There is no doubt that 2026 has been a disappointing year for Colorado Rockies shortstop Ezequiel Tovar. After injuries hindered him in 2025 and he put together a strong perfromance with Team Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic, hopes were high that Tovar could return to form and propel the Rockies offense.
Unfortunately, he’s mostly done the opposite this season.
You’ll be able to read an in-depth review of his season in the Ranking the Rockies series (which starts next week, by the way). However,
as the season winds down, it’s worth noting and exploring the fact that Tovar has actually been better at the plate since the start of August.
Since August 1, Tovar has slashed .279/.325/.404 with 29 total hits, including four doubles and three home runs. In September alone, he is batting .297/.333/.405, going 11-for-37 with a double and a home run along with 10 runs scored. The performance over the last 40 games as been a major improvement for a player who couldn’t seem to buy a hit at times this season, let alone make contact.
So what’s leading to some success lately?
The plate discipline
Tovar entered August with a 25.8% strikeout rate alongisde a .196 batting average and .243 on-base percentage. The 72.3% first-pitch strike rate he carried was the highest in the sport while his 16.3% swinging strike rate was the sixth-highest. Now, a high swinging strike rate isn’t bad if you are coupling that with some predigous power, considering Tovar was behind the likes of Hunter Goodman, Brandon Lowe, and Colson Montgomery.
It becomes a problem when he had the highest swing-rate in baseball at 61.5% but a 73.4% contact rate which ranked 115th in baseball. He also had the third-highest swing rate on pitches outside of the zone along with the highest swing rate on pitches inside the zone, but wasn’t particularly good at making contact with either location.
Things have looked much different in terms swing rate and contact since the start of August. Since August 1, Tovar boasts a first-pitch strike rate of 59.1% which ranks 260th among all players with at least 50 plate appearances. He still swings a fair amount at 57.7% of the time, but he’s down to 12th in that department and has been swinging at pitches out of the zone far less at rate of 39.8% which ranks 29th.
The biggest improvement over the last two months is that Tovar is simply making much more contact, especially on pitches in the strike zone. He has improved his contact rate in the zone to 86.9%, four points higher than it was before August, while lower his contact on pitches outside of the zone.
He may still be striking out 25% of the time, but the slight uptick in walks from 5.6% to 7.0% as a result of his slightly tempered plate aggression is huge for a player like Tovar. He’s never going to be one to draw a lot of walks, but his over aggression on pitches has always been his weakness. There are still issues, but he’s finally making the right adjustments to get back to what he can do well.
Batted balls
With the improved contact, Tovar has been doing something he’s struggled with the majority of the season: hitting the fastball.
Before August, the highest batting average he had against fastballs was a .241 AVG in May. Otherwise, he was hitting below .200, bottoming out at .075 in June. However, the fastball has been handeled nicely over the last seven weeks.
In August, Tovar hit .290 against fastballs and has exploded in September with a .368 AVG. He has still whiffed around 25% of the time, but he is managing to do more against fastballs while seeing them 55% of the time. As a result of catching up to the fastball better, opposing pitchers have increased the usage of offspeed pitches against him.
In the first few months of the season, offspeed pitches came in a little under 10% of the time month-to-month. However, they jumped up to 12% in August and 18.4% in September. He hit over .300 in August but has come back down to a .143 AVG in September has the slower pitches. Breaking pitches will always be Tovar’s bane, especially down and away with two strikes, but the improvement of forcing pitchers to think more because he is timing up the fastball makes it more likely for mistakes to happen that he can take advantage of.
As for when the balls are put in play, there hasn’t been much difference in terms of groundballs, line drives, and fly balls, but there has been some improvement in finding the barrel. Before August, he has a barrel rate of 6.3% but since then has a 7.7% rate which complements his 33% hard hit rate a bit better. There is still room for improvement, but his ability to have more hard-hit line drives off the barrel is generally a good thing. Hopefully, that can then lead to more consistent power in the future. After all, he has now hit double-digit home runs in three of his four full seasons.
Work in progress
There is plenty of work to do for Tovar to get back to the heights of that 2024 season. He’s been in the depths these last two seasons and so getting back to a baseline to build off of is a positive sign. If he can finish the season strong with his current level of play, perhaps he can find the next gear in 2027 to prove he is worthy of his contract and continuing to stick around as a key component for this team.
Ideally, Tovar can find his power again and start collecting extra-base hits and driving in runs. The injuries of 2025 may have taken a toll, something that is hard to recover from, but there is still a quality player in Tovar. If these final two months have been any indication, that player can still contribute in meaningful ways, even if he isn’t the driving force the team had hoped for.
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