The Boston Red Sox took three of four from the Tampa Bay Rays in their first series of the 2018 Major League Baseball season, and the performance of shortstop Xander Bogaerts certainly stood out.
Bogaerts went 8-for-12 with a home run and five doubles over the first three games before going 0-for-5 in Sunday’s series finale. He consistently hit the ball in the air and with authority, suggesting the 25-year-old could be primed for a huge season after a lackluster 2017 campaign.
So, what changed?
Well, for one, Bogaerts is healthy, something he wasn’t for much of last season after being drilled on the right hand by a pitch July 6.
“Last year, if I swung one swing with both hands (in the cage), I probably wouldn’t be able to play that day,” Bogaerts told The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier over the weekend. “I’m blessed that’s over with. It was a hard time for me. But it’s over with now. I could notice the difference right away (in spring training). I could swing with two hands. Right now, in my cage work, most of my swings, the majority, is with two hands.”
Swinging with two hands seems to help, but it’s not the only change Bogaerts made over the offseason upon returning to full health. A visit from Red Sox hitting coach Tim Hyers, who was Bogaerts’ minor league hitting coordinator in 2013, spawned some additional tweaks geared toward driving the ball with more power.
Here’s Hyers’ in-depth explanation, according to WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford:
“What happens is that his first move now is that he loads under his hips, and under his body before he goes forward. In the past he just goes, so your feet get outside your hips really quick. He was getting outside of his frame pretty quick. When he gets outside of his frame he has a chance to be wobbly. The whole idea is to load under your hips before you go forward. (In spring training) he was trying to find that move and then it synced up his hands, so your upper body and lower body are working together.
“He had the goals in the offseason. It wasn’t something where we said, ‘We want you to do this.’ He was like, ‘I want to do this. I want to feel stronger.’ He said he felt his lower-half last year, everything was going. So when he built the foundation I think that slowed the ball down for him.”
It’s hard to extract too much from a four-game sample size, especially with his most recent effort being an o-fer. But the early returns on Bogaerts’ offseason adjustments are promising, which could mean a season more like 2016, when he hit .294 with 21 home runs, 89 RBIs and an .802 OPS while earning his first All-Star selection and his second Silver Slugger award.
“Those were huge, productive conversations,” Bogaerts told Speier of working with Hyers over the offseason to change his leverage and swing plane. “He showed me some stuff on tapes. At the beginning, it’s kind of hard to buy into it, but you can see the process, the philosophy, the data. You trust it.”
