To say that Jason Heyward resurrected his career with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2023 wouldn't be an exaggeration. After a brutal last two seasons with the Chicago Cubs, he had to settle for a minor league pact ahead of last year. The veteran showed he still had something left in the tank, though, turning in quality defense and a wRC+ that was his highest across a full season since 2015 (121).
So it wasn't a surprise that the team was willing to bring him back on another one-year deal. Especially given the lack of outfield options at the Major League level. Heyward had a delayed start to the year due to a back injury, though, with only 52 plate appearances to his name thus far in '24.
For the most part, Heyward has been fine. He's technically been above average by wRC+ standards (103) and has continued to showcase more power ability than he did in his last handful of years on the North Side of Chicago (.191 ISO). His strikeout rate is also at its lowest clip since 2018 (13.5 percent).
Interestingly, Heyward is actually experiencing this success with one aspect of his game waning in a fairly obvious fashion: his approach.
The outfielder is swinging at roughly 55 percent of pitches this year. That's almost a dozen points above his career average. His pitches per plate appearance is also a drop from his career norm, at 3.75. He's whiffing at an 11.2 percent rate that is also out of character for him and worse than many of even his bad years with the Cubs.
Additionally, Heyward is swinging at far more fastballs than ever. A positive, considering he's spinning that into a HardHit% near 50. On the flip side, he's swinging at almost an identical number of breaking pitches, which lie on the other end of the spectrum in terms of quality.
The positive is that even within the overaggressiveness, Heyward has still managed to make contact at roughly the same rate as he has throughout his career. His HardHit%, at 39.0, still looks pretty good. However, he's also driving the ball into the ground at a might higher frequency as a result. Heyward's GB%, at 51.2, is his highest since 2015. Notably, at that point in his career (then with St. Louis), he wasn't the pull-heavy hitter that he's been in recent years. He was able to survive balls in play as a result.
This year has not been the same case. Compounding that groundball contact with pulling well over half the contact he makes has left Heyward with a BABIP of just .231. That's a career-worst. Throw in the fact that he's swinging heavily in the lower portions of the zone and it becomes even less a surprise that this is where Heyward finds himself.
The main caveat within this observation is that Heyward's still at a minuscule sample size on the year. So it's possible that the next 50 PAs could look different than the first 50. At the same time, it feels rather obvious that if Heyward could work in a bit more of an approach, he'd be more liable to get something a bit higher in the zone at which to swing. And then he can deploy those revived contact skills in generating something a bit more elevated.
If this reads as an oversimplification, it's likely due to the sample. Heyward's production has largely been fine, save for a lower-than-you'd-prefer on-base percentage (.288). One imagines that some of this will level out over the course of a full season. A process, though, that Jason Heyward could help to facilitate a bit faster if he starts to reign in the swing rates a bit.