Braun tweaks swing ; hoping to overcome unluckiness

Milwaukee, WI ~ Last season’s numbers for Milwaukee Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun don’t stand out as necessarily groundbreaking  : .254 batting average, 64 RBI, and 20 homeruns. But if you go further into the details you will realize that Ryan Braun caught the case of some bad luck.

Thanks to Statcast, MLB’s high speed, highly accurate tool to track statistics and massive amounts of baseball data, we were able to see that Ryan Braun deserved to have a higher batting average, with more runs batted in. From Statcast, we were able to see that Ryan Braun’s exit velocity off the bat and hart hitting percentage were among the highest in the major leagues. In an attempt to change that Braun, announced that he hired a private hitting coach to help him avoid the loud outs he so frequently ran into last year.

Ryan’s xBA, his batting average based off of hit probability, was .296 in 2018. And Braun’s exit velocity of 91.9 mph, one of the highest in the MLB, shows that Braun’s raising age hasn’t really translated into his abilities in the box. ( In the outfield? Now that’s a different story.)  Very few hit the ball harder than the 35 year old Braun. Based on that information, we can for sure tell that Braun’s final statistics don’t speak for themselves.

Late in the 2018 season, we were able to tell that Braun was altering his swing, trying to lift his launch angle. After his tweakings, Braun’s numbers went up, and he hit the best he had all year in September and October. In 2019, expect Braun to try to perfect what he had going in the late season. If that happens, Braun could end up having a very accomplishable season.

Braun may seek changes because of his declining bat speed, but that may seem puzzling considering his 91 mile per hour exit velocity off the bat. Older players can hit high velocity’s just the same, if not better. Due to  better understanding of the game and more experience, coupled with the abilities to make quick changes and adjustments, Braun will be fine hitting heat in his thirteenth major league season.

Hopefully, thanks to the new changes he’s made, the rest of his game will up, resulting in hits instead of loud outs.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *