Long before Jake Bauers became the playoff hero for the Brewers en route to a commanding 3-0 series lead over the dynastic, two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers, silencing a rowdy Dodger Stadium crowd, he was coming off a brutal 2024 season that had him contemplating retirement.
Before he could turn into a Brewers playoff hero, he was an anchor weighing them down in 2024 after being traded from the Yankees in 2023.
How did Bauers go from nearly retiring, only recommitting to the game after his wife revealed she was pregnant, to becoming a driving force for a Brewers team on the cusp of their first World Series appearance since 1982? The answer lies in tweaks to his swing and his mentality.
Jake Bauers Has Come Out Swinging in the Playoffs
Bauers’ role in the Brewers’ playoff run hasn’t come out of nowhere. As of September 10th, he was the sixth-best hitter in the MLB in terms of weighted on-base average (wOBA) which is a more holistic way of quantifying offensive value. He was only behind Yordan Alvarez, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Juan Soto, James Wood, and Willson Contreras, while ranking above stars Shohei Ohtani and Junior Caminero.
According to a stats dive by MLB’s Jared Greenspan in September, Bauers always hit the ball hard at a rate comparable or higher to MLB’s top hitters, but his “fast-swing” percentage (or swings at 75+ mph) of 68.8% ranks 13th in MLB this season. His 52.9% hard-hit rate is in the 96th percentile in MLB.
Turn back the clock a little more, and a blog from Brewers Fanatic revealed that early in 2025, his breakout season in Milwaukee, Bauers had been far more selective. The bat speed never shot up, but he was hacking at the ball far more and making less hard contact, (or contact, period) leading to his struggles in 2024.
In 2024, his in-zone ball in play rate was 31% – in the first month of 2025, per the blog, that number was 41.8%. Much of that has to do with Bauers making his swing flatter, that is, changing the plane of his swing, as well as the fact that his bat speed has ticked up from 2024 (73.6 mph) to 2026 (76.5 mph).
The ability was always there, but Bauers made tweaks to his swing – the plane and angle of his swing, and the selectiveness with which he approaches each at bat – that have contributed to his immense success this season.
Bauers’ Mentality Has Deeply Matured
Yogi Berra famously said, “Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.” That couldn’t be more applicable to Bauers’ situation. Only posting a .700 OPS once in his first seven big league seasons, it’s easy for a player of Bauers’ caliber to see nothing but disappointment and put a lot of pressure on himself in the box.
When he was given a second chance in Milwaukee to prove himself, Bauers learned to slow down and take the pressure off himself to produce results.
“I came into this year feeling like there was really only one person holding me back, and that was myself,” Bauers said. “So I think I just gave myself the space to believe that I could play — I could play in this league.”
It’s been a great journey for Bauers, who is rightfully in the limelight for his clutch home run in Game 3 last night.
Jake Bauers Didn’t Become Brewers Playoff Hero Overnight