The seduction has happened before. J.D. Drew becomes what he can be, what he should be, the player for whom the Red Sox paid $70 million over five years. He locks in, looks perfect, as if there were simply no pitch that he could miss, as if he always had been able to drive a fastball out to left field or center field. He becomes J.D. Drew, the player so promising that he was picked twice in the first round of the draft.
Squaring up, circling bases
With Ortiz out, Drew keeping Red Sox powering ahead
But then it all goes away. As fast as Drew has gotten hot, has shown all that talent, he has slowed. The strikeouts come more frequently, or ground out after ground out to the right side. It is, in a word, infuriating.
That was Drew in 2007, a nearly lost year that perked up in September, capped by that grand slam in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series. That hardly has been Drew in 2008.
"He definitely went through periods like this when he was in Atlanta, times when he was in LA," said Sox hitting coach Dave Magadan. "But I tell you what, I've never seen a guy square up as many balls as he's squared up over the last five or six games. It seems like every at-bat he's hitting a bullet somewhere. It's pretty impressive."
But. There seems always to be a pause with Drew, an uncertainty that this time it's real. Can he continue his production? Perhaps not at this level, but at least at a level commensurate with that talent and that contract? Is it time to believe, or will he break hearts again?
Maybe this time it's different. Maybe this time, as Drew works on a power stroke that dried up last season, he can be that No. 5 hitter he was signed to be. Or, for now, the No. 3 hitter.
With four home runs in his last eight games, and two in his last two, Drew now has eight on the season, in just 53 games. It took him until his 126th game of last season, on Sept. 11, before he hit his eighth. He finished the season with 11. It is well within reason to think he will surpass that total by the All-Star break this year.
"I think with his swing, if he stays consistent with his approach, he's going to hit some home runs, sometimes by accident," manager Terry Francona said. "He's kind of got a line-drive stroke, I think we all think that. He'll get under a couple and hit some home runs just because he's a good hitter. He stays in the middle of the field like he's been doing, then he's going to stay on the changeup longer, not roll over.
"Home runs are welcome, [but] I don't know that I'm particularly going to sit here and hang our hat on that with him. If he makes solid contact and stays in the middle of the field, we'll take whatever results are there."
And the results have been there lately.
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