Red Sox' Trevor Story, in midst of toughest stretch in his career: ‘It's been bad.'

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MILWAUKEE — Trevor Story missed the first four months of the 2023 season with an elbow injury before making his season debut in August.
Last year, a week into the 2024 season, he suffered a shoulder injury that sidelined him until September.
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Rehab was no fun. The waiting was the hardest part, but Story knew it was mostly a matter of giving his body time to get healthy, and then he would do what he'd always done: play shortstop.
But this season has delivered a different challenge. For the first time since joining the Red Sox, Story is fully healthy. But his performance has left a lot to be desired. He entered play Wednesday with a slash line of .217/.26/.319.
Over the last month, it's gotten worse: He's hitting just .127 (15-for-115) with six RBI and just two extra-base hits. Even one of those extra-base hits came with a caveat, since it was hit off a position player.
Perhaps no stat better reflects his struggles than his 63+ OPS, suggesting he's 37 percent worse than the average player. Among qualified players, his .583 OPS ranks 161st among 169 players.
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For the two-time All-Star, this is surely the most challenging time in his 10-year major league career.
'I'll probably agree with that,' said Story. 'I'm certainly not performing the way I want. And it's kind of coming when the team's not playing good, too. Both of those things never line up good for anybody. It's been a grind, man.'
Making it all the more difficult for Story is that the season began so well for him. April saw him hitting .378 with 15 RBI in a stretch of 18 games. He was flashing his familiar pull power at Fenway and his offensive awakening was enough for the Red Sox to believe that this was, at last, the player they had signed to a six-year, $140 million contract shortly after the 2022 spring lockout ended.
Instead, Story's numbers nosedived, and he's been unable to reverse the freefall.
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'Since then, it's been bad,' acknowledged Story. 'You go through these runs in baseball. But where I need to be better is, the highs have been high, but the lows have been really low, too. I'm not oblivious to that. That's part of being a good player and an everyday player, too — you have to kind of calm those waters when it's not going good. And I haven't done a good job of that.
'I feel like I'm on the right path here, the last few days. I've felt much better in the box and I feel much more like myself. I just have to keep building on momentum like that because I still have the belief that I can be one of the better players in this league. The second I don't believe that....that's not good. But that's still very much a belief of mine and I know I'll get there.'
Like all struggling players, Story has watched video and consumed the data, to the point of overkill. In fact, if anything, he said one of his biggest battles has been not getting too much inside his own head.
Thinking too much about what he needs to change, what adjustments he must make, can be entirely unproductive.
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'It's very easy to look at your mechanics and be internal about hitting,' Story said. 'But there's really no time for that. For me, it's about being an athlete, being as external as I can and letting the athlete in me come out. Because that's my biggest attribute.
'When I think about mechanics or I think about anything other than what I'm trying to do out there with that ball coming at me and, from one of the best pitchers in the world, that takes away and causes a touch of hesitation. I'm focused on getting back to being an athlete.'
Story concedes he did some tinkering with his swing and approach at the start of his slump, and nothing changed.
'It's hard. There kind of becomes a time where you're like. 'Alright man, you've got to make an adjustment and you tired to fix your swing,' '' said Story. 'It's about realizing that my swing is my swing, my mind is clear, and I'm on the attack and I'm feeling like an athlete. And the swing will come out as it should. But it's not easy.'
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Story has the support of manager Alex Cora, who has stuck with him and, other than the occasional re-set day, continued to have him serve as the team's everyday shortstop.
'I've seen some trends the last two games and I feel good about it,' said Cora Wednesday morning. 'He's been able to get behind the fastball. He's had a lot of 3-and-2 counts the last few days. Those are good signs. Now, it's a matter of hopefully we can cash in and get him going.'
'He's always got our back,' said Story of Cora. 'We have a great relationship. It's always an open line of communication. There's no surprises. If we're making decisions like that, we talk through it. At the end of the day, he's the manager and he makes those decision. He's stuck with me; always appreciate that. He believes in me just as much as I do and that means a lot.'
For the past few years, Story has heard talk of Marcelo Mayer as the Red Sox' shortstop of the future. With Mayer's promotion to the parent club last Saturday, he and Mayer are now teammates, sharing the same clubhouse.
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But Story insists he's not looking over his shoulder at the talented rookie.
'Obviously, it's a natural assumption there,' Story conceded. 'But all of our energy and all of thoughts go into winning the next game and how we're going to do that. I think if you ask him, it's the same thing. He's playing third well and he's figuring out how to get into his routine here.
'That's what it's about, man. It's about winning that night It doesn't necessarily matter how we get it done; it's just a matter of whether we do or not. That's always been my approach and he's done a great job of that, too.'
Over the course of a decade-long career, Story has endured his good streaks and bad. He recalls the first half of his 2017 season, his second with the Colorado Rockies, when he posted a .699 OPS. But the second half saw him rebound to an .834 OPS.
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'That's part of the game — you're going to go through ups and downs," he said. 'Finding your way out is hard, but I think I've proven that I can do it. It helps a lot that I know that I've been at the bottom but come back to play at the top of my game. That matters.'
In the meantime, Story works to not let the mental grind wear him down and defeat him.
'I would say it's a battle,' he said. 'The easiest thing to do in this game is to overanalyze and go inward. It can definitely eat you up if you let it and at times it has.
'But one of the things that I've learned is that the fewer thoughts that I have, the better I play and the better I feel about my game. It's a simple thing, but it's a balancing act.'
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Read the original article on MassLive.