David Dahl regains his confidence: Why wifes pep talk has the former All-Star eager for a fresh s

May 2024 · 10 minute read

On some nights last year after his infant daughter drifted off to sleep, an All-Star of just a couple of seasons ago would find a video of a swing, press play and watch. Sometimes, again. Sometimes, again and again.

Dig long enough online and questions can often outnumber answers. Should I do this? Change that? What about this? David Dahl, now a Brewers roster hopeful best known for his time as a Rockies outfielder, loves studying the game. But if he was looking for something to help replicate success, he wasn’t going to find it on a screen — part of what he was searching for was confidence.

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After one more of those nights, Dahl’s wife, Jacquelyn, helped him see as much with some gentle advice.

“Just, when you’re at the field, play baseball and do your thing,” she told him, “and when you come home, just relax and enjoy your time here.”

The conversation wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary, and it wasn’t like Dahl was up late every night with a bat in his hands. But he remembers those words from Jacquelyn when he thinks of how much he struggled the last two years professionally and why 2022 could be different because of a couple of changes. One of them: Off the field, he needed to see himself as more than a baseball player.

“I just was obsessed with trying to figure out how to get better and how to get back to me,”  Dahl, 27, said in a recent interview with The Athletic. “And I think the more you start worrying or obsessing over it, the more of a rabbit hole you can go down.”

On the field, a better pregame routine while with the Nashville Sounds, the Brewers’ Triple-A affiliate, late last season also helped put Dahl back on the path to where he wants to be, where he once was. It’s a desirable destination. And he’s not too far removed from it.

Back when Dahl was a high school outfielder in Birmingham, Ala., in 2012, Perfect Game graded him in the top 1 percent of his class for arm strength and foot speed as part of a scouting report that described his “high-level bat.” When the Rockies drafted him No. 10 a few months later, longtime national prospect analyst Keith Law wrote, “The Rockies haven’t had the chance to add a guy like this in some time.” When Dahl was in Colorado’s minor-league system a couple of years later, Baseball America lauded him as the organization’s best prospect.

He went on to fulfill those predictions by averaging a 112 wRC+ through his first three seasons with a slash line of .297/.346/.521. That was from 2016 to 2019, when Dahl made an All-Star Game, appeared at all three outfield positions and looked every bit like the next homegrown foundation piece in a potent Rockies lineup.

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It didn’t work out that way.

First, injuries sidelined Dahl. There was the lacerated spleen suffered during an outfield collision before he ever reached the majors. A stress reaction in his rib cage. A fractured foot. A high ankle sprain. A lower back injury. A strain in his throwing shoulder.

As good as Dahl’s production was in the early years of his career, there was the catch: From 2016-19, he played in just 240 games, missing the entire 2017 season and never appearing in more than 100 games in any other.

The last two years were different. Injuries weren’t entirely to blame. The main culprit was poor performance.

In the shortened 2020 season, Dahl slashed .183/.222/.247 with a 28 percent strikeout rate — the worst mark of his career — in 99 plate appearances with the Rockies. His line-drive rate plummeted to 20 percent, also the worst of his career. In December 2020, the Rockies non-tendered him. The Rangers then added Dahl on a one-year deal worth a guaranteed $2.7 million. But he never resembled the pre-2020 version of himself. Instead, he continued to struggle. In 220 plate appearances with the Rangers, Dahl slashed .210/.247/.322. On Aug. 4, two days after designating Dahl for assignment, Texas placed him on unconditional release waivers.

Two weeks later, the Brewers signed Dahl to a minor-league contract and assigned him to Nashville — where things started to click.

“I think I’ve always dealt with some adversity in terms of the injuries  — I had a lot of unfortunate injuries — but I feel like I’ve always fought really hard to get back and come back, you know, usually better,” Dahl said. “And so I think these last two seasons, however many at-bats, I think it’s the first time I’ve really struggled on the field. So it was definitely hard mentally, you know, handling it, what to do, with it being the first time.

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“So I just lost some confidence and got into some bad habits with my swing. I was just trying to tinker and get out of it all the time. … I think that’s one thing that was great for me in Nashville. I just stuck to the same thing every day. And just kind of let the process play itself out. Ended up having some good results with that. So it’s something I’m just gonna continue to do in the offseason going into next season.”

Whenever the owner-mandated lockout is lifted and a spring training begins, Dahl will be in the Brewers’ major-league camp as a non-roster invitee with a compelling case to crack the big-league roster.

Because after all of this, Dahl is still only 27.

He’s also a left-handed batter, and the Brewers’ outfield has just one of those, Christian Yelich. The rest of the outfield consists of Lorenzo Cain, Tyrone Taylor and Hunter Renfroe. That’s one fewer outfielder than the Brewers carried for the National League Division Series and on last season’s Opening Day. One knotty issue: Dahl isn’t on the 40-man roster, which is at 36 — and if the Brewers really wanted another outfielder, there’s Corey Ray, a left-handed batter and a first-round pick in 2016, who is on the 40-man roster. But unlike Dahl, Ray doesn’t have previous success in the majors; he has appeared in just one big-league game. While infielders such as Keston Hiura, Jace Pederson and Mike Brosseau could see time in the outfield corners, further negating a need for Dahl, a path to the big-league roster is conceivable, particularly if there’s an injury and the Brewers don’t make another addition.

If what Dahl worked on in Nashville late in 2021 translates to spring training, perhaps he would have an even better shot.

During one batting cage session in the early days of his time with Nashville, Dahl made contact and thought he struck the ball well, but it went straight up into the air. After observing other sessions in which Dahl would hit the top of the screen and then seeing that latest occurrence, Sounds hitting coach Al LeBoeuf looked at Dahl and said, “No.”

Dahl asked, “What do you mean?”

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“You mishit the ball,” LeBoeuf replied.

LeBoeuf explained to Dahl that in Nashville’s park, especially, line drives were paramount to success. The park tends to be favorable toward pitchers. More importantly, the two developed a good relationship and began working together in pregame sessions. They focused on one-handed drills designed to flatten Dahl’s swing and get more of the barrel through the hitting area instead of just clipping underneath the ball. They often worked off the machine, with Dahl seeing high velocity, and hitting it. It’s a good sign after he struggled uncharacteristically against fastballs the last two seasons.

One theory from evaluators on Dahl’s challenges with Texas has a little to do with the ballpark, which also leaned in favor of pitchers. The thinking from some who scouted and analyzed him is that he may have overcompensated in trying to generate power early in the season after hitting a handful of balls straightaway or the opposite way with an exit velocity of over 98 mph. They traveled more than 375 feet to no avail. They didn’t carry and resulted in outs. Dahl, though, wouldn’t use the ballpark as an excuse. In explaining his struggles, Dahl said, “I got very pull happy. (It wasn’t) really that I was trying to pull, but just my bat path and mechanics were just off to where I was just pulling everything and flying open.”

That didn’t happen in Nashville. Dahl got back to a line-drive approach and used the whole field. One evaluator even said, “I loved how natural he looked hitting the ball to the opposite field.” For that, Dahl credited manager Rick Sweet, coach Ned Yost IV and LeBoeuf.

“I just got into a good routine before the games in the cage with Buff,” Dahl said. “And really just getting my direction on my swing back. Using the whole field again and just really getting the confidence back, too. That all played a part. I felt good there. I felt like I finished strong and hopefully can put myself in a good situation going into next spring training.”

Dahl’s numbers with the Sounds were terrific — in 120 plate appearances, he had just a 14 percent strikeout rate, which was the lowest of his career at any level, with a .911 OPS. But minor-league statistics rarely create many reassurances. What matters more is that his experience in Nashville helped reinforce a couple of theories.

“The biggest thing is not just seeing yourself as a baseball player,” Dahl said. “You have a life off the field. Struggling was kind of eating me up a little bit off the field. I was just always thinking about baseball and what I need to do to get better. You got to separate the two.”

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He figured out how to do that with help from his own household. Jacquelyn Dahl, an NFL marketing agent, works with high-profile football players such as Patrick Mahomes. “She’s the best; she’s been my rock through all of this,” David Dahl said of his wife. Once he heeded her words and learned to let go a bit, he also showed to himself he can maybe still play some, too.

“The injuries, definitely, they play a factor, but I think everyone goes through stuff in this game,” Dahl said. “It’s about rebounding and persevering through it. It’s definitely been a kind of a roller coaster of the last two seasons, but I’m super happy and excited where I’m at and just grateful for the opportunity with the Brewers to come in and try to make the squad.”

No one is suggesting that Dahl should be scooped up in upcoming fantasy baseball drafts with the fervor from a few years ago. With the Brewers, carving out a bench role would be a more reasonable goal. At Dahl’s age and based on his success — as long as he stays healthy — many agree the talent is there and he could still have a couple of productive years left.

“I am just going to do everything I can to win a roster spot and I am just very thankful for the opportunity to be in their organization and compete for a job,” Dahl said. “Obviously they got a lot of really good players, a lot really good outfielders. We’ll just kind of see what happens — I am not putting any pressure on myself. Just gonna go play and have fun and be the best teammate I can be, and just see what happens.”

(Photo of David Dahl: Isaiah J. Downing / USA Today)

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