While Espinosa has been solid as a right-handed hitter during his big league career, it's his results from the left side of the plate that have frustrated fans and perplexed scouts. Espinosa's career batting average in the big leagues is 49 points lower left-handed than it is right-handed, and his on-base percentage is 40 points lower. Over the last couple years, Espinosa noticed his left-handed swing path changing. Instead of using his powerful hands to whip through the strike zone, letting them drive the swing, he says he was using his legs too much, and his back side was dropping, resulting in a long, uppercut type of swing. Largely thanks to an offseason approach he learned when rehabbing the shoulder, Espinosa has now focused on hitting hard ground balls and line drives, driving towards the ball and attacking it with his hands. "That's what's helping me this year," Espinosa said. "I'm getting myself in better counts because I'm attacking the ball and I'm ready to hit and I'd go, 'Oh, bad pitch.' Last year, at times, I'd try to see the ball first and react and then I'd be jumpy or I'd be late. Everything would mess up in my swing because I was trying to hit the ball the wrong way. ... "Everyone said maybe it was a blessing in disguise that I couldn't lift hard this offseason because of my shoulder, that I had to rehab and had to do smaller things to focus more on baseball things and not on lifting and getting strong. And it could be that. The last two years, everything was power, power, power, and I was never a power hitter growing up. I ran into that when I got to pro ball. For whatever reason, I don't know why, in pro ball I started driving the ball. I don't even know why in the last two years, my swing dropped the way it did. "My shoulder had been bothering me for a couple years, and I think I told you guys, I had mentioned to them, even at the beginning of last year, 'Hey, I want to get my shoulder checked out. There's something wrong.' And so just to feel healthy, to have the confidence to know that I'm all right, that I can do it, mentally, is probably the biggest deal. I know right now left-handed that I can go out there and I feel like I can hit anybody. That's how I feel. So when mentally, you're in that mindset, that's probably the biggest thing you need in baseball is the mindset to go up there and know that you can compete with anybody." And for a guy who is incredibly hard on himself when he fails, a guy who used to watch and re-watch tape of his unsuccessful at-bats searching for the reason for his failure in that moment, that confidence can be a major factor. The results in spring training obviously mean absolutely nothing and it's a new ballgame, so to speak, starting tomorrow. And while Espinosa's shoulder feels great now, there's always a chance he lands on it wrong or tweaks something, and surgery is then required. But Espinosa says he doesn't go into opening day this year wondering whether his shoulder is healthy. He isn't questioning his swing or the approach that he's taking at the plate. He says he feels like himself again. "I've always, my whole life, been a better left-handed hitter," Espinosa said. "So the last two years, struggling left-handed, it was like I didn't know what was going on. So, yeah, to just have the confidence to go out there left-handed and drive the ball again, and with ease, not swinging hard, not striking out a lot. I feel great. So it did give me confidence, yeah. "Obviously, am I going to hit .390 or whatever it was (this spring)? No. But it showed what I'm capable of, a short stint of what possibly could happen, yeah."