On Wednesday, Texas Rangers rookie Nomar Mazara hit a ball 453 feet (as estimated by ESPN's Home Run Tracker), the longest home run by a Rangers player this year. This pretty much falls in line with Mazara's assessment of his swing when I asked him recently whether he struggled to lift the ball.
"The power is there," he said.
If you sift back through his scouting reports as he was developing in the Rangers' system, there really wasn't much doubt that his swing would produce powerful results. Rather, the question was about his ability to make contact.
Two interesting scouting reports on LoneStarBall.com, both written by Adam Morris, show his rapid progression. The first one is from 2012, when Mazara was in rookie ball striking out nearly a third of the time, while the other is from 2015, when the young Dominican had cut his K rate to nearly one in 10 trips to the plate. The first report says "his hit tool is still a big question mark." And just three years later? "His hit tool showed enough progress last year that there's less of a concern that he's going to turn into Wily Mo Pena."
I spoke with the 21-year-old outfielder early last week -- before he would go on a four-homers-in-seven-games purge -- and it turns out he made two big adjustments, one mechanical and one mental, that have helped him get the most out of his sweet swing.
Let's take a closer look.