Brewers' Narvaez seeks to regain hitting form he had in AL
Milwaukee Brewers catcher Omar NarvaĢez refuses to blame his hitting struggles last year on the unusual circumstances of the pandemic-delayed 2020 season.
āEverything got out of control,ā NarvaĢez said Sunday from the Brewersā spring training complex in Phoenix. āTo me, it feels like thereās no excuses. It was a short season. Everyone talks about that. I feel like as a professional, I cannot have excuses. It didnāt go well.ā
NarvaĢez, 29, arrived in Milwaukee with a reputation as a quality hitter and not so skilled defensively. He was just the opposite in his first season in the National League after the Brewers acquired him from the Seattle Mariners in December 2019.
His batting average plunged from .278 in 2019 to .176 last year. His on-base percentage sank from .353 to .294. His OPS fell from .813 to .562.
After homering 22 times in 132 games in 2019, he had two homers in 40 games last year.
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Hitting coach Andy Haines says NarvaĢez was one of many batters putting too much pressure on themselves because of the shortened season.
āYou could see him trying to do way too much,ā Haines said. āI said it not (just) about Omar, but about a lot of hitters I was watching, theyāre literally trying to have a good season with every swing they took. You can see it. And baseball cannot be played that way. It canāt. If the gameās ever sent us a reminder that it canāt be played that way, it sent us a pretty strong one in 2020.ā
NarvaĢez agrees he didnāt have the right approach at the plate last season.
āI was just swinging at everything,ā NarvaĢez said. āI was putting myself in bad position to try to hit the ball. Thatās one of the adjustments Iām trying to make this offseason. Iām going to stick with it during the season.ā
His hitting woes overshadowed the tremendous strides he made behind the plate to upgrade what had been his biggest weakness.
NarvaĢez improved his pitch-framing abilities to such an extent that he led all catches in converting non-swing pitches bordering the strike zone into called strikes, according to metrics compiled by the Baseball Savant website. He had never ranked higher than 39th in that category before last season.
He also didnāt allow any passed balls and threw out 30% of potential base stealers, up from 18% in 2019.
āEverybody says it was a bad year for me,ā NarvaĢez said. āI donāt feel like it. Offensively, yes. But on the defensive side, it was a good year for me. I take a lot of pride in that.ā
The Brewers are confident his hitting struggles last year represented an outlier while his progress on defense was something he can sustain.
Although his 2019 season in Seattle was his best year as a hitter, NarvaĢez also was a relatively productive batter his three seasons with the Chicago White Sox before going to Seattle. His career numbers heading into last season included a .276 batting average, .361 on-base percentage and .411 slugging percentage.
āThatās the one thing you see in Omar, is just a consistent offensive player,ā Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. āWe didnāt get it last year. It certainly bottomed out for him, where the struggles got real. But thereās a track record there thatās pretty solid, very solid, and thereās every reason to believe he can get back there.ā
Haines spent a few days in mid-January visiting the Miami area to work with NarvaĢez and outfielder AvisaiĢl GarciĢa as they prepared for the season. Haines left Florida feeling encouraged.
NarvaĢez says he didnāt make any mechanical changes to his swing but tried to get his head in the right place after thinking too much last year and feeling ātired mentallyā at the end of season.
Heās refreshed now and ready to bounce back.
āRight now, my confidence is to the sky,ā NarvaĢez said. āJust the way I feel, how my body is working, how good I am thinking. Weāll see. Weāll see in spring training games. I feel like everything is going to go well this year.ā
Notes: Milwaukee finalized right-hander Brett Anderson's $2.5 million, one-year contract. Anderson can earn $1 million in performance bonuses for innings: $50,000 each for 100, 110, 120 and 130; $100,000 for 140; $200,000 for 150 and $250,000 apiece for 165 and 180. He earned $1,851,852 in prorated pay from a $5 million salary last year and $222,933 in earned bonuses for $2,074,785 total.
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