Jared Oliva turned the page.
Literally and figuratively.
And it seriously might have saved his season.
Slashing just .199/.292/.294 on May 31, the Pirates outfield prospect ran out of space in the daily journal that he keeps — black leather, the Pirates “P” embroidered on the front — where he records detailed notes of his preparation and at-bats.
After buying a new notebook, Oliva scribbled “New Season” on the first page, then he went out and actually had one. He began arriving at Peoples Natural Gas Field as early as seven hours before first pitch for Class AA Altoona, working on basic things such as hitting ground balls up the middle or to second base and focusing on hitting line drives.
“It was more about finding that body awareness and barrel control,” Oliva said. “Then just kind of working from there, adapting each day to who’s on the mound, what are we going to face, then we really kind of narrowed down my checklist for the day in terms of what do I need to do to get myself ready that day.”
The fresh start served Oliva — a 6-foot-3, 203-pound outfielder — extremely well.
From June 1 through the end of the minor league season, Oliva slashed .312/.378/.444 with 19 doubles, five triples, four home runs, 29 walks, 34 RBIs and 53 runs scored. With pretty good speed, Oliva also ended up stealing 28 bases over his final 85 games.
“It was a good time to really reset everything,” Oliva said. “And to not just say it, but actually go do something about it.”
How well he flipped that switch has carried over into the Arizona Fall League, where Oliva, a seventh-round pick for the Pirates in 2017, has been on fire.
The 23-year-old, who’s ranked as the Pirates’ 11th-best prospect per MLB Pipeline, has been the AFL’s best player thus far, leading the league with a .527 on-base percentage and ranking second in batting average (.409) through 13 games.
It was announced on Tuesday that Oliva will participate in Saturday’s Fall-Stars Game. Along with leading the league in doubles (7) and stolen bases (7), Oliva also has 12 runs scored, 10 walks and seven RBIs.
“Before, it was a huge list,” Oliva said, talking about all the things he thought about and jotted down in his notebook. “I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just had a lot of things going on. Then we really kind of narrowed it down.”
Turning things around so quickly and effectively might’ve seemed simple, but Oliva said it was not that way at all. Whenever they flashed his average on the scoreboard, he still noticed it was much lower than he or anyone else wanted.
Oliva did find some comfort in his day-to-day work with Curve hitting coach Joe Nunnally, but it wasn’t easy to let go of the short-term results.
“It was honestly tough,” Oliva said. “It was good for me to focus on the work that I need to do each day, but don’t get me wrong, there were times when I was like, ‘Man, I’m hitting .190.’ It was important for me to catch myself and realize that I can’t change it all in one game or one day. I learned that baseball is a marathon, not a sprint.”
It probably didn’t hurt that Oliva did start to get some immediate results. Beginning on June 3, Oliva put together a six-game hitting streak and wound up hitting .296 the rest of the month. That carried over to the next month, when he really got hot and hit .388 and had an OPS of .987 in July, complete with 15 multi-hit games.
The whole thing was a heck of a learning experience for Oliva, who said it’s not the first time in his career that he’s experienced such a drastic change in results.
“That’s how I’ve been my whole life, my whole career,” Oliva said. “It’s the long run. Keep the short-term in sight but long-term in mind. Once things got rolling, thankfully Joe Nunnally called it. He said, ‘You’re going to start getting one hit, two hits, three hits. Work your walks in. Don’t worry, it’s coming. I have trust in you.’
“Sure enough the quality at-bats started to come more often. We haven’t looked back ever since.”
Jason Mackey: jmackey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @JMackeyPG.
First Published: October 9, 2019, 1:15 p.m.
