This story was excerpted from Kennedi Landry’s Rangers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
ARLINGTON -- No, that’s not a vampire playing first base for the Rangers.
The guy with the bright red eyes is Jake Burger, who is experimenting with amber contact lenses to help him see the ball better in darker closed-roof stadiums.
“Houston and Seattle, especially with the roof closed, it's dark and I feel like I can't pick up spin in those places,” Burger explained. “I was like, ‘OK, let's try and figure something out.’ And I came up with these. I'm trying to learn how to put contacts in and get comfortable with them. I thought about getting the Oakley Amber glasses, but I don't like the nose piece when I'm hitting.”
Burger, who has 20/20 vision, was sent the contacts ahead of the Rangers’ exhibition games against the Royals on March 23-24. He’s not wearing them in games yet, though he continues to experiment during batting practice and fielding drills. The brightening effect is meant to help in those darker ballparks.
Burger said he thinks he remembers a player in Minnesota last year using them, though he couldn’t recall who that may have been.
“They're like blue light blocking, in a sense,” Burger said. “Everything kind of looks green to me. I’m figuring it out. I guess if the first game I wear them, I punch out horribly, then it's affecting something badly.”
Burger is correct in that he does struggle in some of those ballparks, though he does say that the Rangers’ home of Globe Life Field is maybe “too bright” at times, and therefore he doesn't need the lenses there. He’s 4-for-34 in at Houston’s Daikin Park and 4-for-22 in Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, which account for two of his four worst OPS marks among all big league ballparks.
He mentioned other indoor parks like Milwaukee, Arizona and Tampa Bay as ones where he’s also affected.
“He's used it during BP and stuff in the cages, so we'll see what happens if he ever uses it in a game,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “Guys wear glasses -- I wore different lenses all the time with shadows in Milwaukee back in the day, amber lenses or those yellow glasses. So I think it's just another way to try to figure out shadows or dome-like dark places, that type of thing. I haven't seen contact lenses like that, other than like Halloween probably. But he likes them, so he's trying to get used to them.”