Casey Schmitt is Enjoying Whatever Comes His Way
The gifted 3b is surging with both bat and glove in his second pro season
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Casey Schmitt has a way of seeing the positive sides of challenging situations. The perpetual rain and cold that plagued so much of Eugene’s early spring schedule? “With the rain on the turf [in Eugene], it was like a slip and slide. We’d run and slide on the turf, so it was a lot of fun. I liked it. I enjoyed it.” Or how about his lost junior year at San Diego State, cancelled due to COVID after just 16 games. “It was a lot of fun — a lot of time spent with my Dad that COVID year.”
Schmitt, it seems, can find the silver lining in even the most adverse conditions. Back to that disorienting and sudden end to his college career, it’s not like the quality family time with his Dad was without its challenges.
“My dad and I, we put up a batting cage. It was bad! It was like $100 and it broke every other swing. I hit him in the chest a couple times — the ball would go through the net and hit him. But we’d just do that and we had a little machine to work on ground balls on our side yard. It was a lot of fun.” Seeing the fun in a challenging situation is basically survival training for baseball players — a fundamental ability to trick the mind and convince it everything is looking up, while challenges and failures close in from every angle.
That doesn’t mean that Schmitt is immune to the frustrations and disappointments that are such a ubiquitous experience of the baseball life. After enjoying a strong spring camp in 2021, his professional career got off to a rough start when he hit just .220 over the first two months of his debut season. When I spoke to him later that season, he admitted that is was difficult to look at those low numbers after coming into the season with such high hopes.
Some of it was just bad hit luck — there was a lot of contact, even hard contact, but too much of it found gloves.
“I feel like I learned how to deal with failure a lot better,” Schmitt said, reflecting on the experience of going through that bumpy takeoff to his career. “Even still, at times, I find myself being a little upset with the way things are going. But I feel like I definitely have matured since [last year.] And I’ve just come with a positive mindset every day. Just learn to enjoy it a lot more. Because it can be taken away in a pitch, just like that. So it was a tough year, but it was definitely a year that needed to happen to me. It was a big thing for me to get through.”
The understanding that baseball can be taken away in a pitch isn’t just a metaphor for Schmitt. After his debut season did start to take off, errant pitches suddenly ended what might have been shaping up as a big finish. First, he took a pitch to the face which broke his nose, and though he returned to the field quickly from that blow, another fastball — this time to the wrist — ended his year for good. While his teammates were steam-rolling to a league championship, Schmitt had to miss the triumphant conclusion of the year, instead heading to Scottsdale for some lonely late summer rehab.
“There was a month and a half left [in the season] when I got hit in the wrist, and I had to go back to Arizona. I had to get my nose fixed and everything, too.” Characteristically, Schmitt laughs at the memory of resetting his nose. “It was a mess but somehow we got through it.”
After healing, and a hard winter of work, Schmitt showed up at the Giants’ brand-new player development facility at Papago Park eager to put the frustrations of his first year behind him. Assigned to High A Eugene to begin his second year, he encountered new frustrations in a Pacific Northwest late winter and spring that made it challenging to even take the field for much of the first six weeks of the season. For most of the first two months of the season, the weather — often rainy, always cold — prevented the team from having any normal weeks with six 9-inning games played to completion and on their regularly scheduled dates. Postponements, suspensions, cancellations — they had them all! Not to mention those other nights when they simply played through the drizzle.
In early May, a stretch of bad weather combined with Oregon Ducks’ field commitments kept the team inactive for nearly a full week — they managed to get in just one game between Monday and Saturday, and that one game was started on Monday, finished on Thursday, and included delays on each of those days. On the Sunday of that week, the Emeralds managed to play their first full, 9-inning game in 10 full days.
Under such conditions, it was hardly surprising that most of the team got off to somewhat sodden starts themselves. But not Schmitt. By mid-May, he was leading the Northwest League in HRs, batting average, slugging percentage, and OPS. He was fourth in on base percentage. The slow start of 2021 was a forgotten memory in the torrid beginning of 2022.
“I think it was just like a mental toughness thing. What I would do is just say to myself: ‘it doesn’t matter. I’ve got a job to do either way.’ So I approached it like that... Just sticking with my routine that I do every day and in the cages, my stretching, taking ground balls and everything.” The focus on routine got him through the unending delays and schedule disruptions. Plus, there was the whole “slip and slide” thing.
Schmitt’s hot start didn’t slow down any once the weather turned mild, either. He stayed firmly among the league’s leaders across a host of hitting categories — and particularly the power hitting categories. After a debut season in which he went deep just eight times, by the time his promotion to Double A came at the beginning of August, Schmitt had put up 17 jacks in the NWL.
“Last year I felt like I would just mishit balls. I was popping out to the catcher, popping out to the infield a lot. So I think once I kind of toned [my swing] down a little bit and just started trying to hit through the ball more, that’s when it started to click a little bit better. I’m still not exactly where I want to be, but I want to continue to work on it and continue to get the better of it.”
A notable element of his power surge was Schmitt’s ability to go deep to the opposite field — the roof of the UO workout facility that hangs above the right field wall at Eugene’s PK park became a popular target for his longballs with the Emeralds. When asked whether he’s always had the ability to hit to the opposite field, Schmitt did the virtual equivalent of a spit take.
“No, not with power! I mean, I would hit balls the other way but it would be balls that would land in front of the right fielder or ground balls between first and second. I think the power the other way came with just consistently working on it, and my weight program making me stronger, faster.”
Did he say “faster, stronger?” That increased strength certainly showed off last week in Richmond, when Schmitt unleashed a two-homer night that included a blast that the Hawk Eye system registered at close to 500 feet, deep into the Richmond night. That was Schmitt’s top highlight night since his promotion to Double A, but what’s been most impressive about his transition up one of the biggest development leaps in the minors, has been his consistency. He’s had just five hitless nights in his 20 games since coming to Richmond. And nine times already he’s posted at least two hits in a night — good for a .367 batting average so far in his first three weeks at the new level.
He’s also shown a strong control of the strike zone, limiting chases and making quality swing decisions in at bat after at bat. “His approach to the plate is really, really good right now,” Richmond Manager Dennis Pelfrey said, “and he stays in the middle of the field. There’s not much [stuff] out there that can beat him at the plate. With the at bats that he puts together, he’s a very dangerous hitter in the middle of the lineup.”
And, as Pelfrey notes, all of that offensive potential comes attached to arguably the best defensive 3b in the minor leagues. Both Pelfrey and Fundamentals Coach Gary Davenport call him the best defensive 3b they’ve ever seen — and in Davenport’s case, that’s a data base that stretches back a lot of years.
Schmitt displays quick feet, range, soft hands, body control, a lightning fast transfer from glove to hand, and an arm strong enough that he moonlighted as San Diego State’s closer in college. Schmitt’s defensive acumen is so strong that Eugene Manager Carlos Valderrama used him to help cover the absence of shortstop Marco Luciano through much of June and July — a change that Schmitt believes helped him improve his lateral movement and his reads.
The other thing that’s helped him improve is experience. The shock that most players experience in their initial year in pro ball is the toll that the daily schedule takes on their body, their energy, their focus. While players are learning their mechanics, learning to deal with failure, learning how opposing pitchers are going to attack them, they also have to learn how to take care of their body so that they can stay on the field. Development can’t happen without that primary ability. Understanding how to manage a physical routine that cares for and builds the body up is just as fundamental to minor league players as learning to hit a curveball. “My body feels a lot better this year,” Schmitt says, “my arm feels a lot better. It just feels better all around.”
That’s crucial for a player who missed out on a playoff run last year, and looks forward to being in the middle of the action this fall. “It was hard for me to watch on TV [last year] I really wanted to be there with the guys.” He was happy to see his former teammates attack the post-season and come away with a championship, but this time he wants to be in the middle of that celebration, not watching it on a computer in Arizona.
After that? The work continues. The perpetual work of driving towards the major leagues. Does Schmitt see an offseason trying to improve on the offensive gains he’s made this year? Focus on the defensive chops that are probably big league ready right now? “For me, I don’t like to focus on one thing… I want to be good at everything that I do. I want there to be a sense of urgency to what I’m doing. And that’s what I try to do with my training in my off-season. I want to make sure that everything that I do, there’s a reason behind it. Whether it my hitting, my lifting, running, fielding, whatever it is. I want to make sure there’s a sense of urgency to continue to get better.”
And, no doubt, have fun while he’s getting there.