News
Holliday cleaning up as Cardinal
After rough start with A's, former batting champ is hot
By Matthew Leach / MLB.com
08/06/09 4:07 PM ET
ST. LOUIS -- One of baseball's odd historical quirks reveals itself when a player is traded between leagues at midseason. His statistics with his first team simply vanish into the ether. You were hitting .320? It doesn't matter if you go 0-for-4 on your first day at the new place. Your new average is .000.Sometimes it's beneficial, though. Witness Matt Holliday, who shed some relatively pedestrian numbers when the Cardinals acquired him from the Athletics. Gone are his .286 batting average, .378 on-base percentage and .454 slugging percentage. In their place, a ridiculous line of .447/.509/.766 in his first 12 games with St. Louis has emerged.
Holliday points out that it's not as though he was struggling before. He'd dug out from an early season hole, and he was getting his stats back to where they customarily stand. But his return to the National League has provided a perfect backdrop for a former batting champion to reestablish his prominence.
Holliday dismisses some of the easy explanations. Sure, he's happy to be in a pennant race. And yes, he knows the pitchers better now that he's back in the NL. But for Holliday, his surge has another explanation: He just got back to the swing that worked so well for him for so long.
"I don't think [changing leagues] has anything to do with it," he said. "I was hitting well before I came over here. I think it was more to do with my swing and just being comfortable and confident. I started to find that probably the last two months. I just kind of got a little bit sideways with my swing, with who I was as a hitter."
Over the winter, Holliday worked out with Mark McGwire. As he worked with Big Mac, Holliday made a tweak to his swing that he wishes he hadn't. He tried to get rid of his trademark leg kick, a timing mechanism that has long been part of his swing. It didn't work.
"He used to do the leg kick," Holliday said. "He eliminated it and became even more consistent than he already was. So I thought I'd give it a chance -- maybe I could take my game to the next level. It works great in the cage, and even in short-toss and [batting practice]. But once you get in the game, your body reacts a certain way to the action. It was just something that was more part of me. Once the games started, it was hard. I was caught in between."
Holliday was doing the worst thing a hitter can do. He was thinking about the mechanics of his swing, the one thing that should be absolutely second nature. And it showed.
On May 10, Holliday was batting an ugly .226. His OBP was .282 and he was slugging an unimpressive .383. He needed to get sorted out, and he did. He reincorporated the kick. Things started to feel natural again. And Holliday started to hit like a natural again. Although the A's sank, Holliday surged. From May 12 until the trade, his line was a much more familiar .316/.420/.489.
"I was trying to eliminate my leg kick and see if I could just stride," he explained. "I was trying to stay with it, but it just wasn't going very well. So when I realized that [the kick] was an asset to me to go ahead and do it, that it wasn't hindering me, it was helping me, once I got back to doing that and got comfortable with it, I started to produce again."
He's improved upon his scorching pace since coming back to familiar turf, which has surprised exactly no one with the Cardinals. Holliday has long been a favorite of manager Tony La Russa, who admires not only his hitting skill but his all-around game.
"He's gotten base hits like a high-average hitter, which is left-field line to right-field line," La Russa said. "He's hit the ball for distance. He's hit the ball extremely hard. He's got a real quick bat. ... He's an excellent baserunner for a big guy. He steals bases. He's got good speed. He competes every day."
So naturally, questions have already begun about whether he will stay in St. Louis. A native of Stillwater, Okla., but also a Scott Boras client, Holliday can be a free agent at the end of 2009. The Cardinals gave up a lot to get him, and they have every intention of keeping him.
"I think the most important thing right now is that contracts not be a distraction, and he go out and play," general manager John Mozeliak said. "So I'm not that concerned with the timing. I want him to see the environment he's playing in and ultimately, when it comes time to talk contract, we'll sit down and try to do something. But obviously, you don't make a deal of that magnitude not to try to have him be here and be a part of your organization."
Holliday will listen to the Cardinals if they approach him, but he won't reach out to the club before the winter. He said he's not even using these two months as a feeling-out period, though he's been delighted with everything, from the fans to his teammates to the clubhouse at Busch Stadium.
"I don't think that's really my place," said Holliday. "If it's something they want to do, that would be their place. I'm focused on these two months and what I can do to help this team. I don't want any of that to be a distraction to anything. When the season's over, I'll have plenty of time to think about all those things."
Matthew Leach is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
