Mar 16, 2014; Kissimmee, FL, USA; Washington Nationals shortstop Steven Souza (21) high-fives teammates after hitting a solo home run during the second inning of the game against the Houston Astros at Osceola County Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Rob Foldy-USA TODAY Sports
Some players never get a second chance in professional baseball and there are those who do who never make good on them. Nationals’ outfield prospect, Steven Souza Jr., has taken full advantage of his second chance and then some. After a strong spring training in 2014 that saw Souza hit .355/.429/.806 in 31 at bats with three home runs, Souza knew he could be getting his chance in 2014. When Nats outfielder Denard Span was put on the shelf on April 12 because of a concussion, that call came sooner than Souza had expected.
Souza said, “When I actually got the call, I lost breath. It was so surreal, and to be so early . . . I thought there might be a chance maybe throughout the year but it was the second week of the season and my family was all together and they started crying so it was really special. . . . that first day was just cloud nine”
On April 13, 2014, in Atlanta, Souza made his major league debut, coming into the game as a defensive replacement in the seventh inning and striking out in the eighth against Jordan Walden, but even that, and a 10-2 loss to the Braves, couldn’t dampen Souza’s mood. “Once I got there, I couldn’t stop smiling. Guys kept joking about me. I was standing in the outfield during BP and they asked me, ‘Why are you still smiling?’ I couldn’t stop smiling, I was so excited.”
District on Deck
Souza has overcome many trials on his path to the major leagues. Drafted 100th overall in the third round by the Nationals in 2007, Souza signed on for a $346,000 bonus and thought he had conquered the world. He didn’t know how to transition from being a high school student to being a professional baseball player and didn’t handle the ups and downs very well, “I had a weird first four or five years where I’d do really well for periods of time and then I’d really struggle. a lot of distractions in my life: things away from the field – chasing women, drinking a lot. You know just had different priorities. I wasn’t a very good teammate; I was pretty selfish.”
Souza’s statistics in his first four years of professional baseball bear out his tendency to be streaky. In 2007, in the Rookie-level Gulf Coast League, he hit only .194/.299/.340 and in 2008, despite seven home runs and 22 steals in 296 plate appearances, he could only manage a .213/.312/.339 triple slash line at the Short-Season-A and Class-A levels, posting a .453 OPS in July of that year with the Vermont Lake Monsters. He had wide swings in his performance in 2009 before something changed in 2010.
Grinding out another baseball season for Hagerstown in the South Atlantic League, Souza looked for some chemical help to get by. “I started slipping when I was doing really well and I was like ‘I can’t slip, I have to keep this going.’ We got off the bus and I knew I was tired so I took Concerta which I ended up getting suspended for,” he said. Concerta is a stimulant used mainly to treat ADHD and is banned by Major League Baseball. Souza and teammate J.R. Higley were suspended for 50-games that July.
Souza admits that he should have taken the hint that baseball was giving him but it took one more run in before he started to turn things around. Getting into an argument with Potomac manager Matthew LeCroy, Souza left the team and went home to Everett, Washington. “ just really felt like it was me against the world. I came home and it was kind of taken away from me. . . . Baseball was everything that I was and now, I was just a normal person and I had to figure out who I was.”
Steven Souza gets full extension, hitting a double on June 7, 2014 as a member of the Syracuse Chiefs in Buffalo, NY. Mandatory Credit: Jay Blue
Souza attributes the start of his story of redemption to some friends, including Brent Lillibridge, Matt Tuiasosopo and Michael Taylor, who helped him find clarity in his religion. He said “once I did that, the struggle kind of left. I don’t need to be a big leaguer. I want to be, I have a dream to be but if I don’t, it’s okay.”
With a renewed outlook, Souza was taken back by the Nationals and sent back to Hagerstown in 2012, putting up numbers that he had never been able to do before. For Souza, it was less about himself and more about being part of a team. “Once I came back, it was more of not so much putting pressure on myself, not worrying about what I could do for the game, if I could be the shining star on the field. It was ‘how can I help my team win, how can I help encourage my teammates, how can I be a better teammate’ and that was my main focus.”
With more experience, Souza is again, on top of the world but this time, he’s doing it as a teammate. Souza is currently hitting .368/.473/.574 with seven home runs and 11 stolen bases and has walked almost as much as he’s struck out. And he’s doing it largely beneath the radar.
At the higher levels of the minor league world, the media has been focused on phenoms like Oscar Taveras, Mookie Betts, Kris Bryant or Gregory Polanco but Souza has been putting up batting average and on-base numbers that eclipse all of them. Even before Polanco’s promotion to the Pittsburgh Pirates, Souza had amassed just enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title and emerged with a 20+ point lead on Polanco. His .473 OBP leads almost the entire affiliated minor leagues (Milwaukee’s Shawn Zarraga, playing in Double-A, just eclipsed Souza with a couple of excellent games).
Despite his success this season, Souza is still humble when he talks about Polanco. “We just got done playing and he is something special. . . . I don’t know that I’m in a category with those types of players, I just try and play the game. I’ll tell you . . . he’s just a great player. To be atop the board with him is an honor really because he’s going to impact a lot of games for the Pirates.”
Although he didn’t want to take a lot of credit for his excellent play this year, he did attribute some of it to simplifying the game. “If I can say anything that I learned from spring training and being the bigs with those guys, it’s this game can kill you mentally. You can over-think, there’s so many statistics, there’s so much over-analyzing . . . but as a player and as a competitor every day, you have to simplify it. You have to forget about yesterday, not worry about tomorrow and take each pitch as the most important pitch. . . . If you swing and miss at a bad pitch, it happens, it’s part of the game.”
By taking things in stride, Souza is letting his natural talent come to the forefront and is playing the game of baseball better than he ever has. When he gets back to the major leagues, you can bet that he’ll still be on Cloud Nine.
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The author would like to thank Steven Souza Jr. for sitting down to an interview on June 7, 2014. The full audio of the interview is available at Grading on the Curve’s Soundcloud page.