Even if he’s only a borderline superstar, Kris Bryant may well be the perfect player for modern major league baseball. He’s won some of his sports’ highest accolades while playing all over the field and sitting for photo and video shoots, and he’s done it inside the fishbowl of one of the most pressurized environments in baseball.
And what’s more, Bryant has made unprecedented improvements in contact rate since his debut, cutting his strikeout rate by 15 points from the 30.6 percent he posted as a rookie. Patrick Mooney wrote that “it has become clear that Bryant essentially serves as his own hitting coach,” but that’s not entirely true.