True Grit

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Everything is measured in Major League Baseball. Too much.

Numbers rule the day and that has led to the rise of analytics ball. It’s not just a home run; it is the distance of the home run that begets the wow factor. It’s not the location of the pitch; it’s the velocity or the spin rate and how far that ball moved that begets the wow factor.

Simply doing your job to the best of your ability is often overlooked.

The game has always had numbers, but numbers are now the biggest piece of the equation. It seems like every decision is based on numbers.

Who to play. Where to play. When to play.

Everything from pitch speed to bat speed to spin rate to make-believe antics of expected batting average are guideposts of the game.

You know what, I’m waiting for another number to pop up.

They don’t have a number to explain the beating heart of a player, that is something that will never be measured by a number.

You can’t measure True Grit.

And often, grit comes from failure.

Some teams have baseball men in charge who vaguely understand that fact and they know when they see that gritty player. They can’t put a number on it, but they feel it in their baseball bones. Unfortunately, a lot of those people have been separated from the game.

Most teams have people in charge who don’t see it, who simply can’t see it.

They may have people in the organization who see it, but they don’t listen to those people, instead, in the end, they rely on the number runners for vital information.

That’s why a team like the 2025 Yankees did not come up with a player like Blue Jays third baseman Ernie Clement, a Gold Glove finalist at two positions — third base and utility. The Yankees did not have the patience, the foresight, or the fortitude to find such a player who does not wow you with measurables but his only goal to find a way to beat you.

Ballplayers do that.

Clement’s numbers this October are remarkable. He hit .277 during the season and does not hit for home run power. He only had nine home runs and that seems to be a disqualifier for the Nerds.

Clement, 29, batted .643 in the wipeout of the Yankees in the ALDS. He followed that with a .345 mark versus the Mariners in the ALCS. And going into Game 5 of the World Series Wednesday night he was batting .316 versus the Goliath Deferral Dodgers. Overall, Clement is hitting .391 this postseason.

I was texting with a baseball friend, a huge Yankee fan, on Wednesday and he was the one who planted the True Grit seed. And there is a Don Mattingly factor here too, more on that later.

“The Yankees don’t have a player like Ernie Clement,’’ my friend wrote, “a player who isn’t a ‘star’ but hustles and gets your attention. And the Jays keep making contact.’’

Everything he said was correct. The Jays keep making contact because of players like Ernie Clement – and as a result the World Series is heading back to Toronto even though the Blue Jays lost star George Springer in Game 3 to an oblique injury. The Blue Jays took a 3-2 lead in the Series with a 6-1 win on Wednesday night.

When you fly under the radar, and you play really well, people start to pick up on it. I’d rather be under the radar, I think it’s great. I’m used to it. — Ernie Clement

The Yankees, who won three straight World Championships from 1998, ’99 and 2000 used to have players like Clement, think of Scott Brosius. Even if these Yankees may have such a player, perhaps Jasson Dominguez is that type of player but we don’t know because the Yankees did not have the courage to play him in this postseason. He got one at-bat, a double.

It takes a certain amount of fortitude and self-confidence as an organization to ride a player like Ernie Clement. And yes, I know this is a Superstar World Series, and I made that point in my preview. It was Dodgers vs. Blue Jays. Superstar versus Superstar. Shohei Ohtani versus Vlad Guerrero, Jr. and then other stars. So, players like Ernie Clement – and for the Dodgers I would put Kike Hernandez in that “get it done’ category – are overlooked.

“I’ve been overlooked a lot over the course of my career,’’ Clement said this week. “So that is nothing new there. When you fly under the radar, and you play really well, people start to pick up on it. I’d rather be under the radar, I think it’s great. I’m used to it.’’

That is just the way the Blue Jays want it. Clement is a tough kid from Rochester, New York. He doesn’t need the splash. He was a fourth-round pick with the Indians in 2017 was eventually waived, landed with the A’s, did not produce, and was signed as a low-level free agent by the Blue Jays in March of 2023, banished to AAA Buffalo.

He looked in the mirror and decided “to lean into my strengths,’’ be a contact guy, and was uplifted by then-Bisons hitting coach Matt Hague.

Clement leaned into who he really was as a ballplayer in those 72 games in Buffalo in 2023, playing all over the diamond and clawed back to the major leagues with Toronto, a baseball story of True Grit.

“There have been times throughout my career where people tell me, ‘We want you to hit for more power,’ getting away from my strength,’’ Clement said of the fight to be himself on the ballfield. “I’ve kind of gone all-in on the contact thing. It’s no accident that our front office and our coaches have put together a team of guys who can make contact. It has turned into our offensive identity.’’

My baseball friend added one more Clement tidbit.

“Ironically, Clement is the spitting image of a young Aaron Boone,’’ he wrote. “So, every time I see Clement I think of Boone and why the Yankees don’t have players like Clement. It’s like Yankee fans are being taunted. And Alejandro Kirk is a joy to watch too.’’

Yes, Kirk is another True Grit ballplayer, who just doesn’t look like a ballplayer until he is up at the bat or behind the plate. In some ways – don’t laugh – Kirk reminds me of Thurman Munson, another guy who was an oddly shaped athlete who got the job done.

As for looking like Aaron Boone, BallNine’s EIC Chris Vitali made that same exact comparison a few days ago, writing on X: “Once you notice that Ernie Clement looks like a young Aaron Boone, you can’t unsee it.

“I’m sorry.’’

No reason to be sorry, Chris.

It is the analytic Yankees who are sorry, sure they had the same record as the Blue Jays but watching the two teams play, the Yankees don’t have the True Grit the Blue Jays have in players like Ernie Clement.

In Andres Gimenez the Blue Jays also have an athletic shortstop with a golden arm and has had some huge success this postseason, including a big hit in the Blue Jays’ gutsy 6-2 win over the Dodgers on Tuesday night when he flicked a single to left off left-hander Anthony Banda on the sixth pitch of the at-bat to score Daulton Varsho and moved Clement to third. Clement had just doubled in his at-bat, knocking the Great Shohei Ohtani off the mound and back to DH.

Gimenez’ exit velocity on his big hit was 80 mph, and he will probably get a demerit for that at-bat by the Nerds. Either way the bottom of the order came through for the Blue Jays, something that has been happening all postseason.

Just another quick point on the Series, the Blue Jays should have won the 18-inning epic Game 3, but Blue Jays manager John Schneider made some crazy moves, including taking out a bunch of his best hitters for pinch-runners as the Dodgers prevailed on a Superstar walk-off home run by Freddie Freeman off cooked lefty Brendon Little; it was pretty much a replay of Aaron Boone’s move in Game 1 of the World Series when Freeman ended it with a walk-off grand slam off lefty Nestor Cortes, Jr. who had been in mothballs the previous month. Schneider also should have used Chris Bassitt as his bridge guy, not Seranthony Dominguez, who gave up the game-tying home run to Ohtani in the seventh.

Wanting to take my True Grit point to the next level I checked in with a top talent evaluator on what makes Ernie Clement special, and this is what he said.

“The Blue Jays are a bunch of guys who really pull for each other, and kind of play the game the right way,’’ the evaluator said. “Clement is an example of that. He’s an impact defender, who came to realize you are not a home run hitter. He has good makeup.  I think having (bench coach) Don Mattingly there, his presence in that dugout is a factor too.’’

The Mattingly Factor was huge with Clement.

“I just thought about my dad, immediately,’’ Clement said of first meeting Mattingly. “We were such big Yankee fans growing up. I heard all the stories about Donnie Baseball and being a Captain of the Yankees, guys like that are just legends in the game of baseball. One, to meet him was pretty cool and then two, to go to work with him every single day and just see all the cool experiences he had in our game, it’s been an honor to play for him and be around him, I get to throw all my throws to first base and he is catching them in practice, it’s just been really cool. He is a legend in our game.

“It’s nice to see a lot of hard work and sacrifice pay off,’’ Clement added. “Every one of my failures have taught me a lesson and helped me find what works for me. My goal is just to be athletic in the box, don’t have a lot of thoughts going on. I just play for my teammates and do whatever it takes to win the baseball game that day.’’

That is the definition of True Grit.