NEW YORK — Corey Dickerson knew he had to go home as soon as he heard the news. Dickerson's father, Tim, was about to leave for the hospital when Corey called to wish him well on Father's Day.
Tim had open-heart surgery when Corey was a child, has undergone carotid endarterectomy and was hospitalized in April for pneumonia. He was scheduled to undergo a cardiac ablation in August. However, doctors decided he needed surgery as soon as possible to correct a flutter in his heart.
Corey left the Pirates to return to Mississippi to be with his family and returned to the team on Saturday. Meanwhile, his father was released from the ICU this past weekend. The ordeal has weighed on Corey for two months.
"I’ve had a lot of family stuff going on outside of here, where it kind of weighs on you a little more than people understand," Dickerson told DKPittsburghSports.com Tuesday at Citi Field. "The game is important. When other things are going on, it’s really hard to focus sometimes on the task at hand. It kind of weighs you down when you’re not doing well."
The 29-year-old is batting .296/.333/.442 with 32 RBIs and is a candidate to represent the Pirates in the All-Star Game. He began choking up on the bat handle in an attempt to improve his contact rate against four-seam fastballs, and the experiment has worked.
His contact rate has increased by nearly 10 percent from last season, and he's struck out only 36 times in 70 games. It's come at a price, though. Dickerson has only five home runs — he hasn't hit one since May 4 — after hitting at least 24 in each of the past two years. That, Dickerson said, has contributed to his current 5-for-29 slump. His fifth-inning walk Monday night was his first in 95 at-bats.
He's now experimenting with ways to maintain his two-strike, Barry Bonds-like approach, while also driving the ball more. The process hasn't weighed on him, though. On one hand, Dickerson is content with his progress hitting four-seam fastballs and his improved chase rate. On the other hand, he had 17 home runs at this time last year, and he knows value is often determined by power numbers, including in All-Star balloting.
He insists he's content with his other numbers, yet he's still trying to incorporate his swing from last season — the one that produced six home runs in a six-game span last May — during batting practice.
"I watch him swing in BP and I think there’s times where we’ve revisited just going up, seeing the ball good and taking that whack at it, not a swing," Clint Hurdle said. "He went though a really good place defending the strike zone, hitting with two strikes and it became about hitting with two strikes. ... Again, go up there with bad intentions. His power numbers are down. He had his first walk in 95 at-bats yesterday. You don’t need to tiptoe around numbers. … That’s real from what we’ve seen the last two years. ... I think right now there’s a different type of approach in his head with where he wants to hit the ball and we’re just trying to get him a little more intentional up there."
Dickerson was receptive to that message, saying, "It’s hard to say homers aren’t important but I want to impact the game as much as possible. If you’re voting for a guy, the public, you see a guy hitting .270 with 15 and you see a guy hitting .300 with five or seven, they automatically look at the home run numbers. My numbers are increased when you look deeper."
Dickerson was hesitant to make any changes, though. After all, he was batting .341 at the end of May. But Dickerson wants to be the best. He studies other hitters such as Mike Trout to try to improve his own approach or in search of answers. He can recite the statistics of almost every other Pirates hitter — he listed the chase rate of several teammates — and will alter his swing to try to improve his own numbers.
That constant pursuit of perfection, though, became more challenging when his brother, Craig, called him during the Pirates' four-game series in Philadelphia in April.
Craig told Corey their father was hospitalized and diagnosed with pneumonia. Tim's atrial flutter caused fluid to fill his lungs, and doctors thought surgery would be necessary to correct the issue. "He has blockages, but they can’t do surgery because he’s older," Corey said. "With kidney problems, too, it’s hard to put him under and stuff like that. What can they do to try to figure things out? That’s the tough part. You feel kind of helpless, especially when you’re here. You know he’s going through it. It’s really tough."
Corey was planning to leave the team to be with family when his father's health took a turn for the better. The problems have worsened in recent weeks, but Corey wasn't aware of the issues until he called on Father's Day. The procedure went as planned, yet Tim's health issues are expected to persist.
Dickerson is not in the lineup Tuesday night against the Mets, but he used that old swing to hit a few balls off the facade of the upper deck at Citi Field. Despite his recent production, Dickerson isn't worried about his approach on the field. He's weighing risk versus reward with trying to drive the ball more. Doing so could disrupt his timing and lead to more strikeouts.
However, he'll continue to pursue perfection, all while thinking of what his father is enduring at home.
"It was important to make sure I was there," he said. "You never know what can happen. It’s tough playing this game and being away from your family."