At one point, Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Jake Lamb was a promising prospect. Though he didn't make Keith Law's Top 100 prospects, Keith did rank Lamb No. 6 among Diamondbacks prospects.
And why wouldn't he? Lamb was coming off a 2014 season in which he hit .318 with 14 homers at Double-A Mobile and was 62 percent better than the average bat in the Southern League. Even though Lamb hadn't done much in a late-2014 call-up, the future was bright heading into the 2015 season. Law wrote this last spring: "Jake Lamb just rakes. The Diamondbacks need to give him the third-base job and 500-plus at-bats. If Kris Bryant stumbles, Lamb could end up the Rookie of the Year."
Things didn't go quite as planned. First of all, Lamb's high strikeout rate (and low walk rate) from his 37 games in 2014 carried over to 2015. It probably didn't help that the Diamondbacks had signed Cuban slugger Yasmany Tomas the previous November to a six-year, $68.5 million contract, ostensibly to play third base. Tomas wasn't destined for the position, but it put pressure on Lamb to perform well from the get-go, which he was doing until a stress reaction in his left foot sidelined him from April 19 to June 6.
When it was all said and done, Lamb's production, including a .263 batting average and modest power, was 8 percent worse than league average. He was the 46th-best third baseman offensively.
Though Tomas was permanently moved to the outfield, clearing the way for Lamb to start at third base, the shine had come off Lamb's up-and-comer status.
When I caught up with him earlier this week, he didn't want to blame the injury, but admitted he was pressing. "People talk about the injury, but once I came back, there wasn't anything with it," he said. "It might have been a mental thing; maybe I put a bit too much pressure on myself to be hitting fourth."
But as he was toiling, he was learning, particularly from watching teammate A.J. Pollock's breakout season, which included a .315 batting average, 20 home runs, 39 stolen bases and plus defense in center field.
Pollock liked to talk hitting, and Lamb listened.
"I heard Pollock talking about matching the angle of the pitch coming in all the time," Lamb said. Like Josh Donaldson and Ted Williams before him, Pollock was a fan of creating a swing with a little upward finish to it in order to match the pitch coming in at an equal angle.
So Lamb read up over the offseason. He read about margin for error, and how getting the bat into the zone quickly gave him a chance to adjust while on plane with the pitch. "The level of pitching up here is so good that keeping your barrel on plane is huge," he said. He read about how chopping down to the ball was no good. "The ball is coming this way and you're trying to hit down on it?" he remembered thinking.
He decided it was a time for change, and made two important changes to his swing mechanics.