RailRiders 2021: Already with elite power, Gittens seeks consistency

May 2—Maybe he could hit it over that building out there.

He never tried. Too many windows and people and cars and things that don't fare well when they meet a screaming baseball.

It's not like the thought never crossed Chris Gittens' mind, though.

With the minor leagues on hiatus and gyms closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, the slugging first baseman needed to improvise. So instead of a ballpark, he used a parking garage near his home. Instead of weights, he filled a backpack with 40 pounds of canned goods. For cardio, he climbed the levels of the garage and for hitting, he bought a net at Walmart and set it up on the top floor.

The net did its job, catching every drive off Gittens' bat. Still, he wondered about the possibilities if it wasn't there.

"A lot of times, I wanted to be like, 'Can I hit it over this apartment complex?' " the 6-foot-4, 250-pound Gittens joked. "But I never did (try it), never did."

Hitting baseballs over things is kind of Gittens' specialty.

The 27-year-old boasts some of the most impressive power in the Yankees' organization. In 2019, he hit 23 home runs in 115 games at Double-A Trenton in winning the Eastern League's MVP award, and that was with the old minor league baseballs, not the suped-up big league balls that led to historic homer numbers in Triple-A that year.

In his second at-bat of spring training this year, Gittens launched a 440-foot grand slam against the Detroit Tigers that left his bat at 114.3 mph and cleared the left-center videoboard at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Florida. He hit two more homers in spring, including a 417-foot blast against the Tigers at their complex.

"He does things that other people just flat out can't do — that they'll never be able to do," said Dillon Lawson, Yankees hitting coordinator. "When you talk about Gittens' power, you have to talk about him with (Aaron) Judge and (Joey) Gallo and (Giancarlo) Stanton. I mean, it's that kind of exit velocity."

Power source

Gittens' first collegiate hit was a bunt.

He was a freshman in the

No. 9 hole for Grayson County College, a junior college in

Denison, Texas. His coach told him to do it, but at that point, Gittens was pushing 300 pounds, and power was already his thing.

He bunted it too hard.

Grayson's opponents had the wheel play on, however, and as the third baseman and first baseman charged the plate, Gittens pushed it out toward shortstop for an easy single.

"It was perfect," he said.

Ever since he saw his older brother Josh play, Gittens dreamt of a career in baseball. Each trip to Walmart he'd grab a plastic bat he could swing. If he couldn't find one, a tube of Christmas wrapping paper would do. He liked watching Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, and how he'd change a game with his power — Gittens tries to pick uniform No. 34 when it's available.

In Little League, he remembers hitting more inside-the-park homers than over-the-fence ones. By his freshman year of high school, he was winning home run derbies.

He headed to Grayson as a two-way player and, at that level, playing two or four games a week at 290 pounds worked. But if the pros were the goal, he knew he needed to get his body right.

"There was a gas station that I used to run to every day before practice, and really my coach made me run," Gittens said. "He made me run every day and go downhill and uphill before I could even be on the baseball field."

Gittens cracked Baseball America's list of the top 500 prospects for the 2014 draft, making the cut at No. 438. As a pitcher, the publication's scouting report said he could run his fastball up to 93 mph and had a curveball to go with it. But when it came to his offense — it might be difficult to find a 438th-best prospect with more glowing writeup.

"He has the type of thunder in his bat that's become harder and harder to find," the scouting report said. "Gittens has easy raw power, capable of just flicking balls out of the park from pole to pole."

The Yankees picked him in the 12th round that year and gave him a $125,000 signing bonus.

Impact player

It's not easy to hit at the backfields at the Detroit Tigers' spring training complex in Lakeland, Florida, RailRiders outfielder Trey Amburgey says.

That's where he realized Gittens was different.

Amburgey joined the Yankees organization a year after Gittens, and they were teammates for the first time in the Gulf Coast League.

It was Aug. 8, 2015, they're on the road playing the GCL Tigers. First inning, the Yankees' cleanup hitter clobbers a ball.

"(Gittens) put a ball over the batter's eye, and I was like, 'What ... what in the world is that?' " Amburgey said. "He just puts it over the wall like it's nothing. It's just gotten more ridiculous as we get older, especially (this) spring training putting balls over scoreboards and stuff. It's ridiculous. It's stupid. You can't teach it."

Amburgey had a front-row seat to watch Gittens. They matched up in Low-A Charleston in 2016, High-A Tampa in 2017 and Double-A Trenton in 2018, when Gittens missed a chunk of the season with a hip injury, playing just 53 games. So, when Amburgey moved on to the RailRiders in 2019 — and with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre crowded at first base with Ryan McBroom, Mike Ford and Logan Morrison — Gittens took a full run at Double-A.

Amburgey missed quite the show.

Gittens led the Eastern League with a career high 23 home runs and 77 RBIs, and his .281 batting average ranked fourth, helping him become Trenton's first MVP since Brandon Laird in 2010.

"All around from offense, defense and even my body, it felt amazing being able to have a healthy season for once, so that was great," Gittens said.

That momentum ended abruptly when the minor leagues shut down in 2020 because of the pandemic, and he didn't get an invite to the alternate site at PNC Field. That was also the last season of Gittens' contract, sending him into free agency.

He came right back to the Yankees

He liked where he fell on the first base depth chart — 2020 home run leader Luke Voit is at the top, then there's Mike Ford and, with Voit making his way back from knee surgery, utilityman D.J. LeMahieu is seeing some time at the position, too.

Gittens could be next. He's a level away from the bigs.

Now, he just has to get there.

Consistent force

With great power can come great strikeout numbers, and Gittens isn't immune.

He knows it. He's focused on cutting it down.

"I know that a lot of pitchers, when I come up to the plate, they don't want to throw me strikes," he said. "So, I've just got to know to take what they give me and don't do too much. Even on an 0-2 count, I can still do damage and hit a home run or even hit a double, single and get a runner in."

In 2019, Gittens struck out in 29.1% of plate appearances (139 strikeouts in 478 plate appearances). By comparison, Judge posted a 25% strikeout rate in his half-season at Double-A. Stanton's was 26.2% over two seasons at the level and Gallo came in at 37.5%.

Gittens works on it in the batting cage, telling coaches to mix in pitches that aren't straight, or are up-and-in or down-and-away. It's also not so much the strikeout rate that bugs Gittens. It's when a strikeout prevents him from doing his job, like when it might leave runners on base or in scoring position.

Lawson said Gittens did a "phenomenal" job increasing the amount of contact he makes over the past couple year. He raved about his gameplanning, saying Gittens has one of the most advanced approaches in the system, constantly studying pitchers and asking questions of veteran hitters and coaches. Lawson thinks the organization can help him tap into more consistency.

"The way we've talked about it here is anyone can make a half-court shot once, but we're trying to be Steph Curry," Lawson said. "We want to make 47 out of 50 half-court shots, and that's a lofty goal, but for Chris Gittens, that's what it is. It's that exactly. When he hits the ball, they're all half-court shots. It's amazing. It's just now how many can he get off? Like, how many half-court shots can he get off?"

There was one particular batting practice at this season's alternate site where Gittens finished with three half-court shots. Home runs soaring out to left field with exit velocities of 113 mph, then 116 mph and finally a 118-mph blast over the PNC Field ad boards that had his teammates howling.

Later that day, he faced veteran lefty Mike Montgomery in a simulated game. Two more homers, but he muscled those ones to right field.

"One was on a heater that we were trying to get in on him and he got his barrel there," said catcher Rob Brantly. "Next at-bat, good awareness of what we did the time before and I went to make an adjustment, and tried to go with the slow curveball. And he just, I mean, he swung at that thing like it was a fly and made it look so easy that the ball just cruised over the fence. So, like I said, he's got a pretty good idea of what he's doing up there."

Next big thing

Gittens is ready for a big year, on and off the field. He's got June 26 circled, and not because of a game against Lehigh Valley. That's the due date for his girlfriend Heather Chee, who is pregnant with their first child.

He can't wait.

Back in December, on the lawn at the base of that apartment complex, Heather floated a pitch to Gittens. He barreled it up and sent a cloud of blue dust bursting into the air.

They're having a boy.

If Dad Strength is a thing, look out.

"Hopefully, it gives me a little more power," Gittens said.

Contact the writer:

cfoley@timesshamrock.com;

570-348-9125;

@RailRidersTT on Twitter