Heyward's new "old" swing, and his contact...

JP Hochbaum

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Early sample size again, but Heyward went back to his old swing he had with the Braves. SO far he has has the second highest hard contact percentage of his career. The two years he had similar hard contact was 2010 and 2012. Those years he had over 80 RBI's and averaged 23 homers, with a 5 offensive WAR.

His slugging percentage doesn't show it but he is driving the ball more than he did in the past two years.
 

CSF77

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Reverse images from his early swing looked like Frank Thomas textbook. What is morphed into looked slap hitter.

No idea who broke him so bad.
 

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Interesting that he regrips during his swing. Every hitting coach would hate that. But how can you argue with Heyward the Hitting Machine?
 

Diehardfan

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He's actually doing even better than he appears....the guy still hits more hard hit balls right at someone than any other player I've ever seen. If his bad luck ever turns around.....
 

fatbeard

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Reverse images from his early swing looked like Frank Thomas textbook. What is morphed into looked slap hitter.

No idea who broke him so bad.

His bat was noticeably faster when he first came up.

[video=youtube;-IMtEiODbjo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IMtEiODbjo[/video]

 

anotheridiot

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just look at where he is contacting the ball in the picture on that article, its basically past him.

I sure hope this look the opposite way catches on from last game. The only way Jason will stop hitting it harder than anyone else can into outs is by getting them to stop shifting.
 

CSF77

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just look at where he is contacting the ball in the picture on that article, its basically past him.

I sure hope this look the opposite way catches on from last game. The only way Jason will stop hitting it harder than anyone else can into outs is by getting them to stop shifting.

That was from 2017. pix from 2016. 2017 rework looked like crap in general. Looked like a slap hitter.

Basically he was on his front foot vs his rear. So his balance was forward.

Then his lead elbow was high and extended vs low and tight. Which is where the long swing comes into play.

If you look at Mauer it is text book. Elbow down and tight. And on hip rotation his lead arm retains that low bend and tight to the body vs Heywards looked like a injury in the making with his front arm swinging like a log.

Mechanically speaking if your lead arm is strait it pushes the bat back naturally thus his bat tailing behind him when his hands get to the plate.

Then you look at the connection point: Mauer made connection by his front knee vs Heryward at his rear hip.

Again this ties to mechanics.

But I wouldn't call him fixed yet. He had many flaws going in and I'm not sure what that train wreck was last offseason of a fix.

Just because he is hitting the ball hard and banged a dinger means little with out seeing new analysis to support a legit adjustment.
 

beckdawg

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I'm not one to talk about swing mechanics because to be blunt I really don't know shit. But I will say this. If his swing is the same as atlanta then something else is different. Look at his flyball rates comparative to his ground ball rates. They are way higher than his career. For example, his GB/FB rate usually was betweent 1.5-2 which is 3:2 GB/FB to 2:1. This season he's at 0.65 or almost 1:2 GB/FB.

I've already discussed this at length else where so I'll just lead with the upshot. Essentially what killed him in 2016/17 is he hit as many ground balls as he ever did in ATL/STL but he hit more of them(fewer K's and walks) and he hit weaker contact. That's why his batting average fell since weak ground balls are easier to field. On the contrary, this year he's hitting almost everything in the air. Problem is his line drive rate as plummeted. My read on that is he's adjust his launch angle(stat cast showed about 3 degree increase over 2017 last time I looked) but I think in doing so he's not quite gotten consistent with his swing. What I mean by that is he's not driving enough balls. If you just miss a pitch and pop it up it can become a lazy fly ball to wherever in the outfield. If you really miss it that ball becomes an infield fly. That's basically what his batted ball profile shows right now with a 8.5% line drive rate(career is 18.7 %) and a 19.2% infield fly ball rate(career is 13.6 %). You could also likely lump his HR/FB there at 7.7%(career 11.2%).

This is both good and bad in my eyes. The bad is obviously he's still not there and if people don't wanna buy him getting there based on the last 2 years I get it. But I think the good is he looks like an entirely different hitter than he's ever been before statistically. And if he starts to drive the ball more those fly balls are going to turn into doubles and homers. The HR he hit the other day was a 110 mph bullet. So, clearly he has the power he just needs to barrel more balls and I think he'll get there. Mechanics tend to be something that just takes a ton of repetition so it might not be til midseason where he gets comfortable but i think he's eventually going to go on a tear. I'm super bullish on him this year.
 

CSF77

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I'm not one to talk about swing mechanics because to be blunt I really don't know shit. But I will say this. If his swing is the same as atlanta then something else is different. Look at his flyball rates comparative to his ground ball rates. They are way higher than his career. For example, his GB/FB rate usually was betweent 1.5-2 which is 3:2 GB/FB to 2:1. This season he's at 0.65 or almost 1:2 GB/FB.

I've already discussed this at length else where so I'll just lead with the upshot. Essentially what killed him in 2016/17 is he hit as many ground balls as he ever did in ATL/STL but he hit more of them(fewer K's and walks) and he hit weaker contact. That's why his batting average fell since weak ground balls are easier to field. On the contrary, this year he's hitting almost everything in the air. Problem is his line drive rate as plummeted. My read on that is he's adjust his launch angle(stat cast showed about 3 degree increase over 2017 last time I looked) but I think in doing so he's not quite gotten consistent with his swing. What I mean by that is he's not driving enough balls. If you just miss a pitch and pop it up it can become a lazy fly ball to wherever in the outfield. If you really miss it that ball becomes an infield fly. That's basically what his batted ball profile shows right now with a 8.5% line drive rate(career is 18.7 %) and a 19.2% infield fly ball rate(career is 13.6 %). You could also likely lump his HR/FB there at 7.7%(career 11.2%).

This is both good and bad in my eyes. The bad is obviously he's still not there and if people don't wanna buy him getting there based on the last 2 years I get it. But I think the good is he looks like an entirely different hitter than he's ever been before statistically. And if he starts to drive the ball more those fly balls are going to turn into doubles and homers. The HR he hit the other day was a 110 mph bullet. So, clearly he has the power he just needs to barrel more balls and I think he'll get there. Mechanics tend to be something that just takes a ton of repetition so it might not be til midseason where he gets comfortable but i think he's eventually going to go on a tear. I'm super bullish on him this year.

It made sense that his GB went higher with weak contact with less B.B./SO. His “new swing” was a contact hitters approach swing. It netted contact hitters numbers and with a shift on it results into a low BABIP.
 

beckdawg

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It made sense that his GB went higher with weak contact with less B.B./SO. His “new swing” was a contact hitters approach swing. It netted contact hitters numbers and with a shift on it results into a low BABIP.

His groundball rate didn't go higher with weak contact though. After his first 2 years in the majors which were absurdly high ground ball rate he settled into the following rates through 2017: 44.0 %, 43.7 %, 45.5 %, 57.2 %(STL), 46.2 %(2016), 47.4 %. I mean maybe you could make the argument it's a point or so high but when i said he hit more ground balls i didn't mean the rate. I meant he physically put more balls into play because of a higher contact rate. That in turn pushed down his average because rather than walking(walk rate dropped around 2%) he was hitting more ground balls that yielded outs. The difference between that and 2018 thus far is his ground ball rate is 39.2%. His previous low was 43.7%. When I say he's "different" that's what we're talking about. A 5% change in your "best" year is substantial. His career GB rate is 49.0 %.

He's hitting .246/.333/.404 after last night. Telling you guys right now if his line drive rate(9.8% vs 2017 19.9% and career 18.7%) starts ticking up he's going to look like an entirely different hitter than even the "good" years in ATL. His previous high in fly ball rate was 2012(36.7%) and that year he had a .269/.335/.479 line and hit 27 HRs. He's currently sitting at a 51.0% fly ball rate. Now some of that improvement in line drives will have to come from his fly ball rate but if you knock off 10% of his fly ball rate and cram it into his line drive rate you'd be looking at something like a 19%/39%/42% LD/GB/FB rates. I mean if he even approach's 25 HRs for a guy who's hit 18 the past 2 full seasons it would be MASSIVE. But given the year he had in 2012 is it that difficult to believe in that sort of power given that was also his previous best year in terms of GB/FB rate?
 

JP Hochbaum

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His hard contact rate is at 33%. 3rd highest of career.
 

Parade_Rain

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just look at where he is contacting the ball in the picture on that article, its basically past him.

I sure hope this look the opposite way catches on from last game. The only way Jason will stop hitting it harder than anyone else can into outs is by getting them to stop shifting.
You should consider the angle from which the picture was taken. It's not directly from the side. The ball was not "basically past him".
 

CSF77

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You should consider the angle from which the picture was taken. It's not directly from the side. The ball was not "basically past him".

Must be a technicalsuckatality.
 

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Must be a technicalsuckatality.
The most powerful position in which to catch a ball is deep into the body, not out front. Out front is an adjustment. And I'm not defending Heyward in the slightest. The particular comment I was responding doesn't really hold up. What would hold more value than the picture is the actual video of that swing and seeing if the barrel was headed slightly up at contact. I felt for a long time that his barrel path needed improvement.
 

Diehardfan

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The most powerful position in which to catch a ball is deep into the body, not out front. Out front is an adjustment. And I'm not defending Heyward in the slightest. The particular comment I was responding doesn't really hold up. What would hold more value than the picture is the actual video of that swing and seeing if the barrel was headed slightly up at contact. I felt for a long time that his barrel path needed improvement.

Do you feel he stands too far away from the plate...I always thought that if he moved just 3 inches closer, it would help him.
 

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Do you feel he stands too far away from the plate...I always thought that if he moved just 3 inches closer, it would help him.
Yes, but he's an arm bar type of hitter, so if he moves in much, he's just going to get pounded inside and break some bats. Heyward needs to be who he is at this point. If standing off the plate is comfort for him and he has improving numbers (appears so right now) you don't mess with him. It's not something I would teach or want to see out of my players, as it isn't ideal, but perhaps Chilli just asked him to get comfortable and consider working on launch angle more than anything. If that's what occurred, then that is great instruction, imho.
 

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