After struggling at plate, Michael A. Taylor hoping to finish season strong for Pirates

As contradictory as it sounds, Michael A. Taylor found that when he stopped focusing on his results he delivered better outcomes for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

That was easier said than done for Taylor, who got off to a red-hot start in the first week only to watch his batting average drop nearly 300 points after he hit below the Mendoza Line in May and June.

“Yeah, to a certain extent, I was putting a little pressure on myself,” Taylor said. “Coming to a new team, you want to perform. I got off to a good start and had some injury troubles. The at-bats were sparing for awhile, so that can be a challenge but it also gave me time to get my body in a position to finish this season strong, and my swing and mechanics.”

Taylor capped a resurgent month in July with a .263/.341/.553 slash line by crushing home runs over the left-field wall with two outs in back-to-back games against the Houston Astros last week at Minute Maid Park.

A 421-foot, three-run shot off five-time All-Star closer Josh Hader in the ninth inning was the difference in a 5-3 win on July 29, and a 403-foot, two-run blast in the sixth inning sparked a 6-2 win the following night.

“You want to help the team,” Taylor said. “I’m trying not to focus on the results, good or bad. I don’t want to fall in that trap again. I can go out there and barrel up four balls and go 0 for 4. If I’m worried about the box score, I’ll look at that as a bad day. For the long haul, my approach, my swings, the quality of my at-bats is the most important thing. Whether they catch it or not, or whether it goes over the fence I can’t control.

“Don’t get me wrong: Anytime you can do something positive on the field and help the team, it’s a great feeling. Ultimately, that’s what I want to do. But I have to control the things I want to control. Focusing on my process is the most important thing to indirectly get those results.”

Related

• Pirates' Colin Holderman on 'weird' struggles: 'I haven't had this happen to me in my career'
• Pirates newcomer Jalen Beeks sees blueprint for success after pitching in 3 straight games
• Isiah Kiner-Falefa took winding road from rehab assignment to being activated by Pirates

If that sounds like something straight out of self-help literature, it’s no coincidence. Taylor said he has worked on and off with mental skills coaches throughout his 11-year major-league career, to the point that he now talks with a third-party consultant on a regular basis.

“It’s been really big for me,” said Taylor, 33, who was placed on paternity leave in early June when his son was born. “I think everybody would acknowledge that almost every sport is mainly mental. That’s a side of the game that goes overlooked for guys. For me, spending more time and investing in that has been huge.”

Taylor also has invested time in working on his plate approach with Jonny Tucker, a former Pirates minor-league hitting coordinator and now their integrated baseball performance coach.

The concentration was on controlling Taylor’s leg kick and his backside, to break his tendency to crash on his front foot and land softer. That has allowed him to slow things down and see the ball better, so the right-handed hitter can try to hit more to the middle of the field instead of pulling the ball to left.

That could have been compensation for Taylor dealing with a hamstring strain that dated to spring training, after he signed a one-year, $4 million contract on March 16. Taylor wanted to be in the Opening Day starting lineup, then produced a .480 batting average and 1.083 OPS with three doubles and six RBIs through the first two series, at Miami and Washington, as the Pirates won six of their first seven games.

Finally, they went into injury-prevention mode.

“The short spring was a little aggressive with my body, then I got to Opening Day and thought I was going to be able to manage it,” Taylor said. “With the schedule and the way it played out, we had so many lefties in a row and being on the turf in Miami, it was just a recipe that was not leading me in the right direction so we had to hit the pause button for a little bit.”

While Taylor avoided the injured list, he split playing time in center field with Jack Suwinski. Where Suwinski had some of the worst metrics in baseball, with minus-7 defensive runs saved in center, Taylor ranks fourth in the majors with 10 DRS.

But both were disastrous offensively, with Taylor batting .125 in May and .147 in June and Suwinski hitting .182 when he was optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis on July 29.

“I’m not going to make excuses for anything,” Taylor said. “I had a good first week or so. I think we made the right decision. I wouldn’t take anything back from the beginning of the year. I wish I could’ve done more, but it’s got me to where I am now. There’s been a lot of growth and positives that have come from all of the struggles.”

The 6-foot-4, 215-pound Taylor coped by doing his best in other areas. Defensively, he won an AL Gold Glove with the Kansas City Royals in 2021 and Statcast ranks his range in the 96th percentile, with eight outs above average, and his arm strength in the 91st percentile. Taylor also has above-average sprint speed (28.4 feet per second) on the basepaths.

“I go out there and try the best I can every day to make plays and to help the team,” Taylor said. “There’s a lot of ways you can impact a game. Lately, it’s been defensive replacement and pinch running. I try to do whatever I can.”

But his slash line remains an unsightly .198/.256/.297 with six doubles, a triple, four homers and 20 RBIs, especially given that he’s coming off a 21-homer, 51-RBI season with the Minnesota Twins. With Suwinski in the minors, Pirates manager Derek Shelton said Taylor should get more playing time in center over the final two months.

“Yeah, he’s going to get a lot of reps,” Shelton said. “I think some of it is the inconsistency of reps, and we started to give him some. And then the second thing is, he’s started to swing at the right pitches. He got in a situation where he was maybe pressing a little bit, maybe trying to do a little bit too much. Now he’s gotten back to attacking the pitches that he should attack.”

Without worrying about the results. Against Arizona on Friday night, Taylor went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts but drove in a run a with a forceout, then scored in the sixth inning of a 9-8 loss. He went 0 for 3 on Saturday but entered in the ninth inning of Sunday’s game as a pinch runner for Yasmani Grandal and represented the tying run on third base when the Diamondbacks got the final two outs for a 6-5 win.

Having won a World Series with the Washington Nationals and reaching the playoffs again with the Twins last season, Taylor is hoping to play a pivotal role for the Pirates in their playoff chase.

“I’ll say mentally, I’m better than I was last year,” Taylor said. “I still can’t control what happens on the field but I’m definitely in a better position physically, mentally and mechanically than I was last year, so I’m looking forward to the rest of the year.”