Manzardo acknowledged that getting that result was reassuring. But he also doesn’t want to just purely lean on his expected numbers. Like any player, he wants to produce.
The differential between Manzardo’s surface and expected numbers point to the quality of contact he has been making, but not always getting rewarded for. Entering Saturday, he ranked in the 90th percentile in average exit velocity (93.1 mph).
One key could be Manzardo hitting the ball in the air more frequently. Entering Saturday, his ground-ball rate was 47.8 percent (up from 30.3 in 2025). His fly-ball rate was 21.7 percent (down from 35.3) and his line-drive rate was 21.7 percent (down from 24.4).
“I'm hitting the pitches I want to hit pretty well,” Manzardo said. “I haven't got results, but when everything's going the way it should, some of these lineouts and hard groundouts, they're just balls that I feel like I should be hitting in the air. I'll get rewarded more by hitting the ball hard in the air. So just trying to keep hitting line drives.”
There’s a long season ahead. Manzardo showed what he’s capable of this past season, and Friday's homer was in line with that.
“You're going to go through ebbs and flows of balls dropping, balls not,” Fink said. “So we just focus on the things that actually matter and are sustainable through the year.
“All our convos with a number of players, but Kyle included, have been, ‘Continue to have good at-bats. Continue to do the things that lead to stickiness over the course of the season and not get too concerned with short-term statistics.’”
