Daylen Lile has been crushing the ball, which led me to ask him about signs — as in, any sign that he’s completely dialed in — at his locker last week. He did not, to my surprise, talk about something like his timing with fastballs, nor did he mention a recent home run that landed in the second deck at Nationals Park. Instead he pointed to a single pitch.
On Aug. 24, Ryan Feltner, a righty for the Rockies, threw Lile an 85-mph changeup on the low-and-outside corner. Lile, a 23-year-old outfielder, thought for a millisecond about swinging but didn’t. The umpire called strike one. And because Lile resisted, he knew he was in one of his zones, when the game slows down enough for him to rake (and rake, and rake). It was, in other words, a sign.
Two pitches later, Feltner threw a more manageable changeup and Lile roped it for a double. In his next at-bat, he singled. In the at-bat after that, he crushed that second-deck homer.