Change in scenery pays off for Flores

Nick Christensen

Friday, May 28, 2004 | 9:02 a.m.

Last year's Sacramento River Cats won nearly 100 games, the PCL championship, and a place in the league's record books as one of its greatest teams ever.

And although Las Vegas 51s utilityman Jose Flores was a part of that squad, it didn't do anything to feed his love of the game.

In fact, it almost sucked him into retirement.

"It was a long spring, I was going to retire, things weren't looking bright," Flores said. "I was hoping I could get back with them. I was frustrated. I didn't know my direction in the game."

Many of his Sacramento teammates were promoted to Oakland in the offseason, but Flores, who was selected as the River Cats' "Most Versatile Player" last year, was left behind.

But instead of throwing in the towel after a 10-year minor league career, Flores, 30, got a break from someone else who rose up from the Athletics system.

Paul DePodesta, an assistant general manager with Oakland, had just been hired to take the GM role for the Dodgers. That gave Flores the "in" he was looking for.

"DePodesta knew what I could do. I figured I'd play out a year and see how it goes," he said. "I was lost; in that state of mind, I didn't know where my game was going. I needed someone to tell me things would be changing and I felt like I had a team to go to."

Still, Flores struggled to find his groove, even with the 51s. Through the first month of the season, Flores was batting .240, on track for his worst batting average at the Triple-A level.

But according to manager Terry Kennedy, the coaching staff noticed some kinks in Flores' at bats.

Hitting coach George Hendrick saw that Flores was hitting a lot of fly balls. Hendrick told Flores how to work on using his top hand on the bat to turn fly balls into line drives.

After a dismal stretch of hitting .194 in late April and early May, Flores made a dramatic improvement, going .435 over his last 13 games and lifting his batting average to .307, second to Jayson Werth, who is on a rehab assignment from the Dodgers.

Flores suffered a groin injury earlier this week at Colorado Springs and is expected to go on the disabled list.

And although this year's 51s team continues to trod along with the league's third-worst record following Thursday's 4-3 loss at Colorado Springs, Flores said he has no plans to retire, or to not retire, after this season. He said he does know he'd like to go into coaching once his playing career ends.

"I would like to coach, or manage. I don't know the first thing about it, but I've talked to some people, (and) they told me I'd be a good manager," Flores said. "But I have so much time still on the field."