Phillies’ Austin Hays struggled to focus and felt ‘mentally drained’ before his kidney infection diagnosis

Austin Hays felt run down — exhausted, actually — for days on end. He didn’t think much of it. He was pushing hard to recover from a strained left hamstring. He figured fatigue was normal.

“Just a heavy workload trying to get back,” he said. “You know?”

But it didn’t go away. Actually, it got worse. Even after he rejoined the Phillies’ lineup on Aug. 23 in Kansas City, Hays was drained. His muscles ached. He didn’t run a fever, but his head pounded. And he had difficulty focusing — “brain fog,” as he put it. When the team returned home for the last week of August, the left fielder’s wife began to notice.

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“She’s like, ‘You don’t seem like yourself. I’ve never seen you like this,’” Hays told The Inquirer on Wednesday. “I was having a hard time having conversations with people. They’d say something to me and I just couldn’t form thoughts. I was so mentally drained. Just not myself.”

The diagnosis came a few days later, after Hays woke up in the team hotel in Toronto on Sept. 2 and went to a hospital with Phillies athletic trainer Paul Buchheit. Hays had a kidney infection, likely caused by something he ate, and needed to begin taking antibiotics. Immediately.

“It probably had been going on for a while,” Hays said. “It was really scary. If that infection made it into my bloodstream, it’s life-threatening.”

Hays is finally feeling better. Well, relatively speaking.

When the Phillies traveled from Toronto to Miami last week, he came back to Philadelphia for additional testing to rule out a more serious, long-term issue. He has been on a two-week course of medication for about 10 days, and his white blood cell count has come back down. His cognition is back to normal, too.

If he wasn’t a baseball player, he’d be nearly 100%.

But Hays is trying to get back to playing left field every day, the role that was intended for him when he joined the Phillies on July 26 in a deadline trade with the Orioles.

It isn’t enough, then, to merely feel like a healthy 29-year-old again.

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“I feel good in my everyday life now — walking around, performing daily tasks,” Hays said. “I feel good doing that. Now, I just need to heal as far as being a professional athlete.”

And the clock is ticking. The playoffs begin in three weeks.

Hays, placed on the injured list last week when it became evident to the Phillies’ medical staff that the infection wouldn’t resolve with 48 hours of antibiotics, resumed baseball activities this week. He’s throwing, taking swings in the batting cage, and lightly running. He initiated some weight training, too.

The Phillies believe Hays is inching closer to playing. But there isn’t a timetable, either. Unlike, say, a hamstring strain, which typically takes four to eight weeks to heal depending on the severity, Hays will progress based on how his body responds.

And Hays’ uncertain status clouds the Phillies’ outfield picture.

The initial plan called for Hays to play left field, with Brandon Marsh taking a majority of the at-bats in center, as long as Hays’ offense was deemed more valuable than Johan Rojas’ elite defense in center. Hays started 10 of 12 games after the trade, going 10-for-38 with two doubles and one homer.

Then, he strained his hamstring on Aug. 7 and missed two weeks. Upon returning, with the unidentified kidney infection sapping his energy, he was 7-for-29 with three doubles in nine games.

In Hays’ absence, Marsh and Rojas have gotten most of the starts in left field and center, respectively. The Phillies went with that alignment in the postseason last October. It’s fair to wonder if Hays has enough time to alter their plans this year.

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With the Phillies, Hays has struggled against right-handed pitchers (10-for-51, .501 OPS) compared to lefties (7-for-16, 1.126). It’s a small sample, but it’s all the Phillies have to go on. Given his limited time to return, maybe the most sensible role for Hays is the righty-hitting side of a left-field platoon with Marsh.

“It’s really unfortunate,” Hays said. “I waited three, four months into the season for the opportunity I was getting. I was feeling really good and playing well, and this just happens.”

Then again, Hays is relieved to simply be over his health scare.

“I’m really thankful that they were so willing to check everything over again and just make sure that I was OK,” Hays said. “All the numbers were trending down and going in the right direction, so we knew we were on the right antibiotic and taking the right medication for it.

“Now, I’ve just got to stay the course. It’s just a matter of, now that my body is done fighting the infection, it needs to heal my legs. I could wake up three days from now and feel like it’s there. Just got to see.”

With Kyle Schwarber (wrist) out until Friday, Bryson Stott batted leadoff in the series finale against the Rays. … Third baseman Alec Bohm has been swinging a “short bat,” according to manager Rob Thomson, but still feels pain in his strained left hand when he swings a regular bat. … Aaron Nola (12-7, 3.41 ERA) will start Friday night against Mets lefty José Quintana (8-9, 4.09).