'Those home runs will come': Homerless streak doesn't faze Pirates 3B Ke'Bryan Hayes

From the sound of the ball off his bat, Ke’Bryan Hayes thought he had a chance. The Pittsburgh Pirates third baseman watched it sail over Arizona right fielder Pavin Smith and off the Clemente Wall at PNC Park.

“Off the bat, I felt like I stayed through it good,” Hayes said. “In my head, after I hit it, I was like, ‘I just hit my first career grand slam.’”

Hayes had to settle for a bases-clearing triple Saturday, but the 101-mph exit velocity and 371-foot distance were reminders of just how close he had come to hitting his first home run since April 15.

His homerless streak has reached 34 games, a stretch where Hayes has still slashed .254/.312/.452 with eight doubles and three triples. Hayes took early batting practice on the field this past week to try to rediscover the swing path and timing that propelled him to hit four homers in 41 at-bats over 15 Grapefruit League games in spring training.

“For me, it’s about getting behind the ball a little better and getting the ball in the air because I’ve been hitting it hard but just hitting it on the ground too much,” Hayes said. “Really, I feel like the best version of me is when I’m able to hit doubles, take some walks, steal some bags and if I happen to pop something over the fence, I do.”

Bryan Reynolds was on second base when Hayes tripled, running toward third when the ball bounced off the wall. Reynolds can relate to the frustration of a homerless streak, as he also went 34 games between homers this season before snapping out of his spell with a three-run shot in a 13-3 win over the Diamondbacks on May 19.

The switch-hitting Pirates outfielder slashed .262/.306/.362 with 13 doubles in that stretch but deadpanned that he’d lost his pop when his hits couldn’t clear the fence. Now, after hitting one right-handed, Reynolds jokes that he needs to hit one from the left side.

“I wasn’t stressed out about it because I was still getting doubles and getting hits,” Reynolds said. “It was a long time. I’m glad I finally got one. It’s not like going through a slump because you’re still being productive, just not as productive as if you were hitting the homers. It can be frustrating when they keep snowballing game after game. I’d rather go through that than go through a 30-game slump.”

That’s where Pirates outfielder Jack Suwinski can relate to Reynolds. Suwinski, who hit 19 homers as a rookie and leads the team with seven this season, endured an 0-for-29 stretch at the plate last year from July 5-14 that resulted in his demotion to Triple-A Indianapolis.

During his days as a hitting coach with Tampa Bay and Cleveland, Pirates manager Derek Shelton observed how hitting home runs can take pressure off players who are scuffling at the plate.

“Guys put pressure on themselves. If they don’t have a hit, then they chase hits. If they don’t have a double, they chase doubles,” Shelton said. “It’s just human nature. You wish you could alleviate that, but there’s no way to alleviate that. Sometimes it’s just a little bit of pressure taken off.”

That worked for Suwinski when he went to Indy last year. He was 0 for 4 in his first game, then homered twice against St. Paul. Suwinski believes hitting home runs is a matter of anticipation, timing and picking the right pitches.

“You definitely have some instinct on when it’s coming,” Suwinski said. “Ke’, for instance, has been hitting the ball really well, getting the ball in the air. Now it’s bound to come through soon. Those are just some things that are really hard to predict. Once you start to try to hit homers, you practically do the opposite — at least for me.”

Andrew McCutchen understands that as well as anyone. As the five-time All-Star and 2013 NL MVP approaches his 300th career home run — he needs six to mark the milestone — he has become well aware of his batting splits. Over his 15-year career, McCutchen’s fewest amount of homers in any month have come in April (41), but five of his six dingers this season came in the opening month.

McCutchen has learned not to overthink the long stretches without a home run, remaining true to his plate approach and believing that hard-hit balls are an indicator that solid contact will go from groundouts to lineouts and turn singles into doubles and doubles into home runs.

His game April 14 at St. Louis is proof to that point. Four times, McCutchen hit the ball 95 mph or harder against the Cardinals. His first contact went for a 98.4-mph single. The second was a lineout to third clocked at 104.5 mph. McCutchen lined out again, this time a 102.5-mph shot to left, before a 95-mph groundout to short.

“That’s all you can do,” McCutchen said. “If you’re making hard contact, that means you’re putting yourself in good position to do some damage in the long run. It’s all about the pitch location, the type of pitch you hit, where you meet the ball. If you’re hitting the ball hard, that means you’re meeting it in a good spot. At that point, there’s really not much you can do about it. They come, and when they come, they’re going to come in bunches.”

The next day, McCutchen hit a two-run homer in the 10th inning to lift the Pirates to a 6-3 win on Jackie Robinson Day. McCutchen then homered in back-to-back games in Colorado, hitting three in four games.

Reynolds and Suwinski can attest to McCutchen’s theory. Along with catcher Michael Perez, they each had three-homer games last June. Earlier this season, Reynolds hit five home runs in a four-game span between April 2-7, and Suwinski hit four homers in four games between April 17-20.

The availability of analytics makes players aware of everything from their contact percentage to hard-hit rate, and Shelton said exit velocity can be an indicator that a player is about to do some damage.

“I think the message is that: Sometimes you can’t control it. Sometimes you go through great stretches,” Shelton said. “It’s that old adage of, as we used to say, ‘Well, you’re hitting the ball hard, and you’re getting nothing.’ Now we can prove that. You just have to continue to stay solid with that message. It’s hard because the player walks away from it like, ‘Great, I don’t have any hits.’ But I think the fact that we can measure these things now makes it easier to say, ‘Man, just stay with it. Maybe it’s one tweak away from really breaking out.’”

That’s advice Hayes takes to heart. Per Statcast, Hayes ranks in the 92nd percentile in average exit velocity (92.8 mph), the 88th in maximum exit velocity (113.1 mph) and his 47.3% hard-hit rate is in the 80th percentile. He hit a line drive 109.5 mph for a 358-foot double to deep left in Monday’s 6-4 win over Texas, and smacked a 107.1-mph single up the middle in the eighth inning of Wednesday’s 3-2 loss to the Rangers. No wonder Hayes isn’t stressing about his homerless streak, believing it’s only a matter of time before he hits one that clears the fence.

“I’ve been working really hard to try to get behind the ball,” said Hayes, who went 45 games last season before hitting his first homer May 28. “Last year, I didn’t hit my first home run until the end of May, so I’m not too much worried about it. As long as I’m driving the ball like I did the last few days, it starts warming up and I start taking a few more chances in some advantage counts, I think that those home runs will come.”