How Pirates' Ke'Bryan Hayes can fix what's happened to him in 2024

Pittsburgh Pirates third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes finally looked like he had broken out last season. After posting a sub-90 wRC+ in 2021 and 2022, Hayes batted .271/.309/.453 with 15 homers in 525 plate appearances. Although he only walked 5.2% of the time, he put up a career-best 19.8% K%, leading to a .321 wOBA and 101 wRC+. Hayes was especially good during the final four months of the season.

From June to the end of the year, Hayes slashed .307/.334/.528. His isolated slugging percentage was well over .200 at .221. He hit 13 homers, had a .363 wOBA, and notched a 127 wRC+ in 305 plate appearances. Heading into this year, Hayes had some big expectations with the bat, but he’s come well short and has even failed to surpass anything he did in 2021 or 2022.

Hayes has only hit .229/.287/.296 at the time of writing this. After posting an ISO above .200 in the summer of last year, he is now down to just .067. He has a subpar 6.8% walk rate as well. The only silver lining from his year is that he’s continued to keep his strikeout rate low, with just a 19.4% K%. But overall, he has a dismal .262 wOBA and 66 wRC+. But what happened? How did Hayes go from a power-hitting third baseman last year to someone who is struggling to get their OPS back to .600? Something had to change between the two years, and there are some remarkable differences once you look at it closely.

What changed with Pirates star Ke'Bryan Hayes' offensive output?

Hayes’ batted ball profile looks much more like what it did prior to his breakout. Between 2021 and 2022, Hayes had a 20.2% line-drive rate, 52.4% ground ball rate, 27.3% flyball rate, and a 4.1 degree launch angle. He pulled the ball just 25.8% of the time with a 4.1-degree launch angle. Then, when he broke out in 2023, Hayes saw his flyball rate jump to 39%, while his pulled ball rate rose to 31%, and his launch angle went up to 13.2 degrees.

But this year is almost an identical mirror of his 2021-2022 numbers. Hayes has a 21.7% LD%, 51.2% GB%, and 27.1% FB%. His launch angle has decreased back down below five degrees to just 4.4 degrees. His 27.6% pulled batted ball rate is still higher than what he was doing in 2021 and 2022, but represents a decrease from his 2023 rate as well.

Another thing that hurts is that Hayes isn’t hitting the ball nearly as hard as in prior seasons. At least in 2021 and 2022, Hayes had an above-average 90.7 MPH exit velocity. Last year, he had a career-high 92.2 MPH exit velo, which was the fourth-best among qualified third basemen, only surpassed by Matt Chapman, Rafael Devers, and Austin Riley. But this year? He’s down to 88.4 MPH.

Hayes declining after Jon Nunnally was let go might be a coincidence, but him declining when working more with Andy Haines again isn’t, because it’s happened so many times now. Hayes isn’t the only Pirates player who has had a massive decline after a solid 2023 season at the dish.

So what does Hayes need to do to get back on track and start hitting the ball like he did during last summer? It’s pretty obvious; he needs to start pulling the ball and lifting it more frequently, both tendencies that led to his improvement last year. When he was doing well at the start of last summer, his launch angle was 13.3 degrees, and he was pulling the ball 37.6% of the time. His best month of the year was August, when he batted over .300 with an OPS just a touch over .950. During that month, he had a 35.9% pull percentage, but a flyball rate over 40% (42.3%) and a 17.3 degree launch angle. 

When Ben Cherington says he thinks the Pirates can improve with internal options, he isn’t entirely wrong. Ke’Bryan Hayes is one of those internal options. We know what he’s capable of, but he needs to re-incorporate whatever changes he made in his swing last year. Just based off of video, you can tell his swing is more geared to go the opposite way than to pull the ball, at least when you compare it to last season. Hopefully, he can figure this out as we head into the second half of the season. If he does, it could be huge for the Pirates, not just in 2024 but in the coming seasons.