Watching the video of his work, Matt Olson was caught by surprise. When he yanked a slider over the left-center fence Saturday at Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park, he hadn’t realized how far beneath the strike zone Graham Ashcraft’s slider had dipped.
It was some low-hanging fruit. Catcher Curt Casali had dropped to one knee and positioned his mitt to block a pitch in the dirt. With his bat at about a 45-degree angle to the ground, Olson shoveled it 407 feet to left center, the ball’s travels ending atop the Reds bullpen.
“When I went and looked at the video, it was a lot lower than where I thought it was,” Olson said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday. “For me, that’s typically a good sign when you’re getting some pitches that you feel like are hittable pitches and they’re well below the zone or out of the zone.”
“That was crazy,” Braves center fielder Michael Harris II said. “You look at the video, the ball’s probably three or four balls below the zone. He still hit it out to center field, 105 (mph exit velocity).”
How hard is that to do?
“I mean, it’s hard enough to hit it when it’s in the zone,” Harris said. “So for him to do that, it’s kind of extreme.”
Extreme is a fitting adjective for Olson this season. Going into Wednesday’s games, his bananas hot streak had lifted the first baseman to the National League lead for home runs (25) and RBIs (60), and he homered again for No. 26 and had two RBIs Wednesday as the Braves completed their three-game sweep of the Twins in a 3-0 win at Truist Park.
The second All-Star game berth of his career is a growing possibility. The fact that the shadow of the beloved Freddie Freeman (whom Olson was brought in to replace before the 2022 season) doesn’t hang over Olson is further evidence of his recognized value. But in his second season with the team he grew up rooting for, the Parkview High grad also was tied for the league lead in strikeouts (101). His batting average after Wednesday was .237, lowest among Braves regulars and under his career average (.248).
“I think at the end of the day, it’s been a tad inconsistent,” Olson said before Tuesday’s game. “But I’ve been making ‘em count when I’ve been hitting ‘em.”
Olson could be excused for being more satisfied with himself than that. He has been an integral piece of the juggernaut Braves lineup. Olson wants more from himself, though. While he could write off the strikeouts as a cost of his power – he would have a lot of company with players who willingly make that deduction – it’s not how he wants to do business. And on a team that prides itself on not giving away at bats or games, Olson fits well.
“I wish he was hitting .300 with the 25 home runs, and so does he, I can tell you that,” Braves hitting coach Kevin Seitzer told the AJC on Tuesday, before Olson added No. 26 a day later. “The kid’s got great power, and his exit velos have been good this year. It’s just a matter of putting the ball in play.”
His issues with making contact are hard to miss. With a half-season to go, he is on pace to break the club’s single-season strikeout record (188, set in 2019 by Ronald Acuña Jr.).
But his whiffing tendency clearly doesn’t sit well with him. Olson was asked about his barrel percentage – a newfangled stat that measures the frequency that batters put balls in play with optimal exit velocity and launch angle. At 19.1%, Olson’s barrel percentage ranked sixth in the majors going into Wednesday’s games. Rather than pat himself on the back, Olson responded by asking if the statistic included only balls put in play (as opposed to all plate appearances). His suspicion confirmed, Olson was less than impressed with his barrel rate.
“Yeah, so I think that probably is going to skew it a decent bit because the strikeouts have been so high,” said Olson, undoubtedly establishing himself as the first baseman of choice for the critical-thinking crowd. “There are a few stats out there, and I think that might be one of them – I mix up a few of them – where it looks a lot better than it might actually be because you’re able to take out the strikeouts.”
Olson might be getting there. Before the home series against the Rockies from June 15-18, Olson had hit .200 with two home runs and 21 strikeouts in 69 plate appearances over the previous 15 games.
“When we came off that last road trip, I was at a place where I just came in the next day and I’m like, ‘Look, we’ve got to do something different,’” Seitzer said. “We need to make an adjustment with cues, with your swing, a drill, your routine. We’ve got to make some changes.’ He was like, ‘I was thinking about it last night and I want to try this and see what happens.’”
What happened was, over the next 12 games (through Wednesday), Olson has hit eight home runs, batted .286 and struck out 10 games in 53 plate appearances. Seitzer declined to identify the tweak – he said it was nothing someone would be able to see – but the difference has been marked. (If you’re wondering, Seitzer said the improvement in performance wasn’t related to Olson’s drop in the batting order from second to fifth, which also happened at the start of the Rockies series.)
“Strikeouts have gone down, in-zone swing-and-miss has gone down,” said Seitzer, delighted that his pupil’s efforts have been rewarded. “He’s just more on time now.”
Olson’s barrage includes his golfed home run in Cincinnati off Ashcraft.
“I think it’s a good sign,” Olson said. “You want to do damage in the zone when it’s there, but there’s also an extra factor of when a guy makes a good pitch, being able to do something with it, too, which is what a lot of guys in here do really well.”
The possibility of a home-run title – his career high is 39, with the A’s in 2021 – does not cause Olson to grow faint.
“There’s no doubt it’d be cool, but I’m a guy who, I can’t get caught up in elevating because that’s when stuff goes bad for me,” he said. “I look at the homers as more of a byproduct of having the right approach. It’d be cool at the end of the year to do it, but it’s not like something I’m set on to do.”
To sum up: Olson led the National League in home runs as of Wednesday afternoon but is concerned about his strikeouts and isn’t particularly taken with the idea of being the home run champion. There may be a statistic to measure that sort of value to a roster, but we know this much. It sure isn’t barrel percentage.
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