{"id":765598,"date":"2026-06-28T11:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T11:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/765598\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T11:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T11:22:10","slug":"austin-wells-is-mlbs-worst-hitter-can-the-yankees-fix-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/765598\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Wells is MLB\u2019s worst hitter. Can the Yankees fix him?"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOSTON \u2014 New York Yankees catcher Austin Wells is MLB\u2019s worst hitter by wRC+, and yet his manager believes he\u2019s trending in the right direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cBelieve it or not,\u201d Aaron Boone said after New York\u2019s 4-1 loss to the Boston Red Sox on Saturday.<\/p>\n

That optimism might not just be coach speak. Changes behind the scenes have encouraged Boone, Wells, and other Yankees personnel. Wells went 0-for-3 in Saturday\u2019s game, and his attitude afterwards seemed as if he had just hit a walk-off home run in the World Series. In his first at-bat against left-hander Jake Bennett, Wells hit a routine fly ball to center field. He followed that at-bat with a flyout to right field in his second plate appearance. Outs are ultimately outs, but baseball is a process-oriented sport, and those two at-bats were indicative of the progress the Yankees are observing with Wells.<\/p>\n

Wells said that those at-bats would have been groundouts to second base earlier in the season. Even though the results led to outs, they provided a glimmer of hope that the tweaks he has made to his process can eventually lead to better outcomes.<\/p>\n

And he needs results, desperately. Wells\u2019 45 wRC+ is the worst among all hitters with at least 180 plate appearances this season. Only three other Yankees have finished a season with a .160 batting average or worse with as many plate appearances as Wells has had. His .510 OPS is the worst for any Yankee since Jim Mason\u2019s .445 OPS in 1975. Wells knows he is having a miserable season offensively. The numbers are staring him in the face on every scoreboard across the league when he steps in the batter\u2019s box, but he no longer feels directionless.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time, I didn\u2019t feel like myself,\u201d Wells told The Athletic. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel like I was able to do what I wanted to do. I feel like, for the most part, it\u2019s working that way to feeling more and more comfortable in the box. I honestly felt the most comfortable in the box (on Saturday).\u201d<\/p>\n

Wells went on a rehab assignment earlier this month for cervical headaches and spent time with Yankees hitting coordinator Jarret DeHart, who worked with the catcher on improving his swing. What they noticed was Wells\u2019 swing was flat through the zone, so they\u2019ve worked on adding more tilt. Having more tilt should, theoretically, help a player hit the ball in the air rather than on the ground. So far in June, Wells\u2019 tilt has increased by two degrees from where it was in the first two months of the season.<\/p>\n

That is important to note because Wells\u2019 groundball rate is up over four percentage points from last season, and the amount of grounders he\u2019s hitting to the pull side is by far the highest of his career. That is a strong indicator of a hitter being out of sorts. In June, Wells\u2019 groundball rate has decreased, a sign that he is getting desired contact.<\/p>\n

In May, Wells was deflated while talking about his offense. He called his results horrible and had few answers for his poor numbers. Even though the results still aren\u2019t coming, he does feel like there\u2019s finally some positives, and he is taking small wins where he can get them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just seeing the ball better, putting myself in a better position with my load to be a little slower and smoother and earlier so that I can make a decision,\u201d Wells said. \u201cIn my last at-bat (on Saturday), I took two good changeups. It wasn\u2019t an auto swing and whiff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where Wells has struggled mightily this year is against left-handers. It wasn\u2019t an issue for him last season, and it is why the Yankees did not believe adding a right-handed-hitting catcher was a high priority in the offseason. It has emerged as one of their biggest needs<\/a> before the trade deadline. Wells had a minus-1 wRC+ against lefties this season, meaning he is 1 percent worse than someone who, quite literally, never steps in a batter\u2019s box.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it goes back to the mechanics of what I was talking about, where I have to be perfect because of how steep and flat I was getting through the zone,\u201d Wells said of his struggles against lefties. \u201cA lefty that\u2019s throwing a sinker, sweeper and four-seam, I have to be right on the pitch, right on the speed and right on the area of the zone with how flat and steep I was coming in. At the beginning of the year, I smothered every sinker on the inner half to second base because of that steep angle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Austin<\/p>\n

\n Gerrit Cole, right, said the New York pitching staff fully trusts Wells when he\u2019s behind the plate because of the amount of preparation he puts into game planning. (New York Yankees via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

What is lost in the conversation around Wells\u2019 struggles offensively is that he is a major part of the club\u2019s pitching success. There may not be a bigger supporter of Wells inside the Yankees\u2019 clubhouse than Gerrit Cole, who\u2019s particular about his catchers. Cole said the pitching staff fully trusts Wells when he\u2019s behind the plate because of the amount of preparation he puts into game planning.<\/p>\n

Few scouts thought Wells would stick as a catcher because of how poor his arm and receiving skills were. He was seen as a bat-first prospect, but that has flipped. Cole keeps track of their prospects\u2019 development. The day after the Yankees announced the signing of Taiwanese pitcher<\/a> Chien-Fan Lai, Wells was asking for a scouting report. So Cole knows how much work Wells has put in to become a good defender.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe comes into this environment and gets the coaching and starts improving in the minor leagues, but people are still dogging him,\u201d Cole said. \u201cThen he gets up here, and the results are real. The objective feedback drives this player to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cole doesn\u2019t have many answers as to why Wells\u2019 offense has gone missing, but he believes the public is missing how his main role on the Yankees is to control the pitching staff. If he does that, the Yankees can live with the offense.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor every Buster Posey, there\u2019s 20 Jeff Mathises \u2014 maybe more than 20,\u201d Cole said. \u201cBuster Posey is probably one of the greatest hitting catchers of all time. (JT) Realmuto is in there. (Dillon) Dingler and Will Smith now. Those are the exceptions \u2014 not that Austin doesn\u2019t think he can play that well or play better, but there\u2019s such a physical demand on catching.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mathis\u2019 career wRC+ across over 3,000 plate appearances with six major league teams was 45, the same as Wells\u2019 in 2026. It is unfathomable to Wells that he is hitting so poorly. He has effectively been reduced to a defensive-first catcher, an unexpected and unforeseen outcome. He said that in all of his years playing baseball, he\u2019s never been this bad at the plate. In a way, it provides him comfort that it will eventually turn in his favor. Until then, he will not let it affect his defense.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re not doing that, it doesn\u2019t matter how many runs or hits I have, like we can\u2019t win the game,\u201d Wells said. \u201cI know I have a huge impact when I\u2019m behind the plate, and keeping that the No. 1 goal and the No. 1 focus for myself makes it easier to brush off in an at-bat or a couple of at-bats. I know I\u2019m 0-for-3 on the day and obviously pissed off about it, but getting to go out there and get a zero in the eighth or ninth inning and win the game, that\u2019s the most important goal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON \u2014 New York Yankees catcher Austin Wells is MLB\u2019s worst hitter by wRC+, and yet his manager…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,2704,85],"class_list":["post-765598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}