He vows that "last year was not the player that I am, that’s not going to be the player I am in the future," something he’ll get a chance to prove in 2020 as the primary replacement for the departed Justin Smoak at first base.
"Obviously, it kind of backfired on me," Shaw said of swing changes during a conference call Friday. "I fought my body and fought myself all year, trying to get myself back to where I was the two years prior to that. I felt like at the end of the season I was in a pretty good spot, and I was finally starting to turn the corner to getting back to where I was in previous years. I took that into the off-season, I continued to hit when I got home for like two weeks, just to make sure that feeling I had at the end of the year stayed with me."
"I think I was too far into it," Shaw said in explaining why he had so much trouble reverting to his original swing. "I had practised it so much over the off-season that I had created some muscle memory in that swing and for some reason I just had a really hard time getting back to where I was the two years before. I just fought all year to try and get that feeling and I could never regain that feeling I had before until later in the season. It finally turned the corner a little bit toward the end of September. I didn’t have an opportunity to prove that or to show it had fixed itself in the game, but physically I’m in a good spot, mentally I’m in a good spot and I’m looking forward to this fresh start in 2020 and getting things started off on the right foot again."
