Oh, oh, oh. Struggling Blue Jays hitters have to know their slumps won’t last

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This article was published 13/04/2021 (1672 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DUNEDIN, FLA.—The infinitely animated and fiery Ozzie Guillen sprinkled eyedrops on his bats “so they could see the ball good.”

Red Sox outfielder Mike Greenwell used to gather bats from slumping teammates, stack them on the clubhouse floor, and perform seances to “awaken the dead wood.”

Leo Cardenas, a shortstop with the Twins and Reds in the 1960s and ’70s, was known to shower in his uniform to wash away evil spirits.

Ballers on the schneid, whether superstitious or just gutted by protracted hitting lapses, will do just about anything to jolt themselves out of a battling slump.

Every player has ’em, those stretches of utter ineptness or maybe just really bad luck — line drives speared that should have found a hole, bullets hit directly into an infielder’s glove. No less an epic slugger than Babe Ruth had this advice: “Scallions are the greatest cure for a batting slump ever invented.”

And let us not forget Blue Jays catcher Danny Jansen, who memorably shaved off his moustache between at-bats during a game back in July, 2019. The catcher wasn’t even here) really in a slump, but he wasn’t liking the feels. So came up in the sixth with a freshly-shaved mug and ripped a two-run single.

“I’m 2-for-2 with the moustache-shaves,’’ he said afterward, disclosing that he’d pulled the same stunt in Triple-A.

Slump-busters they’re commonly called, any edge or angle or word-to-the-wise that can bring the horror to a halt. Who’s to say it’s all hoodoo and voodoo, joss and jammy?

Shoulders sag and there’s a stench of desperation among wretched men, because no sport illuminates the glare of the slump as blindingly as baseball — the 0-fers and shrinking batting average up on the scoreboard, every at bat, for all to see.

The agony of the slumpa — the Scandinavian word from which slump is derived, meaning to “fall or sink into a muddy place.” Sucks all the joy out of life, makes grown men whimper.

Don Baylor, the late power hitter and manager, once observed, making his hands into imaginary scales: “Sometimes you say, ‘Base hit, or first-born?’ Oh God. You get where you’re consumed with it. Reggie (Jackson) used to talk about it all the time. Food doesn’t taste good. A glass of wine doesn’t taste good. Sex is no good.”

Slumpa Exhibit A: Rowdy Tellez, at least until Monday evening, when he finally blistered a single that almost took off Gerrit Cole’s head — ending a career-worst 0-for-28 drought that dated back to last season but, still, 0-for-21 to start 2021. That 0-for-21 wasteland tied Pat Borders and (1991) and Socrates Brito (2019) for longest to begin a Jays season.

So immeasurably relieved. Yet it was Tellez too, as the tying run at the plate, who struck out looking in the bottom of the ninth. (To be fair, blame home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt, who rung up Tellez on a ball that missed low by 3.69 inches, as per Umpire Auditor.)

Tellez bent at the waist, as if to vomit. Bad calls don’t account for 10 strikeouts, which is where Tellez was squatting after his first at-bat Tuesday. But look how these things can snap — he ripped a high slider off the Yankees’ Lucas Luetge over the right-field wall in the fifth, giving Toronto a 6-0 lead with Hyun Jin Ryu dealing on the bump.

No slumping for Ryu, who earned his first win of 2021, with the Jays prevailing 7-3. Ryu provided typical Ryu efficiency — one run on four hits, seven strikeouts over 6 2/3 innings, 95 pitches.

And perhaps we can consider Tellez’s slump definitively conquered.

Manager Charlie Montoyo had said, a couple of hours earlier — after delivering the troubling news that Teoscar Hernandez had tested positive for COVID-19 — that while players in a funk need to work it out primarily with the hitting coach, it’s his job to set a confidence-stroking tone.

“My job and the other coaches’ job is to just stay positive because we’ve all gone through that, so we know what it’s like … Actually, I’m pretty good about talking to guys that are slumping because I did it a lot when I played.”

The epic slump is humiliating. Recall the excruciating nightmare of Baltimore’s Chris Davis, not long before one of baseball’s most feared sluggers, who went 210 days without a hit, setting a dreadful 0-for-54 major-league record in 2019 before finally slapping a shallow single off Boston’s Rick Porcello. Got an ovation from the usually hostile fans at Fenway Park. He did ask for the ball back, telling reporters afterward: “I said it a couple of week ago: ‘You have to embrace it at some point.’ ”

Well, who wants to snuggle up to a slump?

“I know what it feels like,” Montoyo said, addressing some key slouching spots in his roster. “All of a sudden you feel like there’s 20 guys fielding out there instead of eight.”

Slumpa Exhibit B: Don’t want to make too much out of this because nobody expected endearing Alejandro Kirk to pick up where he left off, rat-a-tat with the bat when he was promoted to the Jays in September. Of more significance is how he calls a game and the rhythm he’s clearly established with starters, particularly Robbie Ray.

The 22-year-old from Tijuana is a hit virgin for 2021, through four games. But he’ll take heart from putting the ball in play, just three strikeouts.

“He’s only had 12, 13 at-bats,” noted Montoyo, asserting that Kirk has been eating himself up about it. Not yet. “I do know that if it gets to 20 or something, then he’ll start pressing. I do know that’s going to happen because he’s only human.”

Slumpa C: Cavan Biggio, who has quickly found his defensive footing at third base, came into Tuesday night’s game at TD Ballpark lugging a .125 batting average. Yes, he still draws his walks but Biggio’s spring training avowal that he’d be more aggressive with the bat in his hand is just not happening.

Ten strikeouts, half a dozen without taking the bat off his shoulder.

“Because he doesn’t feel right at the plate, now he’s trying to see more pitches,” Montoyo said. “Which is what you should do as a hitter but it’s not easy. Because when you’re struggling, the first thing you want to do is go out there and hit the first pitch.”

If Tellez, Kirk and Biggio looked across at the visitors’ dugout, they would see someone who, at one time, epitomized the historical slumpa.

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Aaron Judge crushed a home run in his very first at-bat in The Show on Aug. 13, 2016, against the Rays at Yankee Stadium. Hit another the next day. Then, in 22 games through Sept. 11, he struck out 37 times, including 14-multi strikeout games, managing just one home run and nine hits in 77 plate appearances.

Snake-bit.

But he came back the next year with a monster season, 52 homers, and the American League rookie-of-the-year award.

This too shall pass.

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno