Wade Davis Is Masterful, Rays' Offense Handed Win On Silver Platter

I asked Beckham after the game—a digression about him follows, you’ve been warned—if he was looking for the breaking ball. No, he said he seldom sits on an offspeed pitch. He was actually expecting a fastball, but adjusted to Atkins’s poorly thrown deuce and nailed it. Two innings later, Beckham smacked a first-pitch fastball from Atkins for a hard line-out to third base. Reports from the lower minors on Beckham’s plate approach were middling, but so far in Durham he looks like a hitter with skills and the canniness to use them. Best of all, he hits line drives. Even his homers travel low to the ground.

The only thing to keep an eye on, as far as I can tell, is actually a good tendency of Beckham’s that has, at its outer extreme, a downside: His batting eye can be at times a little too fine. A couple of times, including last night, I’ve seen him take pitches right on or near the outside corner that were called strikes, to his displeasure. Russ Canzler sometimes does it, too. But this is really a minor quibble. In fact it’s a good habit to see in a 21-year-old, one you don’t want to see him break.

Beckham is fun to watch in the field, too. He often gives a little leap/hop before the pitcher winds up, in order to stay on his toes. He’ll sometimes follow that with a little roll of the shoulders. He’s lean and athletic and coordinated, and he’s got energy to burn—the kind of player you want to nickname “Jitterbug” or “Zipper.” He charges soft grounders with great quickness.

Beckham is quick in every way. In the top of the ninth, he tried to convert a 4-6-3 double play. Second baseman Ray Olmedo had fielded Hudson’s broken-bat grounder and made a good throw to Beckham at second base, but the ball was hit rather slowly and the lead runner, Carlos Rojas, was bearing down on Beckham. Trying to unload the relay throw in a jiffy, Beckham whipped it a little too sidearm, and the ball tailed way off and into the Bulls’ dugout, advancing the speedy Hudson, who had the throw beaten anyway, to second base. (He didn’t score.)

Beckham’s quickness of body may come from quickness of character, too. I asked him if he thought the Bulls were maybe a little tired, perhaps suffering the delayed hangover of a 10-day road trip from Buffalo to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to Norfolk to home. “Tired?!” he shot back, incredulously, as if only a total lazybones could possibly think such a thing. No way. You win some, you lose some, he explained, and there’s another game tomorrow. To repeat: Tim Beckham is still only 21. Tired? Who’s tired?

My last question was about his ninth-inning throwing error, and Beckham’s eyes, well, quickened. He was taken aback, perhaps, just a little, for just a second, as though dwelling on the negative was a pointless and frankly annoying thing to be asked to do. Yes, he quickly agreed—mainly to dismiss the line of questioning, I perceived—the throw was too sidearm; and then he was ready to move onto the next thing, which happened to be the shower. I bet he was in and out in two minutes.

Better than Niemann because he has a better health record and if he blows up in a good way, his costs are still controlled while Niemann gets into his arb years uncontrolled.