When Bregman was a growing up in New Mexico, he yearned to be a big leaguer. His parents — both attorneys — never discouraged that mission, nor did they feel they needed to propel him toward it. Instead, they offered foundational advice. “They never asked me to do anything,” said Bregman. “They just told me if I wanted to do anything, I better work — work for it every day.” The message took, and resonates decades later in a way that has astonished members of the Red Sox. On the morning of 1:35 p.m. day games, players often drift into the clubhouse between 10 and 11 a.m. and ease into pregame schedules. There’s plenty of downtime in gym shorts on days without scheduled on-field batting practice. Before a recent contest, however, Bregman — already in his uniform pants — concluded a meeting with Red Sox hitting coaches and analysts at 10 a.m. prior to jumping into a batting cage. “He was probably wearing batting gloves [in the meeting],” joked assistant hitting coach Dillon Lawson. “There’s probably text messages or phone calls that even happened before that [meeting]. There’s definitely ones that happen after the games, on the road, on the off-days. “This is what he does. It’s what he was made for. It’s always on his mind and I think somehow, some way, he’s good with that,” added Lawson. “In my Rolodex, he’s one of a kind.” More than an hour after that same day game — a Sox win — Bregman remained in his dirt-covered uniform pants, sitting at his locker. Teammate after teammate — many of them pausing for a visit after they’d gotten dressed and were on their way out of the clubhouse — approached him in what looked like a teacher’s office hours. Bregman, armed with an iPad, digested at-bats, pitches, and plays. He talked about approaches, mechanics, mind-sets — seeking and giving feedback to hitters, pitchers, and anyone else. “I just think he has this nature to connect to people, whether it’s catchers, pitching staff, hitters, the cook,” said Sox hitting coach Pete Fatse. Bregman is, of course, off to a phenomenal start. Typically a slow starter who gains steam as the season progresses (.817 career OPS before the All-Star break, .906 after it), he entered Saturday with the highest average (.309), OBP (.389), slugging percentage (.579), and OPS (.968) of his career through 45 games. His 11 homers are the second most of his career (behind only the 14 he hit through 45 contests in 2019, when MLB balls behaved like golf balls), and his 26 extra-base hits are his most ever. His in-game impact has been immense. Yet Bregman is less focused on those numbers than on the before-and-after of games, ultimately believing the behind-the-scenes activity is what funnels into results. In prior seasons, he’d been goal- and outcome-focused, basing his view of success on whether he went 2 for 4 or reached certain benchmarks in his back-of-the-baseball-card numbers. This season, Bregman has reoriented his view. He recently picked up the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear (“I needed to read a book — I literally was just like, I haven’t read a book since I don’t even know when,” he said), and connected with the message of focusing on stacking habit changes to achieve impact rather than chasing bottom-line goals. Bregman talks of “falling in love with the work before the game” and then allowing himself to treat the game itself as the reward for everything he does over the rest of his day. “I’ve always loved working and the game. I always have. It’s always been the most fun thing in the world, just working at the game of baseball. I’ve always been super-passionate about it,” he said. “But I feel like putting more emphasis on the importance of the work as opposed to putting more emphasis on the results of the game. “It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers that you’re putting up, but I feel like the best points of my career, the thing I’ve been focused on has always been the process of what I’m doing before the game in the cage, how I’m working on my swing mechanics, how I’m working on controlling the strike zone, or how I’m working on preparing to face a pitcher,” he added. “As opposed to going out there and worrying so much about the results you feel from Day One, let’s worry about just executing the swing in the cage and working on the process in the cage. And it’s been a good start. There’s a long way to go, a lot of season left, and want to continue to improve.” That approach has been fascinating and sometimes amusing to teammates. There have been days when Bregman has been hitless but has found reason to take satisfaction in how he’s approached his preparation. There have been days when Bregman has collected multiple hits but felt that his swing was imprecise, inspiring a round of self-criticism and batting cage engineering to fine-tune. “His attention to detail is so refined. One day he went 2 for 4, and he showed up the next day. It was like, ‘My swing’s messed up,’ ” recounted Story. “He knows that if he’s going to move the right way, that’s what’s going to play over the season. He’s very, very, very detail-oriented with that. If it’s not how he wants it to feel, then he’s not buying into [results].” It is one thing for a player to go down the rabbit hole of his own swing and work. For instance, there are similarities between Bregman’s meticulousness with his own swing and that of J.D. Martinez. But members of the Sox have been fascinated to witness Bregman’s Pedroia-esque interest in his teammates — and in trying to push them to chase high standards. “He challenges everyone to never really turn it off,” said outfielder Rob Refsnyder. “When we grab dinners, he’s constantly talking about the next game, the next pitcher, defense, base running. He’s the ultimate baseball guy, and he never turns it off. He really doesn’t. Every conversation circles back to winning the next game, winning the next at-bat. It’s truly special. “I know for a fact he’s made some of our younger players better [be] hungry, and [helped them] understand this is what greatness is,” he added. “I’m sure those guys have learned a lot from him, because I’m 34 and I’ve learned a lot from him already.” Of course, the purpose of that advice — as well as Bregman’s work — is ultimately to contribute to victories. Those haven’t come in a way that the Red Sox had hoped to this point. The team entered Saturday with a 22-24 record. But Bregman remains optimistic that a sound approach will ultimately allow the team to start getting the results it expects — and that there’s a simple formula to improving. “I just want to prepare at an elite level and win,” he said. “I want to win, and I know that if we get the best out of everyone, we’ll win a lot of games.”
CONTINUE READING
