Pittsburgh Pirates: Projecting Team’s Lineup by the End of 2022

Third Base – Ke’Bryan Hayes

Ke’Bryan Hayes is one of the long-term pieces currently already on the Major League roster. Now his 2021 season hasn’t been great. He’s only hit .250/.319/.388 with a .310 wOBA, and 93 wRC+. But there’s plenty of promising signs that this isn’t the real Hayes.

Hayes is still demolishing the baseball when he makes contact. He has a 91 MPH exit velocity and 47.6% hard-hit rate. Both of those would rank among the league’s best hitters. The raw power is there. Plus he’s making contact at a 79.1% rate, which would rank top 50 if he had enough plate appearances to qualify. But the problem has been the type of contact he’s made.

Hayes is putting up an uncharacteristically high 56.1% ground ball rate. That’s about 10% higher than his single-season minor league-high. His 17.1% line drive rate is also very low considering it usually sat around 20-22% throughout his minor league career. His 27% fly ball rate is also considerably lower than anything he did in the minor leagues. His launch angle of just 2.8 degrees, which is the 9th lowest in all of baseball (min. 100 batted ball events).

While Hayes never put up out-of-this-world minor league numbers, what we are seeing right now is not what Hayes is. He’s a whole lot of a better batter than this. He’s probably closer to a .280/.350/.500 hitter if he can put up even a league-average line drive rate because he has high-end raw power.

Hayes’s biggest calling card is his defense. Despite only playing 456.1 innings at third base this year, he has +10 DRS, an 8.2 UZR/150, and is in the top 93rd percentile of outs above average. If there is any player in the National League that can end Nolan Arenado’s 8 straight Gold Gloves, it’s Hayes.