The Yankees allowed Didi Gregorious to be a different hitter, and that freedom paid off:

According to Cockrell, the Diamondbacks and the Reds wanted the left-handed hitting Gregorius to hit the ball up the middle and to left field.

“There was some pop in his bat, just go ahead and get the head out,’’ Cockrell said. “He had been drilled to hit the ball on the ground. I think we just gave him the freedom that it was OK to pull the ball.’’

This sounds like the story David Ortiz tells about coming to the Red Sox.

The Twins, Ortiz says, so enthusiastically stressed small-ball tactics such as hitting behind runners that “if you moved the runner over from second base [with a groundout], you got high fives in the dugout like you just hit a home run.”

In his first at bat with the Red Sox, while batting cleanup in a spring training game, Ortiz happened to come up with a runner on second base and no outs. “I came in with that little pull, cheap-shot s—,” said Ortiz, explaining his grounder to second base on an outside sinker. “I still had the Minnesota Twins in my system.”

This time there were no high fives waiting for him in the dugout, just manager Grady Little with a word of advice. “Hey,” Little said. “Next time? Bring him in.”

Ortiz smiles at the memory. “I was like, O.K.!” he says. “I had a little more freedom than what I was used to.”

Kudos to the Yankees for seeing Gregorius’s potential and letting that develop.