Bobby Witt Jr. is more than just the best player on a bad team; he’s potentially on his way to becoming a superstar. Playing in his second big league season, the Kansas City Royals shortstop has 28 home runs and 39 stolen bases to go with 5.0 WAR. Projected by Eric Longenhagen as “the face of this franchise’s resurgence” during last year’s rookie campaign, he debuted at age 21 and didn’t turn 23 until this past June. And he’s been one of baseball’s best hitters in the second half, posting a .399 wOBA and 152 wRC+ since the All-Star break.

Selected second overall in the 2019 draft behind Adley Rutschman, the Colleyville, Texas native approaches his craft with a keep-it-simple attitude, at the same time continuing to hone a swing that’s always come natural to him. It’s hard to argue with success.

Witt discussed his evolution as a hitter when the Royals visited Fenway Park in August.

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David Laurila: I’ve asked a number of guys whether hitting is more of an art or more of a science. How do you view it?

Bobby Witt Jr: “I think it’s more of an art, because of the swing. So many people have different types of swings. I feel like you form your swing at a young age, and you pretty much critique it off of that. That’s how I look at it.”

Laurila: There is obviously a lot of data in today’s game. I’m sure you’ve studied your swing.

Witt Jr: “Yes, but I’m not really big into the data. I’m more of a visual learner. I see things that I like to do, whether it’s watching guys on TV, or… like, growing up, I would try to emulate guys’ swings. That was kind of how I made my swing.”

Laurila: Whose swing did you try to emulate?

Witt Jr: “Pretty much whoever I was really liking at the time. I grew up a big Red Sox fan and was always kind of smaller growing up, so Dustin Pedroia was one. I had the narrow stance with the big leg kick. I also liked watching Prince Fielder a little bit and transitioned into a toe tap. So just watching guys and seeing what they’re doing on the field, seeing what their approach was. From a young age, I was trying to emulate that to myself.” Read the rest of this entry »

Triston Casas is a studious hitter. He’s also an impactful one, as evidenced by his 19 home runs and 124 wRC+ — this after an abysmal April and a less than stellar May — in his first full big-league season. At age 23, the 6-foot-4, 250-pound first baseman profiles as a cornerstone in the Red Sox lineup. As our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote back in June, the left-handed-hitting slugger “should become a middle-of-the-order force capable of hitting 35-plus annual homers.”

Casas, whom Boston drafted with the No. 28 pick in 2018 out of Plantation, Florida’s American Heritage High School, discussed his scientific approach to hitting prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite ice-breaker questions: Do you view hitting as more of an art, or as more of a science?

Triston Casas: “It’s more of a science. There are numbers involved that can help you, and if you know how to use them accurately, they can pretty much give you a formula for how to have the most success at the plate. Every pitch has a certain characteristic based off the vertical and horizontal movement and the vertical entry angle. Your swing has a certain attack angle into the zone that has to match that pitch characteristic. If it does perfectly, you’re going to have a really good result. More importantly, if you match it, you don’t have to be perfect in terms of the timing, because you’re matching that plane.”

Laurila: A lot of hitters I’ve talked to, including Justin Turner just recently, have stressed the importance of timing.

Casas: “I think hitting is more about being on plane. To me, on plane means matching the plane of the pitch coming into the zone. Being on plane gives you a lot of margin for error. If your swing is too direct or too steep, your timing is going to have to be perfect to match the vertical entry angle of the ball into the zone, as opposed to matching it and being able to hit the ball within that 90-degree angle that allows you to hit it fair.” Read the rest of this entry »

Marcelo Mayer has a promising bat and one of the highest ceilings in the minors. No. 1 on our Red Sox Top Prospects list, and no. 9 in baseball overall, the left-handed-hitting shortstop is batting in the middle of a Double-A lineup while still five months shy of his 21st birthday. Promoted to Portland from High-A Greenville in late May, the young-for-his-level infielder is slashing .249/.318/.457 with 13 home runs and a 107 wRC+ between the two stops.

His pedigree is that of a first-rounder. Taken fourth overall by Boston in 2021 out of Chula Vista, California’s Eastlake High School, he had been projected by many prognosticators to go even higher. And for good reason. As Eric Longenhagen wrote in that year’s draft recap, Mayer presented “among the best hit/power combinations in the high school class. He’s a potential perennial All-Star.”

Mayer sat down to talk hitting prior to a recent game at Portland, Maine’s Hadlock Field.

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David Laurila: How would you describe your approach at the plate?

Marcelo Mayer: “I’m really just looking for a fastball down the middle, a good pitch to hit, and adjusting to anything else from there.” Read the rest of this entry »

To the extent that the term actually makes sense, Garrett Cooper might best be described as a professional hitter. Consistently solid yet never a star, the 32-year-old first baseman/DH has slashed .272/.341/.444 with a 116 wRC+ since becoming a mainstay in the Miami Marlins lineup in 2019. Establishing himself took time.

Selected in the sixth round of the 2013 draft by the Milwaukee Brewers out of Auburn University, Cooper was subsequently swapped to the Yankees in July 2017 — he made his big league debut a day after being dealt — only to have New York flip him to the Fish that November. Six years later, the Los Angeles-area native is firmly ensconced in Miami as a middle-of-the-order cog on an up-and-coming team.

Cooper discussed his evolution as a hitter when the Marlins visited Fenway Park in late June.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with your formative years in the game. How did you learn to hit?

Garrett Cooper: “I grew up in a family where I was the baby of seven kids and had four older brothers who played baseball. That certainly helped, and my dad also paid for hitting lessons, probably two or three times a week starting when I was 9-10 years old. Read the rest of this entry »

Marcus Semien isn’t on pace to match his career-best 2019 and 2021 numbers, but he remains a productive hitter. Two months shy of his 33rd birthday and in his second season with the Texas Rangers, the venerable middle infielder is slashing .271/.338/.438 with 11 home runs and a 115 wRC+. A key cog in the lineup for a first place club, Semien batted leadoff for the American League in last night’s All-Star Game.

Semien sat down to talk hitting during the Rangers’ recent visit to Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with your formative years in the game. How did you learn to hit?

Marcus Semien: “As a kid, I watched major league baseball. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area as a Giants fan — my dad is a Giants fan — and we always had baseball on. From there, I was imitating Barry Bonds’ swing, Jeff Kent’s swing — all those guys I used to watch as a kid. Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob Berry saw his prospect stock drop earlier this season. Highly regarded coming in, the sixth overall pick in last year’s draft had an abysmal .477 OPS in April and his .509 mark in May was barely better. Showing little resemblance to the player who’d raked first at the University of Arizona and then LSU, he fanned 41 times while logging just 25 hits, only two of which left the yard. Playing at High-A Beloit in Midwest League spring weather certainly didn’t help, but red flags were nonetheless flying. When our Miami Marlins Top Prospects list was published on May 31, Eric Longenhagen wrote that he was “content to have a hair trigger when it comes to sliding Berry because I was already skeptical… but deciding how much to slide him is challenging.” Our lead prospect analyst ultimately settled on No. 11 and a 40+ FV for the switch-hitter.

Berry’s June was markedly better. Rebounding from his two-month swoon, the 22-year-old third baseman slashed a solid .287.358/.447, with 10 of his 27 hits going for extra bases. Only one of them cleared the fence — his surprising lack of pop remains a concern — but overall, his success at the plate was much more in line with expectations. Despite understandable concerns, he remains a viable big league prospect.

What’s been behind his improved performance? Berry declined a recent interview request to discuss any adjustments he might have made, but he did sit down to discuss his hitting approach late in spring training. Read the rest of this entry »

Charlie Blackmon is heading down the home stretch of what has been a productive career with the Colorado Rockies. A little more than a week away from his 37th birthday and in his 13th season with the club that drafted him out of Georgia Tech in 2008, the left-handed-hitting outfielder has stroked 1,646 hits, 572 of which have gone for extra bases. Boasting a .296 career batting average — Coors Field has certainly benefitted him — he topped the Senior Circuit in that department in 2017, when he hit .331. Only Todd Helton has played more games in a Rockies uniform.

Blackmon, who is currently on the injured list with a fractured hand, sat down to talk hitting when Colorado visited Boston earlier this month.

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David Laurila: Prior to the 2017 season, I talked to you and one of your then-teammates for a piece titled “Charlie Blackmon and Chris Denorfia on Launch Angles.” What are your thoughts on that subject six years later?

Charlie Blackmon: ”Yeah, so launch angle is something people were really excited about a little while ago. I think that’s a way to reverse engineer a really good hit or a home run, right? It’s taking a dataset and saying, ‘Guys have a higher slugging percentage when they hit the ball in the air,’ and then basically find out that 31 degrees is their optimal angle. I mean, it’s like taking something you already knew was good and saying, ‘Well, now I’m going to try to hit it 31 degrees.’

“Adding lift to your swing is going to put the ball in the air, but I didn’t really like how people were going about it. Now I’m seeing that change. I think where the game is from a pitching perspective, even compared to five years ago, is very different. If you look across the league, I would bet that the amount of strikes thrown in the upper third of the zone has more than doubled. I would say that 70% of the pitchers in the league consistently throw high fastballs, whereas it wasn’t long ago that everybody was trying to throw down and away. There has been a big shift in pitching philosophy and fastball-location philosophy in the past few years.” Read the rest of this entry »

Giancarlo Stanton is a prolific slugger experiencing a frustrating season. A hamstring strain kept him out of the Yankees’ lineup from mid-April to early June, and he’s scuffled mightily since returning to action. Over 47 plate appearances this month, the 6-foot-4, 245-pound outfielder/DH is 5-for-41 with a pair of home runs and 15 strikeouts. On the year, he’s slashing .204/.267/.441 with a 91 wRC+ — well below his standards.

No stranger to the injured list, having landed on it multiple times since New York acquired him from the Miami Marlins via trade in December 2017, Stanton has mostly been excellent when healthy. Now 33 years old and in his 14th big league season, he has 384 career home runs, including 59 in 2017, to go with a .535 slugging percentage and a 139 wRC+.

Stanton talked about his evolution as a hitter, which includes no longer taking swings in the dark, when the Yankees visited Fenway Park over the weekend.

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David Laurila: [Toronto Blue Jays hitting coach] Hunter Mense told me that when you were Low-A teammates, he walked into an indoor cage and found you hitting with the lights off. Why were you doing that?

Giancarlo Stanton: “Dim lights, yeah. It was about trying to pick up the ball. My difficulty back then was picking up balls and chasing. It’s always a work in progress. I still get in trouble up here. You never completely eliminate your original mishaps; you can just get better and improve on them. But yeah, what I was doing was kind of finding obstacles.”

Laurila: Do you do anything like that now?

Stanton: “No. I don’t do anything that extreme anymore, but I did do a lot of extreme stuff to get here. I put it in my mind that someone is always working harder, and there were things I needed to get better at. With so much failure in this game, there are always ways to improve.” Read the rest of this entry »

Luke Raley has been one of the best hitters on baseball’s best team this year. Playing primarily against right-handed pitchers, the 28-year-old left-handed-hitting outfielder has ten two-baggers and 11 home runs to go along with a .258/.343/.570 slash line and a 154 wRC+ in 172 plate appearances, An outstanding athlete for his size — he’s listed at 6-foot-4, 235 pounds — he’s legged out a pair of triples and stolen eight bases in ten attempts.

It wouldn’t be fair to say that he’s come out of nowhere, but the Hinckley, Ohio native did enter this season with a meager resume. Selected in the seventh round of the 2016 draft out of Division II Lake Erie College by the Los Angeles Dodgers, Raley had a .538 OPS in 72 plate appearances with the NL West club in 2021; he had a .584 OPS in the same number of plate appearances with the Rays last season. He was anything but a sure bet to make the Opening Day roster when he reported to spring training.

How has Raley, whom Tampa Bay acquired last March in exchange for Tanner Dodson, emerged as a productive hitter at the big league level in his ninth professional season? I sat down with him recently to find out.

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David Laurila: How much of your success this year is a matter of opportunity, and how much is from improvements you’ve made to your game?

Luke Raley: “I think it’s a mixture of both, honestly. I kind of knew what I needed to work on going into the offseason, and I focused hard on them. And then, obviously, the more opportunities you have, the easier it is to get into a groove. So it was adjustments, and the opportunity certainly helped.”

Laurila: What were the needed adjustments?

Raley: “I needed to be more efficient to the ball, so I did everything I could to minimize movements at the plate. I brought my hands closer to my body, more into my launch position, instead of having them away from my body and then having to get them there. I also banged my leg kick and went to just a straight stride, which I felt could help me keep keep my head more still and recognize pitches earlier. Those are the two big ones, my hand placement and minimizing my leg movement.”

Laurila: Edgar Martinez mentioned having the hands close to the trigger position when I talked hitting with him a few years ago. It simplifies the action.

Raley: “That was kind of our thought process. It’s something that we even talked about last season, but we felt that was a big adjustment to make midseason. We decided that going into the offseason it was going to be my goal to kind of slot my hands in a better position. That would make me a little bit quicker to the ball.” Read the rest of this entry »

Will Brennan is a hot hitter on a Cleveland Guardians team that has struggled to produce at the plate. Over his last eight games, the 25-year-old rookie outfielder is 14-for-29 with four doubles and a home run. Rebounding from a slow start, he is now slashing .261/.298/.380 with an 88 wRC+ on the season.

How good of a hitter Brennan will be at the big league level remains to be seen. An eighth-round pick in 2019 out of Kansas State University, he debuted last September and slashed .357/.400/.500 in 45 plate appearances, this after posting a .314/.371/.479 line between Double-A Akron and Triple-A Columbus. Currently no. 7 on our Guardians top prospects list, he was described by our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen as a hitter who generates “doubles power with a compact swing and all-fields approach to contact.”

Brennan sat down to talk hitting when the Guardians visited Fenway Park at the end of April. Read the rest of this entry »