The Three Amigos
Byrnes, Hart, Landry Lead Assult
Published April 25, 1999
Section: Sports Edition(s): All Page: C-1
By: Brian VanderBeek, Bee staff writer
Eric Byrnes, Jason Hart and Jacques Landry are nothing more than three young guys with talent. Single-A teams across America are filled with guys like that.
What makes these three exceptional is that they're young enough to enjoy what they're doing, old enough to appreciate the opportunity and wise enough to know it's not going to last forever.
But for as long as it does last, the three are sharing a three-pronged vow: to stay friends, to do their best to have fun, and to keep terrorizing California League pitching staffs.
Almost every morning the A's are home, sometime around 9 a.m., all three climb into Byrnes' pickup and drive to a local gym. They also have been inseparable in the A's lineup, hitting 3-4-5 in almost every start since the third game of the season. They've played a major role in the team's exceptionally fast start.
"We really pull for each other because if one of us is going well, the others will, too," said Landry, the California League player of the week. "If one of us gets on base, we're knocking them in and scoring runs. We feed off each other. We also talk about what the pitcher is doing. It's showing in the stats."
And here are those numbers, first individually:
* On Wednesday, Landry, the No. 5 hitter, had a 12-game hitting streak snapped in the A's 15-11 loss to Rancho Cucamonga. In those 12 games, we went 23-for-45 (.511), scored 14 runs and drove in 20.
"It seems that right now, with Jacques being so hot, all we have to do is get on base and Jacques will knock us in," Hart said. "That really takes the pressure off me and Byrnes. "I'm sure we'll be picking each other up like that throughout the season."
* During that same span, Hart, batting cleanup, went 16-for-46 (.348), scoring 10 runs and knocking in 17. Landry and Hart rank 1-2 in the league in RBIs.
* And Byrnes, hitting third, was constantly on base for those dozen games, also hitting .348, scoring 17 runs and driving home eight. Byrnes, Landry and equally hot Oscar Salazar rank 1-2-3 in the league in runs scored.
"As much focus as you can put on 3-4-5, you also have to look at 1-2, and 6-7-8-9," Byrnes said. "It's phenomenal what the whole team is doing. Hitting is contagious."
And when you crunch those numbers, here's how they help to produce a winning team:
* During the first six home games that the trio manned the 3-4-5 spots, opposing pitchers were able to retire all three in order on only two of 20 occasions, meaning that at least one of the three either reached base or drove home a run 90 percent of the time.
* The trio has either scored or driven in 51 percent of the team's runs, accounting for more than four per game as the A's mangle the opposition for eight runs per outing.
"The intensity that those guys bring to the middle of the lineup also carries over onto the field," said A's manager Bob Geren. "I've seen it constantly where one of those guys is 2-for-3, we're up six runs and he goes out there on his fourth at-bat with the approach that the game is on the line."
Common demoninators
The three have a lot in common. They all swing from the right side, they all are products of college programs and all are relatively new to the A's organization.
Left fielder Byrnes, 23, was an eighth-round selection of Oakland last year out of UCLA. First baseman Hart, 21, was taken three rounds earlier in the same draft out of Southwest Missouri State. Third baseman Landry, 25, came to the A's as a Rule V selection last December. The product of Rice originally was a 12th-round pick of Detroit in 1996.
"The common denominator with all three of those kids is that they're intelligent, they have an outstanding work ethic, and their whole philosophy about being a person is something you don't find a lot with young kids today," said Orv Franchuk, Oakland's assistant director of player development.
"They're just quality people, and for me that's the intangible that scouts sometime forget. Anyone can see tools. The part that is hard to see is what these kids are made of -- what kind of family backgrounds they have, and what the kids are about. How many guys with great tools have we seen in the last 10 years who never even made it out of A ball?"
Long odds
Barring injury or collapse, these three will. But they know that the odds are very long against all three of them eventually sharing stories together in the Oakland clubhouse. So while they're here, they hope to be able to contribute to a major-league feeling of camaraderie in a minor-league setting.
"When you have a good team, it's generally because everyone is rooting for everyone else," said Byrnes. "In minor league baseball that can be tough sometimes because everyone is trying to make it for themselves. So a lot of times, you can look past your teammates or actually be rooting against some of the guys on your team, or even worse you can have guys who just don't care.
"But for the first time since I've been in professional baseball, I'm on a team that cares about other people do. I'm rooting for 1-through-9, and when someone else gets a hit I'm just as happy as when I get a hit, and it's a cool thing -- a chemistry that you don't normally see."
Originally printed in the Modesto Bee...I paid to view this article