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Nine Innings: Shelley Duncan

By Jessie Spector of the Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/touchingbase/2007/09/nine_innings_shelley_duncan.html

As a journalist, you're not supposed to root for anyone. But when you've covered a minor league team, it's hard not to root for the guys you've covered to eventually make it to the majors -- especially because if you're covering the minors, not only is everyone super nice and not yet sick of the media, but you're probably trying to get to the majors yourself.

When I covered the Brooklyn Cyclones in 2001 for the Brooklyn Eagle, I also spent quite a bit of time with the Staten Island Yankees and met players from around the New York-Penn League. Some of the players from that season, such as Kevin Youkilis, Dan Haren and Lenny DiNardo, have been in the majors for a few years. But I've always kept tabs on the '01 NYPLers, so when I was done interviewing Chris Duncan back in July, I asked him how his brother Shelley was doing. Chris said good, and that he couldn't figure out why Shelley wasn't in the majors, what with the Yankees needing a righthanded power bat and all. Well, a couple of weeks later, Shelley was in the majors. Now, he's the subject of a Nine Innings interview.

1. If you could trade places with anyone in Major League Baseball for one day, who would it be?

Shelley Duncan: Anyone? Anyone in Major League Baseball for one day... Alex (Rodriguez)... Or (Derek) Jeter. I'm going to have to go with Alex.

Touching Base: Why Alex over Jeter? Jeter's actually been a popular answer. (Including by Chris Duncan.)

SD: No, I'm going to have to go with Alex. I don't know. Probably because of how good he is and... you know what? I'm going to change it and go with Jeter. Jeter's single. He's got a good life here in New York. That would be a fun one. He'd be a good guy to trade with.

2. Outside of winning the World Series, what is one thing you'd most like to accomplish in your career?

SD: That really is the only thing I've ever thought about doing. I'm serious. I can't think about anything else. Really, that's it. The only thing I've ever thought about doing.

3. Who was your favorite athlete growing up?

SD: In baseball, it was Mark McGwire, and in football it was Randall Cunningham. Growing up as a little kid, that's what it was.

TB: You're the right age to have had a Nintendo.

SD: Yeah.

TB: In Tecmo Super Bowl did you use QB Eagles? (Cunningham was not part of the NFLPA's marketing agreement, so the game couldn't use his name, replacing him with "QB Eagles." The same happened for Jim Kelly, er, "QB Bills.")

SD: (Laughs.) I don't even remember that game too much. I just remember the original Tecmo Bowl where you had like four plays. I'd always pick the Bears, who had Walter Payton and those guys. There was like an unstoppable play if you were the 49ers. You remember that one?

TB: No, I just remember nobody could stop Bo Jackson on the Raiders, and then if you played the Giants, you could block every kick.

SD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was always a Bears guy.

TB: Are you a Bears fan?

SD: I never really had a football team until now. Now I'm a big Arizona Cardinals fan.

TB: Wow.

SD: Heh. It's funny, when you get to the East Coast, everybody starts ragging you about your hometown team, so it's forced me to start rooting for them a little more.

TB: They're getting a little better.

SD: A little bit. They'll get there one day.

4. My next question is about your favorite road trip, but you haven't been on the road that much, so I have to ask you about this.

(Duncan, of course, is in the red shirt. I'm in the next car up. With Duncan is Kat Seelig of WFUV radio. Alone for a very rough ride in the Notre Dame cap is Staten Island Yankees reliever Reggie Laplante. Keith Herrera of the Brooklyn Eagle took the picture and gave me a copy after I wrote a story about the Baby Bombers taking a postgame Cyclone ride.)

SD: When is this?

TB: That's 2001, when you guys played in Brooklyn.

SD: Oh yeah!

TB: I remember that the two of us tried to squeeze into one of these things, but we were too big. And I want to know who the guy is with me.

SD: He was Australian, I think. I can't even remember a bunch of the guys' names on that team (After consultation with Sean Henn, we remembered he was a catcher, which was enough to determine it's Mitch Evans). I have such a bad memory. Man, that ride was so bumpy. Holy cow.

TB: Have you been on a lot of roller coasters?

SD: Yeah, but that was one of the most different ones because it's so old, and it just -- phwssh! -- it hurts. It actually hurts.

TB: For postgame entertainment, how does the Cyclone rate?

SD: It's up there. The whole Coney Island experience is great. It's a lot of fun. We just walked right over there after the game playing the Cyclones. That series was a lot of fun.

TB: They gave it to you pretty good, especially, in Brooklyn. You're right out of college, and you've got 8,000 people taunting you immediately (chanting SHELLLLLLEY! SHELLLLLLEY!). That's not the typical rookie ball experience.

SD: I've had people taunt me my whole life. Ever since I was a little kid. I guess if you have a name like mine, people like to make fun of it. So it's just something I dealt with. Sometimes when people started getting on me and got louder and louder, I'd feed into it. Sometimes I like it.

5. If they ever made a movie about you, who would you want to be the actor to play you?

SD: Matthew Lillard. People say I look like him.

TB: I can see that.

SD: That would be it. He's got to get a little bigger though.

TB: He was in Summer Catch, wasn't he?

SD: Yeah. Yeah he was.

6. Is there any significance to your uniform number?

SD: Nope. I had a chance to pick my uniform number in Scranton this year, so I picked 17. My other two choices were already taken by older guys. My brother wears 16, my dad wears 18, so right in the middle, I picked 17.

7. Your brother and your dad won the World Series last year. When you get together as a family, do they give it to you a little bit?

SD: They don't give it to me, but it kills me to hear them talk about it. It kills me, kills me! It makes me want even more to win one some day, because those two with the rings, it's right in your face. So it keeps me going.

8. When did you come up with the home run celebrations? I don't remember that being a part of your game.

SD: It always has been! It always has been, really. I think in the minor leagues, the guys I came up with started doing stuff. Me and Robinson (Cano), ever since A-ball, we've been doing that. Having a lot of fun with things.

TB: You look like you're going to kill somebody.

SD: That's what some people think, but I don't think so.

TB: It's kind of mixing the Mark McGwire thing with Robinson.

SD: It's just having fun, fun moments with your teammates. When a moment happens like that, you can share the moment together instead of by yourself. That's why I play a team sport.

9. Complete this sentence. I am the only player in Major League Baseball who...

SD: I'm the only player in Major League Baseball who has the name Shelley.

TB: That's definitely true. Is there anything else? Any hidden talent?

SD: I don't know. I just know that for sure, that's a definite fact.

      -Shelley Duncan
Matthew Lilard

(i think they look at like)

Yankee’s prank strikes out

Talk about sore winners.

Griffin Whitman, a 10-year-old Red Sox [team stats] fan from Swampscott, was excited to attend his first Yankees vs. Red Sox game Friday night. The young autograph -collector was even more thrilled to score Yankees outfielder Shelley Duncan’s signature before the game. That is, until Griffin read the message from the 27-year-old rookie: “Red Sox suck! Shelley Duncan.”

The Shelley Duncan Phenomenon

Of all the narratives to have emerged from the Yankees’ winning tear since the All-Star Break, one of the most unexpected has been the emergence of Shelley Duncan, an unlikely hero just up from the minor leagues on a team with a score of highly-paid, established players.

He quickly turned himself into a talking point for Yankee fans by homering in his second game for the Yankees on July 21, adding two more by the end of that weekend, and launching a total of five over his first 24 at bats. His statistical line since coming up is straight out of a video game—a .304 batting average, a .375 on-base percentage and a .758 slugging percentage.

The question Yankee fans must be asking at this point is whether he can possibly be for real; whether he’s the next Mickey Mantle, or the next Kevin Maas.

For his part, Duncan has never heard of Maas, the home run hitter who streaked across the Gotham sky, hitting 10 home runs in his first 77 at bats in 1990—but finishing his ultimately brief career in the majors with a .230 batting average.

“I never set expectations for myself in my life,” Duncan said in the tunnel beneath the Yankee Stadium playing field last Thursday afternoon, a night after hitting his fifth home run in just 24 major league at bats, good for an eye-popping .917 slugging percentage. “People who do that, who build up what they expect in their minds, have a tendency to experience letdowns. And if you set the expectations too low, it can lead to complacency.”

It’s probably a healthy attitude for him to have—and for the fans to have as well. Despite the 27-year-old’s pedigree (his brother Chris Duncan is an outfielder with the Cardinals, while father Dave Duncan played 12 seasons at catcher for the Athletics and Orioles), there are plenty of signs that his hot start may turn out to have been something of an anomaly.

Duncan was drafted in the second round (sixty-second player chosen overall) in the 2001 draft out of the University of Arizona. The Yankees assigned him to Staten Island of the New York-Penn League, where he hit a pedestrian .245, though his 8 home runs in 273 at bats yielded a .542 slugging percentage. Still, he was old for the league—the lion’s share of NY-P players are straight out of high school—and a future major league standout would be expected to dominate younger competition. Duncan, for all his power, was erratic, striking out 62 times—roughly once in every five plate appearances.

As Duncan slowly climbed the organizational ladder, the twin weaknesses of strikeouts and low average continued to plague him. As a 25-year-old in his first exposure to AA (where the average age hovers around 22), Duncan hit .240, with 34 home runs, but with 140 strikeouts in 537 at bats. Hitters with holes in their swings big enough to be exploited by AA pitching tend to be completely overwhelmed at the big league level. His second go-around at AA was no better—.256, 19 homers, 77 strikeouts in 351 at bats. His role as minor league roster filler seemed set.

But players like Duncan, commonly known as organizational soldiers, keep at it for a reason—in case a roster spot should open up, giving them a fleeting chance to make a major league impression.

He got a step closer in 2007 when he moved to AAA, raising his batting average to .295 with 25 home runs in 336 at bats, albeit with 82 strikeouts.

Still, that gave Duncan the distinctly unspectacular career minor league batting average of .257, with a .340 slugging percentage. (Maas’s numbers, by comparison, were .280 and .370, with fewer strikeouts.)

But then, suddenly, things starting falling into place for Duncan. Yankee designated hitter Jason Giambi fell victim to a heel injury, and has yet to return. Other candidates to take the DH spot, like Josh Phelps, Johnny Damon and Miguel Cairo, went cold. So on July 20, the Yankees reached into their system, and promoted their organizational soldier.

Duncan’s even-keeled approach immediately served him well over the course of three starts at DH during his first weekend in the big leagues. Off of Tampa Bay’s weak pitching, Duncan had four hits in twelve at bats, including three homers. (He also struck out four times.) His startling power, along with his obvious enthusiasm, made him an instant fan favorite.

Duncan thinks that his newness has helped.

“I think it gives me an advantage—I’m not coming to this as such a young player,” he said. “I’ve had lots of experience adjusting to pitchers, and reacting to the way they adjust to me.”

Of course, he has yet to face quality pitching, getting his big hits off of the likes of Jon Danks, a rookie with a 5.06 ERA, and four other pitchers with ERAs ranging from 6.64 to 10.05. The Yankees have just embarked on a 20-game adventure against three of the American League’s top four pitching staffs in ERA (Boston, Los Angeles and Toronto), along with an impressive young staff in Baltimore, and the defending American League champs, Detroit.

And Duncan’s time with the Yankees may be short anyway, with Giambi already preparing to reclaim his spot by playing rehab games down in Florida.

Duncan, at least, is unfazed by any of this.

“I can’t tell you what the future will hold,” he said. “I’m just going to take advantage of every opportunity I have along the way.”