GRIMES EXCELS AT LIGHTING THE FUSE ON REVS' EXPLOSIVE OFFENSE
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
By: Ron Gardner
Plain and simple, center fielder Scott Grimes just makes good things happen as the Revolution’s lead-off hitter.
He manages to get on base nearly 42% of the time whenever he steps into the batter’s box – thanks to a .305 batting average and a team-high 42 walks heading into the Atlantic League All-Star break.
Once there, Grimes becomes a holy terror on the base paths, with his 15 stolen bases telling only part of the story. With a scary combination of speed and instinct, Grimes never seems to miss an opportunity to get himself into scoring position or take an extra base going first-to-third on hits nearly anywhere in the outfield. Followed by a deep and potent batting order behind him, it’s no surprise that Grimes led the Atlantic League with 69 runs scored to pace York to the first-half Freedom Division title.
Add to that the fact that Grimes has hit 10 home runs and driven in 36 runs from the lead-off spot, Grimes is made-to-order for his role as a table-setter at the top of the Revs’ line-up the way York manager Andy Etchebarren sees things.
“He’s leading the league in runs scored (and) he’s on pace to score 130-135 runs,” Etchebarren said. “If you score 100 runs in this league with a 140-game schedule, you had a pretty good year. You had to get on base a lot. And you have to have guys behind you that are hitting too, to get you to score that much.”
Barring an injury or his being signed away by a big-league organization, the 6-0, 200-pound Grimes, who resides in nearby Kennett Square, PA (about a 90-minute drive from Sovereign Bank Stadium) will soon eclipse the club of record of 83 runs scored by Jason Aspito in 2008. He’ll then set his sights on breaking the Atlantic League single-season record of 119 runs scored by Lancaster’s Michael Woods, also in 2008.
A keen student of the game, Grimes knows quite well the traditional role of the lead-off hitter at the plate – get on base as often as possible, either by hitting for a high average or by drawing lots of bases on balls. And also to be patient at the plate, working deep into counts to wear out opposing pitchers and to allow his teammates to see how and what that pitcher is throwing. Grimes said he doesn’t really think too much about measuring up to those long-admired traits of good lead-off hitters. For him, being the first guy in the batting order simply means more chances to come to bat in every game.
“I like to get as many at-bats as I can,” the 26-year-old Grimes said. “The more I can step in that box, the better I feel. I want to get more at-bats – I want to be the guy that steps up in certain situations. If it’s late in the game, I want to have that extra at-bat in there if I can. I like hitting lead-off. As long as I’m hitting, as long as I get to stand in that box every day, I’m not worrying if it’s #1 or anywhere through #9. I’m not going to change the way I do things just because I’m hitting lead-off. I doubt my approach is really going to change all that much.”
Grimes wasn’t drafted by any major league team coming out of Kennett High School after his senior year there. Even after he rewrote the offensive record books in a number of categories, including a .481 career batting average at Keystone College (a tiny Division 3 school located in La Plume, PA about 12 miles northwest of Scranton), a few big-league scouts told Grimes that they might have an interest in him, but he went unselected again in the spring 2005 entry draft.
Out of school and with no definite plans for his future, baseball or otherwise, Grimes went home to Kennett Square … where he worried and waited. He still wanted to play baseball, but thought that his opportunity to continue to play baseball competitively may have ended when every big-league organization decided that he wasn’t even worthy of being a late-round draft pick.
“I just went home for a month and didn’t do anything,” Grimes said. “I just sat around. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t want to just play in like an adult league (at home). Eventually, one late night, I got a phone call from an independent team in the Can-Am League, the Grays – the travelling team, and it took off from there.”
The Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball, or Can-Am League for short, is a low-budget, short-season league operating in the northeastern United States and the Canadian province of Quebec. While it wasn’t affiliated minor league baseball, it was an opportunity for Grimes to keep playing against mostly older competition.
“I was getting a paycheck every two weeks just to play,” Grimes said. “To me it was awesome. I didn’t even know something like that really existed. I kind of heard about it, but I didn’t really know there was another route (other than affiliated minors) to go. I was having so much fun and learning a lot from a bunch of guys that have played at all different levels. To me, it was a great thing.”
He posted a .248 batting average in 31 games with the always-on-the-road Grays in 2005, before batting .310 in 2006 and .261 in 2007 with the Sussex Skyhawks (Augusta, NJ). He moved to the Worcester Tornadoes (Worcester, MA) for the 2008 season, where manager Rich Gedman (who played 13 years in the majors with the Red Sox, Cardinals and Astros) helped Grimes to make dramatic improvements at the plate. His batting average soared to .365, with 21 HR and 57 in 93 games, with an outstanding .442 on-base percentage and scoring 87 runs. This offensive explosion resulted in Grimes being honored as the Can-Am League’s Player of the Year.
“I matured mentally,” Grimes said of his time refining his hitting with Gedman. “We worked solely on what my approach was, what I was trying to do, what I was looking for - all on the mental aspects. It matured me a lot as a hitter and I made unbelievable strides as a hitter that year.”
It also got him back on the radar of major league baseball organizations. On the strength of his monster year with Worcester, Grimes was signed as a free agent by the New York Mets for the 2009 season. And then unfortunately, as seems to happen all too frequently to many minor league prospects when they finally get an opportunity to showcase their talents in affiliated baseball, an injury (a broken hamate bone in his hand) sustained while batting in a game in extended spring training, cost Grimes most of the season and with it, his opportunity to move up within the Mets’ minor league system.
“I was just taking a swing in a game at a regular fastball and finished my swing and felt a pop in my hand and didn’t know what was going on,” Grimes said. “I just lost all basic feeling and strength in my ring and index finger and was very confused as to what it was.”
Doctors removed the broken hamate from Grimes’ hand, but it took until August for his injury to heal and he could return to game action. In all, Grimes played in only 12 games for the Mets’ Gulf Coast League team (.244 BA) and another 15 games with the low-A Brooklyn Cyclones in the New York-Penn League (.226 BA) in 2009. In the off-season, he was released by New York and spent the first part of the winter hoping another affiliated team would call and offer him another chance, but none ever did.
The road that would bring Grimes to play for the Revolution in 2010, began with two of his former teammates, pitchers Justin Edwards and Tom Cochran (who were teammates of Grimes in Worcester in 2008) calling their former manager, Mark Mason, who had just signed on as pitching coach for the Revs, to recommend Grimes. Neither Mason nor Etchebarren had ever seen Grimes play in person, but after they made a number of phone calls to follow-up, Grimes was signed by York on January 21. No one knew at that time just how big of an impact that he would have both offensively and defensively for the Revs.
“(We were told) you can’t go wrong with Scott,” Mason said. “He plays hard every night. He can run, (has a) strong arm, hit for power, (and) hit for average. We kind of thought we had a really good player coming in. But we knew he was hurt last year. So it was just going to be a question of how healthy he was. He’s been everything as advertised.”
Etchebarren said that while Grimes’ numerous offensive contributions may generate more attention, he also considers Grimes the best center fielder defensively in the Atlantic League. And while an injury cost Grimes the chance to show what he could do last season, Etchebarren thinks that Grimes is doing all the things necessary to earn another shot at returning to a big-league organization.
“He’s 26 years old, with his tools, the way he plays this game, I would say that he’s still got a chance (to play affiliated baseball) – that would be my guess,” Etchebarren said. “If I could get him a Double-A job the second half or next year, I will. He needs to go to Double-A now, somebody’s got to give him a chance, and then he’s got to perform (at that level). But I think he could do that.”
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