'I want to hit it 440': Gordon plans to power up

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Nick Gordon hit 28 homers in total across parts of seven seasons in the Minor Leagues. Now, he has his sights set on a 20-homer season in the big leagues.

Gone is the wiry singles hitter who went to the plate trying to poke the ball through the hole in the infield or smack a ball over the second baseman’s head. Gordon brought a different intent and swing to the batter’s box last season -- and he has now seen how well he can damage baseballs when he goes up to the plate, trying to drive the ball as far as he can on every swing.

Now, he believes in his power -- and as he continues to fill out his 6-foot frame, he’s excited to see how far he can take this new phase of his career.

“Even in the Minor Leagues, I felt like I could hit the ball hard, but I didn't really believe I could drive the ball as well as some of the other guys,” Gordon said. “I didn't really trust that I did have enough power to hit home runs and things like that.”

It’s a combination of that new intent and tweaks with hitting coach David Popkins to Gordon's lower half and barrel direction in the swing that have him feeling so empowered. It was early last season in Kansas City, Gordon said, that he decided to bring the changes into a game. He crushed a drive toward Kauffman Stadium’s deep right-center-field gap for a triple, and had it not been for a stiff wind, he figured it would have been gone.

“OK, I can do it,” he realized.

“Completely different [swing],” Popkins said. “The speed he's creating, the power that he's creating for a guy of his weight is pretty special. Now, he's kind of blending the hitter that he was with that now. He's done it extremely well so far this spring. We're very excited for that swing.”

Gordon hit nine homers and 28 doubles in 138 games last season, with a .427 slugging percentage that would have seemed fanciful in his early days in the organization. The Statcast numbers love what happens when the ball comes off Gordon’s bat, as he ranked in MLB’s 80th percentile in average exit velocity and in the 74th percentile in hard-hit rate last season.

His season culminated with his biggest swing on Aug. 30, when he crushed a 416-foot blast to the upper deck for his first career grand slam, capping a six-RBI day that only made him want even more.

“It feels good, makes you want to get stronger,” Gordon said. “Because I want to hit it 440 [feet].”

The cooperation of Gordon’s body has helped following a brutal few years hampered by gastritis and COVID-19. He reported to camp two years ago at 153 pounds, which spiked to 170 pounds when he arrived last spring. This year, he came in at 178 pounds -- with the hopes of gaining another five or six pounds by Opening Day.

And though Gordon knows that his batted ball metrics were strong, he’s also aware that his plate discipline metrics were quite poor, and that’s a focus of his continued improvement. He ranked in MLB’s sixth percentile in both chase rate and walk rate, also whiffing at too many pitches -- and he knows that walks are increasingly important in the modern game.

He says he’s trying to work with game-like intent and intensity in everything he does, from cage work and batting practice, being selective in those settings and looking for his pitches to drive, so that he can still be aggressive in games -- but be smarter about it.

“If there were days where I didn't feel my best or days where the results weren't the best, it never really was the swing or the contact or things like that,” Gordon said. “It was more so me just swinging at terrible pitches and me just putting myself in a hole.”

Though Gordon is down with a left high ankle sprain, his progression back to the field continued on Monday with fielding drills and live at-bats against Kenta Maeda. It looks like it shouldn’t be too long before he’s back to filling in everywhere around the diamond -- and, now, hitting the ball even farther than he could have thought.

“If you're saying he's kind of surprising himself, even sometimes, great,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I hope he shocks himself all year long and he's driving it all over the ballpark.”