The 'little details' pay off big for Austin Hays, who passes forward what he learns

PITTSBURGH — “I’m not a huge guy,” says Reds outfielder Austin Hays, who has the sixth-best OPS in MLB this season among hitters with at least 95 plate appearances.

He’s listed at 5-foot-11 and 200 pounds. Heading into a postgame interview after Monday’s 7-1 win over the Pirates — a game where Hays went 3-for-4 with two RBI and a run scored — Hays put a shirt on for the cameras and joked about his physique.

He doesn’t look like a standout power hitter. And yet he was one of the best doubles hitters in MLB during his tenure in Baltimore, would have posted 30 home run seasons if his old team didn’t play his home games in such a pitcher’s park and now in 2025 is squaring up the ball about as consistently as any hitter in MLB.

“I have a plan,” Hays said. “I have a pitch I’m looking for or a location that I’m looking for. If the pitcher throws it in that spot, whether it’s the fifth pitch of the at-bat or the first pitch of the at-bat, I want to make sure I swing at it.”

The Reds are a different team with Hays in the lineup. Terry Francona said, “He’s a guy that can hit in the middle of the order and it’s not too much for him. We love him.”

Hays won’t wake up and run into elite raw power like some corner outfielders who are built like tight ends. Hays is a muscular guy, but he’s also the type of guy who has really had to earn his power.

For nearly his entire career, that’s what Hays has done.

“Hays is an absolute gamer,” Nick Martinez said. “He takes his at-bats personally. He wants to win every pitch. He does a phenomenal job communicating to the other hitters how pitchers attacked him. How he adjusts throughout the game. It creates a dialogue that guys want to buy into.”

Hays dives deep into his pregame preparation, which makes him especially good at making in-game adjustments. His teammates highlight the way he develops a great feel for opposing pitchers, their tendencies, their plan and how they approach hitters like him. And then when those pitchers give Hays a pitch to hit, like Pirates starter Mitch Keller did when he hung a slider on Monday at PNC Park, Hays muscles a line drive into the gap.

Hays doesn’t see his job as done yet. When he’s back in the dugout, he tells his teammates exactly what he saw.

“He’s sure about what kind of pitch he’s looking for,” Santiago Espinal said. “That’s who he is. He has that confidence. I ask him how he does it. I ask him questions about hitting. When he has a good feel for the pitcher, he’ll tell you. You don’t have to go out there and ask. He’ll tell you. That’s the type of mentality he has.”

When Hays is asked if a specific example of this process stands out to him, there’s one from earlier this season that he takes a lot of pride in.

On April 28, the Reds are facing Cardinals starter Andre Pallante. Before the game, Hays was talking with Jose Trevino in the batting cage. They were breaking down Pallante’s approach.

“We need to pull this guy close,” Hays said. “He’s throwing a four-seam and a breaking ball.”

But there was one detail that they were missing in their pregame preparation. They had to make a correction on the fly.

“We didn’t take into account (pregame) that he was throwing on the first base side of the rubber,” Hays said. “So the four-seam was playing like a sinker and coming in.”

Hays hadn’t accounted for that in his pregame prep, so he grounded out to start the game. When he returned to the dugout, he told Trevino about Pallante’s adjustment.

“This guy actually has a lot more angle,” Hays said. “It’ll look a bit further away, but still look to get the head out and do damage pull side.”

Trevino took the advice and then immediately homered on a fastball from Pallante.

“He was ready for that angle and was trying to get the head out, so he hit a homer,” Hays said.

“He came back and it was like, ‘I got you.’”

“Little things like that over the course of the season where you’re in it together and talking about a pitcher and what he’s got and you do your prep together, when it comes together on the field, it’s cool.”

Trevino said about Hays, “He’s a smart hitter, man. He’s all about the little details.”

This is the process that Hays has been going through for his entire career.

As a rookie with the Orioles, veterans Manny Machado and Mark Trumbo showed him the ropes. But Hays wasn’t an every day player until the 2020 season, and Machado and Trumbo were both gone by then.

Hays was on an Orioles’ team in the middle of a deep rebuild, and that team didn’t really have established veteran hitters for Hays to lean on. What the Orioles did provide Hays was two peers in Cedric Mullins and Anthony Santander. They were all young, but they filled that “veteran” role for each other.

All three of them went on to become All-Stars, and Santander in particular went from a Rule 5 Draft pick to a standout slugger who has hit 44 home runs in a season.

“You see how Santander turned his career around and became one of the best power hitters in the game,” Hays said. “That was because of the work he did before (games) and then also understanding what the pitcher was doing during games and adapting. To see him have a big jump in his career, that was another big thing for me. Keep trying to get better at that.”

Hays learned from Santander that pregame preparation can only take you so far. You have to be able to adjust on the fly.

“You can only do so much in the cage before the game,” Hays said. “You watch video. You try to build a plan. You look at the numbers. In your mind, you’re picturing what this pitch is going to look like and how it’s going to move. But there are days where guys’ stuff plays a little bit differently or they’re attacking you differently for some reason.”

For Hays, it’s even better when you can turn that adjustment process into a group project and help your teammates out.

“It’s important to talk in the dugout and after at-bats with the guys,” Hays said. “You can build a plan before the game. But if the pitcher has a different plan from what you think or if the ball’s not moving the way that you had talked about before the game, you have to adjust.”

Now on the Reds as one of the older guys in the lineup, the 29-year-old Hays is speaking up and trying to help lead that process with some of the team’s young hitters.

“All of the best hitters I’ve played with do that,” Hays said. “You try to emulate the good players that have played before me.”

When the Reds’ offense was slumping, the biggest concern was that they weren’t ready for mistake pitches from the opponent and they weren’t pouncing on them for extra-base hits. That’s a strength of Hays, and his approach shows an example for the rest of the team.

“I’ll commend Hays on his aggression,” Will Benson said. “I like seeing that. He’s out there taking good passes. I see somebody swinging with that level of intent, and it’s like, go out there and match that. He has a very upbeat attitude and a type of swagger that I sense.”