Photo via @Rockies/X
Eli Whitney | July 23, 2026
Back in April, Kyle Karros looked at a stat line that didn’t impress anybody and calmly explained why it shouldn’t matter.
“My numbers are pretty misconstrued right now,” he told me then, pointing to the batted-ball data on Baseball Savant that painted a far more dangerous hitter than his batting average suggested. The power, he insisted, “is really inevitable.”
It was a bold thing for a 23-year-old with two career home runs at the time to say out loud. It also turned out to be true.
Three months later, Karros is in the middle of the best stretch of his young career. Since June 1st, he’s slashed .315/.418/.562 with six home runs. The 457-foot blast he launched on July 5 didn’t need an expected-stats translation. And when I caught up with him at Coors Field this week and asked whether it all felt like vindication, he shook the premise before it landed.
“I don’t think there was ever really any doubt on my end,” Karros said. “There was never any doubt in my mind, but I definitely wanted to show the baseball world, my coaches, my teammates that I was capable. A lot of the expected numbers have now started to even out to the actual, which I think is pretty cool to see. That’s what happens over time as you accumulate enough at-bats.”
The Swing That Unlocked It
In April, Karros described the power as a matter of getting the ball in the air. Now he can explain exactly how he did it — and it’s not the answer you’d expect. There was no launch-angle overhaul, no sold-out swing change. It was posture.
“I’m trying to stay over my back leg more,” he said. “Naturally, that makes most of the contact out front, as opposed to behind my body. If you’re hitting the ball behind your body, you’re going to hit it on the ground. I’m just trying to hit the ball out front more.”
The distinction he draws is a subtle one, and he’s careful to make it: he’s not cheating on pitches to get there.
“That’s not to say I’m making earlier decisions to get the head out,” he said. “I’m still letting the ball get deep, but I’m staying back with my body more, so most of the contact is out front. It’s not really a timing thing as much as it’s just the position I’m putting my body in.”
It’s the kind of answer that tells you why Karros has always trusted the underlying numbers. He talks about his swing the way an engineer talks about load-bearing walls — and the results have followed.
The Chess Match — and the Scouting Report He Won’t Give You
Success at this level invites a response, and Karros says it arrived fast.
“That’s something I’ve realized at this level happens faster, and it’s more apparent than anywhere else,” he said of pitchers adjusting to him. “Not only do the pitchers have the game plan, I think they have more of the ability to execute it at this level. It’s definitely super obvious. There’s trends — they’ll be attacking me this way one series, and then another team…”
Ask him what those trends are, though, and the conversation hits a wall — one built, as it turns out, by his father.
“I don’t want to get too into how pitchers are pitching me and how I’m attacking them,” Karros said with a grin. “I had an interview a couple months ago, and I was very outspoken about what I try to do. And then my dad got on me and told me, you don’t talk about that stuff on air in interviews.”
It’s a small moment, but a telling one.
In April, Karros told me the only thing that wears on him about the Eric Karros questions is when his dad talks about today’s game like it’s the one he played. Media strategy, apparently, is a different story. Fourteen big-league seasons buy you some credibility on what not to say into a recorder. The kid listened.
“Anyone Can Do It for a Month”
Karros told me in April that he was nowhere near the player he’s going to end up being. A breakout summer hasn’t budged him off that, and his honesty about the gap is striking for a player in the middle of a heater.
“I think it’s doing it over the course of a whole season,‘ he said of the next step. ”I had a pretty good June and July — I mean, we’re still in July, I guess — and I think that’s definitely the player I can be. But anyone can do it for a month. The great ones do it over the course of a whole career.“
Then came the admission you rarely hear from a player mid-surge: the glove has paid a price for the bat.
“As my offense kind of went up, my defense kind of was slacking a bit,” he said. “Me and Andy (Gonzalez) have looked at some stuff, some pre-pitch stuff. I definitely want to get that back up to the standard that I hold myself to.”
That standard is the durability piece, too. Karros made a deliberate offseason push to add weight and build a body that could survive all 162, and deep into July, he says it’s holding — mostly.
“I definitely am feeling it now. I find myself taking it a little lighter in the weight room as of late,” he admitted. “But the weight has held a lot better than it did last year. That being said, we’re getting into the thick of it, so now it’s just about staying with my eating, staying with my weight room program, and keeping it into the stretch.”
Seeing Yourself Succeed
Ask Karros what’s changed in his first full big-league season and he’ll give you a theory of development that doubles as a theory of confidence.
“It’s tough to know how to succeed until you’ve actually seen yourself succeed,” he said. “I think I’ve gotten that experience this year, which has been huge.”
He sees a version of the same thing happening around him in the clubhouse.
“The maturity is one thing, but more so than anything, it’s just the cohesiveness that we’ve been experiencing as of late — just how connected we are as a group, on and off the field,” he said. ‘That’s definitely been apparent more so than it was at the beginning of the year, more so than it was last year. This group is very, very connected.“
Back in the spring, Karros called getting Colorado back to October baseball his North Star. That’s still a long way off. But the sequence he’s describing — see yourself succeed, then make it a habit; connect as a group, then make it a standard — is what the first steps look like.
He called the power inevitable, and it showed up. He won’t tell you what he sees at the plate anymore — but three months later, it’s getting easier to see for yourself.
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