Less than a week ago the Atlanta Braves officially named their replacement to Kevin Seitzer. The hire was none other than Georgia native Tim Hyers. The Braves pried Hyers away from the Texas Rangers to fill the same roll within their organization.
Just a couple days ago Hyers met with members of the Braves media over zoom, and gave some great insight to his thoughts on hitting. Hyers detailed three core principles he is planning to relay to the Braves offense next season. Each of these should excite Braves fans, and his philosophy is already got support from one Braves Hall of Famer.
Approach is good….hunt the fastball, focus on the big part of the field (thru the middle), be better at situational hitting, don’t cloud the mind with too much info. Really good hire! https://t.co/gZLbpnAzcL
— Chipper Jones (@RealCJ10) October 28, 2024
Hyers three core principals to hitting
The first core principal mentioned by Hyers is game-planning. Hyers claims he loves all the information available in modern baseball, but he wants to take the most important information and simplify it so that the hitters aren't overthinking in the batters' box.
This should excite many of us because if you go back and look at some of the at-bats the Braves offense put together last season it was clear the players either had no gameplan or had drastically gotten away from it.
Next, Hyers talks about movements in the batters' box. Hyers mentions that in studying videos of Braves hitters it seems that injuries caused guys to "get out of their swings." Then the mental began to hurt the physical. He believes that because of injuries to key players many guys were up with the thought that they HAD to get a hit.
All you have to do is look at Sean Murphy's 2024 season and confirm that. Murphy has been an above average hitter for most of his career, so the outlier of 2024 feels like the Opening Day injury really doomed Murphy from the start.
Lastly, Hyers talks about is swing decisions. This led to my favorite quote from him in this interview where he said, "You're only as good as the pitches you swing at." Hyers wants to lower the teams chase% while also getting each individual player swinging at pitches in parts of the zone that are strengths for them.
To a lot of fans, plate discipline/swing decisions was one of the biggest issues for the offense last season. And a coach is probably only going to be able to influence so much. I don't expect Hyers to suddenly turn Ozzie Albies or Michael Harris II into prime Joey Votto and watch their walk% soar. However, eliminating some chase and prioritizing swinging at their favorite pitch locations is a much needed skill for this offense.
Hyers ends the zoom call with his overall hopes for the Braves offense in 2025. He wants the team to possess the ability to beat teams in multiple ways. He said he recognizes how talented they are at hitting the baseball hard and beating teams with the home run ball.
However, Hyers wants the team to really lean into the pass the baton attitude. He wants to create an environment up and down the entire lineup to play for each other and recognize when you have to beat teams in other ways beside the long ball.
Overall, I think it's exactly what Braves fans were thinking. We all want the offense to get it's 2023 swagger back, and become a more versatile offense in 2025. Using these core teachings from Hyers and getting some key players back healthy should go a long way towards making this offense one of the best in baseball once again.