One of the hallmarks of Kris Bryant‘s career, and we’re talking all the way back to his prep days, is the ability to make adjustments at the plate to counter pitchers’ attempts to attack him. After standing very tall in the box as a high schooler and into his early days at the University of San Diego, Bryant adopted a deeper squat in order to increase his plate coverage and punish the increasing number of down-and-away pitches he was seeing.
“We widened him up, shortened his step, got him to believe that he could still generate the same amount of power or the fact that he didn’t have to hit it 600 feet, he could hit it 500 feet or 450,” Bryant’s father, Mike Bryant, told Cubs Insider in 2017.