Edwin Encarnacion is proof nobody knows anything
With two home runs last night against Clay Buchholz and the Red Sox, Edwin Encarnacion moved into the top five in baseball for homers. He has 13 bombs on the season now, with 11 of those shots coming in the month of May, including nine home runs in the last two weeks. Nine.
He hit two home runs on Wednesday night and two homers on Tuesday night, making Fenway Park look like a Little League park in the process.
Encarnacion once again looks like one of the most fearsome power hitters in the game - a far cry from “trade throw-in” and “repeated waiver claim”, two other titles he can claim over the past six years or so.
He is the reason sports radio callers concoct ridiculous trade scenarios and front offices stick with talented guys long after most fans have left them for dead. Everybody wants to find the suitcase full of money outside on their way to the coffee shop.
Encarnacion is the reward for patience and the diamond in the rough that makes every general manager in the game question what they’re doing. “How did we miss this guy? What did they see that we didn’t?”
Every team in baseball could have claimed Edwin Encarnacion after the 2010 season (a year in which the Blue Jays demoted him to AAA in late June). You might remember that one team did. The Oakland A’s, always looking out for a bargain or a unpolished gem, claimed EE off waivers in November, only to see him returned to Toronto just a few weeks later.
After fighting to earn his playing time in 2011, Encarnacion won a starting job in 2012 and never looked back. Since that time, he is one of only three hitters with 90 home runs. His overall numbers (.273/.371/.548) look a lot like fellow sluggers Chris Davis and Giancarlo Stanton, except Encarnacion strikes out less than half as frequently.
It’s a very rare skill set he possess, the ability to drive the baseball and draw walks without striking out. Over those 2+ seasons, only Encarnacion, his teammate Jose Bautista, David Oritz, and two-time MVP and triple crown winner Miguel Cabrera can claim a strikeout rate well below league average with credible power numbers (isolated slugging higher than .250).
How did every team in baseball overlook Edwin Encarnacion? His defensive reputation certainly didn’t help along the way. Even the Blue Jays, who boast two of the best power hitters in baseball found on the scrap heap, went out of their way to move past EE after his struggles in 2010.
A switch to a two-handed follow through and time spent working to shorten his swing without sacrificing bat head speed allowed him to thrive. The power was always there, as his years in Cincinnati attest, but a refined approach and key mechanical tweak unlocked the full extent of Encarnacion’s potential.
After a slow start to the season (just two home runs and a sub-.800 OPS in April), Blue Jays fans are again treated to regular displays of that realized potential. Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista form the most fearsome power duo in baseball, two players Toronto plucked from relative obscurity to become lineup anchors and franchise cornerstones.
29 other teams can only kick themselves knowing how easily it could have happened for them. Was Toronto smart or lucky? Sometimes the answer is simply "both."