Column: Padres outfielder Trent Grisham learns patience can be friend, foe

Padres outfielder Trent Grisham has been pirouetting along the pitch-selection fence in oil-soaked ballet slippers, tempting the strike-zone gods with a level of patience that can punish as much as pay off.

For each moment of sublime discipline, there’s a swing too often stuck in neutral.

Welcome to baseball’s finest of lines, where an elite eye for pitches that dive, dart and de-cleat can fall in and out of miniscule calibration, testing mental and emotional limits.

“There’s always that line between being too selective or swinging too much, or not swinging at the right pitches,” Grisham said in the visitor’s clubhouse at Truist Park. “You’re always working that balance. Whether you’re an aggressive hitter or a selective hitter, I feel like everyone fights that.”

Grisham, who entered the series with a .144 average and higher strikeout rate than any of his three other big-league seasons, cautioned that overreaction and wholesale changes can cause bigger and longer slides.

You got to the majors by doing plenty of things right at the plate, goes the theory. Dip into that well, but avoid straying too far off a path that produced a big-league paycheck in the first place.

The early conundrum for Grisham is that his exceptional eye adds walks to spark innings for baseball’s biggest group of strollers, yet also sets him up for too many non-contact situations on solid pitches and those dancing near the fringes.

Grisham is so disciplined that his chase rate on balls outside the zone (21.5 percent) is eighth best in the game. He’s also drifted into areas of excessive patience, standing 165^th of 173 qualified hitters by laying off 41.4 percent of pitches in zone, according to the analytical overlords at FanGraphs.

Finding middle ground? Well, that’s the tricky thing.

“It’s hard to judge yourself off the first 100 at-bats, especially coming off a short spring,” Grisham said. “That’s the way I’m looking at it. I’m not going to hit a panic button and try to change everything.

“I know my capabilities and what I can bring to the table. So, I’m going to keep building to that like I always do.”

Sticking with a plan paid off for Grisham in Friday’s opener against the Braves, when he hammered a bases-clearing double off the left field wall in the ninth to put away the Braves in a late 11-6 runaway.

Entering that at-bat, Grisham had been 1-for-23 (.044) as a pinch hitter in his career.

“No doubt that he’s going to find his groove,” Padres interim manager Ryan Christenson said on the eve of the series. “He’s going to find his groove. Everybody goes through a funk. Just a little off right now.

“He’s going to get a couple of hits here in the next few days and he’ll probably be off and rolling and back to himself. He’s not an under .200 hitter.”

Glimpses of progress arrived in Atlanta.

Grisham produced the Padres’ second and final hit Saturday off crafty Braves starter Charlie Morton, who finished with nine strikeouts and one walk against a lineup that included baseball’s top two hitters.

In the eighth inning of a 6-5 loss, the centerfielder fought back from an 0-2 count for another nine-pitch appearance. He sprayed one ball just foul on the third-base line before threatening to sneak one down the opposite line. First baseman Matt Olson got there quickly, though, and was charged with an error after nearly gloving it.

Putting the ball in play after a long at-bat sparked an inning that finished with four runs, in spite of some untidy Braves’ unraveling.

Grisham came to the plate in the ninth with the Padres trailing by one, swinging through a slider from Kenley Jansen to end the game.

Flashes of more aggressive against the Braves could key Grisham, whose only multi-hit games this came inback-to-back on April 30 and May 1 against the Pirates.

“For me personally, when things aren’t going well, I try to get a little deeper into the at-bats to feel more comfortable in the box and see more pitches,” said Eric Hosmer, who entered Saturday leading the majors with a .377 average. “Those are the type of at-bats that can get you going and get you hot.

“Sometimes you just need one of those big swings to get your confidence up and get you feeling good about yourself. That (bases-clearing double a game earlier) could be one of those at-bats for him.”

It was impossible late Friday to tell if Grisham had struck out on three pitches or dented the outfield wall as a trio of teammates rushed to the plate. That evenness normally serves players well long-term in a grinder of a game.

“I think it’s trying to stay comfortable and knowing yourself,” he said. “That comes with experience and playing more and more. When I was younger, I used to freak out when my numbers didn’t look great. Still now, I don’t like looking up at the board and seeing (an average in the .100s). No one does.

“So, it’s just finding a way to stay within yourself and not try to get it all back at once.”

Grisham acknowledged he’s a slow starter, but his OPS (on base, plus slugging) as the weekend opened stood about 200 points under his career numbers through May.

For now, he’s drilling down to details he thoughtfully considers in concert. It’s timing, hips, hands, waiting for pitches with “damage” potential and more. No one thing, he said, should trump the importance of the bat-swinging collective.

“They’re all equal. 1A, 1B, 1C,” Grisham said. “It can’t be one over the other. They all work in harmony and that’s when I feel like I’m my best.”

Can Atlanta be a springboard? There’s one more game to find out.

But if it is, that would be music to clubhouse ears indeed.