Eric Hinske understands better than most the vagaries of a big league career, and now the former American League Rookie of the Year with the Toronto Blue Jays has a ringside seat to the major leagues’ most counter-intuitive exercises in team building.
Understand that it’s not that the Chicago Cubs undervalue pitching, it’s just that while everybody in the majors is fishing in that pond, president Theo Epstein and general manager Jed Hoyer have gone about collecting five-tool position players. Forget the talk about Marcus Stroman. Know why Jeff Samardzija didn’t end up a Blue Jay? Because unlike the Oakland Athletics, the organization didn’t have the requisite position prospect to get the deal done. Shortstops — everywhere you look there seem to be shortstops who can play second or third or the outfield. Prospects, everywhere prospects. Long, lean, hard-swinging prospects. “Take Jorge Soler,” Hinske, the Cubs first base coach, said on Monday before the start of a three-game interleague series at the Rogers Centre. “He’s a freak. Honestly, he looks like Giancarlo Stanton. Same body … and there’s more coming. I mean, you have to see Kris Bryant.”
Understand, of course, that the true value of any prospect in baseball is only what another GM will give you in a trade for him. But purely for argument’s sake, we can grant the whole notion of rating prospects a certain amount of legitimacy, and if we do that we see that the Cubs have four of MLB.com’s 15 top prospects (Javier Baez, Bryant, Addison Russell and Albert Almora) in addition to the 22-year-old Soler, who with all due respect to his first base coach looks more like Vladimir Guerrero, at this point, than Stanton. Like Guerrero throughout his career, the pitch he doesn’t believe he can hit appears to have not yet been invented. Toss in 24-year-old Starlin Castro, who already has more than 700 big league games under his belt, and 25-year-old 30-homer first baseman Anthony Rizzo, and it’s no wonder that Cubs fans believe the lean years are almost completely behind them.
Funny thing about baseball, though: Sometimes it doesn’t always work out, and even when it does it isn’t always a linear progression, as Hinske knows all too well. The first player acquired by then-GM J.P. Ricciardi, joining the Blue Jays from the Oakland Athletics on Dec. 7, 2001, along with Justin Miller in return for Billy Koch, Hinske was named AL Rookie of the Year after hitting .279 with an OPS of .846, slugging 25 home runs and driving in 79 runs. Hinske was given a five-year contract by Ricciardi but an injury to the hook of his hamate bone — a small bone near the wrist — started a slow, gradual decline that eventually saw Hinske sold to the Boston Red Sox in 2006. But that move — more particularly, Hinske’s reaction to it — started a seven-year run in which Hinske turned into a valuable bench player, winning two World Series along the way and competing in another. By the time Hinske was released by the Arizona Diamondbacks on July 17, 2013, he’d played in 1,387 major league games with a .249 career average. He was 2-for-7 over 10 post-season games; both of his hits were homers.
“I’ve been a really good player and a not so good player,” said Hinske, now a 37-year-old father of three. “I’ve been on good teams and bad teams. The wrist … nah, look. My hand felt fine. The fact is I just never really performed as well as I did my first year. I do think I became a better baseball player the older I got — after I left Toronto — because I started to understand my swing better. I figured out my mechanics.
“Honestly, I have no regrets about my career. After a while, the fastballs you used to hit … well, you start fouling them off, you know? I loved the way I went about my business and I’m proud of the way I got back into the game. To me, that’s a sign that you did things the right way.”
Hinske was contacted by the Cubs over the winter just a few days after the New York Yankees had hired him to be a major league scout. Hinske admits that managing is something that appeals to him down the road, but for now he’s continually amazed at how much is involved in being part of a major league staff. Among Hinske’s responsibilities on Rick Renteria’s staff is working with the outfielders, which means breaking down opponents’ hitting patterns.
“The amount of learning I’m doing now on this side … right now I know I’m nowhere being able to manage,” Hinske said with a chuckle. “Players have no idea what coaches do on an every-day basis, I know I didn’t.
“As a player, you need to stay in your lane. As a player, even though it’s a team sport, you worry about yourself. As a coach? You worry about everybody.”
As for the Cubs’ bright future? “It’s crazy,” Hinske said, shaking his head. “When Theo came over here, he told everybody that this team was going to have to get younger and that meant it was going to take awhile, but it’s all coming together now. These guys have so much talent and so much energy that one of the things I’m trying to do is be as positive as possible, to stress the everyday process of the routine.
“Because it just doesn’t happen all the time, you know? Not everybody is Miguel Cabrera.”
True, that. There are more Eric Hinskes than Miguel Cabreras.