Chris Gimenez spent his offseason working to get better in the
Arizona Fall League
Mike Miller – special to the Dispatch
Mesa, Ariz
Behind home plate at Hohokam Park, the silent scrutiny from dozens of baseball scouts and a leisurely crowd of a couple hundred, mostly retirees who feverishly scope baseball deep into football season, dictate the ambience on a 97-degree Nov. 7 afternoon.
Poised at the end of the third-base dugout, Gilroy-native and Cleveland Indians prospect Chris Gimenez, 25, is “playing his role” as a constant perfectionist, part-time bullpen catcher and full-time sponge.
He chats nonchalantly with Surprise Rafters pitching coach Steve Luebber on the dugout’s top step. The conversation is interrupted by the crack of a first-inning, two-run homer from the Rafters’ Michael Aubrey – a near cacophony that reverberates throughout the mostly empty stadium.
On their way to congratulating Aubrey, Luebber motions to Gimenez in a downward slash with his right arm, the all-too-familiar reminder to swing at the ball with the correct angle.
A better part of the four-year Indian farmhand’s ascension to the next level involved Gimenez observing among the five Indians who played in the Arizona Fall League, which ended with his Surprise Rafters losing to the Phoenix Desert Dogs 7-2 in the Nov. 17 championship at Scottsdale Stadium.
Among the reasons he played in the Fall League, a main priority was to be a “bigger target” as he begins a conversion to play catcher more regularly. Technically, the multi-positioned and adaptable Gilroy High School product was learning how to using every dimension of his 6-foot-2-inch, 190-pound frame as a bullpen catcher eight to 10 times per week. Furthermore, the Fall League, essentially a showcase, builds some name recognition for its participants and Gimenez is a growing target among Indians prospects.
Gimenez’s nationwide adventure as a top-flight prospect found a sojourn on the spring training diamonds that annually serve as proverbial launching pads from early October to mid-November. The Fall League is renown in baseball for its tutelage during a six-week season that organizers label as “finishing school”. Eighty-three players from the “Class of ’06” had a thesis worthy of a major league roster adding to the running total of 407 players on 2007 MLB active rosters. Gleaning some polishing from his Rafters coaches; Luebber and former Cubs catcher cast as Rafters’ manager Damon Berryhill; Gimenez was often hip-to-hip with his new Indians mentor, Jon Nunnally.
Promoted to Double-A Akron in July, Gimenez called his Fall League experience both an “eye-opener” and “the greatest idea in the world”, meanwhile thrusting this transitional period are the six teams in the 16-year league that have an assortment of five different major league teams comprising rosters. For example, 20 pitchers see action during the regular season which limits starters to about four-inning outings. It keeps a comparatively sheltered player like Gimenez, who struggled through four months of two regular seasons with an assortment of injuries, feeling subjected to a crash-course in the batter’s box.
“It’s difficult because during the regular season, you face a starter probably six or seven innings, hopefully you get them out before the fifth, but most of the time you’re facing them two or three times during a game,” Gimenez continues. “These guys – the starters – throw three innings so it seems like you’re facing a new guy every inning.”
This impromptu structure contributed to his regular season .208 Fall League batting average (he didn’t play in the championship showdown against Phoenix), however his trademark power didn’t abandon him. On a Nov. 8 game against the Scottsdale Scorpions, Gimenez found two pitches in the upper-half of the strike zone that he spanked for doubles. Somewhat relieving for him because he’s taking better notice of these pitches by absorbing Nunnally’s hitting philosophy rooted in anticipating those “easy cookies” on the outer portion of the plate.
“I tell him, the battle’s not between you and the pitcher,” said Nunnally, who just completed his first year as a hitting coach for Single-A Kinston. “It’s between you and the ball.”
Home-run happy at the lower levels (he connected for three while at Single-A Kinston and also won an all-star game Home Run Derby), the righthander’s two Fall League home runs boosted the Rafters Fall League-leading total to 39, although, finding his place in a Rafters’ lineup that had seven players finish with batting averages below .220 wasn’t a daily promise. Hitting as low as the eighth spot, his 11 strikeouts in the Fall League produced an at-bats to strikeout ratio of 4.36:1, near his Fall League teammate Rafters overall ratio of 4.33:1. It portends that, as he tames his swing by limiting his plate coverage, the next level of pro baseball will be a heady adjustment.
“It was definitely to come out here and to work on little things offensively with my swing and, as we call it, ‘tighten up my strike zone,’ because I have tendencies to chase a little bit, out of the zone,” Gimenez said. “You want to try to tighten up your zone discipline a little bit to get yourself in better counts to put the barrel on the ball”.
Gimenez says he appreciates the “brutally honest” method Nunnally uses to communicate this. Former Oakland A’s Rookie of the Year contender Mitchell Page minced few words with Nunnally during the early 90s and it’s trickled down to his mentoring of Gimenez since their early-morning hitting sessions during spring training.
“I just go right at him and I said, ‘Look, kid, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you,” Nunnally said. “I just want to make sure tell him to play hard all the time and always remind him, top of the ball down.”
Defensively, the Fall League allowed Gimenez to observe the nuances of his new position, using the bullpen sessions with Berryhill to practice a more athletic set-up behind the plate. Rangers’ prospect Taylor Teagarden is a player whom Rafters manager Berryhill, also of the Rangers, understandably has special interest and the former University of Texas star saw 10 games at catcher to just two for Gimenez (Gimenez played seven games at third base). Gimenez occasionally discussed “reading hitters’ swings” with Teagarden as the Fall League experience allows like-minded conversations between players in different uniforms.
“Not only is it a great experience, but it’s an opportunity to present yourself,” Gimenez said. “Some guys may even be your enemies during the regular season, because, plenty of guys that I played with during the season that killed us are on my team.”
Gimenez’s Fall League invitation caps a series of 2007 accomplishments, including Eastern League Player of the Week kudos in July. The Indians’ 19th-round draft selection in 2004 out of University of Nevada-Reno, is still charging through the 556 players drafted ahead of him. His draft peers, the Red Sox October tinderbox Dustin Pedroia and 2006 all-fall league performer Mark Reynolds of the Diamondbacks, have already panned out fortuitous post-season appearances. Gimenez was one of 53 other members of his 2004 draft class in the Fall League, showing his wares in front of a large sample of baseball’s decision-making brass.
“It’s later now and those guys are sitting here looking for (players) that are willing to be here this time of year,” Gimenez said. “They look for guys with some sort of fortitude. If you go about your business the same way you did in the regular season, you should be OK.”
When asked where he projected Gimenez to play next year, Nunnally replied Double-A Akron without hesitation.
“There’s a lot of things he can bring to the game, ” said Nunnally, who then mentioned the outfield and infield positions Gimenez plays. “He’s not playing everyday and he’s handled the situation real well. He’s really built himself up here.”
After Saturday’s championship, Gimenez left the Valley of the Sun, a pro athletes’ grooming Mecca, as a bigger target.
