SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- When the Giants sent reliever Shaun Anderson to the Minnesota Twins for LaMonte Wade Jr. last February, they felt that they had acquired someone who could potentially become their fifth outfielder. Wade had minor league options remaining and was set to compete with Jaylin Davis, Steven Duggar and others for playing time, with the hope that he could tap into some of the raw power that never really showed in parts of two seasons with the Twins.
By the end of the season, everything had changed.
Wade hit 18 homers and became such an integral lineup piece that Gabe Kapler regularly used him as the leadoff or cleanup hitter. He won the Willie Mac Award in his first season in the organization. His mom quickly became well-known at Oracle Park and the star of several viral moments.
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Wade was the first MLB player in 40 years to have six game-tying or go-ahead hits in the ninth inning later, earning a Late Night LaMonte nickname that's one of the cooler ones in the big leagues. This July, the Giants will hand out a LaMonte Wade Jr. bobblehead.
It was a dream season in just about every way for the 28-year-old, but when Wade was asked recently if he took some time to appreciate all that happened in 2021, he shook his head.
"No, not really, honestly," he said. "I remember when I first got home, those first two weeks all I could think about was the [Max] Scherzer at-bat ... I lost a lot of sleep over that."
Wade is far from alone there. A lot of Giants players, executives, coaches and fans lost sleep over Max Scherzer closing them out in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the National League Division Series. But Wade was not kept up at night by a check-swing call the Giants will never forget. He is haunted by what happened one batter earlier.
San Francisco Giants
With one out in the ninth, the Giants trailing by one, and Kris Bryant on first base. Wade pinch-hit for Austin Slater. It was a move that Kapler had made all season, often in reverse, while setting a record for pinch-hit at-bats, and there couldn't have been a more perfect choice for that moment than a young hitter who swung more games in the late innings than any player in the big leagues last year.
Wade did what he does best. With 42,275 fans standing and players on both sides of the rivalry nervously hugging the dugout rails, he calmly watched a low curveball dip into the dirt and then leaned back as Scherzer came too far inside with a 95 mph fastball.
Wade broke through last season because he fully embraced the ethos of hitting coaches Donnie Ecker, Justin Viele and Dustin Lind: Wait for the pitch you can drive, and then do damage. He did not go up there looking for a curveball, and when Scherzer dropped a second one on the outside corner for a strike, the bat never left Wade's shoulder. He inched up on the plate, thinking about his plan and the preparation in the cage moments before.
On the next pitch, Scherzer played his part.
The fastball was 95.3 mph and in, but not as high as Dodgers' catcher Will Smith wanted it to be. Wade was ready for it, unleashing the swing he spent all offseason working on, and ripped a liner down the right field line. For a split-second, it looked like Late Night LaMonte had done it again.
As fans started to raise their arms, Wade, Scherzer and Smith all turned to watch the ball fly, but Wade knew he had been too aggressive. He watched as the ball curled into foul territory just beyond the first base bag and hit the top of a covered archway, 313 feet from the plate, but 30 feet from the right field pole.
It could have been a two-run homer to win a playoff series against the Dodgers. That's a moment that might get you a statue in San Francisco. Instead, it was strike two.
"I recognized the pitch and I cheated towards it, and I went to it the wrong way. If I would have stayed within myself and my approach, I would have been able to keep it fair," Wade said. "That's what I lost sleep over, because I know that I recognized the pitch and I got too excited. I had the right intentions, but I got too excited. I sped up, and that's what caused it to go foul.
"I just got really excited in the moment, the environment -- Oracle Park was rocking. I just wanted to do whatever I could do to help the team, and to miss that pitch and know you're only going to get maybe one pitch to hit against a guy like that, and to know that I missed it, that's what caused me to lose sleep."
Wade was right. You're not going to get a second chance like that against Scherzer, and the next fastball bore in on his hands. Wade fouled it off the visiting dugout to stay alive, then watched as Scherzer painted the outside edge with a cutter. He gave a quick shake of the head and walked back to the dugout. A few minutes later, the 107-win season was over.
The strikeout ended a disappointing postseason for Wade, who slumped for much of the final two months of the regular season. He started three games in the Division Series and came off the bench in the other two, but he was just 1-for-10 with four strikeouts.
It was that experience, not all of the previous success, that Wade took back to the University of Maryland for an intense winter of hitting drills. He felt he had trouble making in-season adjustments when his swing went out of whack in the second half, and he has worked to find queues that can get him back on track more quickly.
When Wade met with Kapler and the hitting coaches this spring, he talked of finding ways to build off last season and presented ideas he had worked on all offseason.
"I appreciate a player that raises the bar for themselves all of the time," Kapler said. "He definitely established himself as a key piece of our roster and was excellent in the biggest moments last year -- even all the way through the biggest moments in the postseason, we felt that way about him. But to hear him say that he feels there's more in the tank, that there's an elevated level of play, is really impressive. He's setting these big goals for himself and he's got the wind at his back to go achieve them and reach them."
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Kapler looks back now and thinks that maybe he should have adjusted, too. Wade played through several nagging injuries, but he was so valuable against right-handed pitching that he ended up in just about every game, often in the most meaningful spots.
"We pushed him really hard at times and had him ready to pinch-hit every game that he wasn't playing, so I think there's a little of that, and then also adjusting to the stress of the Major Leagues," Kapler said. "Everything is elevated."
For six months, that never seemed to bother Wade. The later it got, the more stressful it got, the better he was -- until a moment that was on his mind all offseason.
"I watched it a couple of times and then I couldn't watch it, but I could see it in my head, which was probably worse," he said. "My offseason workouts, that was the only at-bat we would keep referencing. 'Just slow everything down, that's the Scherzer pitch.' That's what we always went back to."