Orix slugger Sheldon starting to make things happen

Scott Sheldon and his Orix BlueWave teammates may be in the same boat, but for the past month they've been rowing in opposite directions.

Orix BlueWave third baseman Scott Sheldon is making up for lost time after a slow start this season.

While the BlueWave have plunged to a 32-48 record, spending most of July in the Pacific League cellar, Sheldon has positioned himself to pick up Most Valuable Player of the month honors.

Sheldon finished the month of July hitting .389 with 9 homers and 19 RBIs, which brings his season totals up to .267, 16 and 37.

It's a big turnaround for the 33-year-old Houston native, who finished June hitting .219. But ask him what he's been doing differently the last month, and he has trouble pointing to one thing.

"The whole year has been an adjustment," Sheldon said. "But to narrow it down a little bit, the coaches and I have tried to make things more simple in my swing and more consistent.

"Hitting a baseball is relatively simple in theory but it's hard to apply. When you can do that and relax at the same time, generally things start happening for the better."

And there couldn't have been a better time for Sheldon to start making things happen.

Last month, Orix manager Hiromichi Ishige put the heat on Sheldon and teammate Fernando Seguignol, whose batting average had fallen to .218 after leading the league in home runs earlier in the season.

"The way they've been playing," Ishige told reporters in June, "I think we'll have a better chance of winning if they stay on the bench."

Sheldon shrugs off the criticism.

"I try not to read the papers in the States and over here it's a lot easier not to read them because they're in Japanese," Sheldon said.

"But I know what's going on. When you come over here you want to produce and the expectations for a foreign player are higher than those for a Japanese player. That's just the way it is, right or wrong.

"Baseball is a business and if certain parts aren't working, foreign or domestic, then moves are generally made. It's nothing personal."

Despite Ishige's rants about his foreign contingent, most of his problems this season have been domestic.

The rookie manager inherited a team that in recent years has lost some of its best Japanese players -- Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Ichiro Suzuki, Masao Kida and So Taguchi -- to the major leagues.

Sheldon got a close up look at one of those players when he played third base for the Texas Rangers last year.

"Playing against Ichiro was a great challenge. He could bunt, he could run and he could really pick on a third baseman because he can hit the ball down the line or in the hole between short and third whenever he wants to," Sheldon said.

"And he's got a great personality. Whenever he'd get to third, we would kid each other. He'd wink at me when he hit a triple and I would just shake my head. He's unbelievable."

Now that Sheldon is playing on this side of the Pacific, he sees what a big hole Ichiro left behind.

"Anytime you lose quality players, it's hard to recover," said Sheldon. "And so you enter a phase of rebuilding, and that's what Orix is doing."

But Sheldon is quick to point out that the BlueWave's biggest problem isn't a lack of talent -- it's a lack of concentration.

"You can't replace talent right away, and we may not have the best lineup or the best pitching staff in the league, but we can eliminate a lot of mistakes and put ourselves in a better position to win," said Sheldon.

"We need to focus on playing better baseball and we haven't been doing that. We need to do the little things right -- not miss signs, get the bunts down, move the runners over, pitch, play good defense. If we can do those things,the wins will come."