After a white-hot July for the Colorado Rockies star third baseman Nolan Arenado, the fifth-year veteran won a much-deserved National League Player of the Month award.
In his last 20 games at Coors Field, the 26-year-old has been terrorizing his opponents left and right, not only in inhumane plays made on the left side of the diamond, but at the plate as well. He put up 41 RBIs in all, including that ridiculous three-homer, seven-RBI game he pulled off against the San Diego Padres on July 19.
“Awards, they don’t get old,” Arenado, an already highly-decorated young player, said. “You play for awards, you know what I mean? I’m not saying I’m not thinking about MVPs or Player of the Month or all that, but I put in the work because I want to get noticed, I want those awards. I can’t help it. It’s just the way I am, but it’s great to see people notice the hard work I put in and that people appreciate what I’ve been able to do. It means a lot. It’s not easy, but it’s a good feeling.”
To give a snapshot of his production at the plate lately, Arenado scored 18 runs in 97 plate appearances and drove in 30 RBIs off of eight homers and 35 total hits. That was good for a gargantuan .389 batting average.
Even still, he believes there’s more improvement to be done in his game, if you can believe that.
“So far, it’s a good feeling right now. I obviously don’t feel comfortable saying I’ve put it all together, but I got two months left. There’s still a lot I got to do, a lot of damage to be done and a lot of plays I can be making,” Arenado said. “That’s what I focus on every day, is [feeling good].”
Always humble, Nolan gives a lot of the credit to his success to his two teammates that bat before him, D.J. LeMahieu and Charlie Blackmon, who also have been putting up big numbers on offense as of late.
“Just the whole lineup’s been great, obviously, in getting on base for me,” Areando said. “Obviously, D.J. and Charlie have been unbelievable. If I didn’t have them, I’d probably have like 40 RBIs right now, so all the credit goes to them for sure. They’ve just done a great job.”
So far this season, already 105 games in, Arenado boasts 95 RBIs. He’s even thrown six triples in there just for the heck of it, and that’s not normally something that he does. As a player that’s always focused on improving himself on the field, even when it seems he’s already reached that acme of his career, Arenado said he welcomes the change of pace over the last month or so in his offensive prowess.
“I know from early on, I felt like I wasn’t driving in the runs I should be driving in, and I feel like the couple months before the All Star break I started finding my groove a little bit with driving runs in,” Arenado said. “I take a lot of pride in RBIs. Like I said, there’s no different mindset. I just go out there and try to have a good at-bat, and I’m just happy to be able to do it.”
In the first four completed years of his Major League career, Arenado has accumulated four Gold Gloves, two Silver Sluggers, two Wilson Defensive Player of the Year honors, four NL Player of the Weeks, one other Player of the Month and three All-Star appearances, including his first ASG start in Miami this year.
For now, he’s keeping all that hardware in a safe place until he gets a place of his own.
“My mom has it,” Arenado said. “It’s at home, and I think [the awards are] like in a drawer. I don’t even know. My parents have them. I don’t have a house yet, so when I do, I’ll probably take it all out. But they all mean a lot. They’re all meaningful. Obviously, the Gold Gloves are pretty high up and Silver Sluggers, but Player of the Months are big. I think I’ve only had one of those, and it was in 2015 in like September.”
Despite all the recognition that he’s gotten in his relatively short career already, Arenado stays humble by keeping his head in the game and his focus on the good of the team, always. That, he said, has been key to his success.
“I think it’s been huge,” Arenado said. “If we win, we win, and that’s all that matters. When you have those mindsets about the team and just trying to help the team win, I think really good things happen. I think that’s the good thing about us. We’re winning ballgames. It’s easy to think about the team now more than in years past. You’re like, ‘Man, I hope I drive in 100,’ because you don’t know what’s going to happen. Those are bad mindsets to have going into baseball games. The fact that we’re winning, the focus is on the team.”
Of course, the Rockies sat at a 61-46 record heading into Wednesday night’s game against the New York Mets, so the team’s prosperity certainly helps his case.
“We had a month over .500 again, and to know that I helped that out, it means a lot,” Arenado said. “I just want to be a winning player and I want to be on a winning team, that’s why I put in the work that I do. That’s why I work so hard, is for these moments right now.”
