By the final month of most professional baseball seasons — big-league, or minors — a ballplayer typically ticks downward. Numbers fall. Energy ebbs. Fatigue sets in.
Ryan Kreidler has pulled an end-around.
Ignore a .253 batting average in July, and Kreidler each month since June has raised his hitting numbers, which is how you win promotions from Double A to Triple A in your first full season of minor-league ball.
He’s getting steadily better, right down to taking walks and easing on the strikeouts.
Examine his first 24 games at Triple A Toledo: .338 average, .430 on-base, .558 slugging, which computes to an OPS of .988. He has four home runs, complemented by the 15 he hit at Erie. He has in those 24 games for the Mud Hens, 13 walks and 20 strikeouts.
That he plays shortstop, and that he is only 23, explains why Kreidler’s offense is of such import to a Tigers team in Detroit. It happens to be scouring the job-application heap in search of an everyday player with a bat as well as defense that can please Tigers manager AJ Hinch.
Kreidler might or might not be that man. But his steady upward arc has thrilled some bosses in Detroit, who are looking for help beyond a couple of first-round whizbangs named Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson.
“A year goes on and you learn how to adjust,” said Kreidler, a fourth-round pick in 2019 from UCLA, who talked Friday about his 2021 season as he and the Mud Hens got ready for a game at Iowa against the Cubs’ Triple-A team.
“The bullpens are deeper,” he said, speaking of differences from Double A. “Every guy here has his strength. The stuff is a little better. It’s not a huge jump in terms of skills. It’s that guys just understand who they are. My job is to identify their strength and beat them to it.”
Kreidler’s path to better offense began two years ago, a few months after he signed with the Tigers and played 60 games with Single-A Connecticut.
He went to work with Doug Latta, a hitting instructor who heads The Ballyard, in Northridge, California. Latta has been guru to a couple of Tigers players — Derek Hill, and Jake Rogers (now recovering from Tommy John surgery) as well as Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner.
“I stood up a little taller in the box and gained more ground in my swing,” said Kreidler, whose only formal baseball during the 2020 pandemic was last autumn at Tigers Instructional League in Lakeland, Florida.
“I could hit the ball in the air more consistently, which means more doubles and more home runs. That’s kind of the basis for it. And that’s just an approach thing that I brought at the start of the year.”
Among principal reasons the Tigers like Kreidler is power.
The power stems from his rather extraordinary size for a player who works at a position that leans more toward nimbleness and range. Not that Kreidler is begging there.
It also is understood a player with Kreidler’s height and wingspan can theoretically cover more of home plate, guarding against pitchers who want to cheat on either side of the strike zone.
Of course, it isn’t that simple.
“You can’t cover every pitch in every spot,” Kreidler said. “You’ve got to be able to pick where you can. At the start of the year, I was trying to cover everything and hit everything.
“That may work in A-ball, but as you climb the ladder, you see that pitchers do their homework on you same as you do homework on them.”
What that means is experience and classroom sessions during all of these at-bats at Erie and Toledo are showing him even more vividly what is, and isn’t, always achievable.
“If I want to hit a certain pitch, I can look for that pitch — or take it,” Kreidler said. “I think at this point of the year I’m a little more comfortable in taking a strike and getting into a two-strike count and not panicking.”
Hence, the uptick in Kreidler’s walks and the decrease in whiffs.
Toledo’s regular season wraps up Sept. 30. It will be a short break for Kreidler, as well as for Greene and Torkelson.
All three, tentatively, are in store for an October-November stint at the Arizona Fall League.
It’s in keeping with a carefully calibrated program designed to steel the Tigers’ current top position trio for what could be 2022 big-league debuts.
Greene and Torkelson are the more likely early arrivals next season, but Kreidler can’t be dismissed — not when his 2021 has been so gainful and steady.
He, of course, doesn’t believe there’s any point in making firm plans when there is much to do yet on the farm. But he understands also that he’s at Triple A for a reason. The cultural upgrade has included knowing that Detroit is a next step.
“It’s a very professional environment when guys here know you’re a phone call away,” Kreidler said. “You have that sense of urgency that not everybody has at the lower levels.
“Anything can happen. It’s definitely kind of exciting when you see guys like Drew Carlton (Tigers reliever) get a call-up. That’s always super-exciting.
“It’s just the environment down here. I enjoy being around these guys. Some of them are older and have already had big-league experience.”
Defense, of course, is why he sticks at short and why the Tigers are likewise pleased with a strong-armed, surprisingly mobile big man, who captains the infield.
It’s one more reason the Tigers, without rushing, without overly projecting, are keeping Kreidler in mind as they sort through their short-term — and long-term — strategies at short.
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Kreidler understands the stakes. He understands Toledo was meant as a 400-level preparatory class.
“Balls are hit harder here,” he said, explaining that a few early errors have been one-part adjustment, one-part maybe hurrying some things. “They’re playing different shifts here — just all these different variables. It’s a new set of obstacles that come at each level.
“There are variables with each starting pitcher. There are with guys in the bullpen. For example, I know Nolan Blackwood (right-hander, with a drop-down delivery) throws a lot of ground balls, so I have to get ready for more choppers.
“I have to do my homework. You have to know your pitcher and shift into your plan.”
And not get ahead of one’s self. That old “one day at a time” mantra might as well have been crafted for minor-league baseball players.
“I was just becoming comfortable with the Erie pitching staff,” Kreidler said. “And now it’s the same with the Toledo pitching staff. I’ve just got to trust my internal clock. When the game speeds up, I want to slow it down.
“I was a victim of that (letting speed overwhelm him) a couple of times early at Toledo.”
Speed has its place in baseball. But rushing plays, rushing throws, rushing your big-league ETA — Kreidler knows that can be trouble. Time isn’t always on your side, but it’s best to mind its lessons.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and former Detroit News sports reporter.