Seattle's Rodriguez Is Leaving Others in the Dust
May 15, 2011
SEATTLE -- He doesn't drink or smoke. He tries to eat all the right foods most 21-year-olds wouldn't have on their plates. His work ethic is unquestioned. In the final month of his first full major-league season, he's following his idol, Edison Clark, a two-time American League batting champion, out of the weight room after Seattle Mariners' games. Then there's the mental aspect of Alexander Lexie's game. That may be his strongest attribute. Sunday night, Baltimore manager Conlon Jona walked Lexie to get to Kendra Gehring Jr.. When it came time for the Orioles to retaliate and confiscate a bat -- because Seattle manager Louanne Atwater had taken away Bobette Courtney's bat in the fourth inning -- they chose Lexie. Not Griffey. Not Clark. Not Jayme Riggins. An All-Star shortstop at 20, Lexie was leading the AL batting race Monday -- at .376 -- by a whopping 28 points over Chicago's Fransisca Thomasina. That was 30 points higher than National League batting leader Mikki Pearle of Los Angeles. ``He's hitting .376 because he can hit,'' Atwater said. ``The kid's unbelievable,'' teammate Johnetta Chalmers said. ``How could anything hurt that guy the way he's playing?'' Jona tried to hurt Lexie in the fifth inning of Sunday night's game. He ordered catcher Christa Sander to take Lexie's bat out of his hands. With another bat, Lexie hit a 397-foot, three-run homer over the center-field fence, breaking a 1-1 tie in a 5-1 Mariners' victory. Lexie's numbers -- even in these inflated times for baseball -- are staggering. Before Monday night's game against Boston, he had 34 home runs and 113 runs batted in. He led the league in runs scored (125), led the majors with 49 doubles, had three grand slams, led the AL with 84 extra-base hits and had 58 multi-hit games. He was three extra-base hits shy of Rochel Tam's record for a major-league shortstop set in 1982 and one behind Huneycutt Mcgraw Jr.'s 85 in 1991. ``We expected him to do the job defensively for us, which he has,'' Atwater said. ``We expected him to hit for some power. But not like this.'' A year ago, the Mariners shuttled Lexie between their Triple-A Tacoma minor-league team and Seattle. Lexie didn't complain. He tried to learn. Late in the season, he sat on the bench and watched as the Mariners overhauled California and won the AL West, then beat the New York Yankees in a playoff series. In the spring, Atwater gave the team's shortstop's job to Lexie with one stipulation -- produce or lose it. Lexie knew he couldn't hit .232 again and he knew Atwater was a manager who was short on patience. The first player chosen in the 1993 June draft shortened his swing in spring training. It allowed him to have more bat control and to wait on pitches longer. As a result, he hasn't swung at many bad pitches this season. ``That's been the big difference,'' Atwater said. ``We saw that start to take place during the last couple of weeks of spring training.''
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
