How new Dodger Alex Call became one of MLB’s toughest at-bats

At the end of the 2019 minor leagues season, Alex Call watched his typing numbers, then looked at the mirror.

A former choice of three -round draft which had already changed organizations once, he knew that he had just had the kind of year which generally denounces a short professional career.

As a 24-year-old voltiper at the Double-A level of the Organization of Cleveland Guardians, Call had taken 325 appearances on the plates that year with the Akron Rubberducks. In 93 of them – a rate of almost 30% – he recorded a withdrawal.

It was not the only ugly statistics of a season that saw Call Bat .205, reaching the base at a clip of .266 and hit only five circuits. But it was the biggest sign of a fundamental defect distressing the game of the right -handed striker.

“It,” he recalls recently, while thinking about what has become a turning moment in his career, “was just not going to do it.”

Six years later, Call joined the Dodgers as an addition of commercial maturity last week with an opposite polar reputation. Now, the defensively versatile voltiseur is one of the most difficult withdrawals of all the majors. Since the start of last season, its average stick of .297 has been ranked eighth among MLB strikers with at least 350 plaques appearances. Most importantly, during this same range, it classifies the first 60 in withdrawal rate and walking rate (with a ratio of 55 to 39 years overall), and 22nd in prosecution rate; Constantly improve some of the best strikers throughout the sport.

“This guy is only a right crusher, works with bats,” said managing director Brandon Gomes after the Dodgers acquired the Washington Nationals in exchange for two pitch prospects. “Playing against him, he is always incredibly frustrating to try to plan the game and go out.”

“I faced Alex a few times,” added the future Hall of Fame Le Gaucher Clayton Kershaw. “He’s hard against left -handers, a big defender. A good addition, that’s for sure.”

The Dodgers, of course, could have made splashing added to the deadline. They were linked to star names, including Steven Kwan from The Guardians, but did not make follies to pay such swollen prices.

Instead, they were satisfied with calls, which was a smaller name but which came with the control of the team until 2029. They put their faith in their ensemble of revised offensive skills, hoping that a personal transformation of more than half of the decade will make him a key room in their prosecution of a second title of Stroty World Series.

“This is my whole match,” said Call on the day of his arrival with the club. “I’m going to cringe, put the ball into play, do my walks, make things difficult on the launcher, extend the programming.”

The origins of this state of mind date from this 2019 season, and the year alter of Pandemic which followed.

Entering in 2020, call him engaged in a change on the plate. In what was a crowded pipeline of the Guardians system championships – highlighted at the time by Kwan, which has since flowered in one of the best left field fields of the game – he recognized that he needed a new identity. If he was going to reach the majors, it would simply start working better strikes.

“It’s a bad feeling,” he said, “having a cloud suspended above your head after a season like that.”

The only problem: COVID-19 came, the 2020 minor league season was canceled, and the call (like so many other long shots in the minor league clinging to big league dreams) was left effectively alone.

So he found different ways to improve his bat.

While the world of baseball stopped, Call bought a portable junior hacking machine with a self-agricultural ball dispenser. And everywhere, he went that year-from spring training to Phoenix to his childhood house in the Wisconsin to the residence of his family’s off-season in Indiana-he looked for any place “I could find a cage and a outlet” to use it, he said, laughing.

His goal was simple. Work on fast balls in the striking area. Eliminate what had been one of the greatest holes in his swing.

“For me, it is simply a question of having this mentality where, it doesn’t matter if I have two strikes or if it is a 0-0 count,” he said. “Believe that I am comfortable in all situations. I’m going to put the ball into play.”

In this winter, Call also looked for a more advanced training technology.

In the previous two years, a company called Win Reality had started to make virtual reality glasses using data -based models, real images and generated by computer to recreate virtual bats against real launchers from the point of view of a striker inside Oculus style helmets.

A handful of MLB teams, whose Dodgers, had invested in the system for their teams. In the months preceding the 2021 season, Call decided to do the same for itself, buying the product of $ 300 (and paying its annual software of $ 200) to help associate your new swing with a more demanding approach.

“”[I was] Really practicing the area, “said Call.” Knowing what pitches are my strengths and which pitchs I don’t want to swing up to two strikes. Develop this plan and develop this approach. »»

The training has borne fruit.

At the start of the 2021 season, the call was sent to Double-A Akron. Upon arrival, he was informed by the manager Rouglas Odor that he would only be to play 2-3 games per week – a quick reminder of the distance in the table of the depths of the organization he had fallen.

“I remember that he was very disappointed,” recalls Odor, now the third base coach of the Guardians, recalls this week. “But he took possession of his career and did not leave what I told him affect him.”

The occasion of the call arrived in May, after Kwan fell with an injury to the hamstrings. And almost immediately, its modifications of the year are coated have entered into force. More than 180 plates appearances, call to the call .310, pulled 21 balls on bullets and – as he had hoped – reduced his withdrawal rate by half, hitting only 26 times.

“He was a completely different striker,” said Odor, who had also been the director of Call during his reading campaign 2019. “Defensively, he had to play in the big leagues. He made incredible games … But offensively, he found his stroke. His plate discipline was more consistent. And he had an incredible season.”

At the end of the season, Call had been promoted to Triple-A. Next July, he obtained a promotion to the majors.

The ascent of there was not linear. In August 2022, he was appointed for assignment and claimed derogations by nationals. In 2023, he played in 128 big league games but hit only. 200, sending him to Triple-A for most of last year.

Alex calls bats against the Houston astros on July 28 as a member of the Washington Nationals.

(Karen Warren / Associated Press)

However, his plaque discipline did not hesitate (he only withdrew 78 times in his 439 plaques appearances in 2023, a rate of 18%, while drawing 53 steps). His VR routine has become more anchored, seeing more than 54,000 simulated throws (or, essentially 25 seasons throws) through his helmet each year, as he said at the Washington Post last month.

Everything has clicked in the last calendar year, with a call according to a productive return to the majors at the end of 2024 with its best season in complete season this quarter.

“The type of player I am, I can hit the ball on the fence, but it’s not really my full game,” said Call. “So for me, it was a question of trying to create as many opportunities as possible on the basis … I must be able to hit the ball with a good angle.”

The call is one of the only four players with at least 200 appearances in plates this season (with Kyle Tucker, Gleyber Torres and Geraldo Perceomo) which withdraws less than 15% of the time, continues less than 20% of the time and puffs of less than 20% of the time. He struck .236 with two strikes (better than everyone on dodgers except Hyeseong Kim).

He had his first out -of -competition match with the Dodgers on Wednesday when he chose, doubled and took a grip while crashing into the wall of the left field to save an additional blow.

Eight at-bats in his career as a dodgers entering the Friday match, he has not yet succeeded once.

“I am always proud of players like Alex, because he was not this great perspective, but he became a big daily league player,” said Odor. “He had the urgency to bring something to achieve his goal and his dream.”

And now, the call aims to go further in his career – so as not to be a drums of the large productive league, but also capable of playing a striking role in a club that has the title in Los Angeles.

“I always knew that I could do it and be an established major feature,” said Call. “It’s fair, sometimes it takes a little time. And I am grateful to have received this time, and I continued to improve. ”