Adam Eaton learned from his low points with White Sox: 'Dude, you have no idea'

NEW YORK -- Amid the din of pop music and EDM blasting through the White Sox clubhouse at Citi Field, Adam Eaton, the burgeoning star emerging in right field, is explaining the burdens of success and expectations. He felt its heavy weight last season and knows it well.

In mid-March 2015, after just 211 major league games, Eaton signed a five-year, $23.5 million contract. He was, at 26, a long-term pillar for the organization and rewarded with a deal he felt paid him well and still afforded the team an asset on a discount. If it was supposed to bring him peace of mind, it didn’t. On May 10, he was batting just .186. He felt the pressure of feeling worthy.

He stressed and strung together no-hit days. The contract had attached a value to him and now he was trying to validate it. It was unsettling.

“If you think about ‘This is how much I’m making, this is how well I have to play,’ you’re going to be (screwed) three ways to the wind,” Eaton told Paste BN Sports. “You are. If you’re making $10 million and you want to try to be a $10 million player you’re going to be screwed… That’s how I felt even though I told myself that. This is what I’ve done, not what I’m going to do and I need to just go play. It stressed me out and it was very difficult.

"And learning through some lumps and some struggles that it’s alright, play at this level, don’t worry about money or whatever it may be. But, yeah, everybody thought I was fat, dumb and happy when I signed my contract. ‘Oh he got his money. He doesn’t care anymore’. Dude, you have no idea.”

Eaton found soothing in a motto hawked by Cody Ross, a former teammate: When you sign, it’s for what you did, not what you will do. He talked out his anxiety with Adam LaRoche, the recently retired first baseman, and worked on altering his mindset. After months of inner turmoil, Eaton finally found calm.

That’s how his ascent into one of the best players in the American League came back on track. While he posted an .846 OPS over his last 129 games of the 2015 season, Eaton’s slash numbers do not jump off the page like Mookie Betts in Boston, another diminutive outfielder on the climb. Even in Chicago, with Jose Abreu’s slugging acumen behind him in the lineup and the annual brilliance of Chris Sale, Eaton can be overlooked on his own team. But with the White Sox currently scuffling during a roller coaster season, dropping out of first place in the American League Central after a seven-game losing streak that ended Tuesday, Eaton has been a stable presence atop the lineup, batting .278 with a .756 OPS.

But that is only part of the story. In the last calendar year year, only eight AL position players have a higher WAR (Wins Above Replacement) according to Fangraphs. His defense in right field has been without par so far this year -- no player has more defensive runs saved.

These number are of little significance to Eaton. While sabermetrics may like him more than the superficial numbers, he has no affinity for them. Or numbers in general. He mostly eschews feedback, unless it comes from his family or his team, he says.

“I go home,” says Eaton. “I sit on my dock. I fish. I drink beer. And I relax. I don’t look at anything media. I don’t look at anything that’s written. I don’t even know what slugging percentage is. I don’t follow that. I think it’s people from Harvard that want jobs and want to create jobs and stats. Honestly, I don’t put much emphasis in any of that. I let my eyes tell me what to do.

"Even in the outfield, if a guy -- if the stats say he’s going to pull this ball but he’s fouling every ball off to my left, I’m not going to go with the stats, I’m going to go with my gut. For me that’s telltale of a good baseball player. You can look at all the stats and all the sabermetrics that you want but realistically it’s your heart and understanding the game and understanding body language with what you think is best.”

But this is not about Eaton and the cognitive dissonance of numbers and instinct. Even if he doesn’t appreciate the numbers -- “I’m sure in a week they’re going to come up with a stat that says I’m not very good” -- they do explain his talent in full.

After being a Gold Glove finalist in 2014, he struggled in center field last year. Eaton shifted to right field after the White Sox signed Austin Jackson this offseason. The position has suited him well. With 15 DRS this season, he’s eclipsed his total in center two years ago in just two months.

At the plate, he has harnessed his ability, posting the 16th lowest strikeout rate in the AL this year and the 21st highest on-base percentage, .364, entering Tuesday.

Eaton professes to not be too keen on mechanics. He does not see each at-bat as a chess match. He concedes that opposing teams likely have a better understanding of the ways to get him out than he does. Instead, he says, he tries to minimize the holes in his swing.

Late last season, he made the decision to start swinging more often at two-strike pitches. The rationale for the choice was simplistic.

“Not trusting the umpire to be honest with you,” he said. “If you went and looked at last year a lot of suspicious third strike calls.”

Confident in his feel for the strike zone, Eaton has become more defensive with two strikes. Though his OPS with two strikes has fallen marginally, so has his strikeout rate. Still, Eaton has no explanation for why he believes umpires had the tendency to seemingly miss calls with him.

“It might just be because I’m short,” he said. “Umpiring is difficult. It’s very difficult for them. Guys are throwing harder than they’ve ever thrown. There’s more movement on the balls than there’s ever been. So for me, I trust myself to put the bat on the ball than putting it in the hands of the umpire.”

In the midst of success, Eaton is still trying to maintain stability. He’s minimized his presence on Twitter -- going more than a month without tweeting this spring -- and imploring himself to ignore the crests and valleys in reactions it can bring. His game, he admits, is still evolving. He is just 27 and in his third full season.

But the lessons of the tumult he experienced a year ago still ring with him. To produce, he had to disregard his contract and the expectations. Just go out and play, he still reminds himself.

“Just picking up your big boy pants and putting them on and doing the job you’re supposed to do,” he said. “It was a difficult time for me but a learning process.”

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