Travis Snider hopes to return in 2012 and build on the progress he made in a fragmented season.
There is resoluteness in Travis Snider as he reflects on a long, trying and truncated season, along with a keen awareness of both the problems that caused his struggles and their implications on his status with the Toronto Blue Jays.
Issues with his swing led to not one but two demotions to the minors, the erosion of his place on the organizational depth chart, and ultimately the overuse injury to his right wrist as he worked relentlessly to find himself at the plate.
Now back home in Lynnwood, Wash., to begin the four-to-six weeks of rest prescribed to clear up the tendinitis that cost him a September call-up to the Blue Jays, Snider is under no illusions about where he's at as a player.
Already he's thinking of ways to take the best of 2011 and apply it to 2012, and the 23-year-old outfielder knows he must hit the ground running next spring to reassert himself in the Blue Jays hierarchy.
"I look forward to competing," Snider said in an interview. "Competition is going to be the big word moving forward because we've got a good group of young guys who have all had some success at that level as well as some failure, and looking at the way my position in the organization is not the same as it was a year or two ago.
"I look forward to a good off-season of some hard work preparing myself to build off the positives and negatives of the last year, really just going down there hungry and doing whatever I can to make that team, and help the team win."
That the 14th-overall pick in the 2006 draft failed to entrench himself this year ranks as one of the bigger disappointments of the season for the Blue Jays. Even to the untrained eye, Snider's natural talent is obvious and his professionalism and work ethic only add to the package.
Many have been left scratching their heads as to why it all hasn't come together yet, and adding to the mystery is that the Blue Jays have done remarkably well with taking underachieving players from other teams and placing them in an environment where they could finally find success.
One theory is that he has never been given an extended run in the majors, with his 232 games in the majors coming in multiple stops and starts.
That was certainly the case this season, when he was demoted to triple-A Las Vegas late in April after batting just .184 with a homer, 12 RBIs and 23 strikeouts over 25 games, and then after he returned July 4, ended up the odd man out again when Brett Lawrie was called up at the beginning of August.
But Snider didn't use his 61 games in Vegas idly, working near constantly with 51s hitting coach Chad Mottola to repair what he in July described as a "glaring problem" in his swing that caused him to pull off the ball, leaving holes in his plate coverage.
Both Snider and the Blue Jays felt the issues were resolved during his first stint in Vegas, especially when he came out hot, going 20-for-56 in his first 13 games with nine doubles, two homers and 17 RBIs.
Then he slid into another funk, going 6-for-44 with 16 strikeouts over the next 11 games before he was sent back down Aug. 4. He liked how things were going once he reunited with Mottola the second time, but then the tendinitis stopped everything in its tracks.
Still, Snider expects lots of good to carry over into 2012.
"I feel like we've established some basic mechanics in some of the things I've tried over the last couple of years at the major and minor league levels," he says. "I'm cautiously optimistic when I say I feel like I've experienced enough trying things to know what I need to go back to.
"It was something I think me and Chad really started to tap back into the second time being down there before I got hurt, and that's just progress I'm looking to build on. I think as a hitter I've learned that there's no one finished product, there's no one flawless solution.
"Moving forward for me, it's a matter of getting back in tune with what got me there."
To that end, Snider intends to spend part of his off-season running private hitting clinics and teaching at public camps, to "surround myself around the art of hitting again."
"Hitting is something that was second nature to me as a kid and now is something I've had to work really hard at to try and regain my swing," he says. "I'm not going to throw the towel in on it, I'm not going to hang my head just because I've had a couple up and down years."
Instead, he plans to keep channeling "the adversity I've dealt with the last few years" into his workouts. Back in 2009, when he was demoted after a hot start to the season faded, he was optioned to Las Vegas and headed to the desert with a bad attitude.
During the subsequent such demotions in 2010 and 2011, Snider went down with a more determined approach, seeking to get himself back up as soon as possible. Now, he's tailoring that even more.
"Really after a few years of doing this, and going through some injuries, some successes and some failures, you get back to the point of square one," says Snider. "You realize it's a game and all I can do is prepare myself the best I can during the off-season, take the experiences I've had, and learn from them and really just go out there and enjoy playing the game of baseball, no matter what it brings, positive or negative."
That's why he takes great pride in his positives from this year, including gains made defensively and on the basepaths, two areas that were substandard for him in the past.
In 49 games he stole nine bases, recorded four outfield assists and played six times in centre field, four of them starts.
"For me to have accomplished that, that's something nobody can ever take from me and if you would have asked me that as a kid growing up with a promising future in baseball what position you think you would have played, I never would have said centre field," says Snider. "I look at that, I look at baserunning, the stealing bases, but I think more importantly is having the right light to look at myself as a hitter, and what I've gone through, because that was my calling card as a young prospect and really has been the thing I've yet to establish on a consistent basis at the major-league level."
Snider was hoping to get another crack at it when the rosters expand in September, but the injury pushed those plans back to next spring. The first symptoms started to show up in the middle of the month and though he wanted to play through it, the Blue Jays felt otherwise.
"It's been kind of a long year for me, I've put in a lot of extra work and it sucks to see it come down to something like tendinitis," says Snider. "I didn't think it would be season ending first and foremost. I was hoping it would be something that I just could get through the end of the season, ultimately the decision was made by the organization.
"It's something I agree with, in the long run it's going to be beneficial for me to take the time off now instead of trying to push through it and then being set back through my off-season. I let them really guide me in the right direction at this point."
