Don’t panic for a second on this struggling A’s slugger

The sport of baseball never makes perfect sense. However, if you’re Athletics slugger Nick Kurtz, baseball makes absolutely zero sense.

Imagine hitting baseballs 92.7 mph on average for an entire year. You end the season with 36 home runs and win the AL Rookie of the Year Award.

Next year, you hit baseballs 97.3 mph on average for the first 15 games of the season. However, your stat line reads: .192 AVG, 1 HR, .288 SLG, .661 OPS.

Somehow, despite hitting the ball harder than anyone in the sport, your slugging percentage is literally slashed in half—and then some.

That’s the dilemma facing Nick Kurtz in the middle of April. Even though he’s swinging the bat even better in year two, the results are nowhere to be found.

As a 23-year-old who’s yet to sign a contract extension, that’s a brutal spot to be in. Fortunately for Kurtz, he’s bound to dig out of that hole soon.

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Making Even Louder Contact?

The major takeaway from Nick Kurtz’s rookie season was that the ball jumps off his bat incredibly hard. No matter where it’s pitched or where he hits it, it’s always hit well.

In 2025, Nick Kurtz ranked 20th in MLB in average exit velocity. He led all rookies, landing 16 spots ahead of the next rookie, Drake Baldwin. In barrel rate, he finished seventh in the league with a staggering 18.4% clip.

That context is extremely important when you start to examine some of the early improvements that Kurtz is making in 2026.

As alluded to earlier, Kurtz has improved his average exit velocity by 4.6 mph. By itself, that’s currently the third-largest increase from 2025 to 2026 in MLB. In addition to that, Kurtz improved his hard-hit rate by 6.6% and recorded a new career-best exit velocity of 115.1 mph.

The craziness doesn’t even end there. Kurtz has been far more patient at the plate, seeing almost a full pitch more in each plate appearance on average. Because of this, he’s walking 22.1% of the time this year, which lands him at fourth in the league in that category.

If you told somebody before the season that Kurtz would make these improvements, they’d likely expect him to be leading MLB in home runs while batting above .300.

The gap between raw performance quality and box score results is absolutely unreal—like seriously. There is no realistic outcome where Kurtz continues to struggle to an extent even close to his current pace.

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The One Blemish in His Game, and How He Overcomes It

At his best, Kurtz is a pure hitter who threatens to take over a series. He’s always going to be the guy who you “can’t let beat you” on the pitcher’s scouting report.

However, there is one aspect in which Kurtz struggles massively. Frequent strikeouts have always been a mainstay in any sample of his hitting data. In 2025, Kurtz struck out 30.9% of the time, which landed him in the bottom 4% of MLB in that category. This stemmed from a massive 35.5% whiff rate, a byproduct of his consistently thunderous swings.

In 2026, these rates have reached more extreme levels. As of Wednesday, Kurtz is striking out at a 38% clip and whiffing at a 43.3% clip. Because so many of his at-bats are ending without a ball in play, Kurtz’s statistical struggles have been amplified significantly.

However, this is far from the reason why Kurtz is batting .192 with a lone homer. In his rookie season, Kurtz proved that he can produce elite numbers even with a high strikeout rate. His AL Rookie of the Year Award serves as a pretty good argument against anyone who says that he needs to make more contact.

In 2025, Kurtz actually produced a .290 batting average over nearly 500 plate appearances. Luis Arraez—who struck out the least in baseball—hit .292 last year. Kurtz is so powerful that despite striking out often, most balls that he does put in play are hammered. Simply put, his power is so extreme, it actually makes him an above-average contact hitter as well.

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So, Why Does This All Matter?

Kurtz put down the blueprint in his rookie season. There will be a hefty amount of swing-and-miss, but he gives you over 1.5 extra-base hits each series.

This approach works for Kurtz. It did at Wake Forest, it did in the minors, and it worked in 2025 with the A’s. Because of this track record, one simply cannot say that the blueprint is suddenly going to falter.

Kurtz’s expected slugging percentage is nearly .100 points higher than his actual slugging percentage. His barrel rate as a predictor for SLG (0.36 correlation) suggests he should have above a .450 SLG. Right now, Kurtz is slugging just .291.

While his strikeout tendency makes him more volatile, there’s no way around the fact that Kurtz’s underlying metrics are severely outperforming his current numbers. As the weather heats up and balls start to find grass and not gloves, we’ll forget Kurtz ever started out the season this way.

It looks rough on the outside, but if you watch Kurtz every night, you know that the big left-handed monster never left.