Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Photos
Kyle Stowers was a part of that Baltimore Orioles place participant prospect hearth hose, nevertheless it’s OK for those who forgot about him. Mentioned hearth hose has turned to a dribble because the Orioles’ fortunes have reversed. You additionally might need gotten him confused with Colton Cowserwhich may be why the Orioles felt like they might commerce him to Miami final summer season for Trevor Rogers. (The opposite prospect in that commerce, Connor Norbyhas the identical similar-name-mixup factor going with Coby Might. This city ain’t large enough for the 2 of us, and so forth.)
And for those who nonetheless had your eye on Stowers in any case that, you have been in all probability postpone when he hit .186/.262/.295 in 50 video games for the Marlins after the commerce. A greater group, with a deeper expertise pool, may’ve eliminated a 27-year-old outfielder with that batting line from its main league roster. However in Miami it’s extra like a expertise splash pad, so Stowers stays.
A lot the higher, as a result of after 52 video games, the previous Stanford slugger is hitting .291/.362/.508. He has the identical wRC+ because the much-celebrated Pete Crow-Armstrongthe next wRC+ than Fernando tate Jr., Vladimir Guerrero Jr.and Bobby Witt Jr.three second-generation huge leaguers with greater than $1 billion in contracts amongst them.
If Stowers’ present type continues, he’d finish the season inside spitting distance of that .300 batting common, 30-homer, 100-RBI degree that we anticipate from middle-of-the-order hitters. Or a minimum of, what we anticipated after I was a child, after we knew about spherical numbers however not any of the flowery stats which have developed within the twenty first Century.
Regardless, that’s a heavy expectation to drop on a man who’s in his first full main league season, and who began stated season below substitute degree for his profession.
So, “Can he preserve doing this?” is a special query from “Is he doing something completely different?” The reply to that second query is a convincing sure.
Right here’s our man on the finish of final season, hitting a triple off Alex shutters. A groundball triple, it bears mentioning. By way of 2024, Stowers liked a grounder. 5 of his 16 extra-base hits in 2024 got here off groundballs; over the primary three partial seasons of his huge league profession, Stowers hit the ball on the bottom 46.2% of the time.
Should you’re a giant, strapping younger man like Stowers, “the bottom” is just not a very environment friendly place to hit the baseball. Even in his lamentable 2024 season, Stowers had plus bat velocity, so he did get comparatively good outcomes when he put the ball on the bottom: a 74 wRC+ on grounders, in comparison with the league common of 41. However a 74 wRC+ isn’t going to chop it typically, particularly when his fly ball wRC+ of 77 was properly under the league common of 126. That is, after all, to say nothing of Stowers’ largest drawback final season: a 35.4% strikeout price.
Right here’s Stowers now.
As batting stance modifications go, this one is pretty refined. He’s holding his fingers just a bit farther out from his physique, standing a pair inches farther again within the field, and he’s opened his stance a couple of levels. This isn’t the I RICE adjustment, for example.
However it’s modified every little thing.
A Stowering Fly Ball
Season
LD%
GB%
FB%
Air Pull%
Barrel%
xwOBACON
2024
17.6%
49.6%
32.8%
10.1%
10.9%
.417
2025
23.5%
39.4%
37.1%
24.8%
19.5%
.508
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
Stowers has each elevated his bat velocity and shortened his swing. He’s hitting extra line drives and extra fly balls, and a larger proportion of each are going to the pull aspect, the place they’ll do extra injury. He’s lower his groundball price by 10 proportion factors and almost doubled his barrel price.
Now, barrel price is under no circumstances the be-all and end-all of hitting. Barrel price consists of batted balls with an exit velocity and launch angle which have led to a batting common of .500 or higher and a slugging proportion of 1.500 or higher, since 2015. These are the place a whole lot of doubles and residential runs come from. There are many hitters, even good hitters, hitters with a little bit of pop, who put up huge numbers with low barrel charges as a result of they’ve very good bat management and use the entire area and by no means strike out.
However an influence hitter will wish to have a barrel price within the double digits a minimum of. Should you spend a whole lot of time on Baseball Savant, seeing Stowers’ 19.5% barrel price in all probability flipped an alarm in your mind. That’s a quantity you don’t see too usually.
Certainly, out of the 256 hitters on the Baseball Savant leaderboard, Stowers’ ratio of barrels per batted ball occasion is the fifth highest. The 4 hitters forward of him — the one 4 hitters with a barrel price of a minimum of 20% — couldn’t have been higher hand-selected as an example what sort of a hitter we’re speaking about right here: Oneil Cruz, Cal Raleigh, Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Choose.
And in contrast to Cruz, Ohtani, Choose, Kyle Schwarberand among the different exit velo monsters on the market, Stowers’ uncooked energy is just not going to get scouts respiratory right into a paper bag. His hardest-hit ball this season is simply 110.3 mph, tied for 126th within the league with (amongst others) Mickey Moniak, Sosa Islandand Maikel Garcia.
However Stowers ranks twenty first amongst certified batters with an EV50 — median exit velocity — of 103.7 mph, the identical as ELLY DE LA CRUZ. So whereas he’s not placing up outlier exit velos, he’s making particularly arduous contact when he places the ball in play. He wants to try this, as a result of lot of the earlier criticisms stay. He nonetheless chases a whole lot of pitches exterior the zone. He swings and misses an absolute buttload, even inside the strike zone; his Z-Contact% is the fourth worst amongst all certified hitters.
However you may get away with that for those who get your cash’s value if you do make contact. Listed here are among the different hitters within the backside 20 in Z-Contact%: Rafael Devers, Logan o’hoppeCruz, de la Cruz, Ohtani, Matt Olson, Freddie Freemanand Bryce Harper. Stowers has made big strides towards turning into that type of hitter.
On balls within the strike zone, Stowers’ swing price (77.6% in 2024, 76.3% in 2025) and phone price (75.9% and 76.4%) have barely budged since final yr. However he’s slugging .603 on these pitches now, up from simply .428 final yr. On pitches in Baseball Savant’s Coronary heart assault zone — the center of the zone — he really has lower his whiff price from 24% to 19%, whereas rising his SLG from .515 to .795.
Whereas he’s accomplished extra injury on pitches within the zone, he’s mitigated the destructive impacts of his swing-and-miss. Final yr, he whiffed 34.5% of the time; the one gamers within the twenty first Century who’ve carried that type of strikeout price to even a league-average total efficiency have both been elite defenders (Javier Báez and Matt Chapman), 40-homer guys who draw tons of walks (Adam Dunn) or each (prime Joey Gallo).
This yr, Stowers is hanging out 27.6% of the time, which remains to be not good. However it’s inside the regular bounds of “not good.” The price of doing enterprise for an influence hitter within the age of the 100-mph splitter “not good.” Particularly since Stowers has additionally elevated his stroll price to eight.9%, which is definitely a fraction higher than league common.
Now that he’s made these modifications, can we pencil Stowers in for 30 homers a season for the subsequent 5 years? I wouldn’t go that far simply but; it’s solely been a couple of months. However he appears to be like like hitter proper now. Ok that it’s best to bear in mind the identify.
