After Unique Offseason Training, Vinny Capra Hoping to Contribute as Part of Brewers' Opening Day Roster

[Jack Stern]

"We've talked about what I needed to do to kind of become a little bit better of a player," the Brewers' newly-minted utility infielder said after receiving the good news over the weekend. He did it, and a trip to New York awaits.

It was the obvious outcome for the entirety of spring training, and Pat Murphy made it official on Sunday: Vinny Capra has made the Brewers’ Opening Day roster. It will be the first Opening Day for the infielder, who slashed .283/.353/.739 this spring and hit six home runs to tie with teammate Rhys Hoskins (and five others) for the Cactus League lead.

Spring training stats are noisy and often meaningless. Authentic signs of improvement, if any, are found in process-based adjustments and (sometimes) the metrics accompanying them. Capra checked those boxes after spending his offseason training to increase hit bat speed. His procedure was a bit unorthodox. Many hitters train bat speed by swinging weighted bats, but Capra worked predominantly with Chicago-based mentor and mixed martial arts trainer Dimitri Therios.

“Throwing punches, kicks—the form of it is very similar to baseball,” he explained. “It's just the transfer of energy from the ground up, so the rotational power is essentially the same.

“You got to kind of build the engine, I guess, to swing harder … I was trying to work on rotational speed and have things moving away from my body, like [when] you swing, and I guess it transferred over as best as it could. Trying to use the ground, too. That was a big thing, staying grounded in the swing and using my legs the best way possible.”

Without numbers in front of him, Capra could not speak directly to his progression, and the absence of public bat tracking at most Cactus League stadiums means no one can definitively say (from the outside) that he is swinging harder. Mechanically, though, he feels improvement.

“I think the main impact is just how hard I'm hitting it. That was the main goal," he said. "How we get there doesn't necessarily matter, if it's bat speed or mechanical changes, but that's kind of the end result.”

There have been quantifiable signs of growth on that front. In 489 Triple-A plate appearances last season, Capra hit seven batted balls with an exit velocity of at least 105 mph. He hit three in just 55 plate appearances this spring—and again, not all of those trips to the plate even came under the electronic eyes of the Statcast system.

Bat tracking data will provide quick answers to how much Capra’s unique training helped him. For now, he sees an initial payoff in making the roster and hopes it will help him contribute. He is still not a serious power threat, nor will he be a lineup mainstay, but he has the profile to help in a utility role.

“You like to see things go forward, right? And more so, it's being able to contribute at this level, and that's going to hopefully help win ballgames every day if you can do a little bit of something. I think that was kind of the main goal coming in.”

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[GasserFace]

Interesting story and great work by Vinny this offseason.  Mixed martial artists are some of the most explosive and well rounded athletes that I have seen.  It makes a lot of sense that this type of training would produce these results.  Take a minute to watch fighters like Islam Machachev or Ilia Topuria and the rotational that they generate is almost frightening.  Long story short, don’t mess with Vinny Capra.