JASON HEYWARD, OF ATLANTA BRAVES
8/9/1989BATS- L THROWS- L
Drafted- 1st Rd – 2007 HS
Bonus- $1.7 million
Somehow, Jason Heyward slipped to the 14th pick in the 2007 MLB Draft. Today, he stands alone as the best player in minor league baseball. But we are not here to tell you everything you already know about Heyward. There is no reason to spend paragraphs discussing how Heyward is a pure hitter with elite plate discipline and a strong throwing arm. So we covered it all in one sentence and now we have plenty of room for an in-depth breakdown of the mechanics of Heyward’s swing.
SETUP
Heyward sets up with his feet slightly outside his shoulders and his knees well bent. He creates a triangle as he grips the bat, with his wrists acting as the apex. His arm extends from his side, at his shoulder, at a nearly 90-degree angle, and his bat rests behind his head on a slight incline. He wags the bat and has a slight timing mechanism of flapping his elbows toward to and away from each other. He also gets his shoulders involved and the top half of his body goes back and forth a bit. You would prefer a hitter to stay still, but if he likes the timing mechanism, there is not a terrible amount of harm. Considering Heyward’s hit tool, this clearly has not created a problem for him.
HEAD MOVEMENT
The movement in the top half of his body as he waits for the pitch causes his head to move some. There is a little more movement than you would like to see, since you want the hitter to have still eyes focused on the pitcher’s release point, but again, Heyward’s results minimize this as a concern.
LOWER HALF
Balance and torque in the lower half is what turns tools into performance. Heyward is very balanced. If anything, he gets slightly out in front at the point of impact. This is definitely a big reason why he will be a .300 hitter at the major league level. However, when evaluating this area of his swing, you can also see why Heyward should be a 30+ home run guy as well. If he can stay back just a bit and create slightly more torque, he can get under the ball more and drive it for more doubles and home runs.
STRIDE
Heyward has the minimal stride you want a hitter to have. This likely helps to decrease the impact of the movement in his top half before he swings.
EXTENSION
This is another area where Heyward has no problems. He has great extension. Because he has great balance and his lower half leads his hands into his swing, he is able to extend effectively.
OUR INSTINCT
Did you notice we had hardly anything negative to say about Heyward’s swing? He has a little too much movement in the upper half of his body before his swing and he is just barely unbalanced, favoring his front half. There is really no need to mess with his setup to fix the movement in his top half, based on his results. On his balance, his current swing is more suited to pure hitting. With a slight shift of balance, Heyward can hit for more power without relying on his hands.
Heyward seems to be a safe bet to reach his potential and should be similar to Bobby Abreu during his years in Philadelphia before that ill-fated Home Run Derby. He should be a .300-30-100 type of guy with a strong enough arm for right field and excellent instincts in the field. He won’t steal nearly as many bases as Abreu, but he has good speed and above average base running instincts.
Heyward is the future face of the Braves organization and will be the man to replace Chipper Jones in that role. Heyward is ready now and if this is indeed Bobby Cox’s swan song season you can bet that Heyward has arrived and that it’ll be a long time before he gives up the reigns in Atlanta.
Special thanks to Aaron Bentley for his Instinct on this breakdown.
David Reiffer
Feb 25. 2010
From the video, Heyward looks a lot like a younger Fred McGriff. Have no idea if the crime dog’s swing even compares with Heyward, but that was the first thing I thought of.