BOSTON — When Devon Travis jammed his left shoulder during the benches-clearing melee between the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees earlier this week, he feared for the worst.
“I was pretty nervous. Just really, really scared,” Travis said. “It didn’t exactly feel like it did last year, but any reminder of shoulder pain is a little scary for me.”
It should be. Travis missed long stretches of the 2015 season due to inflammation in the same shoulder and had off-season surgery on the area to insert screws and mitigate the effects of an acromion bone non-union, which cost him the first two months of 2016. On Monday, when he took his first swings after mixing it up with several Yankees in the middle of the melee, Travis felt the familiar sharp pain that sidelined him last year and thought he’d undone the months and months of rehab it took to get his shoulder back to full health.
“It wasn’t a fun injury to go through. And to have any flashbacks of it…” Travis said, trailing off. “It’s not a good feeling.”
Fortunately and somewhat surprisingly for Travis, his shoulder felt better the day after the brawl, and continued to improve the day after that. He sat out just two games before returning to the Blue Jays lineup Thursday night, going 0-for-3 and, most importantly, finishing the game without experiencing any significant pain.
Travis says he felt the injury once or twice, notably when he had to reach out unexpectedly for an errant throw from Josh Donaldson in the fourth inning. But he wasn’t limited when swinging the bat, which lifted a substantial weight off the shoulders of a young second baseman who spent the prior 72 hours worried sick.
“Right now, I probably feel exactly like everybody else in the big leagues,” Travis said. “There’s only a few games left—everybody’s got something that’s barking a little bit on them. But that wasn’t the reason I didn’t get any hits yesterday, that’s for sure.”
No, Travis has other ideas as to why he was hitless in his last 15 plate appearances coming into Friday night’s game. It has to do with his opposite field approach. When Travis is at his best, he’s driving the ball to right-centre field for singles and doubles. When he’s scuffling, he gets pull happy and falls into a tendency to chase pitches outside of the zone.
“Going the other way, that’s the biggest thing. Just staying committed to that approach is so key,” Travis said. “Even if I’m not getting hits, if my mindset is to drive the ball the other way, it helps a lot. It kind of fixes my swing. So, I’m just trying to get back to trusting that approach.”
Travis sat down in front of a laptop with Blue Jays hitting coach Brook Jacoby for 30 minutes before Friday night’s series opener with the Red Sox and pored over video. Jacoby showed him swings he’s been successful with in the past, and compared them with the swings Travis has been taking recently. The 25-year-old was amazed with what he saw.
“This is a game where, truthfully, you learn something new every day. You go back and look at video and you see yourself doing things that you had no idea you were doing,” Travis said. “[Jacoby] is incredible with that. He finds stuff that I don’t pick up on during games. He’s really awesome at what he does.”
Travis says him and Jacoby have sat down together like that no less than 10 times this season, as Travis’s swing continues to evolve. Travis leads the team in batting average and has been one of Toronto’s most consistent hitters all year long. He’s been especially good when he works the count full, batting .350/.469/.550 in the 49 plate appearances he’s gotten to 3-2.
Anyone who’s watched Travis consistently has surely noticed his proficiency in those situations. He has an 83.1 per cent contact rate this season (the league average is 78.2 per cent), which demonstrates how adept Travis is at fouling off pitch after pitch until he gets one he can drive.
Travis credits his work with Jacoby and the persistent adjustments he’s made at the plate throughout the course of the season for that success. As pitchers have found new ways to attack Travis, he’s constantly altered his approach right back. With an open mind and a willingness to try new things, Travis will sometimes shift his strategy at the plate on a daily basis.
With a potentially devastating shoulder injury dodged, Travis is just happy to be back in the starting lineup, trying new things at the plate every chance he gets.
“It’s always a work in progress. You can go 3-for-3 one day hitting one way and then 3-for-3 the next day hitting a completely different way,” Travis said. “And then the next day you go out hitting the exact way you were hitting before and you just don’t get any hits. You just keep working at it. It’s all part of the game.”
