Let’s get swinging with Colt Keith

Let’s take a look at some swing metrics for two hitters for the 2026 season.

Player A: 71.2 MPH bat speed, 6.9 ft swing length, 16.0% Fast Swing%, average contact point of 5.7” in front of the plate.
Player B: 72.0 MPH bat speed, 6.9 ft swing length, 19.7% Fast Swing%, average contact point of 5.3” in front of the plate.

Looking at them, it could be assumed that they could have had similar seasons. Similar bat speed, short swings, both swinging the bat 75+ MPH about the same amount, both make contact about the same spot.

Ready for the reveal? Player A is Kevin McGonigle and Player B is Colt Keith. Despite their swing metrics being so similar, their seasons were quite different. Let’s dig into some of differences and maybe find a why that might be.

Swing tilt

One metric I noticed to be slightly different was the average swing tilt. Kevin had a 4° steeper swing at 36° vs Colt’s 32° and in general, Kevin seemed to be more consistent with his swing angle:

The 1st one is Kevin, 2nd Colt, and 3rd both to see a comparison side-by-side (Kevin in the orange). When looking at the average for the two, there is some clear overlap. However, Kevin has a lot more on the steeper side, which tends to have better numbers overall even if it’s only slightly.

Contact and stance

As I noted above, on average they made contact at nearly identical spots. When taking a look deeper into this, I noticed that their depth in the box’s were a bit different where Colt was standing 24.4” deep and Kevin was standing 29.2”. Same contact point, Kevin deeper in the box.

Let’s look at this combined with the swing tilt information and add in the attack angle:

Colt: 32° tilt, 11° attack angle, 5.3” in front of the plate, 24.4″ deep
Kevin: 36° tilt, 15° attack angle, 5.7” in front of the plate, 29.2″ deep

When I look at this, it makes me wonder if Colt could afford to move further back and make contact on more of his upswing, allowing him to lift the ball more in the air and giving him a GB% to more match Kevin’s.

September/October

If we look at September/October, Colt’s best month of the season and his 2nd best month from wRC+ and OPS, Keith was standing about 1″ deeper in the box than his average on the season and was among the deepest in his career. Adding to that, he saw a more steep swing, averaging 35°, added 0.5 MPH of additional bat speed, and also upped his attack angle to 13°. It’s a super small sample size, but half of the hits he had went for extra bases and his GB% dipped below 30%.

Final thoughts

I think it would be making it far too simple for me to say “all Colt needs to do is x, y, and z” to be great; there is so much more that needs to also be taken into account. These are just a few thoughts I have when I look at the information we have access to. We can see how the swings of Colt and Kevin are similar and also differ. We can also see that one of Colt’s more successful months had swing numbers that more closely match Kevin’s. However, the larger point here is that Colt could be an early adjustment or two away from having the year we all hope for. As we enter year 4, based on how year 3 ended, I think we could see those adjustments.