BRADENTON, Fla. — At first glance, Kevin Kramer's swing doesn't look much different than the one he used before the Pirates made him a second-round draft pick in 2015.
To the untrained eye, the second baseman's bat path still seems to move uphill. However, the 24-year-old, following a trend around baseball, tweaked his swing before last season to get the ball in the air more often.
It produced immediate results. Although he was limited to 53 games at Double-A Altoona because of a broken hand, Kramer's ground-ball rate plummeted and he surpassed his home run total from the previous season in nearly 300 fewer at-bats.
The swing is having a similar affect this spring, too. Although he went 0 for 1 in the Pirates' 15-1 loss to the Braves on Saturday at LECOM Park, Kramer has reached safely in seven of nine games.
His time in big league camp is likely coming to an end, but the swing — which has produced four extra-base hits — has made him the Pirates' most intriguing prospect to watch in Grapefruit League play.
"I really wish I could have seen what the swing would have done over 500 at-bats last season," Kramer, a left-handed hitter, told DKPittsburghSports.com. "I wanted to see the changes happen over the course of a year. Obviously, we did some good things in 200 at-bats, but in terms of a full season, you can’t get a full grip on it."
The change began after Kramer was frustrated with his production at High-A Bradenton in 2016. He produced a respectable slash line of .277/.352/.378 in his second professional season. Yet, he was disappointed that hard contact was staying on the ground.
So, the organization — specifically Larry Sutton, the Pirates' hitting coordinator, Michael Ryan, the manager at Double-A Altoona, and Andy Barkett, who was the organization's assistant hitting coordinator in 2016 — concocted a plan to help Kramer get the ball in the air more often.
Instead of trying to lift the ball, they encouraged Kramer to level out his bat path in the zone. The thinking was that any mistake was more likely to be a line drive, rather than a weak grounder.
The adjustment is similar to one made by many players across Major League Baseball — including the Pirates' new third baseman, Colin Moran — but Kramer said producing more "launch angle" wasn't the goal.
"No, no, no," Kramer said. "It was trying to do more damage. Let’s just call it that. I’m a fan of getting the ball in the air because if you miss you might still hit a line drive, but I don’t think about, ‘Oh, 26 degrees.’ ... I just want to get a good pitch to hit and drive it. If it goes out, it goes out. I don't care where it goes. It’s more about driving the ball and getting a good pitch to do it with."
It was as much a mentality change as it was a mechanical adjustment. And the results were telling. Before a pitch from Andrew Suarez struck Kramer on the back of his right hand on June 10, Kramer was batting .297 with six home runs — two more than he hit at High-A in 2016 — and was selected to the Eastern League All-Star game.
His slugging percentage was .500. He had 20 extra-base hits with 27 RBI and a .380 on-base percentage. All in 234 plate appearances.
Kramer's line-drive percentage rose nearly five percent from the previous season. His ground-ball rate dropped 18 percent, and his fly-ball percentage skyrocketed from 26.8 to 40.3 percent.
"The results were there," Kevin Newman, who batted leadoff and played shortstop at Double-A Altoona, said. "The changes were working. It wasn't a major change to his swing, but the small tweaks he made were really driving the ball. He was on fire. Who knows what his numbers would have looked like if the injury didn't happen?"
Kramer was supposed to miss eight weeks, but the two broken bones were slow to heal. He wasn't out of a soft splint for six weeks, and twice he was shut down for 10 days because he experienced excruciating pain when trying to swing a bat.
He did not play in a minor-league game until Sept. 2 — nearly 12 weeks after the injury occurred — and split 16 games between rookie ball and short-season West Virginia to finish the regular season. Kramer was able to play in four playoff games for Altoona, but he lacked upper-body strength after having to change his training regimen during recovery.
He went 1 for 13 as the Curve claimed the championship, and he knew all along that he needed to spend his offseason taking more swings against live pitching. So, he went to instructional league in the fall before playing 16 games in the Arizona Fall League.
Although he batted just .200, he was able to get enough swings to make him feel comfortable with his mechanics heading into spring training. The overall number of at-bats fell short of his goal, but Kramer expressed confidence that he knows what additional adjustments need to be made.
"For me, I have a full extra year in the swing, into the stuff that we’re changing and the mentality of it," he said. "Honestly, I’m trying to make little adjustments on my season last year and I’m trying to press play from last season. There are things I’m doing now that I’m doing better than last season, of course, knowing the swing, knowing where I fell short, knowing where I did well, and trying to build off that."
He's done that so far this spring. Kramer is not a candidate to make the major league roster. In fact, he could be headed back to Double-A since he has yet to complete a full season there and Triple-A's infield could be crowded if Max Moroff doesn't make the Pirates' opening day roster.
Kramer could be a possible callup at some point late this summer, but Clint Hurdle has a few reservations about what he's seen so far. After all, production in Grapefruit League games can be deceiving and Kramer doesn't even have a full season in with the swing.
"This very well can be one of the most difficult times to gauge talent," Hurdle said. "He’s talked about [the swing]. I think we all like the player. We all like the aggressiveness in the box. We like the barrel that can show up. We’ll see how it plays out in the season, though. I think once we get more information, watch more swings and get into real games we’ll have a better read."
Kramer is also proving to be versatile defensively, playing shortstop this spring after spending the past three seasons at second base because a torn labrum in college negatively impacted his arm strength.
He knows he'll have to prove himself in the minor leagues. But the swing has him fairly optimistic about his chances.
"The swing feels good," he said. "It's very good."
