Eloy Jiménez had three hits Friday night and smacked just his second home run since the All-Star break. But it was the agile night the 26-year-old had on the basepaths — going first-to-third on a single, scoring on a shallow sacrifice fly to left, hustling out an infield single — that really tantalized.
“I’m feeling pretty good right now,” Jiménez said. “I’ve been putting more effort in the gym than before. I’ve been practicing running before the game. I think that helps me a little bit more.”
With his injury history and poor reputation as a defender, it might surprise readers to know that Statcast grades Jiménez by sprint speed as faster than teammates Yoán Moncada and Elvis Andrus. It might surprise Jiménez’s body at times, too.
“He can get down the line when there’s adrenaline in the mix, so we have to find ways to prepare him in that way,” manager Pedro Grifol said. “We had our talk in New York about it. And his preparation is getting close to game speed, which is really important.
“We think that his preparation pregame is going to help prevent the smaller injuries here and there, just because he’s got that burst of speed down the line that he really doesn’t replicate in practice. We’ve got to get him close to that, to that speed in practice, to be able to sustain any of that here in the game.”
Recreating game speed in drills and pre-game work was an emphasis for Grifol essentially since the day he was hired. It can feel overdue for Jiménez, who among his many injuries, suffered a right hamstring tendon tear last April in Minneapolis while hitting a season-high sprint speed racing down the baseline.
But high-minded plans about ramping up Jiménez’s practice intensity quickly ran into the reality of his situation for the past few years. Jiménez suffered a hamstring strain during the home opener, had an appendectomy the next month, and has spent much of the year ensconced in rehab work and treatment to enable him to simply take his at-bats.
“[If] he’s got some things that he’s nursing, then obviously you can’t do that as much,” said Grifol.
Even now is an awkward time to ask if ramping up Jiménez’s routine might make him more capable of handling the rigors of outfield defense. A mild groin pull last month, and heel soreness earlier this August have conspired to make him a DH-only player since July 16.
“I’m trying to work as hard as I can to help the team one way or the other,” said Jiménez. “I feel good to play. I’m going to be available if they need me.”
Grifol said of Jiménez’s future spot: “If he plays a little bit of right field, great. If not, he’ll be one of the best DHs in the game.”
Even the latter scenario would be an important coup.
Jiménez entered Saturday night with an .820 OPS since June 16, and he has a .283/.322/.463 overall line with 14 homers for a season that has another laundry list of reasons why it’s been a challenge for him to hold a consistent offensive rhythm. Eclipsing the 122 games played and 31 home runs of his 2019 rookie season — still career-highs — are not in the cards this year.
Despite all that, Jiménez has been an undeniably good major league hitter, but not quite the game-wrecking force that the Sox centered their now-smoldering rebuild around. And not quite the force that Jiménez knows he can be.
“I’m going to be better, I know,” Jiménez said. “We are young. We need to learn a little bit more about the strike zone and all that. I know we are going to be better.”
That sort of stuff comes with time and at-bats, which is easy to say, and has been much harder to do for Jiménez and the Sox.
“We’ve just got to keep him healthy,” said Grifol.