Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports
SCOTTSDALE — His profile fits exactly into the Farhan Zaidi mold. Jason Krizan can play anywhere, moving around the outfield and the right side of the infield. He hates striking out and has shown impressive plate discipline that has resulted in a more impressive minor league oddity: 436 career walks, 436 career strikeouts. He has shown glimpses of power, especially in 2019, when across 443 Double- and Triple-A plate appearances, he knocked 14 out of the park.
His attitude, though, evokes the relentlessness that Gabe Kapler often espouses, in which a player, no matter his age, can grow and develop and improve.
Why hasn’t the 31-year-old Krizan, with four-digit minor league games played and zero in the majors, accepted that his dream might not be realized? At some point, he wants to get into coaching, and he spent his 2020 COVID-19 time not at an alternate site but giving individualized lessons to 10- and 12-year-olds in Texas. What is keeping him from stepping into his next occupation?
“The game’s evolving, and I’m still learning stuff every day,” Krizan said on a recent phone call. “I got drafted in 2011. And in 2011, it was kind of the end of the pre-analytical era. It was before all the technology and watching it develop. I’m still learning, and it’s fun.”
Kapler entered the organization and quickly made waves by suggesting a footwork adjustment that he envisioned for Brandon Crawford, a three-time Gold Glover. The Giants are an organization that believes in constant progress, which has manifested itself in late-career breakthroughs from Mike Yastrzemski to Alex Dickerson to Donovan Solano. Krizan’s ceiling is not as high, but it’s a guiding principle that he hopes to take advantage of.
In Giants camp, where Krizan survived the first round of cuts but was a victim of Saturday’s cutdown, he has been surrounded by the technology he is curious about, and he is surrounded by late-bloomers he can try to emulate. He played against Yastrzemski plenty in the Eastern League and watched as another prospect was passed over repeatedly.
Seeing Yastrzemski break out in San Francisco “was definitely something we thought about,” said Krizan, who’s still around the team because there is no minor league camp to report to. “But you need to earn your way to the big leagues, no matter what. It definitely fires me up that he came over here because it’s awesome to see. He definitely earned his way over here. He was definitely a great player with the Orioles organization, and he just got put in a tough situation.”
Krizan’s toughest situation arose in 2015, when he touched Triple-A for the first time. He had been an eighth-round pick in 2011 by the Tigers as a senior and rose his way quickly through the system. He had a nice season at Double-A in 2014 and broke camp the following year one stop away from the majors as a developing utility man, moving from the outfield to second to increase his versatility.
He thought the promotion he had waited for was coming, and the opposite happened. He batted .169 in 20 Triple-A games and got demoted.
“That hurt me mentally,” said Krizan, who is on his fourth organization. “It was the first time I had been sent down. As a younger guy, you don’t really know what to think at the time. Whenever you go through it at first, it kind of knocks you down a little bit.
“To me, once I finally got through that, it was more of: How do you respond? You can get wrapped up in feeling sorry for yourself … or you can be like, hey, I need to go work on some things, and I need to get back into it. I need to get things going again.”
That was the mindset over the next few years, bouncing up and down with quality contact skills but lacking an elite talent that could help him rise to the next level. Beginning in the winter of 2016, Krizan sought more competition, more reps, more chances to grow.
It turned out as more than just a player in the Dominican Winter League.
“It makes you appreciate the Latin players coming over here,” said Krizan, who understands some but is not fluent in Spanish. “With the language barrier, sometimes you feel like you’re on your own and kind of figuring out who you are as a player, and how you get through struggles on your own definitely helps you grow as a player.”
It would have been easy for Krizan to call it a career after going through a nice spring with the A’s last year and then receiving the disappointing news he would not be included in their alternate site. When his Airbnb lease in Arizona expired in April, he and his family moved back to Texas, where he stayed in shape and had plenty of kid time: both teaching young players and being a father to his newborn son, his first child.
It was an “unbelievable” experience, he said, to actually be there at a time when he normally wouldn’t be. And yet, soon after his son turned 1, Krizan was back in the Dominican Winter league, trying to get better, trying to get ready for Giants camp.
“He’s a pro,” Kapler said of the lefty-hitting Krizan, who has a .394 on-base percentage with two homers and a double in 33 spring plate appearances. “A great guy, can really swing the bat, particularly against right-handed pitching, but also gives you a good at-bat against lefties. Takes aggressive hacks, even when the ball is below the zone. And so sometimes that comes with a little bit of swing-and-miss in that part of the zone. But I really like the aggressiveness of the stroke, the ability to use the whole field, the ability to get the ball in the air to the pull side.”
The manager, though, isn’t sure where he exactly fits defensively, calling it an area where there’s “room for improvement.”
Even at 31, Krizan would agree.