Schumaker is a hit at second base - STLtoday.com

Left behind at Jupiter, Fla., to rehab in relative isolation for several weeks, Cardinals utility fielder Skip Schumaker passed time in his Embassy Suites hotel room with telephone calls to his family and documentaries from ESPN.

"You're in spring training for what feels like four months," Schumaker described. "It was a dark time."

He isn't talking about the hotel's lighting.

With few or no teammates around and sharing a clubhouse with the greenest players in the Cardinals' organization, Schumaker had only one constant to keep him company at the ballpark â€" his swing. Never one completely comfortable with his swing, Schumaker tried to heal his strained oblique muscle and hone his swing to make rehab as short as possible. It proved even shorter. Less than 15 at-bats into his rehab assignment, Schumaker was recalled to the majors and presented with a familiar problem.

He needed more at-bats to be ready to hit in the majors, but if he would hit in the majors, then there would plenty of at-bats available.

"I know that hitting puts you in the lineup," Schumaker said. "Everybody knows that. That's what makes it difficult when you do come back and don't feel great â€" trying to find those hits. Because the more you hit, the more you'll find your name in there. That's just the reality of the game."

Schumaker has hit since his return, lacing at least one single in each of his past six starts and all five games he has started and taken an at-bat. The lefthanded batter had four hits in 10 at-bats against Milwaukee and has elbowed his way into the starting role at the Cardinals' most unsettled position, second base.

The "dark time" Schumaker described was really more of a pause in time. The oblique injury subtracted Schumaker from the three-way joust for starts at second, but it's as if the competition waited for him to catch up. Tyler Greene and Daniel Descalso, who split the starts before Schumaker's arrival, have struggled at the plate. Both are hitting .200. The Cardinals' .238 average from the second-base position ranks 11th in the National League, and it sinks to .215 when Schumaker's production is subtracted.

Descalso and Greene have combined for almost as many strikeouts (22) as times on base (23) while playing second.

When asked about Schumaker's string of starts, manager Mike Matheny said, "To answer the question, yes, we're trying to get some offense going here. Skip seems to be putting together some good at-bats right now. We'll give him a chance to play second base."

Greene, the Cardinals' designated favorite to win the job out of spring training, has made eight starts there. He held the job until Schumaker came up because of a string of four games when he reached base in five of 13 plate appearances and homered. The best power potential at the position, Greene overall has hit .200 (six for 30) at second.

Descalso, the best defensive option at the position, started five of the first six games of the season at second. Since then, he has plunged into a four-for-23 (.174) spiral that includes six strikeouts. Descalso said recently that he's "just trying to get back to where I was two weeks ago, no major overhaul."

"It's one of those things that happen during the course of the year, and unfortunately, it happened right out of the gate," he said.

A .291 career hitter, Schumaker plays down his natural ability to hit, but there is something behind his discomfort at the plate. The bat model he uses doesn't feel right in his hand and hasn't for years. Before the 2004 season, Schumaker received the wrong model of bats. He ordered I13 models and received R161s, the major difference being the thicker handle on the R161 bat. Stuck with the wrong bat, Schumaker hit .316 that next summer, led the Class AA league in hits and hasn't gone back to the preferred model since.

He said it still doesn't feel right.

Last year brought a different kind of discomfort. Schumaker's rehab was rushed because of another injury at the major league level and it took weeks for him to recover his timing. He hit .152 in his first 33 at-bats. It took a .347 jag through July to resurrect his average and reclaim the starting job that he held until an oblique strain in the postseason.

"I'm not the kind of guy who can roll out of bed and hit," Schumaker said. "I need repetition and cage work and all of that stuff to feel right at the plate. It's not necessarily live at-bats, but repetition. When you're hurt, it's tough to hit off a tee and hit off soft toss. You get out of your routine when you're hurt. I tried to do as much as possible without it limiting me."

That's how he spent those days in Jupiter, relatively alone with his swing and a bat he still can't get a comfortable grip on.

He filled his mornings with treatment for his second oblique strain in six months and as many swings as that oblique strain would allow. Even when he played in extended spring games, his day at the ballpark was done by lunch time. That meant killing hours downloading and watching ESPN's "30 in 30" documentaries on Ricky Williams or Len Bias. When he did start his rehab assignment, he expected twice as many at-bats as he got.

But somewhere in there, somewhere in what he called twice "a dark time," the light went on.

So far, that's prompted a switch at second.

"He can hit," Matheny said. "He's always been able to do that. I don't know what it was that got him clicking, but he's consistently the type of player that you've seen from him a long time here."