My father used to say that the most important person in the conversation isn’t the person speaking.
I struggled to fully comprehend this for years. Still am.
Then I read in college that Socrates defined wisdom as recognizing that being wise means admitting you “know nothing.”
This troubled my mind in a similar way. How can there be a conversation without speaking and how can one be wise without knowing things? And then one day it clicked. Only a fool does without knowing. And no one can know everything. So we are all fools.
Baseball players are familiar with this feeling.
It’s a game of imperfections that guys spend their entire lives trying to perfect, knowing they never will. So the wise player listens in the conversation, admits he knows nothing…and then what?
And then what? If you pay very close attention, you get just a little bit better. Just a tiny, teeny, microscopic, minuscule little fraction of a bit better. Then you do it again the next day.
“Every day is an opportunity.”
Colorado Rockies Senior Director of Player Development, Zach Wilson, didn’t say “every game” he said “every day.”
Baseball is a unique game for countless reasons but chief among them may be that it is a constant grind to such an extent that players plan off days with the precision of a strategic military intervention.
Daily routines and rituals become sacrosanct. And, like that old adage about the duck seeming calm on the surface but paddling like hell beneath it, most of what makes ballplayers great (or not) is never seen by the public.
What the public did see of Raimel Tapia and Carlos Estevez in 2017 was a lot to love and a lot to question and a whole lot of trips back and forth between MLB and Triple-A.
With just under two weeks to go until the start of the regular season, neither can be sure what their role will be in 2018, but they will surely have one. Especially if they can capitalize on the lessons and experiences from a season ago.
And there are some strong indications that the team has faith they will do just that.
“It’s tough for young players, especially in Tapia’s case guys that are everyday players, to suddenly adapt to a role that you’re not used to,” says Wilson. “Whether you play that day or not, you’ve got an opportunity to get better. Certainly, in Tapia’s case, I think he was able to do that.”
There may be no more of a rhythm player in the system than Tapia who struggled in a bench role early but improved throughout the season. Estevez went from the last guy in the ‘pen to dramatically altering his mechanics to one of the most trusted arms in some of the most important games his club had played in nearly a decade. And he excelled.
“Carlos at the end of the year was a really big part of that bullpen,” says Wilson. “He was a go-to guy for Buddy towards the end. His continued growth has been really nice to see but that’s just the life of a young player sometimes. When you first come up, you might be in a different role and you’ve gotta figure out ways to adjust to that. And the ones that can end up being really successful.”
“Just the experience of being in the big leagues can be getting better if you choose to look at it that way, and they did,” Wilson continued.
Through an ugly first 19 at-bats in MLB and all the back-and-forth between leagues, Tapia still managed to find his rhythm and put up some impressive midsummer stretches.
Nonetheless, whenever a veteran returned from injury, it was back to the bench or Albuquerque for Tapia. But his focus and attitude through it all earned him an important role on the team down the stretch and a spot on the postseason roster.
“There are lessons that can be learned both when you are playing and not playing that can only be learned at the major league level,” says Wilson. “Not only did we learn some of those lessons with Tapia, but now he’s got playoff experience. For a young kid to come into a Wild Card game and get a big hit when we needed it, that’s a big deal. Those things sometimes get overlooked by the layman, but in the development process, that’s a really, really, big step. And he was able to take that step.”
Whether he begins the year at MLB or not, this doesn’t sound like an organization who is in any way down on what they have been seeing from the exciting young outfielder with the funny hitting mechanic.
The 2017 campaigns of Raimel Tapia and Carlos Estevez remind us of the insanely tumultuous nature of a 162-game season. Even deep into the summer, neither could stick on the roster. Both experienced struggles the likes of which they never had to deal with before in their careers. But by the end of the season, with limited space and plenty of deserving candidates, they were clearly essential for the postseason roster.
And both have barely scratched the surface of their potential.
