintain the hot hands. He finished that season with 15 long balls. Frank Schwindel did not make it to the big league even though he had 7 home runs in the 2018 spring training. Daniel Vogelbach had only 4 home runs in the 2018 regular season and Jung Ho Kang only hit .169 in the 2019 season.
Danny Jansen was hot in the spring, batting in 13 runs in 8 games. He could add some offense to the Blue Jays lineup along with Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Kyle Tucker looked ready for the 2018 season with 21 RBIs in the spring training, but he had limited time that year. Jose Abreu and Jorge Soler both had a great season last year. Abreu had a career-high 123 RBIs and led in RBI in the American League in the 2019 season. Jorge Soler’s 48 home runs were his career high, leading in the AL.
Spring training stats could be somehow useful. We can see a player’s “level of readiness” for the new season. For some players who made adjustments in the offseason, spring training games are for them to see the initial results of the offseason work. If they feel good, they keep doing it. If they are not playing well in the spring training games, they still have enough time to adjust. However, spring training stats are not 100% related to a player’s seasonal performance. The 162-game season is really long, if a player plays very well in the spring training, all he has to do is probably only “maintain good performance”, which means a player has to extend a great 1-month performance to another 6 months or even longer.
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