Early in the season – the good old days – Mike Cameron remembers hitting well, then walking often, getting on base one way or the other every night.
“Now, I’m not hitting and I’m not walking,” he said Thursday. “If I take a pitch, it’s a strike. If I swing at it, it’s a ball.”
And he said that with a smile on face.
“He’s been working hard, trying to make small adjustments,” hitting coach Gerald Perry said. “Pitchers have been throwing hard stuff in on his hands, soft stuff away – and he’s been rolling over it, which gets him a lot of ground balls.
“The last few days, we’ve used different drills in the hitting cages to help him stay inside the ball instead of rolling his wrists over.”
Cameron sees progress. He’d love to hurry it along, but it’s a multiple step process.
“My mind and body aren’t together yet,” he said. “My mind has accepted what I’m doing and what I have to do, but my body just hasn’t adjusted.
“At times I’m too aggressive at the plate, at times I’m too passive. When I’m hitting well, I’m a patient hitter. I wait for my pitch. The last few weeks, I’m swinging at the pitchers pitch, and for a hitter, that’s bad.”
Never a strict pull hitter, Cameron doesn’t consider himself one now, though Perry said he’s had a tendency to hook the ball foul lately on inside strikes.
Did the four-home run game on May 2 change his approach?
“It would have changed mine,” Perry said, laughing. “You hit four in a game, how can you not think of yourself as a home run hitter? But I don’t think that’s changed him at the plate. He’s just put the weight of the world on himself the last few weeks and tried to do too much.”
As a result, Cameron was hitting .233 when play began Thursday, and in a slump that had seen him go 2-for-23.
“The main thing I have to do is put a good swing on a pitch and put the ball in play,” Cameron said. “I’ve been trying to hit impossible pitches and taking strikes
“We’ve got – what? – two days left in May? I’ve had it with that month, it’s killed me.”
Cameron smiled again.
“Well, I had one good day in May, but other than that, this month has pounded on me.”
Trash talk: Ever wonder how players wile away the time before batting practice on the road, sitting on the bench watching the other team hits? Quite often, they insult one another – just to pass the time.
Paul Abbott, for instance, was riding Bret Boone on Thursday.
“It’s always about Boonie, isn’t it?” Abbott teased. Without missing a beat, Boone said, “You’re on the disabled list now, aren’t you? So, technically, you don’t even exist.”
Martinez hits off a tee: After five days without swinging – shut down to let his left leg completely rest – Edgar Martinez began light swinging again Thursday, hitting balls off a tee. Over the next few days, he’ll gradually increase his running and his swinging, aiming toward a rehabilitation assignment in the minors sometime next week.
Clutch hitter: Ichiro Suzuki leads the majors with a .500 batting average with runners in scoring position, going 21-for-42 in those at-bats. A year ago, Ichiro batted .445 with runners in scoring position, the highest average in the American League since Paul Molitor hit .449 in 1987.
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