Taking A New Stance Buhner Brings New Mechanics, Attitude To Camp In Effort To Improve Average

Same number: 19.

Same look: affable skinhead.

Same attitude: all-out all the time.

Yet, this spring, Jay Buhner is different.

He’s hitting.

“This is the best I’ve ever seen Jay hit in the spring,” Mariners manager Lou Piniella said.

Buhner is hitting .435.

The difference is the result of changes Buhner has made, alterations in approach - trying to hit the ball up the middle more - and more noticeably, in mechanics.

“I keep hearing that I’m getting older,” said the hard-charging outfielder, who is 33. “I’d prefer to think I’m getting smarter. I don’t want to go through what I did last spring. I was terrible, and in the first months of the regular season I was terrible.”

The old (younger) Buhner would stand at the plate, both feet pointed to the mound, his head facing the pitcher. The odd stance was one he developed after Dr. Doug Nikitani, the Mariners’ optometrist, tested him and found Buhner was severely right-eye dominant.

“To see the ball optimally, Jay had to use his right eye,” Nikitani explained. “So we had to have him hold his head so he could use the right eye to follow the ball from the pitcher’s hand.”

Now, Buhner has closed up his feet slightly, moving his left (front) foot more toward the plate. To see the pitch with his right eye now, he must turn his head more to the left rather than look straight ahead.

“And my knees are bent a bit more, and my grip on the bat is looser,” he said.

Last year, Buhner hit .213 in the Cactus League and .224 the first two months of the regular season. “I had to bust my ass to get back to respectability,” he said.

In the end, he hit at least 40 home runs for a third straight season, just the 10th player to do that. Seven of the other nine are in the Hall of Fame.

It was enjoyable company, but Buhner can do better with the bat.

“I should hit .270,” said the man they call Bone. “I hit .243 last year. I’m better than that. Before that, I usually hit around .270, and I want to get there again.”

So he’s goofing around a bit less in camp, getting more out of batting practice.

“I used to figure I could turn it on the last week,” he said. “Last year showed me I can’t do that anymore.”

More than anything, he’s trying not to be wiped out by right-handed pitchers as much as last season, when he hit .220 against them and .317 vs. left-handers.

So he has closed his stance and is staying on the ball more, trying to avoid pulling off the pitch and giving right-handers a big advantage on breaking balls and fastballs away.

This past week showed he can do that with no loss of his prodigious power. Friday, he hit a homer estimated at 450 feet, over the batting background in center field at the Milwaukee Brewers’ Maryvale Park. Sunday, he hit what is regarded as the longest homer a Mariner has produced in six years here, over the grass berm in left and over the fence that marks the perimeter of the ballpark.

“Jay seems to have learned that you don’t have to try to hit a ball out to hit a ball out,” Piniella said, “not with his power.”