Aubrey Huff has always said
he is a notoriously slow starter, which has
hindered his production the last three seasons.
But this year, the Orioles' designated hitter is
well on his way to matching or surpassing the best
two seasons of his career.
Through Monday, Huff was hitting .305 with 28 home runs
and 91 RBIs. He also has 69 extra-base hits. Not since
2003, when he hit .311 with 34 homers and 107 RBIs, and
2004, when the numbers were similar, 29 and 104, has
Huff put together such a season.
Huff usually doesn’t like to talk about his
success at the plate. In fact, when searching for
answers earlier this season as to why he has been one
of the Orioles' clutch performers in the middle of the
lineup, he said, “I don’t know. See
ball, hit ball.”
That wasn't exactly the explanation many were looking
for, but it was consistent with what he said last
weekend.
“It just seemed like this is a ‘do’
year,” he said. “I have had three off-years
in a row.”
Whatever it is, there is no question what Huff has
meant to this offense. He is hitting .329 with 11
homers and 74 RBIs with men on base. With runners in
scoring position, he has batted .328 with five homers
and 60 RBIs. With runners in scoring position and
two outs, he is at .315 with two homers and 24 RBIs.
His on-base percentag5 is .361, and he is slugging
.560.
“I feel pretty confident in the year I’ve
had,” Huff said. “The big thing was slow
starts, and even though this wasn’t a fantastic
start, it was a lot better than what I have had in the
past. You know, I was around .240 the first two months,
and that’s not great, but I managed to drive in
some runs, so that was nice, but for some reason, the
second half has always been a little more friendly to
me.”
It is always important when a player is struggling at
the plate to still be able to contribute to the team,
and Huff took a tremendous amount of pride in doing
that early in the year. “I wasn’t hitting
for average, but I was getting a lot of big hits and
driving in some big runs, and that means a lot,”
he said. “You look at Carlos Pena in Tampa.
He’s not having the year he had last year, but
every time he’s up in the late innings,
he’s getting the big hit, and you got to do that
when you are not hitting for average."
Orioles manager Dave Trembley said he has watched Huff
closely this year and thinks there are reasons Huff has
been able to put together the impressive offensive
numbers.
“I think he’s a lot more relaxed, and I
think he is standing up straighter at the plate,”
Trembley said. “He uses the other side of the
field. He’s a very good cripples hitter, and for
me, a cripples hitter is when [opposing pitchers] get
ahead in the count, and they throw him the fastball, he
usually doesn’t miss it. His swing doesn’t
seem to be as long or as big as it was.”
Trembley thinks something else may have turned Huff
around.
“It’s the second year with the
organization, and he seems to be a lot more
comfortable,” he said. “I think some
personal things in the offseason with him as far as
losing his best friend woke him up and put some other
things in perspective for him.”
Huff came into spring training coming off a very
emotional winter. He lost friend and former Tampa Bay
teammate, pitcher Joe Kennedy, who died unexpectedly
from heart disease on Nov. 23, 2007. As a tribute, Huff
asked Kennedy’s wife if it would be all right to
honor him by wearing Kennedy’s No. 17, which he
wore in Tampa. She agreed it would be a great gesture
by Huff. So Huff switched from No. 19 to No. 17 to
start the year.
Kennedy’s death is something Huff still thinks
about every day.
“He was one of my best friends, growing up in the
Tampa organization,” Huff said. “In
baseball, you probably have five or six real close
friends you keep up with your whole career and
throughout your whole life, and he was one of them.
… He lives on in my memory by wearing the
jersey."
After being swept by the Yankees over the weekend, and
splitting an unconventional doubleheader with the White
Sox, the Orioles find themselves a season-high seven
games under .500. Huff would rather look at the overall
big picture to this season than just the recent
struggles.
“We’ve played well all year,” he
said. “You can look at the pitching being bad the
last couple months, but we were terrible hitting-wise
the first couple of months, and they were brilliant. If
we could have put it all together at once and played
consistent baseball, we would probably be about 10
games over .500, but that just hasn’t been the
case."
Huff also attributes the competitive nature of the
Orioles to Trembley. “Dave has been great,”
Huff said. “He lets you play. He is a young
manager in terms of major league experience. He is a
guy that’s going to let you play and be positive.
He’s not a yeller or a guy who is a screamer who
is going to get a lot of the young guys nervous or
anything like that, so I think in that aspect
he’s great.”
Trembley appreciates that sentiment and what his
cleanup hitter has done the whole year.
“He’s been a dangerous hitter in the middle
of the lineup and a very reliable, two-out RBI
guy,” Trembley said. “He’s gotten a
lot of big two-out RBI hits for us.”
(pressboxonline.com)