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It's not quite at the level of avoidance of opening up a pitcher's shoulder for surgery, but you don't want to change a hitter's swing unless you have to. So there's nothing incidental about Zack Collins capping the end of a tremendously long season by heading down to Glendale to quiet the load in his swing.
Even after Collins hit .311/.488/.623 in the month of August despite having a promotion to Double-A mixed in, it didn't remove the necessity of the change.
“When you have college baseball you have an aluminum bat and you're seeing 88-92 [mph] and you can get away with a little bit more than when a guy is throwing 97-98 [mph] every night at you and you've got to compete every night,” White Sox hitting coordinator Mike Gellinger said. “Sometimes in order to pull off big moves with the bat you've got to feel strong everyday. You've got to feel top of your game everyday and by simplifying things I think you get away with a little bit more.”
Collins was hesitant to get into details of his swing adjustment in person, but Baseball America‘s Josh Norris described it as starting his stance from holding his bat over his shoulder, to resting it on his shoulder, Freddie Freeman-style. While there's only so much the Sox can ever hope to do to totally eliminate his unconscious tilting of the bat as he loads his swing, they can try to compensate by shortening his overall path to the ball and getting him in position earlier.
“During the year, his misses — the balls that he couldn't hit — were strictly because of body position,” Gellinger said. “More or less trying to get to a little better balance position before he actually executes his swing. His swing for the most part, he makes a few moves with his hands that we just calmed down. For the most part it's not a major overhaul at all.”
The Sox don't want a major overhaul because they don't want to throw out the guy who slugged 19 home runs and recorded a .221 ISO, and mess up the plate process of someone who drew walks at an 18.5 percent rate. But even changing his hand placement could throw his comfort level off enough to put him at a disadvantage when he's trying to compete in games.
“During the season sometimes, these adjustments take a little bit of time,” director of player development Chris Getz said. “You might have a little bit of success, but for your long-term well being in this game, I’m going to have to commit to something. Coming out here offers you time to do that. Zack has come out with a great mindset. He’s had purpose every single day. He’s going to leave here on Saturday in a better place than he was coming in.”
After nearly hitting his prescribed 90-game catching limit during the season, Collins' in-game workload was light in September. Despite there being games every day, instructs better served the purpose of having Collins on Sox property and working in batting cages with coaches to get comfortable.
We don't know yet if it will work, and a ton of instructional league game reps in the Arizona air probably wouldn't have made the picture any clearer, but there's a common denominator showing up here that defined Collins' work to beat the long odds he faced to stick behind the plate as a catcher: he's willing. There are a lot of variables and chance involved in who winds up hitting their prospect ceiling, but the biggest controllable factor is work ethic, and Collins has staked his faith in the White Sox player development, from eagerly soaking up John Orton's tutelage behind the plate, to now working on his swing with Gellinger.
“He definitely knows what he's talking about,” Collins said. “He's helped out a lot of guys in this organization. He has a great reputation for helping guys out and I trust everything he says.”
Collins was always going to be the big test of the White Sox's ability to draft and develop position player regulars to support their rebuild, and now the fingerprints on his growth will only become more clear. Just to check, it seemed worth it to ask one of the last above-average position players the Sox drafted and developed to see if he thought the franchise was now in a place to graduate some more soon.
“Absolutely,” said Aaron Rowand.