The Ben Zobrist strategy for 2011 Major League Baseball: Simplicity and health
Tampa Bay Rays player Ben Zobrist is making adjustments to his approach to the game this year, with solid reasons for change.
2010 marked one of the most testing seasons for Zobrist. The player had a neck injury to deal with and there was the pressure to sign a good contract with the club. Given all these pressures, the player had had a decent season in 2010. But his 2009 season
stood out quite better in comparison as the season had recorded his best career performance. The player converted 27 home runs in 2009. Compared to that, Ben managed to produce only 10 homers in 2010. His batting average in the previous year was .238, compared
to his .297 career-best posting.
The utility man talked to the press after his workout on Wednesday. “I had a down hitting year, [but] everything else, I felt like I did well,” Ben Zobrist said. “I did really well defensively. I ran the bases really well. I did all the other facets of the
game that I could’ve done better than I’ve done them before.”
However, the situation is different now. Manager Joe Maddon is working with Zobrist and his approach to the Major League Baseball 2011 is all about simplicity and health maintenance. The player underestimated neck soreness last season, during spring training.
Now, the situation is different.
“He’s an experimenter and he just needs to get back to doing what he had done well the year before and the year before that,” Maddon said. “It’s one of those things where you think-that-I-think-that-you-think-that-I-think kind of stuff, and that kind of
messed him up. You just got to simplify it again.”
The player also wanted to prove his merit as he signed a four-year deal worth $18 million. Zobrist strained his neck and shoulders in the process as a consequence. This year around... well, let’s just wait and see.
The Tampa Bay Rays are in Port Charlotte for their spring training, but the club isn’t finding the trip out of the city, even to their temporary home, different by many standards and other than Ben Zobrist’s change in approach to the game, nothing much does
seem to be changed.
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