From Janitor to MLB Power-House, Evan Gattis Found the Perfect Home in Houston
By Josh Sippie
Now known as the ‘White Bear,’ Evan Gattis doesn’t have your prototypical “highschool to college to drafted to minors to majors” story. While it may have all those pieces, it also had pieces in between where he sought spiritual gurus, became a ski-lift operator, worked at a pizza parlor, served as a janitor, lived in Yellowstone and entered an inpatient psychiatric ward.
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Like I said, not the typical story.
But despite the turbulent backstory and the wandering around the Western United States, Evan Gattis found his way back to the sport that helped him through it all in the first place, and it’s there that he’s starting to discover his calling. Conveniently enough, he now resides on a team that’s just starting to develop their own unique calling as well.
Evan Gattis is now serving as the center of arguably the best power alley in baseball, the Houston Astros. The Astros’ rise to prominence is second in probability only to Evan Gattis’s own tale (I bet he has some great stories). But now the two might have found out that they are the perfect match for each other, especially given the Houston Astros overlying theme of the season.
One might say that Evan Gattis got a late start to his professional baseball career, but at 27 years old, he put up 22 home runs and 97 RBIs in just 108 games for the Atlanta Braves. Naturally, he caught the eye of the “hit home runs now, ask questions about strikeouts later” Houston Astros. But he’s one of the few on the team that’s demonstrated a hint of consistency in the home runs/RBIs/strikeouts categories and he’s proving that the clean-up spot should be his for the long run.
With runners in scoring position, Evan Gattis is hitting .222 with 4 home runs and 20 RBIs. In your head you may be saying, “well that isn’t that great” but when you consider the rest of the Astros, it is great. Luis Valbuena is hitting .129 with runners in scoring position and Chris Carter is rocking out at .190. Colby Rasmus is hitting .187 with a 36% strikeout rate and George Springer is hitting .115. So like I said, .222 is great.
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After his 3-4 affair against the Detroit Tigers where he hit every piece of the cycle except for a double, it appears that the Astros may have found the perfect guy for the middle of their order. In terms of strikeouts, he only strikes out 25% of the time, which when compared to the likes of Colby Rasmus and Chris Carter, is pretty impressive. Not only that, but Evan Gattis’s 9 home runs are second on the team and his 28 RBIs lead the team and are right up there among the top power hitters in the league.
Being a designated hitter, there’s literally no reason to ever give Evan Gattis a day off, and after the Tiger’s game, this is good news indeed. Especially seeing as how in his last ten games, he’s hitting a very respectable .263 with 3 home runs and 10 RBIs (via astros.com). However, perhaps the best part about those last ten games is that he’s only struck out 7 times in 39 at bats, well below the team average.
Whatever happened prior to his return to baseball, the Houston Astros are thrilled to have Evan Gattis in their midst now.