When the Cubs’ Corey Patterson struck out Friday for the eighth time in his first 14 at-bats since volunteering to bat in the leadoff spot he only recently embraced, boos greeted the center fielder on his long walk to the dugout.
If the boo birds could follow Patterson to Milwaukee as they did earlier last week, it came as no surprise they showed up at U.S. Cellular Field.
Fan reaction to Patterson has become so bad that some skeptics have started to compare Patterson going to Dusty Baker to announce he was ready to start leading off to Will Ohman going to Baker and saying he is ready to become the fifth starter.
Clearly, Patterson has replaced LaTroy Hawkins as the voodoo doll Cubs critics love to poke.
Imagine fan reaction to the notion that the statistics under the name Patterson this season still provide hope for an organization perpetually searching for the prototype leadoff hitter. It’s true.
His name is Eric, and he was sitting in a hotel room in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as a member of the Peoria Chiefs about the time his older brother sought refuge in the Cubs dugout.
“I really choose not to comment on how Corey’s doing leading off,” said Eric Patterson, the 22-year-old second baseman for the Class A Chiefs who is 3 1/2 years younger than Corey.
The brothers, from Kennesaw, Ga., have spoken to each other since Corey’s well-documented move up the order and talk several times a week but “not much about baseball-related stuff.” Big brother’s voice over the phone line never wavers regardless of the statistical line of the day.
“Whether he goes 10-for-10 or 0-for-10, he really sounds the same,” Eric Patterson said. “With Corey, you can never tell if something’s bothering him. He’s always been like that and I’ve adopted that approach. There are too many highs and lows to react to everything.”
That might explain why Eric Patterson sounded as excitable as an accountant going over tax returns when discussing his Midwest League-leading .354 batting average heading into Friday night’s game. The 5-foot-10-inch, 160-pound speedster, who once bragged to a hometown reporter he was faster than his brother, also had 17 stolen bases.
Showing slightly better discipline than Corey, who had struck out 71 times in 277 at-bats heading into Saturday’s game, Eric Patterson whiffed 47 times in his first 206 plate appearances–once every 4.4 times at-bat. He has walked 26 times.
Last week Patterson started at second base in the Midwest League All-Star Game and received 44.7 percent of the vote in an on-line poll on the Chiefs’ Web site asking fans to name the team’s most valuable player.
“I think it’s just a combination of a lot of things coming together,” Patterson said. “I’m traditionally a slow starter, but in college [at Georgia Tech] I never had spring training before to work through that. Here, by the time the regular season started, I was ready.”
The younger Patterson hazards no guesses when he plans to be ready to join Corey on the Cubs, a possibility only if the trade rumors that have hounded his older brother all season prove false.
Such disappointment in Patterson stems from the age-old dilemma in sports when production fails to catch up with potential, a loaded word that often gets coaches fired and young players run out of town.
By the time Corey Patterson was 22, his younger brother is reminded, he already had started two seasons at Wrigley Field and had been compared to Lou Brock and Barry Bonds. Making it look easy, in some ways, only has made it harder for Corey Patterson to find his niche in Chicago.
“Seeing everything he has been through and did made it easier for me, no question,” Eric said. “He worked hard, and that definitely helped. I didn’t learn so much from how he handled the recognition as much as how he approached his job and handled everything that happened to him.”
The lessons came in handy when the former collegiate star many scouts considered to have first-round ability plummeted to the eighth round in the 2004 amateur draft. Many analysts blamed the drop on teams who were reluctant to deal with Patterson’s agent, Scott Boras, and a whisper campaign that questioned his approach to the game and willingness to sacrifice power numbers for average.
Sound familiar?
But the Cubs finally signed him to a contract last August, including a $300,000 bonus, and Patterson has made those rumors appear groundless in his first season of professional baseball. After a spurt in April, Cubs director of player development Oneri Fleita beamed to Baseball America: “Every part of his game has been great.”
“He’s using all fields, showing patience, bunting for hits, turning the double play well and showing great instincts on the basepaths,” Fleita said.
The best thing Eric believes he has done is listen.
“I’m just taking the advice Corey gave me, to be yourself and don’t try to do things you’re not capable of,” Patterson said. “I’ve been fortunate that everything is going as well as it has. I’ve made some adjustments and things are working.”
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Tale of the tape
A look at 22-year-old second baseman Eric Patterson’s numbers at Class A Peoria and 25-year-old brother Corey’s with the Cubs:
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ERIC CATEGORY COREY
.359 Average .245
206 At-bats 277
74 Hits 68
5 Home runs 10
5 Triples 1
11 Doubles 9
17 Stolen bases 10
47 Strikeouts 71
26 Walks 13
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dhaugh@tribune.com %%
