TORONTO — It was a grand ruse in the finest tradition of the keepers of the game’s secrets, involving the manager, training staff, club doctors, teammates – even the general manager. It’s continuing today, with nobody saying on the record how exactly Kevin Pillar broke his hand last July, except that it wasn’t on the field.
“Baseball is an emotional game,” is all Pillar said on Thursday.
What, did the guy punch a dugout wall or something?
“Yeah, that’s a pretty good guess,” one club source said. “He was pretty embarrassed by it.”
But the bottom line is this: if Pillar had not been able to keep body and soul together for the better part of two months last season while he played with a broken right hand, it wouldn’t have mattered. The secret would have leaked out. And that tells you a little bit about why even though manager John Gibbons has thought about at least platooning with Pillar out of the leadoff spot – a left-handed bat like Michael Saunders or, maybe, Ryan Goins – for now he’s going to ride with Pillar.
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And this is the thing to remember about Pillar in this callow portion of the 162-game season, while his performance out of the leadoff spot comes under increasing scrutiny: eventually, as Gibbons himself pointed out, Pillar figures out a way to answer the challenges placed in front of him.
“I don’t think anybody completely understands what it takes to play the style of game Kevin plays,” Gibbons said quietly. “I’m well aware of the fact that every challenge we present to him or every challenge he faces, Kevin usually meets it.
“He was adamant last season that he was going to play. We needed him; we wanted him.”
Pillar would not reveal details of the injury he suffered last season, except to say it occurred shortly after the all-star break and was a non-displaced fracture. He did not take batting practice on the field, he said, from about the third week of July until Aug. 21, when the team was in Anaheim to play the Los Angeles Angels. He didn’t lift weights; he didn’t swing the bat in the on-deck circle. In the field, he made sure that when he dived for a ball he landed on his shoulder, not his right throwing hand. “I gave myself one good swing an at-bat to try to get a good pitch and make a good move,” Pillar said.
“I got by.”
Pillar, who finished the season with a .278 average, hit .240 in August, .333 in September and into October, and hit .286 in the post-season. “It was my secret,” he said, shrugging. “You can’t give the other team any advantage. We talked about it internally and figured that the way it was broken, it was still stable. I wasn’t comfortable, but given the time of the year, we felt like if I could at least play defence and help this team any way I could, it was better than just having me on the bench.”
Pillar went into spring training telling everybody he wanted to be the leadoff hitter. He won the job, the logic being that he would see fastballs in front of Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, because opposing pitchers wouldn’t want to venture into the maw of the Blue Jays lineup with somebody on base. But Pillar has shown signs lately of his old slider-chasing ways, and going into Thursday’s game he was the only full-time player in the majors to have not drawn a walk in 40 plate appearances. More to the point, he’s been making soft contact against right-handed pitchers with just one well-hit ball in 28 at-bats, the second-lowest mark among qualifying players. “What … it surprises you that he hasn’t walked?” Gibbons asked. “It’s not his nature.”
Added Pillar: “I’m not where I want to be offensively right now. But I’m putting in work; I’m not afraid to do that. That’s what I like about this game … I enjoy putting work in to try to get to the level of other guys. Last year, I had what was probably the worst month historically for my career (he hit .181 in May) and I answered it with, maybe, my best month (June, when he hit .365.) This is just another challenge.”
Do not count him out. Ever.
