But by early September, Vogt was playing with the Brewers like a man rejuvenated, and he credits a change of scenery.
“It brings new life to you, and it brings a fresh start,” Vogt told Sporting News before a recent game against the Cubs at Wrigley Field. “Rejuvenation. Rejuvenation was the main word that kept coming to mind because I felt like I was getting a new opportunity to play meaningful baseball for the first time in three years, and I was excited for the opportunity.”
Vogt’s story is a familiar one. When players change uniforms, whether in season or during the offseason, it’s not unusual for them to perform notably better with their new teams. There are several factors that contribute to this, but players who have made such moves are consistent in their belief that the switch made a difference.
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After slashing .217/.287/.357 through 54 games in Oakland, Vogt now has an OPS that is nearly 200 points higher than what it was with the A’s, thanks largely to hitting more often, and for more power, with the Brewers than he did with the A’s.
Vogt was a two-time All-Star with the A’s, representing them in 2015 and 2016. His early-season struggles with the bat in Oakland were mostly mental, he said, and it took leaving the A’s to snap him out of it.
“I was in my own way mentally. I was trying to get four hits every night, instead of going one at-bat at a time, and I was struggling,” Vogt said. “I was so down on myself mentally in Oakland, I had gotten to the point where I didn’t feel like I was bringing any value to the team. I wasn’t able to see past the results and see that you can do other things, and I was doing other things productively. It had become a mental battle for me that I wasn’t able to get out of. ”
This mire was not likely to end for Vogt without a change in uniform.
“When a first-place team calls for you, it was ‘Oh wow, people do recognize that I am still valuable.’ I was very defeated in Oakland,” Vogt said. “I had a very defeatist attitude, so I was able to get that turned around when I got here, and I was able to thrive on that.”
The Brewers sat atop the NL Central when Vogt got the call from them June 21, and though they have since fallen behind the Cubs for the division lead, they remain in the hunt, even sweeping Chicago at Wrigley Field earlier this month.
Vogt’s belief that coming to a winning team helped him can be backed scientifically, said Jeffrey Fishbein, the sports psychologist for the White Sox.
“Look at difference in those teams,” Fishbein told Sporting News, referring to Oakland and Milwaukee. “When you’re traded to a team that is in a pennant race, and you feel like you’re wanted, and someone views you as an asset, that can totally change how you view your own ability level and subsequent performance.”
Fishbein, who has spent nearly 20 years in baseball, working for the Expos and Marlins before joining the White Sox, said that much of what impacts how a player feels about a trade comes from how he views himself and to what he attributes the move.
“Previous findings suggest that there is an uptick in their performance after being traded if they were underperforming prior to the trade,” Fishbein said. “Players who were underperforming tend to look for anything to help their performance. Many times it’s their own thought process — how they are perceiving themselves in the context of the season. When traded, many perceive that as a fresh start and a clean slate.”
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Other players can relate — even one of Vogt’s teammates.
Neil Walker, who had spent a season and a half with the Mets after seven seasons in Pittsburgh, came to Milwaukee just over a month ago. And though his uptick in performance has so far been less dramatic, Walker has felt revitalized.
“When you come into a place that is in striking distance of the playoffs or even the division, it’s an exciting atmosphere,” he told Sporting News. “Guys here are excited to play every day with the common goal of getting a win.”
Walker admitted that being in New York had become a slog at some points, and leading up to the July 31 trade deadline, the conversation among his Mets teammates turned to the trade rumors.
“We had a lot of expiring contracts, so we had a good idea that a lot of us would move,” Walker said. “We had a few conversations about where we would end up and things like that.”
For Walker, it was his private hope that he would go to a contender. After nearly a decade in the majors and three postseason appearances that didn’t end in a World Series championship — thanks to three straight wild-card game exits — Walker knew that a few teams were interested. But he was unaware until they called that the Brewers were among them.
“I was very excited," Walker said. “Obviously I knew the division very well being in Pittsburgh for as long as I was, and there was a lot of negativity following the team around in New York for most of the season, and over here it was a breath of fresh air.”
The drudgery of playing out the final months of the season on a non-contending team can wear on players just like injury and natural physical breakdown, and the task for Fishbein and other sports psychologists becomes making the goals for players short-term and attainable. But for those who move on before the season ends, such as Vogt and Walker, they get that shot of rejuvenation.
In the winter, the shift to a new organization is less dramatic because players have the opportunity to ease in with their new teams in spring training. But even then, changing teams can still mean improved performance, but for different reasons.
For Cubs reliever Brian Duensing, it was less about the mental shift of going from the Orioles to the Cubs than it was coming into a data-rich environment.
“I had never seen scouting reports like this,” Duensing told Sporting News. “The amount of information is absurd, to be honest.”
The Cubs’ staff, Duensing said, never tinkered with anything he did on the mound, but rather supplied him with a wealth of information that helped him find new ways of sequencing his pitches and approaching batters. Coincidence or not, Duensing’s FIP dropped from the 4.27 he posted in Baltimore in 2016 to 3.26 in Chicago this year.
“I learned that just because a certain pitch may not work in one situation, it doesn’t mean that the same pitch wouldn’t work in a different location [in the same situation],” he said.
As one example, Duensing mentioned learning to change his approach with his slider against left-handed hitters.
“Just because lefties hit sliders that are down and away, it doesn’t mean that they will hit front-door sliders or sliders that hit different parts of the zone,” he said.
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For the Rays’ Sergio Romo, who had years of prior success to show his capability, the change of scenery that came from going to Los Angeles to Tampa Bay meant returning to a familiar role. For more than half a dozen seasons with the Giants, Romo was a fixture in the late innings, securing 141 holds and 84 saves while in San Francisco.
With the Dodgers this season, Romo’s career-worst 6.12 ERA and 5.76 FIP made his departure from the team via DFA on July 20 unsurprising. But the Rays took a flier on him, sending Los Angeles cash considerations in exchange for the seemingly washed-up reliever.
But with the Rays, the 34-year-old has cut his ERA to 1.67 and his FIP to 2.93. Rays pitching coach Jim Hickey chalks this up to Romo’s return to more familiar game situations.
“He was extremely grateful for an opportunity to pitch in what’s become some pretty high-leverage situations,” Hickey told Sporting News. “He is just simply looking at being in these situations as an opportunity that he wasn’t going to get in LA.”
Simply, Romo was not “the guy” to get high-leverage outs with the Dodgers, but the Rays consider him a part of the stable of their best relievers.
“He has been right in the back end of the bullpen; he has gotten a lot of big outs for us since he has been here,” Rays manager Kevin Cash told Sporting News. “The high-leverage guys that we have used for the last month or so, he has been right in that mix.”
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Fishbein corroborates the idea that a simple change in perspective led to Romo’s renaissance.
“It boils down to how you view yourself in the context of the team. When you lose the status of being ‘the guy,’ in theory it should not matter,” Fishbein said, adding that the details of the job remain the same. “And yet sometimes pitchers look at the way they are perceived on the team and lose motivation, focus, and intensity because of that."
Baseball players are meticulous in their routine, and even when they struggle they are prone to rely on consistent, careful preparation. But when the disruption of that routine is caused by changing teams, that change in scenery can definitely be a change for the better.
