It’s that time of the season.

Not just for Wil Myers learning third base and Trey Wingenter navigating the eighth inning and so many other things a team in transition is trying to accomplish as the season winds down.

It’s that time for the Padres’ marquee player, too.

“You’re still trying to win, still trying to compete,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said. “But you’re trying to gain ground and identify what went wrong for your year. For me, that’s one thing I told these guys — from this point on I want to try to get the ball in the air and see what happens.”


What has happened is that Hosmer has hit a home run in three straight games for the first time in his career.

In addition to his homers Friday, Saturday and Sunday, he also went two games (Friday and Saturday) without hitting a ground ball. It was just the second time this season he did not hit a ball on the ground in successive games.

Just three of the 15 balls he put in play in four games against the Reds were grounders, well below his major league-leading 61.9 percent ground ball rate entering the series.

All six balls Hosmer put in play over the three-game stretch preceding the series in Cincinnati were grounders. In compiling the highest ground ball rate of any of his eight major league seasons, he has had 36 games this season in which every ball he put in play was on the ground and 11 games in which none of the balls he put in play were on the ground.


Hosmer shrugged.

“I guess that’s what we’ve been searching for all year,” he said. “… It just got to the point where I wanted to focus on the main thing – ‘What is the main thing of getting the ball in the air?’ ”

That’s pretty much precisely what he asked hitting coach Matt Stairs and assistant hitting coach Johnny Washington before the series in Cincinnati.

It’s not that Hosmer hadn’t worked previously on getting the ball in the air. In fact, it had been a focus of his offseason.


But he figured the final month was the time to narrow it down.

Lo and behold, simplifying it to Stairs’ advice to concern himself solely with the back leg — not his elbow or swing, typical instruments for manipulating launch angle — and timing his step more in sync with the pitcher’s delivery.

“I gave him some pointers that helped me,” said Stairs, who had better than a 40 percent fly ball percentage over his final 10 major league seasons, a number that would be among the major league leaders and more than twice as high as Hosmer’s fly ball rate (19.9) entering Tuesday’s game at Safeco Field. “I told him what I went through with my leg and how I developed a better habit of getting the ball in the air on a consistent basis.”

Hosmer describes it as staying back longer and essentially using the ground for power.


“It almost seems like a lot of the good hitters who do a good job of getting the ball in the air hit one-legged,” Hosmer said. “The front leg is just there for the landing. I made it a point to really get into the back side and let everything work off that.”

Hosmer is always better when he stays back. That’s why so much of his power is to the opposite field. It allows him to see the ball longer and have his bat stay longer in the zone.

This year, he too often found himself lunging.

Basically, he was anxious, perhaps even trying too hard.


Others in the organization have postulated Hosmer was at times attempting to carry an offense that was so paltry so much of this season.

Hosmer has several times this season, including Tuesday, refused to bite on that line of questioning.

But he did acknowledge not being himself. A notoriously streaky hitter, Hosmer had some hot stretches this season. Mostly, though, he was battling himself.

“You’re always trying to make stuff happen, especially when you’re going out there and feel like you can’t pull off your ‘A’ swing,” he said. “You go from doing no stride to putting your foot down to doing anything you can to try to get the run in. … It’s come to that a lot his year. It’s kind of understanding what I need to do in a certain at-bat, really just doing whatever I can to try to do that. There were certain times I couldn’t pull my ‘A’ swing off.”


He said he doesn’t know why he’s had his worst statistical season. He won’t attribute it to trying to meet the expectations of being the man on his new team with his new $144-million contract. He won’t attribute it to seeing more consistently high-caliber left-handers in the National League West.

Having hit 25 home runs each of the past two years, he has 16 through the Padres’ 145 games this year. A career .284/342/.439 hitter coming into 2018, he is batting .254/.318/.402 this season.

And his next strikeout will tie his career high of 132 set in 2016.

He is batting .269/.322/.491 over his past 28 games, maybe not enough to justify the $20 million a year the Padres are paying him through 2022 but trending in the right direction.


He has also struck out just twice in 27 plate appearances over the past seven games. His next-best stretch this season was two strikeouts in 25 plate appearances, accomplished just twice.

In the past seven games, Hosmer has chased just 23.2 percent of pitches (16 of 69) outside the strike zone, well below his season average of 33 percent.

“I think a lot of it is us throwing stuff against the wall to get back to having that feeling I can have my ‘A’ swing every time,” he said when asked why his plate discipline has been better. “It’s feeling I’m locked in and not having to battle finding the mechanics before a game and having all that extra work. We’ve gotten back to that feeling of remembering who I am and getting those swings off, and it’s not a constant search coming into the park every day.”

It’s as important to him as any player that September is a success.


“It will almost feel like a jump start going into next year,” Hosmer said. “It was a long year constantly trying to get hot, trying to find myself. At the same time, Stairsy and J-Wash were learning me as a hitter. I think we’ve gained a lot of ground, especially this last month. I think the hard stuff is out of the way. … We know what got us going.”

kevin.acee@sduniontribune.com