BRADENTON, Fla. — Three of the four main fields at Pirate City were empty late Tuesday morning, save for batting cages, screens and a few buckets of baseballs. Catchers had finished their hitting and throwing work for the day and were busy catching pitchers throwing bullpens. Roughly two dozen position players kept busy elsewhere in the sprawling complex.
As the sun rose high in the sky and country music blared on the sound system, Ke’Bryan Hayes laced up his cleats and fairly anonymously joined a couple minor leaguers for extra infield work, the group drilling down into details amid minimal chatter.
That Hayes has seemingly already been proclaimed the National League Rookie of the Year, a future Gold Glove winner at third base and the Pirates’ face of the franchise mattered little in this particular moment. This was baseball, in its purest form.
Standing at shortstop, where he prefers to do infield work, Hayes’ primary focus was tracking baseballs to his right, shuffling his feet and catching them on his backhand, quickly and accurately firing lasers to first base.
“I’ve only played 24 games in the major leagues, so this year we’re going to play 162 and maybe some after that,” Hayes said. “There’s going to be a lot of ups and downs, and I’m looking forward to it.
“I feel like I still have a lot to prove.”
It’s a reasonable and accurate way of looking at the situation, but good luck trying to tamp down external expectations given Hayes’ immense talent and Pittsburgh’s need for a bonafide star. Hayes plays slick defense, has power to all fields, and he’s young enough that he’ll be here awhile. As the Pirates tacitly admit there’s a rebuild happening, one thing that’s sort of universally accepted is that Hayes figures to play an integral part.
At the same time, framing Hayes — a soft-spoken, polite and humble 24-year-old — as something he’s not does more harm than good. Though Hayes works his tail off and absolutely has the right temperament to play this game, he’s hardly flashy or someone who seeks attention. He’s more the lead-by-example type.
“I’m not the most vocal guy ever,” Hayes said, “but my coaches have always told me, ‘Don’t change who you are or what you do. Lead by example, and whenever you do say stuff, keep in mind that guys are watching.’”
There will be no shortage of eyeballs on Hayes this season, those fans and observers curious to see how he follows what was a flat-out ridiculous first month. After making his MLB debut on Sept. 1, Hayes hit .376 and ranked fourth among major leaguers who had at least 75 plate appearances during the final month of the 2020 season with a 1.124 OPS. His .442 on-base percentage was sixth.
Coupled with what he did at the Pirates’ alternate training site in Altoona, those 24 games were proof positive for Hayes that the recent swing changes he made — hands lower and out over his body, stance opened up — had the desired effect.
It was also enough to keep Hayes — who has been flashing plenty of that gap-to-gap power and smooth fielding during two days of spring training work — wanting more.
“I feel like I’ve always had the power,” Hayes said. “I just feel like I wasn’t putting my body in a consistent position to hit the ball hard. I feel like I’ve always had stretches where I’ll hit the ball really hard, but it would be for a game or two and then for the next 2-3 games I wouldn’t.
“Everyone wants to hit .300, but you can’t really control that. All I can really control is putting together good at-bats and trying to square the ball up. And whenever I’m on defense, trying to make every play for my team. I just want to keep building and continue to work on the things that I was working on last year, not trying to add any extra pressure but just going out and playing how I normally would for a season.”
The shortened season enabled Hayes to keep things in perspective, though it’s unlikely he would have developed into an egotistical monster even if he would have produced those same eye-popping numbers over a full slate of games.
His major league father, former Pirate Charlie Hayes, has seemingly taught his son plenty about having a slow heart beat and employing the even temperament it takes to succeed at this level.
Some might label the Pirates’ new star as old school, but it’s really more about not getting too frustrated or too out of whack when you do find success.
“I don’t think he’ll change,” manager Derek Shelton said. “I think he’ll probably play 15 years in the big leagues and never change. That’s who he is. He’s the same person every day. He was the same person every day when he came to the park last year, and we expect that to continue.”
It also might be fair to expect Hayes to take a more vocal role, though again, the worst thing the Pirates can do is force this. Nobody in history has become a better leader by explicitly saying that’s what they were trying to do. This sort of thing is organic and inexact. It comes with time.
The Pirates did do something here that’s interesting, though Shelton downplayed its significance: Todd Frazier, the veteran infielder the Pirates signed who’s still going through intake testing, was given a locker next to Hayes.
A funny moment apparently occurred when Hayes said he told Frazier that he grew up watching him play, which had to make the 35-year-old feel every bit of his age, if not more. But the Pirates should also hope that there’s maybe an accidental benefit here.
For while Hayes should absolutely keep doing his own thing for now — focusing on extra work, the tiniest details of the game and putting his head down until he feels like he has a little more clout — the Pirates will also need him to evolve long-term for this entire rebuild to work.
“I think Ke’Bryan is a key part of the foundation that we’re building, and we saw it last year with what he came up and did,” Shelton said. “By no stretch of the imagination are we going to put it on one player or probably one group of one, two or three players, but he’s definitely part of that foundation.”
