Over at the Enquirer this morning, there is an excellent article on comments Jay Bruce recently made to Trent Rosecrans. Well, article is maybe a stretch, it’s actually Bruce’s ten-minute long answer to a single question.
What emerges from it is a portrait of a very thoughtful ballplayer. He sounds, in some ways, a lot like Votto, which makes sense as they’re reportedly good friends. Anyway, one comment that really stood out to me was what Bruce had to say about sometimes taking a strike…
I’m swinging at fewer strikes, but the strikes I’m not swinging at – I’d rather be 0-1 than 0-for-1.
That does an excellent job of articulating the importance of doing everything you can do to get a pitch you can hit.
I am a big Jay Bruce fan. I watched him play here in Louisville. It happened that his first game was the first ML game I went to with my then soon-to-be wife. I also saw his first homer a few days later during pre-wedding festivities. I’ve paid close attention to his career, and I’m always a bit biased in his favor, so you should take what I say with a grain of salt, but I would be awfully inclined to give him the extension he mentioned a few years ago. Someone who approaches and thinks about the game like this is, I think, likely to sustain his value over the long haul. Plus, he’s just so darned affable.
Anyway, go read the whole thing. Here it is.