“You’re better than this,” Tony Beasley recalls telling Elvis Andrus after the 2015 season. “This is not a good shortstop, but this is not who you are. This is what you’re doing; it’s not who you are.”



That season had ended in heartbreak. What had been a 2-0 lead in the ALDS was frittered away with back-to-back losses at home, followed by a blown lead in the fifth and deciding game. Errors on three consecutive plays in the seventh inning — two committed by Andrus and one when Mitch Moreland made an errant throw to Andrus — had made certain of that. Andrus was the portrait of a broken man at his locker after the game.



He was finally ready to hear Beasley’s message.



“Sometimes, we have a hard time trusting our own coaches, and trusting people, regardless,” Andrus explains. “Because at the end, I’m the one showing up out there, and this is my job, it’s my...