How Max Kepler Got Right Down the Stretch in 2023

32 minutes ago, Karbo said:

I wonder if he changed due to poor mechanics or if he just got a better mind set and let it rip. Once he had gone on a bit of a tare his confidence could carry him a long way. Baseball hitting is a game of failures. Even a good hitter will "fail" 2/3 of the time. How you react will be the key to more success.

I try not to label this as a mechanics thing. While he is moving differently (i.e. staying back from the plate), I don't believe it was an intentional change but something that happened while trying to fix holes, if that makes sense.  

In 2017 I had a conversation with him on his approach and he told me that "Pretty much the only time I'm telling myself to do stuff is when I might be in a slump or something."

He's very much a guy that tries to continue to do what got him here. He's not going to make wholesale changes. But I also think his midseason numbers (i.e. slump) prompted something.

I do think he has changed his mindset a bit on how to attack (he talked about that in the spring) but I also think he had the same mindset in the first half of the season as he did in the second -- only that his approach (and health!) allowed him to be successful later in the year. 

3 minutes ago, tony&rodney said:

This seems to be as good of an answer as anything really. Health and mind are critical to success. 

I realize that as a non-caretaker you are unable to see the additional analysis so let me just say, yes, health and mindset are 2 of the 3 things that helped him in the 2nd half.

12 minutes ago, roger said:

I have believed that Kep's biggest problem the last few years were the shift, and what it did to his thought process as he stepped into the batters box.  Yes, the shift was gone all season.  But after several years of looking out to right field and seeing defenders seemingly everywhere, it took awhile for his brain to understand the change.  I truly believe as he grew comfortable with the current defensive alignment, he became a different hitter.

My response is...maybe?

Hard to know exactly what is going on in a hitter's head. But the fact that he was pulling the ball more in the 1st half than the 2nd half (54% vs 43%) suggests defensive alignment wasn't necessarily a factor for his late season surge. Plus, a lot of success had to do with barreling balls to the big part of the park (33% vs 17% in 1st half and 24 hits vs 11 in 1st half). 

His performance on pulled ground balls post-ASB was much better than after the break (.263 vs .069 in 1st half). Big difference was that he was less one-dimensional after the break: In the 1st half he pulled 81% of his groundballs and he pulled 60% in the 2nd half. 

There was likely something in his mind about the defensive positioning, but his ability to give himself space and hit balls hard all over the field helps open up other areas for him to.

50 minutes ago, Rod Carews Birthday said:

@Parker Hageman ... What do you think?  Can it continue or should the Twins sell him off while the price is decent?  I'm completely on the fence.  I loved his second half, but I remember living through the previous couple of years as well. 

Very tough question.

Sometimes I think an early season injury can be a good thing over the course of a long season. Like I said in the post, part of that production was likely due to health (not having an additional 250 PAs in the 1st half maybe kept him fresh).

That 2nd half performance was one of his best splits of his career but that .351 BABIP suggests it could come back down (although his wOBA of .393 was very close to his expected wOBA of .390 so the way he was impacting the ball could mean he's capable of continuing that). 

Teams will try to adjust to him and find more weaknesses. That's the game. I'd like to think he came away with something from this year but you just don't know. 

It's a funny game.

6 hours ago, Castinofan said:

Very insightful, Parker but you missed the most obvious reason for his second half improvement. He started wearing his socks up to his knees!

Dammit. I always overcomplicate things.

2 hours ago, Shaitan said:

It feels like clickbait when caretaker articles aren't labeled as such from the homepage.

Are you seeing something different? From the mobile site, there are 2 marks that show “Caretaker” on it.