A veteran American League slugger was gone from the scene last season. His return, as a force at designated hitter in the middle of his lineup, has lifted his team into playoff position. He is enjoying the game again and has even been a clubhouse leader. He is the best choice for the AL Comeback Player of the Year Award.
He is Prince Fielder of the Texas Rangers. You were expecting someone else?
As important as Alex Rodriguez has been to the New York Yankees, Fielder has been just as vital to the Rangers, who entered the final week of the regular season with a 2 1/2-half-game lead in the AL West. He went 5 for 14 and drove in five runs against the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park this weekend, and he is hitting .304 with 22 homers and 91 runs batted after Sunday’s game.
This is the player the Rangers believed they were getting before the 2014 season, when they traded second baseman Ian Kinsler to the Detroit Tigers and assumed the final seven years of Fielder’s contract (with financial help from the Tigers). This is the player Fielder feared he might never be again, after surgery in May 2014 to fuse two disks in his neck.
“There’s doubts,” Fielder said after driving in two in Friday’s victory. “You have neck surgery, you don’t know where you’re at. You haven’t played in a year or so, you don’t know where you’re going to be.”
He added: “You worry a lot. Anytime someone does surgery, let alone on your spine, it’s a little weird.”
His prognosis was encouraging, Fielder said, and there was a powerful NFL precedent in Peyton Manning, who came back strong from a similar procedure in 2011. But Fielder still had to do the work, endure a summer without baseball and the drudgery of rehabilitation.
Rodriguez used his time off, he has said, to rest a body ravaged by age and injuries — and altered, at times, by repeated use of performance-enhancing drugs. He returned in a better frame of mind. Fielder did, too, with much less attention.
Before spring training, Fielder told The Dallas Morning News that he had become bitter with the game, a feeling that had festered since 2009, when he was criticized by fellow players after a choreographed home run celebration as a Milwaukee Brewer.
Fielder ended a game against the San Francisco Giants with a home run. His teammates waited for him at the plate, and when Fielder arrived, he raised his arms in triumph as the players fell together like bowling pins around him. It was clever and fun, but the Giants took offense. They hit him with a pitch the next spring.
Fielder moved on to the Tigers as a free agent before the 2012 season, helping Detroit win a pennant but failing to drive in a run in the next year’s AL Championship Series. He had already felt some tightness in his neck and shoulder by then and was shut down after 42 games, and only three homers, with Texas last season.
“Even from spring training last year, he came in here and it was disappointing; He got injured and he was kind of quiet,” Rangers closer Shawn Tolleson said. “This year, from spring training, you could just tell he had a different presence in the clubhouse. He’s been a leader on our team. He’s been a go-to guy with questions and problems, and what he’s done in his spot in the lineup has been huge for us.”
Fielder bonded instantly with Texas’ new manager, Jeff Banister, who coached for the Pittsburgh Pirates when Fielder played in the National League Central. He told Banister he had always noticed his intensity in the dugout, and had tried to match it on the field.
When Yu Darvish, the Rangers’ ace starter, was found this spring to need Tommy John surgery, Fielder appreciated Banister’s blunt response, which basically amounted to two words: So what? The team bonded, hung around the fringes of contention and then surged after trades in late July.
“We’re a real close team,” Fielder said. “It’s easy to have fun when you’re able to play with a bunch of guys who are real close. It’s easy to come to the park every day.”
Fielder hit more than 30 homers in each of his last five seasons with Milwaukee, through 2011, and has not done so since. But Banister said he had become a more sophisticated hitter. The .304 average would be the second highest of Fielder’s career.
“You don’t miss that many games and just show up: ‘OK, I’m going to be Captain Caveman again and start yanking balls out of the ballpark,’ ” Banister said. “You’ve got to find that stroke first. He was really smart to do that. You’ve got to find that barrel. Those hands and eyes have got to work together again."
Banister said he actually had more doubts about the return of first baseman Mitch Moreland, who played in just 52 games last season — and hit only two home runs — because of ankle surgery.
Moreland has been almost as productive as Fielder, with a .281 average, 23 homers and 84 RBIs. He left his family behind in Birmingham, Ala., in early January to work with a physical therapist in Arizona, where he stayed through spring training.
“They said that it was something that was definitely going to be tough to come back from,” Moreland said. “But at the same time, the doctors thought I could come back at full strength and feel better. There were times when it bothered me more than others, and that made it a little tougher. But there was never any doubt that I was going to be able to be back.”
Fielder or Moreland would be a worthy choice for the comeback award, which is selected by beat reporters for MLB.com. Rodriguez has earned his cheers from Yankees fans, but he created the adversity he has overcome. A better back story is essential to the honor.
“If Mitch got it, that would mean a lot also,” Fielder said. “We both were out last year and came back strong, so if either one of us gets it, I’ll be happy. If anybody else gets it, I’m not happy.”
A happy, productive Fielder has been good for the game, and critical to the Rangers. Here’s hoping he stays happy when the winner is revealed in November.
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