As the rookie Gordon Beckham was breaking in with the White Sox last summer, his play suggested he’d come down from a higher league.
When he wasn’t smoking doubles all over U.S. Cellular Field, he was reaching the seats — 43 of his 102 hits went for extra bases, including 14 home runs. He drove in 63 runs in 378 at-bats, which projects to 102 runs batted in over a full season. If he wasn’t Joe Crede at third base, he was certainly adequate in the field as he made the transition from shortstop.
At 22, less than a year removed from the College World Series, Beckham had “ballplayer” written all over him. He never seemed overmatched by the big-league environment. One scout called him the best young player to hit town since Ryne Sandberg’s 1982 debut with the Cubs. Beckham’s fellow players voted him the American League’s top rookie.
Now Beckham, 23, is discovering that the game is not as easy as he had made it look in his first season.
There has been another position switch, but he discounts its impact. Beckham is an athlete, with the hands and the range to play an excellent second base.
At the plate, however, he looks like a different player. Those scorching line drives that consistently found gaps last year have turned into lazy fly balls. Strikeouts have piled up at an unacceptable rate. After struggling to keep his average north of .200, Beckham took a seat on the bench this week as Brent Lillibridge got a look at second base and went 4 for 10 in three starts.
“I’m not punishing Beckham,” Manager Ozzie Guillen said. “He’s still a big part of this ball club and he’s going to be a big part of it. But the way Lillibridge is swinging the bat, he deserves to be in there. My job is to go with the team that gives us the best chance to win, and right now it’s Lillibridge.”
The Dodgers’ scouting manual used to have a chapter on “the good face,” loosely defined as a calm, clear-eyed, square-jawed bearing that bespoke confidence but stopped short of cockiness. Gordon Beckham has the good face. Shortstop in baseball, quarterback in football, point guard in basketball — athletic success seems rooted in his DNA. The concept of failure is so foreign to him that he has a hard time discussing it, even as it ties him in knots.
“It is what it is — I’m not having the year I expected to have or they need me to have, but I can’t get down,” Beckham said this week as he cooled off in the dugout after taking extra fielding practice in 90-degree heat hours before a game. “You can’t dwell on what’s not happening. You still have to play the game, do your job and help the team even if you’re not getting the results you want at the plate.”
Steve Stone, the Sox’s TV analyst and a former big-league pitcher, believes pitchers have identified Beckham’s strengths and adjusted accordingly.
“He’s not seeing those waist-high fastballs he drove all over the park last year,” Stone said. “Now it’s, ‘Let’s see if he can hit a face-high fastball.’ That’s a tough pitch to lay off, and tougher to do anything with.”
Beckham isn’t sure that’s the case. “I don’t know if they’re pitching me any different,” he said. “I just know I’ve been missing pitches I should be hitting, all year.”
Paul Konerko, the Sox’s 34-year-old team captain, empathizes with Beckham, having endured some rough patches during his 12-year career in the majors. He believes Beckham’s rapid rise skipped over a critical psychological stage of the development process.
“Most of us, I wouldn’t say we learned how to fail in the minor leagues, but we learned how to deal with failure,” Konerko said. “Gordon got here so quick he didn’t have an opportunity to do that. He’s learning to deal with failure at the major-league level, and that’s a lot harder because everything is magnified. But he’s hanging in there. He’s a confident guy, and he’s kept a good attitude.”
White Sox hitting coach Greg Walker believes Beckham’s problem is “between his ears.”
“There’s nothing wrong with his mechanics — he keeps it simple,” Walker said. “But he’s trying to do too much with each at-bat and get it all back at once.”
Beckham has to learn patience, which is as important to a hitter’s development as pitch recognition and a quick bat. Walker cites Carlos Quentin, whose re-emergence as a slugger has been the impetus for the Sox’s charge into contention in the division.
“It looked pretty easy for Carlos in ’08, then he got hurt and started scuffling,” Walker said. “He finally made up his mind that he was too good a hitter to hit the way he’d been hitting. All of a sudden he started driving the ball, and he’s been our hottest hitter.”
No one associated with the Sox has given up on Beckham, least of all Beckham. The memories of 2009 are too fresh — he was the best player on the team and he hasn’t lost it overnight. “I’m frustrated, but I’m not down,” he said. “I’m learning from this. This is when it started falling into place for me last year.” Beckham will come out of it. He has too much talent to fail, and mental toughness to match.