Home runs.
If you saw the on-field interview that Josh Hamilton did after the game last night with Emily Jones, you heard and saw Hamilton’s raw feelings about being a Texas Ranger again emerge the way his power stroke had a couple hours earlier.
If you found yourself reading between the lines a bit at Hamilton’s April 27 press conference when he addressed his feelings about returning to Texas, at that time largely in the context of getting away from Los Angeles, there was no nuance to what he said last night after Texas 7, Boston 4, with a smile as big as the one he flashed the night before when he stepped up to the plate in Rangers white for the first time in nearly 1,000 days, showered this time by a powerful ovation, a reception far different from the one he received back on October 5, 2012, when he saw just eight pitches (zero of which were balls) in four at-bats as the Rangers saw their season end (and Hamilton his Rangers career) at the hands of Joe Saunders and the Baltimore Orioles.
Whether you saw the postgame exchange last night or the two home runs or the huge walk in the eighth or the first-to-third-on-a-single that followed or just the box score, or if you merely root for laundry, that was a really good win, evocative at times of those 2008-12 Hamilton years here, and in some ways of those Rangers teams as well.
After Chuck Morgan ushered Hamilton to the plate Thursday night, bringing on far more cheers than anything else from the announced 34,000-plus, he stepped in and promptly turned on inner-half 95 from impressive Red Sox rookie southpaw Eduardo Rodriguez on the first pitch of the at-bat, displaying plus bat speed as he rifled a double down the right field line — but also showing the anything-but-methodical approach that was equally reminiscent of the end of his first Rangers tenure.
The bat speed was there again Friday night, even if that’s not as easy to recognize when it comes against knuckleballs living in the 60s and 70s, but the Hamilton trips to the plate were far different in other ways.
First plate appearance: Six-pitch at-bat in a tie game; takes the first two pitches. Solo home run gives Texas a 1-0 lead.
Second plate appearance: Five-pitch at-bat in a tie game; takes the first two pitches. Solo home run gives Texas a 3-2 lead.
Third plate appearance: Two-pitch at-bat with two outs and men on the corners and a 3-2 lead. Takes the first pitch, then grounds out to third base.
Fourth plate appearance:
Texas up 5-4 in the eighth. Bases empty after a Prince Fielder single to center is followed one pitch later by an Adrian Beltre 5-4-3. Shawn Tolleson warming to come in as Hamilton steps up with two outs.
Lefthander Craig Breslow on the mound.
Fastball, fouled off, strike one.
Changeup, swung through, strike two.
Hamilton was down, 0-2, a count after which he’d gone 7 for 68 with the Angels in 2014 (.103/.116/.162), with zero walks.
And a count after which, in his final season with Texas in 2012, he had gone 20 for 129 (.155/.167/.341), with one walk all year.
We’re all familiar with the book on Hamilton, especially when a pitcher gets ahead in the count, especially with two strikes.
Breslow threw a 90-mph fastball. Hamilton watched it go by. Ball one.
Then a 78-mph change out of the zone, a pitch Hamilton could never resist chasing. He resisted. Ball two.
Another fastball, at 91. Hamilton kept the bat quiet. Ball three.
Breslow then spun a slider down and in, another piece of shark chum Hamilton has never not loved.
He spat on this one, and took his base.
From 0-2 to a walk, which Hamilton never made happen in 2014, and just once in 2012, in about 200 combined trips to the plate.
Mitch Moreland then sliced a 2-2 pitch to left center, and Hamilton tore around second and reached third without a throw.
Tolleson was warmed and ready at that point to protect the 5-4 lead.
But then Robinson Chirinos greeted new reliever Matt Barnes with a rocket down the left field line, scoring not only Hamilton but Moreland as well, as Carlos Peguero couldn’t cut the ball’s path off short of the fence. (If Mike Napoli hadn’t been thrown out of the game minutes earlier, Brock Holt would have still been in left field and Moreland doesn’t score on that play.)
The sequence gave the Rangers a comfortable 7-4 lead that Tolleson needed 12 pitches to preserve.
Last night was the ninth multi-homer game in Hamilton’s career. They’ve come against nine different teams.
I’m not sure whether any of them included a big walk later in the game against a left-handed offspeed guy who had started him out 0-2. But I can guess.
“That at-bat was equally as impressive as the homers,” Jeff Banister told reporters after the game. “The ability to get on base late when we needed to be able to mount another charge after we gave up two runs in the top of the inning. I look at those as extremely key at-bats. It was big.”
Especially for a see-the-ball-take-a-huge-rip-at-the-ball type like Josh Hamilton.
In the space of three innings last night, Hamilton hit two home runs in his home ballpark.
Which is two more than he hit at home for the Angels in all of 2014.
And one fewer than Angels left fielders have hit, in anyone’s ballpark, in 2015.
Some have quipped that hitting home runs off knuckleballers doesn’t really count. But Hamilton has long been a hitter who’d rather see 93 than something that spins or dances.
The fact that he can turn on 95 like he did Thursday, or let a junk pitch travel and get deep before firing his hands at it like he did twice early last night — or take an 0-2 count all the way to a base on balls — all of that bodes well for a player who will make around $7 million Rangers dollars over these next three seasons and something like $68 million Angels dollars, and who looks, however much faith you want to place in a stupidly small sample, like a guy who just might have something left, at the plate and on the bases and running balls down at the fence and keeping the opponent from seeking an extra base.
The dude can still be an impact player. A win-win — unless your taste for schadenfreude leads you to suggest this could be a win-win-devastating loss.
Regardless, it appears he’s not finished contributing to winning baseball.
And last night, after it was clear that he’d let sink in what he got done and in whose uniform, it was equally clear that this chapter turn in Josh Hamilton’s baseball career is no longer about what he’s been freed from — but instead about the chance he’s been given to come back home and tap back in, at least on occasion, to something special.
