Pirates CF Bryan Reynolds focusing on making good swing decisions to snap out of slump
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As Bryan Reynolds has gone from scuffling to slumping, Pittsburgh Pirates manager Derek Shelton warned that his All-Star center fielder has to be careful to not get swing happy when he’s not happy with his swing.
Shelton offered an explanation for why Reynolds was batting .146 (6 for 41) with one extra-base hit — an inexplicable triple, at that — over his last 11 games entering the weekend series against the San Diego Padres.
“What I mean by that,” Shelton said, “is he quits focusing on the ball and focuses on swinging at the ball. He has to focus on just making sure he sees the ball to make good swing decisions.”
After slashing .302/.390/.522 with 35 doubles, eight triples, 24 home runs and 90 RBIs last season, Reynolds has his own theory. He’s not seeing the ball with any consistency, so he’s found himself in-between: Taking pitches he normally swings at and swinging at pitches he normally takes.
“It’s hard not to chase hits but baseball is hard, too,” Reynolds said in between sniffles Thursday, two days after going on the covid-19 injured list while awaiting test results after showing symptoms. “It’s easy to just put it on one thing. That’s the nature of the game. You’re going to suck sometimes; you’re going to be good sometimes.
“When you’re not seeing it, you’re not seeing it. It’s just faster and you don’t track it well. When you’re seeing it well, it’s slow and you can see everything. Sometimes it just speeds up, whether that’s from trying too hard and stressing to get hits instead of just simplifying it — see ball, hit ball, like you’re playing backyard wiffle ball or something.”
Instead, Reynolds is whiffing at an alarming rate. With 22 strikeouts and six walks, his K rate (27.9%) is up 9.5% and his whiff percentage (30.4%) is up 6.5% from last season while his walk rate is down 2.8%. He’s chasing more pitches, especially outside the strike zone, and making less contact.
Reynolds has had his ups and downs before, following a team-best .314 batting average with 37 doubles as a rookie in 2019 by hitting a career-worst .189 in 55 games in the covid-shortened 2020 season. Even so, Shelton’s confidence in Reynolds’ hitting ability has never wavered because of his career track record. The Pirates showed their faith in Reynolds by signing him to a two-year, $13.5 million contract earlier this month to avoid arbitration.
“Bryan Reynolds’ hitting is something that’s never gonna keep me awake at night,” Shelton said. “He’s gonna hit. He’s hit at every level. He’ll continue to hit. He goes through samples where he scuffles a little bit, and then we’re gonna see the best hitter in the game for a month. So I’m, not really worried about him.”
Where some hitters change everything from their stance to their swing to snap out of a slump, Shelton jokes that Reynolds isn’t the type to make major changes — except for his facial hair.
“The most tinkering that Bryan does is he goes moustache, goatee, clean shaven,” Shelton said. “That’s the tinkering that he does.”
Truth be told, the switch-hitting Reynolds tries to get back to hitting the ball to the opposite field. Problem is, he’s found that facing a majority of right-handed pitchers hasn’t helped his cause. He’s batting .238 (5 for 21) against lefties and .178 (8 for 45) against righties this season, though his three extra-base hits have come against the latter.
“Sometimes, it’s not necessarily, ‘I feel like this, so I do A, B and C,’” Reynolds said. “I just need to get my focus back to the middle part of the field.”
Where Reynolds tied for the major-league lead in triples last year, Shelton pointed to his lone three-bagger this season as the “perfect example” in his faith in Reynolds. He turned what Shelton called a “jam shot at 49 mph” — the slowest-recorded triple in the Statcast era — down the third base line into a triple April 21 at the Chicago Cubs. Reynolds saw third baseman Patrick Wisdom chase the ball into foul territory and leave the bag uncovered, so he never broke stride after touching second base and outraced shortstop Nico Hoerner to third base.
“What really stands out with Bryan is that he still plays the game the way it should be played,” Shelton said. “Most guys, when they don’t hit, you see him start to do things differently. They’re frustrated, so they don’t run balls out. They don’t break up double plays. He never does this. … When guys start to scuffle and you see it in them offensively, there’s other parts of their game that are affected by it. But his are never affected by it.”
If Reynolds is affected by moving up to the No. 2 spot in the Pirates’ batting order after hitting third in 142 games last year, he’s not complaining. Since coming off the covid-IL, Reynolds has hit safely the past two games with a pair of singles but also has five strikeouts in eight at-bats.
Unlike the 2020 season, Reynolds knows he has time to fix this funk. He doesn’t give much thought to the small sample size, given that he also homered twice in a three-day span in the first homestand. Reynolds believes that he proved what kind of hitter he is in his two full seasons in the majors.
“I don’t think I suck,” Reynolds said. “I’m not overly stressed about it. There’s plenty of time left to figure it out. It’s frustrating, though. I should be frustrated.”