HOUSTON — A batter’s box is 24 square feet of possibility. Stand wherever you like, as long as one foot is not completely outside of the chalked rectangle. The permutations are many. But 90% of hitters plant their feet in their preferred spots at bat after at bat, game after game, year after year, like those yellow footprint guides in a TSA full body scanner.
“Ninety?” says Boston hitting coach Tim Hyers. “It might be higher. That’s my experience. Because they’ve had success to get here, and they don’t like changing a lot.”
To understand why Kiké Hernández has claimed this postseason as his personal property—like some combination of Babe Ruth in 1928, Carlos Beltrán in 2004 and Randy Arozarena in 2020—you have to understand the mighty change he undertook just as these playoffs began.