Impeccable on defense, Pirates SS Kevin Newman working to be aggressive at plate

If Kevin Newman didn’t make it clear the first time that he doesn’t want to talk about his errorless streak, the Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop repeats himself to remind that it’s off limits.

So we don’t dare discuss that he hasn’t committed an error at short through his first 73 games this season or that he’s on the verge of passing the 2015 starts of J.J. Hardy (75) and Jhonny Peralta (77) and closing in on Omar Vizquel’s record streak of 89 errorless games to start 2000. (Mike Bordick owns the major-league record for most consecutive games without an error, 110, with Baltimore in 2002).

“No, I don’t know where I rank. I just come out and try to work as hard as I can and just prepare myself as best I can every game,” Newman said. “I don’t like talking about that stuff.”

While Newman doesn’t dare jinx what what he’s doing impeccably this season, he has no qualms with detailing in depth why his batting average is hovering around the Mendoza Line.

Newman was batting .206/.247/.268 with seven doubles, one triple, three home runs and 13 RBIs entering Thursday’s game at the New York Mets, which was rained out.

For someone who has hit at every level — from high school to college to winning two batting titles in the Cape Cod league to .308 as a rookie with the Pirates in 2019 — and batted .606 in spring training, Newman is at a loss to explain why he is suddenly struggling to find knocks at every door.

“You know, it’s definitely different,” Newman said. “I’ve hit for a long time, including ’19 in the big leagues. So this year is definitely a different feeling.”

Over the past eight games, Newman is batting .138 (4 for 29) with one extra-base hit, a 356-foot solo home run on Sunday with an exit velocity (92.9 mph) that didn’t register as a hard-hit ball. But it gave the Pirates the lead in a 2-0 win over the Milwaukee Brewers and, more importantly, showed a side of Newman that he is working on.

“It was really good to see,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “He got us on the board. I know that’s the first time we had a lead in a while. It gives you a little bit of a sigh of relief, like, ‘All right, here we go.’ ”

Shelton emphasized Newman was taking “good, aggressive swings,” even on a fly ball to deep right that went for an out.

“The aggressiveness of his swings,” Shelton said, “is really starting to come back.”

That’s what is most confounding to Newman. When he talks about making adjustments at the plate, they are more to his mentality than his mechanics. He is not tinkering with his stance or his swing or trying to reinvent himself as something he is not.

“The position I’m in is the position I’ve always been in. It’s funny because, as a hitter, you get away from that. You think something is so wrong, so wrong when it’s really not. A lot of it is up here,” Newman said, tapping his head, “and a lot of it is the mentality of letting your body do what it’s been trained to do for 20 years. That’s a lot of the adjustments between the ears that come into play.”

That starts with thinking less, Newman says. He wants to simplify his approach by being aggressive at the plate. Newman rarely strikes out (6.6%) or draws walks, and most of his hits are to the infield or shallow outfield. He doesn’t drive the ball and ranks among baseball’s worst in barrel percentage (1.1%), hard-hit rate (23.8%) and exit velocity (85.4 mph), as evidenced by his homer against the Brewers.

“The thought wants to be hard contact,” Newman said. “I fell into a hole of really thinking about mechanics in the box. That’ll take away from being able to react to pitches. That home run that I hit, I went up there with the mentality of get a pitch out over (the plate), something as simple as that, and let my body react. And that’s what happened, instead of thinking, ‘I want my hands here. I want to be in this way, my front foot here, my land spot here,’ all those things.”

Since then, he has had one hit (a single) in his last 12 at-bats. Of his outs, five were fly balls (four to right), one pop-up, four groundouts and one strikeout. Although all of Newman’s extra-base hits — three homers, seven doubles and a triple — were to left, he appears to be trying (and, perhaps, overcompensating) to hit to all fields.

After committing eight errors — five at shortstop and three at second base — Newman spent the offseason working on improving his first step on defense and has been perfect in 241 chances.

Newman believes he can make the same type of turnaround at the plate.

“I know it’s there. I know it’s there. I’ve proven it. I’ve shown it. I know it’s in there,” Newman said. “So it’s a matter of getting back to that spot and confidence and just being able to really bring it out to the field daily. I do it every few days, but to be a major-league baseball player, it’s consistency. It’s coming out every day. I’ll have a good couple days, then struggle for a couple days. It’s just a matter of stringing them together and finding it and being competitive and come out and do it every single day.”