BSN Exclusive: Ryan McMahon opens up on big-league struggles

The very moment the Colorado Rockies selected Ryan McMahon with their second pick in the 2013 Draft, the questions began to arise about where he would play.

Sure, he was barely out of high school and still four years away from making his MLB debut, but his overwhelming skillset and advanced mind for the game made it clear, at least to me, that his call-up was an inevitability.

But just one month before the draft, Colorado debuted a new third baseman who you may have heard of before. It took a moment for Nolan Arenado to catch on in the national conversation as a superstar but those with a wide-angle view of the organization suddenly saw a cornerstone playing the same position as one of the club’s most promising prospects.

Additionally, with McMahon’s athleticism, the writing was on the wall that his days of regularly patrolling the hot corner would have to be limited if he was going to find his place.

Over the last two years, the former high school quarterback has added first and second base to his resume, showing a particular affinity for first, employing his 6’3 frame for optimal use.

But even the willingness to find a new position hasn’t cleared a path for McMahon. Now in his rookie season, rewarded with a 25-man roster spot after an excellent spring training, he is still looking for his place on the roster, and his stride in the batter’s box.

Those predicting he would burst onto the scene (guilty) were in for a rude awakening. He collected just two hits and three walks in his first 30 plate appearances over 16 games. But he has fared much better in his last 13 MLB games (31 plate appearances), throwing out seven hits and seven walks, including a double, for a .292 batting average and .452 on-base percentage.

I mention to ‘RyMac’ that with each passing at-bat, he looks more and more comfortable at the plate.

“Yeah, I do feel, slowly but surely getting back into it,” he replied. “Like to maybe stop hitting balls so much to the right side, maybe get back up the middle a bit. But, right now I’m just trying to get in there and help the team. Honestly, it feels really good getting on base and being a part of it and stuff like that.”

Before the hits started to show up, McMahon was showcasing his increased comfortability by taking more relaxed at-bats and being more selective with what pitches to take a chance on, leading to more walks. I asked if that was a purposeful decision or if it just happened to be that he was finally seeing some pitches that were missing the edges instead of hitting them.

“Little bit of both,” he said. “Earlier, I’d probably be swinging at a lot of those pitches. Now I’m kind of just like, ‘Hey, that’s not something I’m going to swing at. They call it a ball or strike, whatever, but that’s not something I’m going to swing at with less than two strikes.’ Just kind of getting back, honestly, to something I kind of did last year really well. I’m going to swing at my pitches until I’ve got two strikes. Just kind of getting back to that important part of seeing pitches.”

When the game speeds up but you are getting fewer opportunities than you are used to, it can be tempting to swing at anything you think manageable instead of being patient, hunting for that pitch you can truly do damage with. It certainly doesn’t help that pitchers at this level are experts in praying on any lack of patience by working with stuff that has greater velocity and break than anyone in the minors. There is no way to emulate what trying to hit an MLB curveball is really like.

“Gets better at every level,” says McMahon. “There’s better sliders, better changeups. It just reinforces that you have to be in your best spot, have your best swing day in and day out to compete with these guys. So I’m just learning that, how to deal with that, learning how to get through the days where I don’t feel the best. Maybe fight some pitches off, get a walk a walk, something like that, something to help the team. So, just the little things.”

As he said, and as the team recognized in sending him back to Triple-A to iron some of these things out, this is all new to McMahon. The quality of pitching, the role he has been asked to fill, even at times the position he has been asked to play.

Since returning to Albuquerque, McMahon has been getting work in at second base for the first time this year, one of many indications that his “demotion” had more to do with giving him an environment to work on a few things rather than as a punishment for lack of production in April.

And you could already see the talented rookie making those adjustments.

“I think the most important thing was, in the beginning, I would overanalyze that one at-bat,” McMahon says of his slow start. “Because, you go for a day where you’re 2-for-4, you don’t think about the two bad at-bats. You think about the two good at-bats. So, then to have the one bad at-bat, you start overanalyzing it, tweak things that probably don’t need tweaking. Just little things like that. I think I’m doing a better job just flushing it and moving on to the next one.”

It takes a lot of mental toughness to overlook a .000 batting average for a series even if you only had two at-bats. Now McMahon will need to flush his struggles that marked the beginning of the 2018 season and get to repeating what was working just before he was sent down.

Everything we’ve seen from him up to this point suggests that Ryan McMahon will be back to MLB this season and better than we last saw him. But these next few weeks are vital in the ongoing process of turning him from one of the most promising prospects in the minors to one of the most promising young players in the bigs.