Every year, players have hot starts. A player from the minor leagues will take advantage of the league not having a book on him yet. An old face in a new place will rekindle lightning in a bottle for a series or two. There are hot starts, and then there is the core of the sun start that Adrian Gonzalez is off to. The Dodgers’ first baseman is making the act of hitting a baseball look beyond simple. With his 2-for-5 performance Sunday against the Diamondbacks, his average has “plummeted” from .667 to .609. A-Gon isn’t going to challenge Ted Williams’s .406 in 1946 or Barry Bonds’ 73 home runs in 2001, but he is in for a season for the ages.
Adrian Gonzalez has very little to prove. The guy is beyond durable in an age where fans aren’t even expecting 150 games from their stars. Gonzalez knocks in 100 runs a season without breaking a sweat and still plays as if he has a gargantuan chip on his shoulder because he was part of the Great Boston Salary Dump of 2012. Lumped in with tremendously overpaid Carl Crawford and equally maligned Josh Beckett, Gonzalez had the stigma of being a failure in Boston. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. His departure after hitting .321 with 42 home runs and 203 RBI for Boston, in just a season and a half, was the cost of doing business.
El Titan, his nickname in Mexico that was derived from his high school’s mascot, has been an under the radar stud for the boys in blue. He has hit more than 20 home runs and driven in 100 or more runs in each of his two full seasons at Chavez Ravine. This season, it looks like those figures may come closer to the All-Star Break than October.
Take his 4-for-4, three home run performance last Wednesday against the Padres for example. His first home run was simple. Padres’ starter threw a 97 MPH heater right down Hollywood Boulevard and Gonzalez pulled it to the moon. It wasn’t the first time Gonzalez had been challenged inside by Padres’ pitching. The second one saw Cashner try to get the pitch outside but to no avail. Gonzalez got the barrel on it flush and roped it off the top of the wall in right field and out again. His curtain call came after going down and getting a 93 MPH fastball just below his knees and launching it into orbit. All former teammate Matt Kemp could do each time was run to the wall and admire the majesty of each towering drive.
Every time he is making contact, it is flush and it is hard. He has eight extra base hits (3 doubles, 5 home runs) in his 14 hits through six games. Each swing has taken the collective breath of the crowd away, both for the home fans and the visitors. After a winter that was all about the overcrowded outfield and the new additions up the middle, Gonzalez has come to the forefront in just a week’s time. He has carried the Los Angeles offense almost from the shadows, a place where he has thrived, for two years. He’s promising to be even better with the spotlight fixed right on him.