All hail Zorilla!

To hear Joe Maddon tell it, mild-mannered Ben Zobrist must have stepped into a phone booth somewhere between Durham and Tampa Bay last summer, a la Clark Kent, and emerged as the power-hitting beast he has become - complete with a nickname coined by his manager.

"He went to the minor leagues as Ben Zobrist," said Maddon, "and all of a sudden he comes back and he's Zorilla."

And now, several months later, Maddon is having a difficult time keeping him out of the lineup. As the Rays' offense collectively flailed away for most of the past week or so, Zobrist was the one guy swinging the bat well.

Transformed from shortstop-of-the-future to superutility player last season because of his adaptability on defense, Zobrist has become a legitimate offensive threat. His bat is now sufficiently potent that Maddon tries to get him in there just about every day, whether starting in right field or filling in for a starter getting a break somewhere else on the field.

It's just another in a line of chances the Rays have taken - hey, let's see how well this guy can play the outfield - that has turned out brilliantly. But Maddon doesn't even pretend to claim he foresaw Zobrist's evolution at the plate. "No," said the manager. "Not at all."

The transformation seemed to come quickly, on the heels of a final 11-game stint at Durham last summer that saw him go 20-for-37. Recalled to Tampa Bay for the fourth time last season Aug. 5, he smashed seven homers the rest of the way - including four the final weekend of the regular season in Detroit.

This from a guy who had 22 homers in 1,531 career at-bats between the majors and minors entering 2008.

But the pieces actually fell into place over time, according to Zobrist. The process started in motion after the Rays acquired him from the Astros in July 2006. A prospect at that time, he had always hit for a good average - over .300 every year in Houston's minor-league system. Yet he was a self-described "straight slap hitter" at the time.

"Every once in a while I'd catch one out front and hit a homer," he said.

As soon as he joined the Rays, he said, instructors encouraged him to make more of an effort to drive the ball. Rays hitting coach Steve Henderson urged him to be more aggressive at the plate, taking advantage of a 6-foot-3, 200-pound frame he wasn't using.

"He's large, he's a big guy," Maddon said, "and he was a big guy who was hitting like a little guy."

So Zobrist tried, and got the results he wanted while in the minors. But during his stints in the big leagues in 2006, 2007 and early 2008 he often looked timid, sometimes feeble, at the plate.

"Almost afraid to make an out," he said, "and you do just that."

As he continued to grapple with major-league pitching last summer, he finally got one last piece of advice that made a difference. James Shields pulled him aside and told him how he would pitch Zobrist if he was facing him. Zobrist likes the ball in, but until he showed a pitcher he could drive the ball to the opposite field, he was going to see a steady stream of pitches on the outer half of the plate that left him flustered.

He thought about that when he went back to Durham in July, and along with some alterations to his swing he had been working on since the start of the season - holding his hands lower in his stance, among other things - everything "just kind of erupted."

It's still going. Ben Zobrist, the guy who hit .155 with Tampa Bay just two years ago, is suddenly a run-producing force in a group that already had plenty of star power. And he hopes his sudden indispensability will keep him in that lineup regularly, figuring his results at the plate will only improve with a steady stream of at-bats.

"You don't have to focus so much on getting your timing and seeing the ball and all that stuff," he said. "You can focus a little bit more on what the pitcher's trying to do to you."

And you can bet that pitchers are focusing a lot more closely on Zobrist now than they ever have.