DENVER — Casey Schmitt couldn’t find the right words to describe Giants rookie outfielder Drew Gilbert. So he looked to a teammate for help.
“He’s just … how would you describe Drew?” said Schmitt, turning to Dom Smith at the next locker.
“A lightning bolt?” Smith said. “Like, if you put a lightning bolt in a little ball.”
“He’s like a little ball of fire, just waiting to explode,” Schmitt said. “We love it. It’s good fire.”
Generations of major league rookies have been taught to be seen and not heard. Sometimes, even being seen too frequently was considered a bad thing. You were supposed to know your place and speak when spoken to. These days, even though a hundred unwritten rules continue to govern behavioral norms, major league clubhouses are not the repressive environments that they used to be. And that makes things a lot easier when you’re a 5-foot-9 rookie with an irrepressible streak.
“There’s some things he’s gonna have to learn along the way,” said Matt Chapman, the Giants’ unofficial captain. “But I’d rather that someone is fired up to be here and cheering on their teammates and excited when big things happen. I’d rather have someone like that than someone who doesn’t get excited for their teammates. Baseball is a little different now than when I started playing, but I think if it’s done the right way, it’s fine.
“He’s funny,” Chapman added. “We like him.”
The Giants deployed their little ball of lightning-fire Monday afternoon at Coors Field and the Colorado Rockies couldn’t be sure what hit them. Facing his former University of Tennessee teammate, Chase Dollander, Gilbert smacked a two-run home run in the third inning, flipped his bat down the first-base line, singled in each of his next three plate appearances, and fueled a series of emotive, over-the-top dugout celebrations that had all of his teammates laughing throughout an 8-2 victory.
Rafael Devers hit the hardest home run by a Giant in the 11-year Statcast era, a 114.5 mph shot that cleared the fence almost before he left the batter’s box, and Willy Adames added his 26th home run of the season as the Giants kept the power supply humming while winning their road trip opener. The Giants have hit a home run in 15 consecutive games, which is their longest stretch since 2001, when Barry Bonds broke the single-season record by hitting 73 of them.
Bonds, of course, also stands as the last Giant to hit 30 home runs in a season, when he won the last of his seven NL MVP Awards in 2004. Adames will break that two-decade drought if he can hit four more in the club’s 24 remaining games.
Adames can be sure of one thing: Whenever he hits a home run, Gilbert will be waiting in the dugout to greet him with a shouting, chest-bumping reaction that might better reflect a raucous collegiate dugout.
“I don’t know if you can tell, but he’s got a lot of energy,” Adames said. “The guys like that. We need that in the dugout. He brings it every day.”
“He’s like a little ball of fire, just waiting to explode,” Casey Schmitt said of Drew Gilbert. (Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images)
Gilbert made an immediate impression in his major league debut when he had the temerity to swing at a 3-0 pitch. On Monday, he applauded all the way from first to second while advancing on a balk. When he stands in the outfield grass, he doesn’t merely await the next pitch. He takes a seemingly spring-loaded jump, catching at least 18 inches of air, and lands with his weight centered at the moment of potential contact.
And when a teammate hits a home run? The TV truck knows by now to have a camera on him in the dugout. Adames might be the cheerleader-in-chief on this team — he’s the first on the scene after a walk-off hit — but Gilbert is emerging as the Giants’ official hype man.
“Man, I mean, he came up a month ago? And I feel like I’ve known him forever,” Schmitt said. “He’s hilarious. He’s so comfortable in his own skin. He fires everyone up. Just being around him, he’s a nut.”
Gilbert’s zest for life might have been influenced by a childhood that was often reduced to the size of a sterile hospital room. He underwent six surgeries as a second grader because of recurring intestinal blockages. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic, a 90-minute drive from his home in Stillwater, Minn., never pinpointed a cause; the disorder was believed to have a genetic component because Gilbert’s sister, Molly, suffered from the same ailment. Gilbert didn’t have any issues after the seventh grade and made a full recovery, but the ordeal took away a sizable piece of his childhood.
“It was something that held me out of school for most of first grade through fifth grade, kind of felt like I wasn’t a normal kid,” Gilbert told ESPN in 2022 on the night the Houston Astros selected him in the first round. “Taught me how to be tough, and it kind of gave me an edge that I’ve carried with me. Kind of felt like you’ve been given your life back.”
Baseball was always central to life in the Gilbert household. His mother, Cindy, a former gymnast at Winona State, worked nearly two decades for the Minnesota Twins while running the players’ family room. She essentially babysat the players’ children during games, and Drew often came to the Metrodome and then Target Field to help out. As a lifelong Twins fan, it was a thrill to not only meet but become acquainted with players like Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and Michael Cuddyer.
“As a kid, I was starstruck,” Gilbert said. “But as you grow up and get older, you realize they’re normal humans. Being here now, I feel like a normal human. It’s a crazy lifestyle, no doubt. It’s always going to be a little different, being in the big leagues. But there’s perspective, too.”
Cindy Gilbert isn’t sure how much her son’s health issues influenced his all-out style of play on the baseball field. From the first day of Little League, that’s just the way he’s approached the game.
“Always gave 110 percent, always passionate,” Cindy Gilbert said. “He just wanted to live life, play baseball and appreciate it.”
Gilbert was a two-way star at Stillwater High and was recruited more heavily as a pitcher, where his 2600-rpm curveball and riding fastball dazzled on the showcase circuits. He had pledged to play at Oregon State before a coaching change led him to reopen his commitment. Tennessee coach Tony Vitello and his staff had just arrived in Knoxville and were looking to put a fresh stamp on a program that had been mired in also-ran status for years in the Southeastern Conference. Gilbert was exactly the kind of player they were looking for.
“He just wanted to live life, play baseball and appreciate it,” Cindy Gilbert said of her son. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
“I get a call from Coach V and he says, ‘Get off the road, we got a difference maker coming to town,’” said Josh Elander, the Vols’ associate head coach and recruiting coordinator. “Coach V got on a flight, sat down with Drew and his family in Minnesota and he just clicked with us. Everyone thought he was the next weekend arm, throwing 94-97 mph from the left side. I mean, he was a sure thing on the mound. But he wanted to hit. As a Northern kid, maybe he was a little raw. We saw he had the hand speed and the ability. So we adjusted on the fly.”
Instead of a Billy Wagner clone, the Vols got an All-American three-year starter in center field and lineup catalyst whom Elander credited with changing the program.
“You could argue he’s the most important player we’ve had in the program in 10 years,” said Elander, who has helped coach the Vols to a 2024 College World Series championship as well as five consecutive NCAA super regionals. “That’s the kind of impact he made on the field and off the field.”
The Vols are making a major impact on major league rosters. Gilbert became the 10th Vols player from the Vitello era to reach the big leagues and the eighth from Tennessee’s 2022 team. The Rockies, fittingly given that UT’s fight song is “Rocky Top,” have three of them: Dollander, outfielder Jordan Beck and right-hander Seth Halvorsen.
The Giants are assembling their own Power T alumni society. When they acquired Gilbert on July 30 from the New York Mets in the deal for right-hander Tyler Rogers, they also received former Vols right-hander Blade Tidwell. Former Vols shortstop Maui Ahuna, a fourth-rounder in 2023, is at Low-A Eugene, and Low-A San Jose infielder Gavin Kilen was their first-round pick this past July.
Tennessee’s program has become synonymous with more than its success in producing big leaguers. The Vols, encouraged by their coaching staff, play the game with a ton of polarizing, bat-flipping swagger — traits that Gilbert imprinted on the program as much as the program imprinted them on him.
“The way we do things here is very simple,” Elander said. “It’s very tough to get on the field between the lines. We want to create an environment where competition is king. So if you’ve earned the right to be on the field and wear the Power T, we want you to be comfortable and play their game. With bat flips or whatnot, we give our guys a little more leash here, but they are incredibly respectful of the game.
“We didn’t feel like we were invited to the party in the SEC. We were just kind of there. Well, if you’re not invited, you gotta kick the door down at some point, show up each day and know we have a chance to win. Instead of thinking it was possible, they knew it was possible. I can’t describe how much Drew had to do with that.”
The Vols coaching staff had to create a special rule that only applied to Gilbert: He wasn’t allowed to run into the outfield wall.
“Even in practice or scrimmages, he made those ‘take your breath away’ plays where it was full speed into the wall,” Elander said. “We were worried he’d have to carry him off the field.”
Gilbert was almost carried off the field as a hero after his walk-off grand slam beat Wright State in the NCAA Tournament opener in 2021. His bat-throwing, helmet-chucking, cavorting trot around the bases went so viral that fans began printing “Bat Flip King” T-shirts. Gilbert turned the sensation into a charity, Bat Flip 4 Kids, that raised money to buy toys for hospitalized children and gift cards for their families and caregivers.
“It’d be a random Monday and he’d grab a couple teammates and go down to Fort Sanders Medical Center or UT Medical Center,” Elander said. “He’d take some gifts and meet some of the kids. He’d just do it on his own.”
“He could not be a better, nicer kid,” Vitello told the Houston Chronicle in 2023. “He’s got a lot of people that don’t like him in the country, but if you ask the guys … that played with him and got to be around him every day, I guarantee you they all love him and they love to go to battle with him.”
Gilbert stepped to the plate Monday afternoon after Dollander hit Patrick Bailey with a pitch to start the third inning. Neither Dollander nor Gilbert cracked a smile. But Bailey knew he’d be the last thing on the pitcher’s mind. When he stole second base, practically walking the rest of the way there after getting a massive jump, Dollander nodded his head in acknowledgment. Then he threw a fastball on the inner half that Gilbert pelted over the right field scoreboard.
Gilbert didn’t make eye contact with Dollander as he twirled his bat. It was a little understated by his standards, but a bat flip is a bat flip.
“Fiery dude, plays with passion,” Dollander said. “He got me and obviously he did what he usually does when he gets somebody. Bat flips, stuff like that, that’s just who he is. I loved him to death and this won’t be the last time we face each other, so I’m looking forward to the next one.”
Gilbert finished his home run trot, descended the dugout step, powered through a gauntlet of teammates and screamed as Chapman grabbed him by the throat. Gilbert said they do something similar as part of an over-the-top hype ritual prior to the first pitch. Nobody in the Giants clubhouse would detail everything involved in those rituals, except to say that Gilbert made sure everyone took the field loose and laughing.
Us watching the home run: 😤
Us watching the celebration: 😧 pic.twitter.com/yGtv4Zne9b— SFGiants (@SFGiants) September 1, 2025
“He’s just funny,” right-hander Logan Webb said. “I can’t tell you why. He just makes me laugh every single day.”
“It’s everything,” Adames said. “The things he says, the things he does. He’s just crazy. I can’t tell you examples. It’d be over the line, way, way over the line. But he is definitely funny.”
The goofball often has a place on a winning team. When the Giants were on the path to winning the World Series in 2012, infielder Mike Fontenot would celebrate victories by doing cartwheels au naturel in the clubhouse. The 2010 World Series champions were motivated by Aubrey Huff and his Rally Thong. While those traditions are best left in the past, there have been countless days this season when the Giants clubhouse could’ve used a little levity and goofy energy.
Gilbert knows he has to police his enthusiasm now that he’s not playing for SEC championships. A single smear of eye black will suffice instead of war paint covering both cheeks. But he said he cannot totally abandon the in-your-face style of play he helped bring to the Vols program. Balled-up lightning is always a discharge waiting to happen.
Drew Gilbert’s reaction yesterday after Flores’ HR.
Gilbert, RF, hit his first MLB HR the day prior. pic.twitter.com/0wncwWXdSE— pattiinnyc (@PattiMets) August 19, 2025
“Shoot, when I worked this hard, why wouldn’t I play like my hair’s on fire?” Gilbert said of his approach in college. “The opponent hasn’t worked harder than me. I know that. So why does he deserve more than I do? It was awesome. I miss it every single day and I’d like to think I didn’t take it for granted.
“And I enjoy watching other people’s success on my team. I don’t care who is. It’s awesome because you see the day-to-day work all these guys put in to play in such a difficult environment. The big leagues are as hard as it gets, you know? So for my teammates to have success out there is fulfilling for me too.”
(Top photo of Drew Gilbert, right, celebrating with Patrick Bailey: Justin Edmonds / Getty Images)
