Ten and a half months after the Braves traded Jason Heyward to the St. Louis Cardinals, he returned for his first game at Turner Field as a visiting player. He felt a lot more like a visitor than he probably ever imagined he would in his so-called homecoming.
“It would be more of a homecoming if more teammates that I played with were here, more guys from the past, more guys from the recent past,” said Heyward, who was drafted by the Braves and played his first eight professional seasons in the Braves organization, including his first five major league seasons. “Right now there’s not a whole lot of guys left. It doesn’t feel too homecomingish.
“I mean, I know this is the place I broke in with and played a lot of games here, but it’s just a different team now.”
A different team in a very different place than his current team, the Cardinals, who clinched the National League Central title on Wednesday at Pittsburgh, with Heyward hitting a grand slam and making two terrific catches in the 11-1 rout that secured the division title.
The Braves, on the other hand, were out of contention by late summer and 25 games behind the NL East-leading Mets before Friday. They’ve been playing “meaningless” games for quite a while now, playing for pride and just trying to avoid 100 losses and finish the season on some sort of positive note.
A reporter asked Heyward if he ever thought he’d see the Braves eliminated from playoff contention as early as they were this year. That’s something he never experienced, with last season’s late-September eliminated being the earliest the Braves were officially out of contention while he played for them.
“It was only a week and a half — last year was the first time — that I played in games that didn’t count,” he said. “There’s something to be said about that.”
The Cardinals had a day off Thursday in Atlanta. Heyward, 26, who grew up in nearby McDonough and graduated from Henry County High School, didn’t venture far from his current offseason home in the Buckhead section of Atlanta on the off day.
“I stayed up here in the city,” he said. “I’ve been living in Buckhead, in the Atlanta area for five, six years now, so I just hung out up here, had the guys over to my house and we watched Thursday Night Football.”
Heyward met with reporters just before batting practice Friday in the visitor’s dugout. He wore a Cardinals postseason hooded sweatshirt with “October” on the chest. He’s ready for his return to the playoffs for the first time since the Braves lost to the Dodgers in a 2013 division series. He was also the Braves team that lost to the Cardinals in the 2012 Wild Card Game, and was a Braves rookie in 2010 when they lost to the Giants in a division series.
He hopes to get his first taste of postseason victory with the Cardinals, who have the best record in baseball (100-59 before Friday) and will face the winner of the NL Wild Card Game in a division series that starts next Friday.
Heyward, in his final season before free agency, started out slow, batting .217 with two homers and four RBIs in April, but soon found his groove and has been hot since mid-summer, raising his average to a career-best .292 before Friday, with a .358 on-base percentage that would be his second-highest. His home runs (13) and RBIs (60) were just a tick above last season’s totaled, but he had career-highs in stolen bases (23, in just 26 attempts) and doubles (33 doubles).
Heyward’s defense has been exceptional, as usual. He led the majors with nine Defensive Runs Saved in September, raising his season total to 23 before Friday and his three-season total to 65, second in the majors behind only Braves shortstop Andrelton Simmons.
Playing for the Cardinals in what many consider America’s best baseball city has been a thrill, Heyward said, adding that he felt comfortable right away with his new team.
“They did a great job of making me feel like family,” he said. “That’s just kind of their m.o., you’re part of the family here when you step in. We all trust each other and we trust we’re going to get the job done, and even if we don’t we know the next guy is going to get it done. Just have fun and grind it out together.”
The Braves traded Heyward because they were starting a rebuilding project and he only had one season left until free agency, and they weren’t prepared to offer him anywhere near the size of long-term contract they believed he would ask for.
They traded him and reliever Jordan Walden to the Cardinals for starting pitchers Shelby Miller, who pitched like an ace for much of the season despite his 5-17 record, and Tyrell Jenkins, a prospect who was the Braves’ minor league pitcher of the year after going 8-9 with a 3.19 ERA in 25 starts and a career-high 138 1/3 innings between stops in Double-A and Triple-A.
Soon after they traded him, they started trading plenty of others, with his former teammates Justin Upton, Evan Gattis, Craig Kimbrel and Melvin Upton Jr. among those traded away by opening day. For that reason, his connection to the team he came up with, in terms of following what’s going on with them or how they’re doing, hasn’t been as strong as one might expect.
“When I see guys that I play with get traded, I keep up with them, and reach out to them and wish them luck,” he said. “And I still talk to some of the guys that are still here. That’s about it.”