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It is probably unfair to expect Jason Giambi to ever be the player he once was. He is five years removed from his most valuable player season, when he was the rowdy ringleader of the Oakland Athletics, the team the Yankees visit tonight. At 34 years old, his prime years are gone.
Jason Giambi is 0 for 15 with 10 strikeouts since April 28 and is batting .195 for the season.
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But as Giambi begins his latest comeback, starting tonight at designated hitter, the Yankees do not know if he will even be a viable player again, let alone a valuable one. He is 0 for 15 with 10 strikeouts since April 28, with a .195 average and 6 runs batted in over all for the season.
Giambi seems to practically beg for walks, and in more than half his plate appearances this season, he has failed to put the ball in play. When he does make contact, he is not driving the ball with any force. Unless Giambi is hurt, or still feeling washed out after his treatment for a pituitary gland tumor last summer, there seems to be no plausible explanation.
"He's healthy, that's all I can tell you," General Manager Brian Cashman said yesterday. "It's just a matter of getting him to produce."
Cashman would not say if Giambi still took medication for the illness he battled last season, and Giambi's agent, Arn Tellem, declined comment. Giambi has pointed to more recent physical problems - a forearm cramp, a beaning in Tampa Bay on May 4 - as the sources of his struggles, and has maintained that he was doing well early in the season. But the mystery remains.
"In spring training, he seemed more relaxed in the batter's box than I'd seen him in years," said one scout, who did not want to be named because he was talking critically about another team's player. "He didn't show big-time power, but he had good at-bats, and even on his outs, he was making hard contact. I didn't see this deterioration."
A second scout, who has watched the Yankees more recently, said that Giambi baffled him.
"Look at his eyes," said the scout, who did not want to be named for the same reason as the first scout. "He's got that faraway, glazed look.
"It's odd. I don't know what to make of it, whether he's totally confused or what."
The scout said he thought Giambi was not seeing the ball well. When Giambi came to the Yankees in 2002, he had 20/13 vision in his right eye, the lead eye when he bats. But Giambi had a staph infection in both eyes in 2003, and the Yankees tested his vision after he was hit in the head in Tampa Bay earlier this month. Giambi passed the test.
Giambi's statistics might indicate that his vision is fine. Steve Phillips, an ESPN analyst and former general manager of the Mets, said the Yankees should be encouraged by Giambi's strike-zone judgment. Giambi has 18 walks, helping him to a .386 on-base percentage.
"To me, there's hope because the on-base percentage is good," Phillips said. "His ability to recognize pitches and not chase a lot out of the zone is something to build on. At some point, though, the pitchers are going to say: 'You know what? Let's see if he can hit it,' instead of walking him."
Giambi has been a different hitter since the All-Star Game break in 2003, when he stopped using steroids, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's report of his testimony in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative steroids case. A .306 career hitter to that point, Giambi has batted .213 since, with 30 homers, 80 runs batted in and 151 strikeouts in 558 at-bats.
When Giambi was more open about discussing steroids, he maintained that strength could not make a player hit well. Giambi might not be as strong as he once was, but if he is healthy, he should still have his batting skills.
"A guy doesn't forget how to hit the ball," the second scout said. "I think it's a mental thing now. Steroids only account for, say, 40 home runs going down to 30. It doesn't make you a better hitter; it just gives guys more strength. It certainly doesn't make you hit the ball."
Giambi rarely does even that. He has failed to put the ball in play in 53 of his 101 plate appearances this season. In the two games he played on the Yankees' last homestand, Giambi saw 39 pitches. He took 28 and swung at 11, making contact with 5. They produced three foul balls, a groundout and a fly ball.
Considering that evidence, it was little wonder that Cashman and Manager Joe Torre broached the topic of sending Giambi to the minor leagues in a meeting with him on Tuesday. Giambi rejected the idea, preferring to stay and to work with the hitting coach, Don Mattingly.
With Tino Martinez surging at first base, Giambi's at-bats will come at designated hitter, and at the expense of Bernie Williams. If Giambi does not hit right away, Torre probably would use Williams.
"I'm not telling Joe to play Jason; that's Joe's decision," Cashman said. "On days he's not in the lineup, that doesn't mean his work behind the scenes won't continue. Joe consistently goes with the hot hand eventually, anyway. If Bernie had gotten red hot in the last two days, that would have carried into the road trip. It didn't happen, so Giambi gets another chance to make a statement."
The Yankees will not say how many more chances Giambi will get. They won 101 games last season with hardly any significant contribution from him, and they owe him about $80 million through 2008. Cashman tried to stress patience.
"We're still talking about probably no more than a month of terrible performance," he said. "It is what it is - terrible - but if I went around from club to club, you're going to find guys struggling like this.
"I'm not trying to camouflage how bad Jason has been the last month. But if you take away the winter side of it that we're all obviously dancing around, he's a guy who hasn't hit for a month. That's not something that doesn't happen."
INSIDE PITCH
Reliever Felix Rodriguez had surgery on his left knee yesterday and is expected to miss four to six weeks. ... Starter Jaret Wright reported to Tampa, Fla., yesterday for rehabilitation on his injured right shoulder. Hurt on April 23, Wright will miss at least three more weeks. ... Outfielder Ruben Sierra, who has a torn biceps muscle and a strained rib cage, could begin a rehabilitation assignment on Monday and return next weekend.
