TORONTO – Jose Reyes is still delivering the spectacular with his glove, like he did Wednesday by ranging to his right to snare Ryan Kalish’s hot smash, spinning, leaping and throwing a dart to first base for a pretty out.
A more regular sight, however, is that of a groundball skipping past the Toronto Blue Jays shortstop, whose defensive coverage has eroded noticeably in recent weeks. At times, he’s looked slow off the bat, at other points balls three or four steps away he usually gets have been out of reach.
What’s going on?
“The last few weeks I’ve been playing with a sore (left) hamstring, it’s giving me a little trouble running full speed, stuff like that,” Reyes said during an interview Friday. “I don’t want to do anything crazy on the field and blow up my hammy.
“I just try to play through it because my team needs me on the field. I do whatever I can to stay on the field.”
The soreness – in the same hamstring he tweaked during spring training, strained on opening day and landed him on the disabled list – started after he played in the Blue Jays’ 19-inning, 6-5 win over the Detroit Tigers on Aug. 10 and has been fairly steady since.
To avoid another stint on the DL, he’s been arriving at the ballpark far earlier than his usual early for extra treatment and stretching. During batting practice, third base coach Luis Rivera, who is also responsible for the infielders, only hits him 20-25 grounders and doesn’t move him much “because we need him in the game, not in BP.” After games, Reyes’ left leg is mummified in ice packs, as is the right shoulder that troubled him in early July, requiring a cortisone shot just before the all-star break.
No one should doubt his toughness.
The leg problems do however help explain why his mobility in the field has been limited and he’s stolen just four bases, the last two on Sept. 3, since Aug. 10.
“There’s nothing you can really do, I don’t try to be overaggressive on the base-paths and try to be careful when I’m running,” said Reyes. “Every time I’m going full speed, when I stop I have to take a little break to let the soreness calm down a little bit. It’s been tough the last few weeks. …
“The season is long, you’re always going to play with a sore body, that’s the way it is, nobody plays 162 games pain-free. Every time you have something physical, you feel like you’re not able to do what you want to do on the field, specifically when I get on base. I want to steal a base so bad. At the same time, I’m thinking about my hammy in the back of my mind, it holds me back a little bit.”
The limitations are most glaring in his defence and the metrics are rather unkind in that regard.
For instance, his DRS (defensive runs saved, a stat that aims to measure how much above or below average a defender’s overall play is) has dropped from minus-4 last year to minus-16 this year, better only than Yunel Escobar’s minus-23 among qualified shortstops. At the other end of spectrum, Andrelton Simmons is a plus-23 and Zack Cozart is a plus-19, to provide some context.
DRS is by no means a perfect measure, and Reyes’ arm strength remains elite, even with his shoulder soreness, and that allows him to compensate for some issues. But Rivera notes that “if you have bad hamstrings on turf it’s not a good combination.”
“I don’t know how bad it is, and I don’t know how much he can tolerate,” added Rivera. “Looking at the catcher’s signs and knowing what pitch is coming, you can start leaning a little bit one way or another, that can help.”
Reyes is trying to play it smart in other ways, too, picking his spots, listening to his body, which is something he does now because “I’m 31, I’m not 21, 22, so (the body recoves) a little bit different.”
“When I was younger if I felt something in my hammy, I would still go full out, that’s why I’ve had so many problems in my career,” he continued. “I blew up my hammy a couple of times because I didn’t worry about slowing my game down when my hammy was tight.
“Right now, when I feel something like that, I’m going to slow my game down a little bit, I’m able to play through it and I’m able to stay on the field.”
Something for the Blue Jays to consider next year is whether resting him more regularly early in the season – once a week in April, May and June, perhaps – would help ease the wear and tear on his body and keep him fresher deep into the year. And if the Rogers Centre turf accelerates the wear and tear on Reyes’ body over the next three years, a switch to a position less demanding than shortstop might be worth kicking around.
Right now, none of that is on the mind of a determined Reyes, whose dedication and will is admirable.
“(Regular rest days) make sense, but as a player, you just want to play, you don’t want any days off, even when you feel good,” said Reyes. “I’m a guy who doesn’t want to go to (manager John Gibbons) and say, ‘I need a day.’ It doesn’t matter how I feel, I want to be on the field every day.
“Even if I have a sore body, a sore hammy, anything like that, that’s not my concern, my concern is that I’m able to be on the field for a long period of time. The end of the season, my numbers are going to be there, I don’t worry about that, I just feel happy to contribute to helping my ball club every single night.”
Diminished range or not, Reyes is finding ways to do that.