Hinshaw at ease in Travs' year 2

Outfielder Chad Hinshaw spent most of spring training with the parent club Los Angeles Angels, but he will again start the season in the minors with the Arkansas Travelers.
Outfielder Chad Hinshaw spent most of spring training with the parent club Los Angeles Angels, but he will again start the season in the minors with the Arkansas Travelers.

Minor-league baseball players aren't given many updates on their professional progress.

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Arkansas Travelers outfielder Chad Hinshaw (left) is ranked as the 10th best prospect in the Los Angeles Angels organization.

"They don't want people to get complacent," said Chad Hinshaw, an Arkansas Travelers outfielder.

Arkansas vs. Midland

WHEN 7:10 p.m. Thursday

WHERE Dickey-Stephens Park, North Little Rock

RADIO KARN-AM, 920, in central Arkansas

WEBSITE travs.com

TICKETS $12 box, $8 reserved ($5 kids), $6 general admission ($4 kids)*

*A $1 charge will be added for tickets purchased the day of the game.

As a result, players such as Hinshaw search for other clues to confirm their careers are on a positive trajectory.

Hinshaw took the fact that he spent all of spring training in major league camp with the Los Angeles Angels as a positive. Rather than playing every day on a back field in Tempe, Ariz., he was sharing a clubhouse with Mike Trout and Albert Pujols.

Another positive came Sunday, when Hinshaw was taking at bats at Angels Stadium in Anaheim, Calif. Hinshaw went 0 for 2 with a strikeout in the Angels' victory over the Chicago Cubs in the exhibition finale, but he left with plenty of advice from big-league players, as well as a reassured confidence in where he's at beginning his third full season with the Angels.

"It definitely showed that I can play with those guys," said Hinshaw, who hit .167 in 10 spring training games. "But, also that I have a lot to work on. So, I took both away from it. I'm not far from them, but there are things to work on."

Two days after hitting in the same lineup as big-league mainstays Kole Calhoun and C.J. Cron, Hinshaw, 25, was in his 2016 home -- the clubhouse at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock getting ready for his second season at Class AA Arkansas.

Hinshaw will likely play center field and hit first, second or third when the Travs host the Midland RockHounds at 7:10 p.m. Thursday. He said he wasn't disappointed about returning to Arkansas but upbeat and excited about the momentum of his career over the past eight months.

Hinshaw, a 15th-round pick out of Illinois State in 2013, hit .289 with 17 doubles, 1 home run and 26 RBI in 71 games last season for the Travs, half of which was spent rehabbing in Arizona from a thumb injury suffered while stealing a base. He then hit .349 in the Arizona Fall League, a performance that persuaded Baseball America to rank him the 10th best prospect in the Angels' organization.

Mark Parent, the Travs' first-year manager, said he's intrigued by the speed of Hinshaw, who stole 27 bases for the Travs last season..

"That's a good tool. I like that tool. I wish I had that tool," Parent said of Hinshaw's speed. "It's a tool he needs. He needs to bunt, he needs to hit balls out, he needs to run balls down, and he just needs to mature as a player and know himself."

Hinshaw's work in the fall encompassed 63 at bats over 15 games in October and November, which followed a Class AA debut interrupted by injury.

Hinshaw, 6-1, 205, was hitting .258 through his first 27 games with the Travs when, during the second game of a doubleheader with Northwest Arkansas on May 10, he was thrown out trying to steal second base. Hinshaw jammed his thumb on the play, and he later learned he had torn the ulnar collateral ligament. He had to leave North Little Rock for the Angels' spring training facility in Arizona to prepare for surgery.

Hinshaw spent six weeks out of a lineup and played eight games in Arizona before returning to the Travs on July 22. He hit .306 after his return, which set up his positive fall.

"That was, shoot, almost half the season," Hinshaw said. "So, I just wanted to get my at bats in and figure out who I am."

Hinshaw said figuring that out had nothing to do with statistics, but he admitted to being pleased whenever he would glance at how he was doing.

"At the end of the season, when the numbers are there, it's nice, it's always good," he said. "It's more just working on my development as a player because, at the end of the day, numbers in the minor leagues mean nothing if you never make it."

Sports on 04/06/2016

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