Gunnar Henderson has struggled with 2 strikes, but he feels he’s turning the corner

With the way Gunnar Henderson chucked his bat, it was easy to see he was proud of this plate appearance. He was right to be.

The Orioles star fell behind, 0-2, as in so many of his trips to the plate lately. This time, it ended differently. For a player on pace for a career high in strikeouts, what he showed next is a positive development. He took two balls. He fouled off the next four pitches — although a few of those were outside the strike zone — and then he laid off one final slider from left-hander Jacob Lopez in the first inning of Friday’s game.

Ten pitches, four balls, one walk and one bat flip.

“Yesterday was a big day for me, I felt like,” Henderson said of Thursday’s series finale against the Miami Marlins, during which he felt his plate appearances were better in terms of swing decisions and pitches seen. “I know, when I get back to what I know I can be, I can trust myself to see those pitches and take those close ones, and also get the swing off that I want to.”

The problem to this point, Henderson said, is he hasn’t seen the ball well enough. He wasn’t picking up the spin early enough to lay off those breaking balls out of the zone, and there were times when his approach boiled down to luck.

“Swing and hope it’s there,” Henderson said, exaggerating how lost he really felt. It wasn’t that severe. But it was close.

In two-strike counts, batters are at their greatest disadvantage. Pitchers are too good, with their arsenals too deep for a batter to feel comfortable in that spot. Henderson, however, has been especially poor with two strikes, hitting .074 with a .278 on-base-plus-slugging percentage before Friday night’s game.

There were 343 players this year who had seen at least 200 pitches. Henderson ranked 329th in two-strike batting average. His on-base percentage of .129 ranked 333rd on that list. The reason, he thinks, is a matter of timing,

“I’ve trusted myself that I have the bat-to-ball skills to put the ball in play,” Henderson said. “Recently, or I guess this year, it’s been a little bit different. I don’t feel like I’ve given myself [time] to actually see the ball. It feels like I’ve been closing myself off.”

Henderson is a “rotational hitter,” meaning his power comes from the twist of his body as his bat slashes through the zone. The issue with that is, if his timing is off, his head can be pointed toward the third-base dugout as he prepares to uncork his swing. He can see the ball in his peripheral vision, but that makes it harder to pick up spin.

“If you rotate too much, then you’re not getting a full view,” Henderson said. “I was picking it up later, so I wasn’t giving myself time to actually see it. ... I wasn’t giving myself a chance to actually pick up the ball, track what it’s doing.”

Despite that, Henderson has hit nine homers. But he has racked up 54 strikeouts in 38 games and his OPS is .674. Still, manager Craig Albernaz has left him in one of the top two spots of the lineup because “he’s just one swing away.”

“To me, with Gunnar, you just leave him put. The track record speaks for itself,” Albernaz said.

There are players who alter their two-strike swings to create more contact. Henderson, it seems, isn’t one of those. He’s capable of doling out damage in any count, Albernaz said, and he doesn’t want to limit him by forcing a contact-only approach.

“I think, the way our hitters have been trained and are training, they have the ability to not sacrifice barreling up the ball and still hitting it hard, as opposed to just playing ping-pong and just putting it into play,” Albernaz said.

The downside of that, potentially, is the tendency to strike out. The Orioles entered Friday with the sixth-highest strikeout rate in baseball (24.2%), and Henderson’s 31.2% is higher than ever before.

The season, though, requires a series of adjustments. Henderson thinks he found something Thursday even though the results weren’t exceptional. He at least saw the ball better, and that could set him up for better months ahead.

“Yesterday was the first time in a long time I felt like I could actually see the ball,” Henderson said. “It was still, obviously, not where I want it to be. But it was a lot better and I actually got into some good counts and took some good swings on the ball.”