There’s not much going right for the Brewers in the young season and therefore not much for Brewers fans to celebrate. One bright spot, though, is the also young Jean Segura’s hot start. After experiencing the worst year of his personal and professional life Segura is storming back. Last year he hit .246/.289/.326. As of today, Milwaukee’s shortstop is hitting .333/.379/.529. He can probably credit the change in performance to a new plate approach.
Before we get too far it’s important we acknowledge that anything we talk about this early in the season has that small sample size caveat. We can’t know for certain how the rest of the season will play out and at no point am I suggesting Segura will maintain that slash line. But at least for right now he is doing what he needed to do to have a bounce-back season at the plate. It’s pretty simple too. Well, it’s easy to point out anyway, probably a bit harder to actually implement. He mostly just needed to keep his weight back when he swings.
He’s always going to hit a lot of ground balls, but staying back will allow him to drive a few more. And more importantly it should allow him to spray more balls to the right side of the field. Take a look at his spray chart from last year:
Source: FanGraphs
As you can see, a lot of outs came when he hit balls the left side of the infield. I can tell you from watching most of those games those were weak grounders. You’ll also notice in that chart most of his hits were from balls driven to center and right. Take a look at his spray chart from the first eight games of this season:
Source: FanGraphs
Again, obviously small sample size applies. But as you can see he is hitting a lot of balls to the right side. This is all because he’s been able to adjust his weight on his swings and stay back more consistently than last year.
Here’s a game from last year where he had six hits against the Twins (not to pick on them!):
Take special note to compare his second swing to the rest of them. Especially on that second hit you can see him lunging forward with his swing. The result was a slow grounder to third base. In his other plate appearances in that game he did a much better job of staying back and as a result he was able to drive the ball more.
That’s what he’s doing this year, early though it is. If that’s something he can continue doing for the whole season I feel pretty confident he’s going to have one hell of a comeback season. Last year he hurt his shoulder early in the season. Then he got hit with a bat in the face in a freak accident. And in mid-season he suffered the tragic loss of his infant child. No deserves a comeback season more than Jean Segura and there is no one I’m personally rooting for harder. I’ll leave you with this last video. It’s of a triple Segura hit against the Indians. It is from Spring Training, but it’s a good example of what happens when he’s right at the plate.
