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Colt Keith is starting to live up to the hype and the Detroit Tigers are giddy
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- Colt Keith is starting to live up to the hype and the Detroit Tigers are giddy
Colt Keith is always tweaking his swing.
The 22-year-old, whom the Detroit Tigers signed to a long-term contract before his MLB debut by hitting .306 with 27 home runs in the minor leagues last season, adjusts his swing before games and after games, but even more impressively, he sometimes adjusts while standing in the batter's box during games.
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Keith rarely experiences prolonged slumps because he's always a swing adjustment away from a breakthrough. He is able to make the adjustments because he uses his hands to control the barrel of his bat and his eyes to avoid chasing pitches.
"I'm trying to stay as consistent as I can with my emotions, my mechanics and my routine," Keith said after Sunday's 11-2 win over the Chicago White Sox , in which he had four hits and missed the cycle by a triple. "It's up and down in baseball. The best players in the game stay even the whole time, so that's what I've been trying to do."
Detroit Tigers second base Colt Keith (33) bats against Chicago White Sox during the fifth inning at Comerica Park in Detroit on Saturday, June 22, 2024.
Keith, who bats left, is hitting .243 with four home runs, 14 walks (5.8% walk rate) and 42 strikeouts (17.3% strikeout rate) across 68 games. He has a below-average .628 OPS.
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The season-long numbers won't bounce back overnight after a poor start.
"He's a really good hitter," manager A.J. Hinch said. "It's going to take a while for the numbers to get where they're supposed to get to, but he's starting to put the at-bats together and starting to take a game plan that he wants into the game and not overcomplicate it, not try to do too much, not try to make up the next at-bat because of the last at-bat. We just need him to mature and learn the league."
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Keith's numbers have been weighed down by a miserable first 30 games, hitting .152 (15-for-99) with zero home runs and a .399 OPS from March 28 through May 5. Since then, Keith is hitting .315 (40-for-127) with four home runs and an .811 OPS in 38 games from May 6 through June 23.
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His 131 wRC+ (Weighted Runs Created Plus) ranks since May 6 ranks second among second baseman with at least 130 plate appearances in that stretch of games, trailing only Jordan Westburg . The wRC+ metric reveals Keith has been 31% better than the positional league average offensively since the beginning of May.
But the first 30 games were dark days.
"That's definitely the most I've felt like I've been lost and struggled," Keith said. "There was times where I felt noncompetitive in the game. ... The beginning of the year was just really overwhelming."
Keith implemented a toe tap in early May to calibrate the timing of his swing, and over the past month-plus, has made more adjustments to the load of his swing to keep his body in a comfortable hitting position. The most important aspect is keeping his head quiet throughout his swing.
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"Keeping my head still is definitely the biggest thing for me," Keith said. "I don't want to stuck too far back or too far forward. It's finding a happy medium."
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Detroit Tigers second baseman Colt Keith (33) rounds the bases after hitting a two-run home run in the first inning against the Chicago White Sox at Comerica Park in Detroit on Sunday, June 23, 2024.
Scott Harris, the Tigers' president of baseball operations, felt comfortable signing Keith to a long-term contract — which guarantees $28.6 million over six years — because he believed Keith's ability to make quick adjustments in the minor leagues would translate to the major leagues.
Harris was right.
"I think the hardest thing I've ever done in my career was make an adjustment in the big leagues with my swing," Keith said. "That was just the beginning of the year, but it's been five, six, seven adjustments down the road, and it's getting easier and easier every time."
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A FIRST FOR EVERYTHING: Tigers rookie Colt Keith takes 'big step in right direction' with first four-hit game
Keith already has three four-hit games this season: May 17 against the Arizona Diamondbacks , June 15 against the Houston Astros and Sunday against the White Sox. (He also posted back-to-back three-hit games May 20-21 against the Kansas City Royals.)
As for four-hit games, Keith is tied in third place with Mookie Betts and Francisco Lindor among 94 hitters. The trio of Keith, Betts and Lindor — all with three four-hit games — trails only Luis Arráez (five four-hit games) and Will Smith (four four-hit games) on the four-hit leaderboard .
"It's impressive," said Matt Vierling , who has been batting leadoff with Keith in the two-hole recently. "There's a process to it. It takes some time to get used to pitching up here, get comfortable in the stadiums, the umpire, the strike zone, the game. Everything is a whole different animal than the minor leagues. To see him keep maturing and growing, it's pretty cool."
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The combination of Arráez, Smith, Betts and Lindor has a combined 14 All-Star selections, 11 Silver Slugger awards and three batting titles. And Keith has outperformed all four of those players on offense since the beginning of May.
Maybe Keith, whose eyes and hands give him the rare ability to adjust his swing in real time, is destined for greatness.
"I would say my expectations for myself are higher than anybody else's," Keith said. "I still got goals that I wrote down before the year, and I have time to meet them. I'm trying to have good at-bats every day and chip away at not only my personal statistics but also get wins for the team."
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Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold .
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Colt Keith starting to live up to the hype for Detroit Tigers
