ONLY IN AMNEWYORK
QUEENS, NY — Something had to give for Brett Baty to make good on his last chance to stick with the New York Mets, and it turned out that thing was his approach at the plate.
The 25-year-old third baseman has made good on David Stearns’ patience with him, often pointing toward a more intense work ethic in the batting cage that helped spark a hot streak and May. But he is also utilizing a different stance and a more aggressive mindset at the plate to show the promise he once flashed as one of the organization’s top prospects.
Since he was called back up on May 7 after slashing .204/.245/.352 (.597 OPS) with one home run and four RBI in 19 April games, Baty is batting .290 with a .914 OPS, five home runs, and 16 RBI in his previous 21 games (not including Sunday’s series finale against the Rockies).
It has taken non-stop working and tweaking to get there.
Working with personal hitting coach and former minor-leaguer Aaron Capista, Baty’s stance is significantly overhauled from last season, when he batted just .229 with a .633 OPS, four home runs, and 16 RBI in 50 games while losing his job at the hot corner to Mark Vientos.
Baty is following through with two hands, which helps the barrel of his bat stay in the zone longer. He has moved more than three inches further back in the box compared to last year, from 26.4 inches to 29.8 inches (h/t Baseball Savant), which helps him see the ball just a few microseconds longer.
His stance has opened up slightly by four degrees, from four to eight, which Baty says is an attempt to help him feel “closed to keep my front shoulder in there.”
He has also been working on being more stationary at the plate. The distance between his feet in the box has been considerably shortened from 38.8 inches last year to 26.3 inches. Eliminating any swaying back and forth, though, has been one of his biggest focuses, as it “makes my swing more efficient.”
“It’s just constant adjustments because we never figure this stuff out,” Baty said.
What has truly brought it all together, though, has been a more aggressive approach, which has been sparked by studying his new teammate, Juan Soto, and his meticulous pregame work — particularly his famous “knob drill.”
With a coach kneeling in the opposite batter’s box and underhanding him baseballs, Soto pivots his hands downward rather than actually swinging to make contact with just the knob of the bat.
The exercise allows him to stay short to the ball and get on top of it, which does not necessarily jive with today’s analytically driven obsession with launch angles. But it creates more line drives, which has helped him become one of this generation’s best all-around hitters.
For Baty, those observations have resulted in a noticeably quicker bat, which gets through the zone on an average of 76.2 mph this season compared to the 73.5 mph average from last year.
“I’m just trying to be more direct and quicker to the ball,” Baty said of what he has picked up from watching Soto prepare. “I’ve talked about this with him. He tries to be super direct and super quick to the ball, and that’s why he does that knob drill.”
A left-handed bat like Soto, who was once swinging through chances zipping through the heart of the plate and falling behind in counts early, Baty is now able to jump on any mistakes that come his way.
“We see him attacking fastballs early in counts, and we’ve seen him attacking breaking balls on the first pitch,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “That’s what we want to see. He’s a good hitter.”
Consider Soto’s example for the third baseman as another perk of having the superstar in Queens, even if his slow start with the Mets has become the fodder of most hot takes in the Big Apple.
“It goes to show you that you have to have some type of routine where you can always fall back to, whether you’re going good or bad,” Mendoza said. “It’s like, if you’re struggling, OK, I’m going to go back to doing [a certain drill]. I think it’s just developing that routine, whatever the case might be. [Soto and Baty] have completely different routines, where Brett is more of a challenging himself hitting off machines and all that. Soto is more traditional… I think guys watching him go about his business and when it feels like the sky is falling, he’s the same guy every day and he’s not going to alter. He’s going to stick to his routine, and guys are watching.
“Brett is a perfect example right here where he’s watching an elite player going through some tough moments, and he’s the same guy with the same routine.”
