How new Dodger Alex Call became one of MLB’s toughest at-bats

At the end of the 2019 minor-league season, Alex Call looked at his hitting numbers, then looked himself in the mirror.

A former third-round draft pick who had already changed organizations once, he knew he had just had the kind of year that typically portends a short professional career.

As a 24-year-old outfielder at the double-A level in the Cleveland Guardians organization, Call had taken 325 plate appearances that year with the Akron RubberDucks. In 93 of them — a rate of nearly 30% — he recorded a strikeout.

It wasn’t the only ugly stat in a season that saw Call bat just .205, reach base at a .266 clip and hit only five home runs. But it was the biggest sign of a fundamental flaw plaguing the right-handed hitter’s game.

“That,” he recalled recently, while reflecting on what became a turning point moment in his career, “just wasn’t gonna get it done.”

Six years later, Call joined the Dodgers as a trade deadline addition last week with a polar opposite reputation. Now, the defensively versatile outfielder is one of the harder outs in all the majors. Since the start of last season, his .297 batting average ranks eighth among MLB hitters with at least 350 plate appearances. More important, over that same span, he ranks top 60 in strikeout rate and walk rate (with a 55-to-39 ratio overall), and 22nd in chase rate; consistently putting together some of the better at-bats in all the sport.

“This guy’s just a straight grinder, works at-bats,” general manager Brandon Gomes said after the Dodgers acquired Call from the Washington Nationals in exchange for two pitching prospects. “Playing against him, he’s always incredibly frustrating to try to game plan for and get out.”

“I’ve faced Alex a few times,” added future Hall of Fame left-hander Clayton Kershaw. “He’s tough against lefties, a great defender. A good add, for sure.”

The Dodgers, of course, could have made splashier adds at the deadline. They were linked to other All-Star caliber names, including Steven Kwan of the Guardians, but didn’t splurge to pay such inflated deadline prices.

Instead, they settled for Call, who was a smaller name but came with team control through 2029. They put their faith in his overhauled offensive skill set, hopeful a personal transformation more than half-a-decade in the making will make him a key piece in their pursuit of a second straight World Series title.

“That is my whole game,” Call said on the day he arrived with the club. “I am going to grind out at-bats, put the ball in play, take my walks, make it tough on the pitcher, lengthen out the lineup.”

The origins of that mindset date to that 2019 season, and the pandemic-altered year that followed.

Entering 2020, Call committed to a change at the plate. In what was a crowded pipeline of outfielders in the Guardians system — highlighted at that time by Kwan, who has since blossomed into one of the best left fielders in the game — he recognized he needed a new identity. If he was going to reach the majors, it was going to start with simply working better at-bats.

“It’s a bad feeling,” he said, “having a cloud hanging over your head after a season like that.”

The only problem: COVID-19 came, the 2020 minor league season was canceled, and Call (like so many other minor-league longshots clinging to big-league dreams) was left effectively on his own.

So, he found different ways to improve his bat.

As the baseball world shut down, Call bought a portable Junior Hack Attack hitting machine with a self-feeding ball dispenser. And everywhere he went that year — from spring training housing in Phoenix to his childhood home in Wisconsin to his family’s offseason residence in Indiana — he sought out any place “I could find a hitting cage and an outlet” to use it, he said laughing.

His focus was simple. Work on hitting fastballs up in the strike zone. Eliminate what had been one of the biggest holes in his swing.

“For me, it’s just about having that mentality to where, it doesn’t matter if I have two strikes or if it’s an 0-0 count,” he said. “Believe I’m comfortable in every situation. I’m going to put the ball in play.”

By that winter, Call sought out a more advanced piece of training technology as well.

Over the previous couple years, a company called Win Reality had begun manufacturing virtual reality hitting goggles — using data-driven models, actual video and computer-generated images to recreate virtual at-bats against real pitchers from a hitter’s point of view inside Oculus-style headsets.

A handful of MLB teams, including the Dodgers, had invested in the system for their teams. In the months leading up to the 2021 season, Call decided to do the same for himself, buying the $300 product (and paying for its annual $200 software program) to help couple his new swing with a more discerning approach.

“[I was] just really practicing the zone,” Call said. “Knowing what pitches are my strengths and what pitches I don’t want to swing at until two strikes. Developing that plan and developing that approach.”

The training paid off.

At the start of the 2021 season, Call was sent back to double-A Akron. When he arrived, he was informed by manager Rouglous Odor that he would only be slated to play 2-3 games per week — a quick reminder of how far down the organization depth chart he’d fallen.

“I remember him being very disappointed,” Odor, now the Guardians’ big-league third-base coach, recalled this week. “But he took ownership of his career, and didn’t let what I told him affect him.”

Call’s chance arrived that May, after Kwan went down with a hamstring injury. And almost immediately, his COVID-year changes took effect. Over 180 plate appearances, Call hit .310, drew 21 walks and — just as he’d hoped — cut his strikeout rate by half, punching out only 26 times.

“He was a totally different hitter,” said Odor, who had also been Call’s manager during his dismal 2019 campaign. “Defensively, he was already to play in the big leagues. He made some unbelievable plays … But offensively, he found his stroke. His plate discipline was more consistent. And he had an unbelievable season.”

By the end of the season, Call had been promoted to triple-A. The next July, he earned a promotion to the majors.

The ascent from there wasn’t linear. In August 2022, he was designated for assignment and claimed off waivers by the Nationals. In 2023, he played in 128 big-league games but hit only .200, sending him back to triple-A for most of last year.

Alex Call bats against the Houston Astros on July 28 as a member of the Washington Nationals.

(Karen Warren / Associated Press)

Still, his plate discipline didn’t waver (he struck out only 78 times in his 439 plate appearances in 2023, an 18% rate, while also drawing 53 walks). His VR routine only became more ingrained, seeing upward of 54,000 simulated pitches (or, essentially 25 seasons’ worth of throws) through his headset each year, as he told the Washington Post last month.

It all has clicked over the last calendar year, with Call following up a productive return to the majors at the end of 2024 with his best full-season performance this term.

“The type of player that I am, I can hit the ball over the fence, but it’s not really my full game,” Call said. “So for me, it was about trying to create as many opportunities to get on base as possible … I have to be able to hit the ball at good angles.”

Call is one of only four players with 200 plate appearances this season (along with Kyle Tucker, Gleyber Torres and Geraldo Perdomo) who strikes out less than 15% of the time, chases less than 20% of the time and whiffs less than 20% of the time. He has hit .236 with two strikes (better than everyone else on the Dodgers except Hyeseong Kim).

He had his first standout game with the Dodgers on Wednesday, when he singled, doubled and made a catch while crashing into the left field wall to save an extra-base hit.

Eight at-bats into his Dodgers career entering Friday’s game, he has also yet to strike out once.

“I’m always proud of players like Alex, because he wasn’t this big prospect, but he became an everyday big-league player,” Odor said. “He had the urgency to make something happen in order to reach his goal, and his dream.”

And now, Call is aiming to take his career one step further — to be not just a productive big-league bat, but one capable of playing an impactful role on a title-contending club in Los Angeles.

“I always knew that I could do it and be an established major leaguer,” Call said. “It’s just, sometimes it takes a little bit of time. And I’m grateful that I was given that time, and just continued to get better.”