Before Jake Burger played first base for the Texas Rangers, and before Skip Schumaker managed them, the two shared a Miami Marlins dugout and flourished alongside each other.
So much so, Burger told The Dallas Morning News at one of the team’s Winter Warmup stops Thursday, that he’s prepared to “run through a wall” for Schumaker in his first season on the Texas bench.
“I’m really fired up,” Burger said. “I always think about my time in Miami with him. He was an excellent communicator.”
Anything specific come to mind?
Try this conversation.
It’s awfully prescient now.
“If you play 150 games a year,” Schumaker, per Burger, once told him. “You’re going to do everything you’re setting out to do. You’re going to have a 30 home run season.”
Burger is in search of those marks as he prepares for his second season with the Rangers and his first reuinted with the manager who’s seen him in or around the neighborhood of both firsthand.
The Rangers acquired him prior to last season in an attempt to pad their lineup with a slugger who could mash fastballs. Instead, as part of an offense that went wayward quick, he slashed a career-worst .236/.269/.419, hit only 16 home runs and struggled against four-seamers in an injury-riddled 103 games.
“We know we underperformed,” Burger said. “I feel like I was a big part of that. I think this is that year where you wipe it clean and we all come into camp with high energy and being who we are.”
Burger, who is fully recovered from an early offseason wrist surgery, has used this winter to rediscover the self-described “aggressive hitter who’s there to do damage.”
He diagnosed his mechanics and swing data with hitting coach Justin Viele to identify the cause of his full-season career lows in home runs and slugging percentage.
His good-to-great bat speed, hard hit percentage and ability to barrel balls did not lag enough to justify the stark decrease in power. The exact direction that his batted balls were or weren’t going, he and Viele surmised, might have.
The 29-year-old pulled a career-low 13.5% of his total batted balls and only 7 of his 16 home runs last season. For reference: he pulled 21% of his batted balls in the previous two seasons combined and slugged 63 total home runs — 40 of which were hit pullside — in the process.
He’s worked in the cage this winter to free up his hips and let his hands “play out in front a little more” to generate easier pullside power.
“That’s my bread and butter,” Burger said. “That’s where I hit a lot of home runs. My mechanics, it felt like I was kind of cutting myself off, and that caused pop ups.”
Schumaker, at baseball’s winter meetings last month, aknowledged that Burger might’ve done “too much too early to justify” his acquisition. He posted just a .660 OPS in the first half of the season, was optioned to Triple-A Round Rock for a rest in May and had any potential second-half surge limited by his multiple trips to the injured list.
By September, when he attempted to play through his wrist injury, the Rangers had effectively platooned he and Rowdy Tellez at first base.
“He’s a tough, tough kid,” Schumaker said. “He tried to play through a lot of these things and he tried to play catch up. I think it caught up to him for the majority of the year. I’m looking forward to a big year out of Jake.”
That’s a moot point if Burger is sidelined. He missed two weeks last season because of a left oblique strain, three because of a left quadriceps injury and two because of a left wrist sprain.
The wrist injury is “a little finicky” in his own words. The soft tissue injuries, Burger believes, are closer to preventable. He’s done “a lot of pilates” this offseason to strengthen his core and flexibility in an effort to avoid pulls and strains.
“Obviously injuries are unforeseen and you don’t know when they’re going to happen,” Burger said, “but you can prepare yourself to stay on the field.”
His manager seems to believe he already knows what’s possible if Burger does.
