John Mallee

Kris Bryant digs his right foot into the dirt followed by his left. The Cubs slugger taps the plate once with his bat and then cocks it behind his head, ready to unleash one of baseball’s most majestic swings.

The mantra going through his head at the time is simple.

“See the ball, hit the ball,’ ” Bryant said. “Pitchers are too good, so you can’t go out there thinking about your swing.”

The time for thinking about his swing is during the offseason, spring training and these days while in the batting cage. At 24, the reigning National League Rookie of the Year continues to look for ways to improve.

“I’m always wanting to do better,” Bryant said. “I thought last year I had a good year, but I wasn’t satisfied at all. I popped up way too many balls or missed some I should have crushed.”

With that in mind, Bryant and Cubs hitting coach John Mallee sought to level his swing to allow his bat more time through the hitting zone.

“We … talked about it toward the end of last year just because the wind blows in so much (at Wrigley Field),” Bryant said. “In order to hit a home run into the wind here, it’s got to be more of a line drive.”

One point of discussion was the launch angle of the ball — the vertical angle at which the ball leaves the bat. The goal was to cut down on Bryant’s uppercut, which has produced some prodigious home runs, while maintaining power and increasing line drives.

“I committed to making a swing thought change just to be more flat with my swing,” Bryant said. “Last year, I think I was worse in terms of fouling pitches off and I told myself I don’t want to do that; I want to hit the pitches that are in the strike zone.”

For a power hitter, a launch angle between 20 and 30 degrees is optimal (“For me, 25 to 30 usually produces a lot of my home runs,” Bryant said. “Anywhere from 22 to 26 is a good swing.”) while anything above 30 often results in long flyouts or popups.

“In June and July of last year, he was hitting so many fly balls and was kind of missing some pitches in the strike zone,” Mallee said. “So we tried to work on flattening his swing out a little bit … to get the ball to come off the bat with a little different trajectory.

“It’s understanding the path that you want and then just rehearsing the path. We put in a set of drills with him to help flatten his path out. He’s taken to it very well. … He just wants to be the best he can be.”

Cubs hitting coach John Mallee talks with Joe Maddon during the first full-squad workout of spring training on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016, in Mesa, Ariz.

(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

Studying launch angles sounds complex, but Mallee said the concept is quite simple.

“It’s just how long the bat stays on plane with the pitch,” he said. “When guys try to hit fly balls, they get too steep or they’re working too much uphill. Even if the pitch is in the strike zone, they have a tendency to mis-hit it or swing and miss.

“The game revolves around timing. The goal is to get on plane with the pitch as quick as you can and stay on plane with the pitch as long as you can so that you can pick it up anywhere in the strike zone.”

That Bryant wanted to make adjustments despite his stellar rookie season impressed manager Joe Maddon.

“He came in last year with all the ballyhoo and he was struggling,” Maddon said. “We could see from the side what was going on, but you need the when-the-student-is-ready-the-teacher-will-appear kind of moment. So he was ready. So he started telling John, ‘I need to make some adjustments.’

“When you have that as a coach or a teacher, that’s such a wonderful moment (because) so many times guys just think they have it wrapped (and say), ‘I’ve been so successful, why would I ever want to change?’ So to make that change on a major-league level as well he did, that’s not easy.”

The eagerness to adjust his launch angle and bear down with two strikes has translated to better at-bats for Bryant. The best example of each was Bryant’s home run against the Nationals‘ Gio Gonzalez on May 7, a towering drive into the teeth of a 23 mph wind on an 0-2 count.

“This year he’s a much better hitter,” Maddon said. “You see so many more balls go to the right side, especially with two strikes. And then a guy makes an 0-2 mistake and it’s as loud as it’s ever been (May 7). When you’re able to combine those factors, that’s when he’s going to be able to drive in 100-plus runs because he’s not going to be limited to just driving in runs primarily based on homers.”

The average launch angle in the majors through May 15 was 11.26 degrees, while Bryant sat at 17.34, according to Statcast. Bryant finished last season at 19.2, among the highest in baseball.

All 30 major-league parks are equipped with Statcast, a system that uses a series of high-resolution optical cameras and laser equipment to track the location and movements of the ball and each player. Launch angles, along with velocity of batted balls, hang time and distance, are measured and easily accessible to hitters, though Mallee said the Cubs use their own analytics.

Bryant said he shies away from analyzing Statcast data during the season but has used the numbers as a guide to better his swing. He then takes the approach into the cage and works on repetitive motions.

“Just a couple of swing thoughts in the cage that help me get flatter,” Bryant said. “In the offseason I was more conscious of it, but before the game I’m not thinking about it too much. I just trust that the drills I’m doing are putting me in the right position to get to that path.

“It might take away some home runs, but you make more contact, and for me that was a chance I wanted to take.”