ANAHEIM, Calif. — Joey Loperfido popped into manager John Schneider’s office Sunday morning and told his new manager that he wanted to talk.
The 25-year-old was deep in a funk, at the time 4-for-32 with 16 strikeouts over his first eight games with the Toronto Blue Jays, still acclimating to his new environment, new reality, not at all making the type of impression he wanted. And he understood that as much as he was learning about everybody, everybody was also learning about him, too.
“I just wanted to say, ‘Hey, I know you don’t have a huge track record with me, but this isn’t it. This isn’t who I am as a player,’” Loperfido said. “He tried to stop me, like, ‘You don’t have to say this,’ and I was like, ‘No, I want to. The way I work through this and respond to it will show you who I am and what I’m about.’ We had a really good conversation. I left his office feeling a lot better. Took a deep breath after that and tried to carry it through the last few games.”
Two games later, Loperfido ended an 0-for-24 drought with an RBI single in a 6-1 win over the Los Angeles Angels, building on a walk and stolen base earlier in the contest. When the ball touched green in right field, Schneider thought to himself, “Nice, take a deep breath, Joey,” glad for a player working on some adjustments to see some results.
The way he’d handled the dry spell, along with the way he initiated the conversation they had in his office, also helped reinforce what the Blue Jays believed they were getting when they acquired him, Will Wagner and Jake Bloss from Houston for Yusei Kikuchi.
“It was refreshing,” Schneider said of Loperfido’s message. “You don’t get that all the time, especially with a guy coming from a different organization. … That and just conversations that we all have with him, whether it’s his teammates, the coaching staff, the hitting coaches or myself, he’s got a really good head on his shoulders. That gives you a lot of confidence in what he’s doing and what he’s trying to do. So I love the fact that he did it. It’s not easy to do. And it just shows his character.”
The conversation is also reflective of the way both sides have worked to build a relationship in the roughly two weeks since his acquisition. Joining a new team and needing to hit the ground running can be challenging, especially for a young player transitioning to the big leagues.
Loperfido had already shown that he’s unquestionably a big-league defender. But a 38.4 per cent strikeout rate in a limited sample in the majors is concerning enough that after the trade Astros GM Dana Brown told the Astros’ pre-game show that “we still have to figure out what the bat was going to be because he has some strikeouts.”
The Blue Jays, however, liked that in previous seasons, Loperfido has already shown the aptitude to make changes and perform and had some ideas for him when he arrived. But they didn’t want to immediately inundate him with their assessments, instead choosing to hear him out, understand where he’s coming from and work with him at his own pace.
Using that approach helped to quickly earn Loperfido’s trust, even as “we’ve had some pretty honest discussions and some discussions that you’re probably not having 13 days into being on a new team.”
“You kind of start like a big ball of clay and you work your way down to the realness of it,” he said of taking in the Blue Jays’ messaging. “It’s easy to be OK, this is a bad couple of at-bats, let’s write this week off. But at a certain point, you’ve got to be honest, like, I need to make an adjustment, what can we do to get the results?”
In recent days, he’s been using resistance bands anchored by weights to help his body control, a drill that assistant hitting coach Matt Hague began reusing with Spencer Horwitz last week and repurposed for Loperfido.
While their issues are different — Horwitz is trying to keep himself from moving forward too quickly, Loperfido is trying to be more stable on his backside as he strides — in both cases, the patch was rooted in what they needed to feel right at the plate.
“I talked to them about some common denominators of my swing when it’s going really good,” said Loperfido. “Almost all of it revolved around my back hip and how that controlled the load and my weight and forward move of the swing. From there it was like, hey, this is something we can really work on that’s tangible movement. I can take a swing with that band and see and feel how controlled I am and then I can take a swing without it and try to replicate that stacked feeling. It’s been huge.”
While one hit certainly doesn’t fix all, Loperfido felt an immediate difference in the way he was seeing pitches, in turn helping him make better swing decisions, which should ultimately lead to better results.
In the interim, he credited the way his hitting group of George Springer, Daulton Varsho, Ernie Clement, Davis Schneider and Horwitz has helped to support him and laugh off his dry spell. The entire Blue Jays dugout celebrated when his liner touched green Tuesday.
“I know they were all hyped, they’re a good group,” said Loperfido. “I feel like we’ve learned a lot about each other in a short period of time. And they’ve been great. I feel like they’ve really embraced me and learned a lot about me as a hitter and a player and competitor in a short period of time.”
All of which has made him more determined to show the Blue Jays who he is, not only in words, but in actions, too.
