LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After the regular baseball portion of the interview ended and the chitchat began in the home dugout at Louisville Slugger Field, Nick Senzel looked up at the interviewer and said, “I’m glad you asked that question.”
The question was how the Senzel of roughly four years ago would have handled his current situation: rehabbing from offseason foot surgery and on assignment at Triple-A Louisville, his future uncertain.
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Four years ago, Senzel was one of the top prospects in baseball and had been moved to a new position, optioned at the end of camp and then injured near the end of spring training.
He didn’t make his debut until the first week of May. At the time, Senzel felt he was ready to play in the big leagues. He was also 23 years old and impatient to get to the majors. As the No. 2 overall pick in the 2016 draft, expectations were high for Senzel. And as high as the expectations were from others, his own were higher.
But at the same time, Senzel’s impatience was as high as those expectations. The 23-year-old Senzel had wanted to be in the big leagues as a 22-year-old and was convinced that he could’ve been.
His first year in the big leagues was his best, but even that had some rough spots, including a season-ending shoulder injury. The following year both the regular season and Senzel’s season were cut short by COVID, the next he was limited to just 36 games due to a knee injury, and then 2022 was cut short by a toe injury that just didn’t heal.
That doesn’t even include the bouts of vertigo and the elbow surgery in 2018.
In all, he’s played parts of four seasons, but just a total of 273 games, with a high of 110 last year. None of it has gone how 23-year-old Senzel — or the Reds who drafted Senzel just before his 21st birthday — thought it would.
Those kinds of thoughts, though, are for others. None of that changes where he is right now, which is in Toledo with the Bats, who opened a six-game series with the Tigers’ Triple-A affiliate on Tuesday.
So, how would the 23-year-old Senzel handle starting this season in Louisville, shuffling between center field and third base?
“I think it’d be tough … it’d be tough,” Senzel said. “It’s tough with uncertainty. But I think the big difference now is I know I can’t control a lot of these things. What I can control is getting ready to go out and play here every day and if I can do that every day on a consistent basis, I’ll be happy.”
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Senzel said he had a conversation with his wife Emily recently about where he was and the situation he found himself in this spring.
“I’m not even thinking about the major leagues, I’m thinking about wanting to be the best baseball player I can be every day,” Senzel said. “That can take a lot of the uncertainty feeling away when I’m just focused on what I can do and be doing. It’s a lot of maturity. I’ve had to mature in that area. It’s a challenge every day.”
The younger Senzel was a bit of a solitary figure, fighting against everyone. It was part of the edge that made him good, but it also didn’t always serve him.
In the years since, he’s met his wife and the two now have a 16-month-old son, Nicholas Peter Senzel II, or Nicky.
Like many before him and many after, fatherhood and responsibility had a way of changing perspective and priorities for Senzel, at a time when much of his offseason was spent on a scooter that didn’t really allow him to do the things a professional athlete must do in the offseason to stay prepared.
While he’s had injuries in the past, this one was the clichéd blessing in disguise. He couldn’t move much, but he didn’t really want to — preferring his time with his son.
“Him and my wife, the support and foundation I have, coming home to them and being able to talk to my wife about the game,” Senzel said. “They’ve been the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
And then, of course, when Senzel gets home, Nicky doesn’t care that he went 0-for-4 or spent another day on the IL in rehab.
“He doesn’t know,” Senzel said. “One day he will.”
He may know that, but he’ll also know that his dad loves him and his dad will know Nicky loves him back. Just like Nick’s father, Jeff Senzel, was always there for Nick.
That steadiness, that love from his father is something that Senzel knows is of the utmost importance with his own son.
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It’s not as much about showing his son that he’s the best baseball player in the world, but that he knows who he is, that he’s done his best. That’s what a role model is. That’s what Jeff Senzel was — and is — to Nick.
That’s why doing the little things during his rehab was so important, even if Nicky won’t remember it. It’s setting that precedent as a father, as a husband and as an athlete.
Because Senzel couldn’t do much with his foot while it was in a boot, he had to fight that inactivity by being strict about his what he ate and drank. He made sure he kept his caloric intake down.
“If I was eating like I am now, I’d be packing on the weight,” Senzel said. “I have to take in between 3,700 and 4,000 calories a day just to be able to maintain. If I did that in the offseason, I’d come in at 220 and that wouldn’t help the transition back to the field.”
Listening to his body has always been a struggle, not as much with the eating, but with the injuries. He’s thought he could play through things and has seen his performance suffer. That’s one of the reasons he’s still on a rehab assignment now, despite hitting .273 through six games with the Bats, including hitting his first homer of the season Tuesday.
What the 27-year-old Senzel understands is that nobody in the Reds organization wants anything less for him than he wants from himself. The Reds want him on the field and productive just as much as he wants that. So even if he doesn’t agree with every decision, be it what day he started playing in games or just how much he’d run on a certain day in rehab, he knew everyone had the same goal. What he could do is listen to those who know more than he does, give his input for the things they couldn’t know, and do what was asked or needed of him.
Among those things is returning to third base. He’s also played center field and left field with the Bats and could play some second base too.
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Reds manager David Bell has said Senzel would play where he was needed, if that’s center or third or somewhere else. But when he is ready, he’ll play.
Drafted as a third baseman, the Reds moved Senzel to center field because they had Eugenio Suarez locked up to a long-term deal. That meant Senzel needed another place to play. That position ultimately became center field.
He’s had a couple of forays back into the dirt and could likely make more.
While the younger Senzel may have felt jerked around, the older Senzel understands it could be good for both himself and the team.
“I feel like I’m blessed to have a skill set to be moved around and play those positions at a high level,” Senzel said. “When I was younger, I was fighting that all the time. The older I’ve gotten, the more of a chance I’ve had to realize that being versatile like that is going to get me in the lineup more and get more at-bats.”
Last week, Senzel said he felt like he was somewhere around the second or third week of spring training. In Louisville, he’s watched Joey Votto go about his work every day. It’s a sight he’s taken in for much of his career — because anyone who can work alongside an all-time great and not observe isn’t very smart — but the biggest insight is that it doesn’t matter if Votto’s at Great American Ball Park, Yankee Stadium, Louisville Slugger Field or Toledo’s Fifth Third Field, the work is always the same. The work doesn’t change because the goal changes, the work is the work.
And that’s where Senzel is — working in Louisville (or Toledo) to get to where he wants to be, sure, but more importantly where he can be.
“I don’t really know what their plan is for other guys up there, who knows?” he said. “I’m not really worried about that. But you know, they’ll call me when they think I’m ready.”
(Photo: Keith Gillett / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
