'Of course I want to hit more home runs': Pirates 3B Ke'Bryan Hayes focuses on hard hits

Ke’Bryan Hayes knows the old baseball adage — home runs are thrown, not hit — so the Pittsburgh Pirates third baseman isn’t focusing on the fact that he has yet to hit a homer this season entering Saturday.

Hayes has good reason to pay more attention to the positive numbers than dwell on a zero on his stat line, as he ranks fourth in the National League in both batting average (.324) and on-base percentage (.424) and in the top 10 in doubles and walks.

But Hayes hit 11 homers in the first 120 games of his major league career, including one in his major-league debut Sept. 1, 2020, and another in his first at-bat Opening Day 2021, so it’s surprising he hasn’t put one over the fence through his first 125 plate appearances this season.

“Home runs come whenever they come,” Hayes said. “I’ve never really thought, ‘Oh, I need to hit more home runs.’ If I get into that mind frame, that’s just going to make me want to do too much and could cause me to swing at pitches I don’t want to swing at. My swing might get too big, stuff like that.

“Of course I want to hit more home runs. My main focal point is just hitting it hard. Home runs come whenever you get that contact point out front and you’re getting pitches that are up in the zone and not missing.”

For Hayes, the hard-hit rate (48.8%) isn’t the issue, as he has 40 swings that generated 95 mph or higher and his average exit velocity (92.6 mph) ranks 17th in baseball. His meatball swing percentage is down from 72.3% last season to 54.5% this year, a possible indicator he’s not getting (or swinging at ) as many pitches down the middle of the plate.

Pirates manager Derek Shelton pointed to Hayes driving a 401-foot double to the deepest part of PNC Park — the 410-foot North Side Notch in left-center — on Monday against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Shelton also noted that Hayes has nine doubles, which is tied for seventh in the NL, though five were down the lines.

“He’s driven the ball,” Shelton said. “The thing we’ve talked about a lot with Ke’ over the last couple years is that everybody wants to put a home run number on it. One year it may really jump up, and he may not hit as many doubles. One year he may hit a ton of doubles and not hit as many homers. If we’re relating power to homers, which I’m not, then he’s still driving the ball. It’s still fine. The other thing is, I think homers are at an historic low throughout the league, too. I think that plays into it.”

There have been rumblings this season that MLB has deadened the ball, and Hayes has found that some swings where he hit it square “kind of didn’t go anywhere.” That’s out of his control, so Hayes is concentrating on having good at-bats where he can get a hit or draw a walk. His walk percentage (14.4%) ranks in the 92nd percentile, as Hayes has almost as many walks (18) as strikeouts (22) this season.

“As a hitter, your No. 1 goal is to have good at-bats and hit the ball hard,” Hayes said. “I just try to go out there every day and have purposeful work whenever I’m hitting in the cage and whenever I go into the game, knowing what I want to do against that pitcher that day. The results are the results.”