If Oklahoma City Baseball Club third baseman Kody Hoese looked ahead, he’d see that his lifelong dream has never been closer.
But the 2016 Griffith graduate is focused on his day-to-day tasks as he plays in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ farm system.
“I don’t even think about the next step anymore,” Hoese said. “Once you start thinking about that, you start pressing a bit or trying to do too much. You have no control over what happens, so you might as well do your best each day and let the rest take care of itself.”
That approach helped Hoese earn his first promotion to Triple-A at the end of spring training and remains the foundation upon which he’s building the best stretch of his professional career.
Through 25 games, Hoese is Oklahoma City’s second-leading hitter with a .319 batting average and has three home runs, six doubles and 13 RBIs.
“I’m just impressed with how he goes about his business,” Oklahoma City manager Travis Barbary said. “He’s very good with his pregame routine. He spends a lot of time in the cages, and he’s the same way on the defensive side, getting work in every day with his ground ball routine. And the numbers speak for themselves. He’s having a great season to this point.”
Hoese, who went to Tulane and was the Dodgers’ first-round pick in the 2019 MLB draft, chalked up his early success to confidence. He said he’s riding the wave of self-belief that he felt building during the second half of the 2023 season.
“It’s about not getting yourself with your thoughts before you even get into the box,” he said. “There can be times when you’re second-guessing if your swing is off or that there are other things you need to work on. In reality, though, it’s not your swing. It’s just your head messing with you.”
Hoese has learned that during his roller-coaster ride of a pro career, which includes a lost season during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when minor league baseball was shelved across the country. Hoese went to the Tulsa Drillers, the Dodgers’ Double-A affiliate, the next season. But he said he struggled to regain the rhythm he had in Tulane in 2019, when he hit .391 with 23 home runs in 58 games to land on MLB radars. He hit .188 while playing in just 59 of Tulsa’s 120 games.
“It was frustrating,” he said. “I’d get hot, and then I’d get hurt, or just have some little things that would throw off my rhythm or timing. Baseball’s a rhythm, timing and consistency type of game, so anything that throws you off a little bit makes it feel like you’re back to square one. But the minor leagues are all about learning from past mistakes.”
Hoese then hit .232 in 77 games in 2022. Last year, he was batting .164 on May 25 when he started to put in extra time with Oklahoma City hitting coach Lou Iannotti each day. Hoese raised his batting average to .244 by season’s end and finished with 11 homers and 36 RBIs.
“I was showing up super early to the field for one-on-one time with him,” Hoese said. “We’d look at video and talk about what needed to happen. Changes aren’t immediate in baseball. They take time. There weren’t any mechanical changes. It was more about getting back on time with the pitcher and staying back so I could drive the ball.”
Hoese’s numbers continued to trend upward during spring training this year, when he hit .571 in six games to earn a long-awaited promotion. He got the news a few days before the start of the regular season.
“I was super excited to get out of Double-A after three years there,” he said. “I’d always wanted to get to Triple-A and see what it’s like being at a different level with all of the different ballpark atmospheres.”
Just don’t expect Hoese to start thinking about another promotion.
“If you start thinking that you’re so close, then you’ll start pressing or think that you need to do more,” he said. “When in reality, you just need to do the same things that you’ve already been doing.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter.
