Sixty games into the season, Matt Kemp is quite possibly the National League’s Most Valuable Player. He leads the league with 48 RBI, is second in home runs with 16, is fifth in batting average and On-Base Percentage, third in OPS, and fifth in stolen bases. He is nearly on pace to become only the fifth member of the 40-40 club (current pace is 43-38), while returning to playing center field as well as what earned him the Gold Glove in 2009, all while playing his home games in Dodger Stadium, still one of the best pitchers parks in the game. Jon Weisman at DodgerThoughts gives stats (before today's game) showing that Kemp is the best offensive player in the league.
To Kemp fans, this is not a big surprise. Blessed with natural talent, the Dodgers have just been waiting for Kemp to start hitting like this. And indeed his 2009 season—when he earned both a Silver Slugger and Gold Glove award—seemed like he had arrived. But a regression in 2010 put this in question.
A lot of explanations for Kemp’s resurgence have surfaced—he is no longer dating Rihanna; he is in a contract year; his tiffs with the “old school” coaching staff including Joe Torre and Larry Bowa has improved with new manger Don Mattingly, hitting coach Jeff Pentland, Third Base Coach Tim Wallach, and most notably close friend of his agent, First Base Coach Davey Lopes. But there might be a simpler solution—Kemp has finally played 10,000 hours of baseball.
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explains one of the indicators of success is practicing for 10,000 hours. He uses professional hockey players as the first example, but with athletes in almost all sports, he shows a disproportionate number of the best come from the ranks of those whose birthdays fall the closest to the sports’ youth league cut-off dates. In baseball, the cut-off date for little league had long been July 31 (it has since moved to April 30), and there is a disproportionate number of major leaguers born in August. Kkids born in August tended to be the oldest kids in the leagues. Since they were bigger, they tended to be stronger, better coordinated, and apparently more talented. They were then selected for starting lineups, all-star teams, traveling teams, etc. By the time they moved to high school and college, they had far more opportunities than their peers to practice and improve upon their skills. Gladwell sets this marker at about 10,000 hours.
Kemp did not have those 10,000 hours before being drafted. Indeed, for Dodger fans, it is a fortunate fluke that Kemp is a baseball player at all. Hailing from Midwest City, Oklahoma, one might expect Kemp to be a football player. At 6’3” and 215 lbs (and listed as heavier in prior years), blazing speed, and a cannon for an arm, Kemp easily could have been a standout Quarterback, tight end, or wide receiver. But Kemp related in a pre-game radio interview a few seasons ago that he dropped football in junior high school after injuring another player (something that undoubtedly had football coaches in the town crying). Kemp’s main focus was basketball. Given his natural talents, Kemp probably could have made it to the NBA (he won the state title along with the Knicks’ Shelden Williams), but at 6’3”, he would have been somewhat small for a league with an average height of 6’7”. At that height, he would have been a Guard, despite having the strength you might associate with a Forward. So, through something of a fluke, he gave up the sport that might have fit well with his natural talents and focused on a sport where his size would have made a professional career much more difficult. But his second sport was baseball, and the Dodgers recognized his raw talent.
Kemp probably had put in 10,000 hours in basketball by the time the Dodgers drafted him in 2003. But a much lesser amount of time in baseball. Whereas James Loney, Chad Billingsley, Andre Ethier—who all made their major league debuts with the Dodgers in 2006 (along with players like Jonathan Broxton and Clayton Kershaw, who make up the young core of the Dodgers, and former Dodger Russell Martin)—had long been playing baseball, Kemp had not. But if you figure Kemp was participating in baseball activities for 6 hours a day during the 162 games a year, and another 45 for Spring Training, and maybe 90 days in Rookie Ball after having been drafted in 2003, Kemp had about 9500 hours of professional baseball on Opening Day 2010.
Tony Jackson, who covers the Dodgers for ESPNLosAngeles.com, recently wrote a piece about Kemp having found himself. The key to what he hears about Kemp is summed-up in a comment by hitting coach Jeff Pentland: “He has a feel for hitting, and he is able to adjust at the plate.”
The real key might be simpler--Matt Kemp has finally gotten in 10,000 hours of baseball.
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