Brantley’s father helped himm have breakout season

By Paul Hoynes

Northeast Ohio Media Group

GOODYEAR, Ariz.

In late January, Michael Brantley still didn’t know exactly what his father would tell him.

“He won’t say,” said Brantley, standing in the middle of the Indians locker room at TribeFest. “It’s too early. He knows I’d forget.”

Well, it’s not too early now. In fact, the time for waiting is over because the Indians start full-squad spring-training workouts Tuesday.

Michael Brantley and his father, Mickey, do a lot together. They fish, golf and hang out.

“I can’t touch him anymore at golf,” said Mickey, a former big league outfielder. “He kills me. The only thing I have left to try and beat him at is fishing on one of our trips.”

They fish for flounder from October through November. Michael Brantley bought a boat to work the rivers and streams along Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway. After flounder season, they fish for bass off the shore.

What the Brantleys really do is hit. Michael does the hitting and Mickey does the coaching.

“We start off with three times a week,” said Brantley, a former hitting coach with Toronto. “Then we go four times a week. Then we go five times a week before spring training.”

Just before Brantley left for spring training last year, Mickey gave him some advice. It’s not like Michael hadn’t heard it before, but this time Brantley’s bat made the words resonate.

Brantley had always been tight at the plate. He was a leadoff hitter and he thought like a leadoff hitter. He wanted to work the pitcher so his teammates had a chance to see his pitches. He wanted to run the count to 2-2 or 3-2 and swing only at a good pitch.

Mickey Brantley wanted his son to take a chance. With manager Terry Francona moving him down in the lineup, he wanted him to live a little.

After all, there’s no rule that says a pitcher won’t throw a hittable pitch on the second pitch of an at-bat instead of the 10th. The hurdle was in Brantley’s mind.

“Michael has always been a student of the game,” said Mickey. “He thought if he made an out in the first two pitches of the at-bat, it wasn’t a productive out.”

What convinced Brantley to walk on the wild side?

He hit .500 in spring training doing what his father suggested. Hitting is like any other endeavor; nothing succeeds like success.

“I learned I could be free at the plate,” said Brantley. “I could swing at a 0-0 fastball or a 2-0 fastball and have no regrets.

“In the past, I was more cautious about what pitches I swung at. I wanted to make sure I had good at bats each and every time instead of just trying to get a good pitch to hit, putting a good swing on it and see what happens from there.”

It was a revelation that turned into a revolution for Brantley.

He hit a ho-hum .255 in April, but had four homers and 20 RBI. In May, Brantley hit .345 with five homers and 19 RBI. Two months into the season, Brantley had nine homers, one shy of his career high for a year.

Brantley hit .341 in June with 14 RBI. In July, he hit .321 and went to his first All-Star game.

“Michael was growing from a good player to one of the best players in the game right in front of our eyes,” said Francona.

In a lineup battered by injuries, Brantley just kept hitting — .286 in August and .416 in September. He led the AL with a .376 average with runners in scoring position.

Brantley ended the season hitting .327 with 200 hits, 20 homers and 97 RBI. He stole 23 bases in 24 attempts and posted a .890 OPS.

In franchise history, covering 114 seasons, Brantley is the only player with 200 hits, 45 doubles, 20 homers and 20 stolen bases in one season.

When he went home after the season, he told Mickey, “Dad, I think I had a pretty good season.” His father corrected him, “No, you had a great season.”

Brantley finished third in the AL MVP voting and won a Silver Slugger award as the AL’s top hitting left fielder. The attention caught Brantley by surprise.

“I was sitting on the couch and I got a phone call,” said Brantley. “I told my father, ‘Dad, I just won the Silver Slugger.’ He told me, “Well, what did you think was going to happen?’

“I’ve never been the kind of person who sits there and looks at stats. It was more shocking to me than him. He kind of made fun of me, but my first thing is about being a good teammate and winning baseball games. That’s my goal and that’s what I stick to.”

Brantley turns 28 on May 17. He’s entering what should be his prime years and they belong to the Indians after he signed a four-year $25 million extension in February 2013.

The question is was 2014 as good as it gets for Brantley? Has he peaked or is there more to come?

Brantley prefers to look at it as just another year.

“You take what you learned from 2014 and bring it into 2015,” he said. “I don’t want to ever say it’s a career year because it’s like you’ve plateaued or gave up. I’ve worked twice as hard as I did last year in preparation for this year.”

If it was a career year, and Brantley can keep producing seasons close to those numbers, it’s hard to believe anyone would be unhappy.

“I don’t know if Michael has hit his ceiling yet,” said Mickey Brantley. “I don’t know if he can hit 30 home runs and drive in 120. You never know. A lot of it comes down to luck, preparation, or staying healthy.

“But the year he had last year, he’s trying to at least duplicate it or better it. “

Career years are one thing. What about the career advice Mickey gave his son in the spring of 2014? Better to retire undefeated than try to top that in 2015.

Perhaps silence would be the best choice, but when has a coach ever stopped coaching or a father ever stopped giving his son advice?

“My thing for him is working on trying to drive the ball out of the park the other way (left field),” said Mickey Brantley. “He’s got power to center field, right center field and right field. They’re going to be pitching him quite a bit away so we worked on hitting the ball the other way — either out of the park or over the outfielder’s head.”

Will it work? We’ll know more when Brantley enters the petri dish of the Cactus League season. The first game is March 3.