When an actor gives a poor performance on Broadway, unflattering reviews and an unsatisfied audience usually follow.
That is the natural order of consequences. All an actor can do in response is prepare and come out the next time, and give a better performance. That is the extent of what fans and critics can ask.
The same goes for professional athletes, but when those ugly outings come during the postseason, the stage is infinitely bigger than any Broadway has to offer. Poor performances on the field can lead to more significant consequences, including helping getting a team eliminated from the playoffs and/or making a player expendable from a roster. The boos are also inevitable.
Prince Fielder has experienced all of that. The Texas Rangers’ high-priced designated hitter, a front-runner for the American League’s Comeback Player of the Year Award this season, has dealt with the criticism that has come with his shoddy postseason numbers with the Milwaukee Brewers and Detroit Tigers, who traded him after the 2013 season.
"I got kids, man," Fielder famously told reporters, including MLB.com’s Alden Gonzalez, after the Boston Red Sox eliminated the Tigers in 2013, the last time Fielder appeared in the playoffs.
His responses still do not sit well with his former home fans.
Prince Fielder bounces weakly to first. Already in postseason mode. #igotkidsman
— Motor City Bengals (@MCB_Tigers) August 20, 2015
"You have to be a man about it," Fielder added two Octobers ago after he hit .182 in the AL Championship Series. "I have kids. If I'm sitting around pouting about it, how am I going to tell them to keep their chins or keep their heads up when something doesn't go their way? It's over.”
When told Tiger fans might not embrace that kind of response, Fielder fired back with an age-old athlete adage: “They don’t play.”
Fielder does, but it has been at an entirely pedestrian level during the playoffs over the course of his otherwise impressive career. He has played in 39 postseason games and accumulated 164 plate appearances with the Brewers and Tigers since October of 2008.
In no series has he hit higher than .278, and his career slash line is .194/.287/.333 with a .620 OPS, five home runs and 11 RBIs. He has not homered in his last 20 games (84 plate appearances). He has one extra-base hit in his last 18 and has not driven in a run in his last 18. Also, in his last 16 games (65 plate appearances), he has struck out 12 times against three walks.
But to have any kind of working relationship with Fielder is to understand his unwillingness to show public frustration or question his own abilities. That attitude stretches to his team, as he showed Monday after the Rangers’ third consecutive loss, but it could have very well summed up his attitude toward his postseason disappointments. He is stoic in defeat and triumph when the microphones are turned on, downplaying virtually every question hurled his way.
"Worry doesn't do anything," Fielder told reporters Monday. "It just makes everything seem bigger than it is."
Everything about Fielder’s career has been big, though. From his stature to his home runs—he was the youngest player to ever hit 50 homers in a season when he did it at 23 years, 139 days—to his $214 million contract over nine years, to his playoff failures.
Even his injury last season was a big one. He had a herniated disk in his neck and had surgery in May of last year to fuse two of the disks in his spine. That injury, which started to bother him for the first time in 2012, severely limited his production in 2014 and chopped his season to just 42 games in his first with the Rangers after never having played less than 157 games in any of his previous eight full seasons.
At the time, the injury was significant enough for everyone, including Fielder, to wonder if he would ever be the same slugging, intimidating middle-of-the-order behemoth he had been in those previous eight years.
“There’s doubts,” Fielder told Tyler Kepner of The New York Times last weekend. “You have neck surgery, you don’t know where you’re at. You haven’t played in a year or so, you don’t know where you’re going to be.”
“You worry a lot,” Fielder added. “Anytime someone does surgery, let alone on your spine, it’s a little weird.”
This season has been a wonderful bounce-back one. Any doubts have evaporated in the Texas heat as Fielder’s batting average has been no lower than .300 since the third game of the year. His power numbers have been down—his 23 home runs would be the lowest full-season total of his career—but he is getting on base at a .379 clip, reminiscent of his Brewer days that earned him that enormous contract with the Tigers.
But we have seen these kinds of award-worthy seasons from Fielder before, and we have also seen them devolve into ugly postseasons. That cannot happen this time around, assuming the Rangers qualify as the AL West champions or through the wild-card route. The Rangers are not a good enough team to overcome one of their most valuable players performing as Fielder has in past Octobers.
For the Rangers to have a real chance to advance in these coming playoffs, Fielder has to continue being the offensive force he has been his entire career, including this season.
All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.
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