In some ways, he is not so different from his undersized superstar teammate Jose Ramírez, who always enjoyed strong contact skills, and learned to optimize ball flight.

To access that ceiling, he possesses a superpower few possess: self-awareness.

He identifies and accepts areas in which he needs to grow and improve, and attacks them. He obsesses over the Hows and Whys of the craft. His baseball makeup is even rare among the major leaguers Driveline trainers work with. What does that look like? Driveline hitting director Tanner Stokey has a favorite anecdote.

Entering the summer of 2022, Stokey received a call from Bazzana’s then-agent, David O’Hagan, of Excel Sports Management.

Coming off a freshman All-American season at Oregon State, Bazzana was invited to play in the Cape Cod League, the illustrious wood-bat circuit where college stars attempt to raise their prospect status. Every player accepts that golden ticket. Former Driveline hitting trainer Andrew Aydt couldn’t recall anyone who had ever turned it down.

Well, there’s a first time for everything. There’s Travis Bazzana.

“(O’Hagan) called me toward the end of his freshman year at Oregon State,” Stokey said. “The first thing he told me was, ‘You’re going to want to hire this kid someday.’ I was like, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’”

O’Hagan then explained that Bazzana wanted to train at Driveline instead of playing at the Cape.

Excuse me, Stokey thought.

“At the time, I thought it was a little crazy not going to play in the Cape — if there’s a summer league to play in, that’s the one,” Stokey said. “But Trav is self-aware enough to know that he was likely going to be a first-round pick (one day), if not very close to it, and he wanted to find ways to become as valuable and productive as he possibly could.”

Bazzana became aware of Driveline in his native Australia because Baseball Australia had a relationship with our company. Bazzana got his hands on bat-speed trainers from former MLB player Glenn Williams, now CEO of Baseball Australia, and followed a Driveline bat-speed protocol.

“I wore them out,” Bazzana said of the bat-speed trainers.

As a young amateur, Bazzana played with the Ku-Ring-Gai Stealers club on Sydney’s North Shore. While he did not have access to bat- and ball-tracking technology then, he had a desire for a data-based feedback loop to guide his progress. To monitor bat-speed progress, Bazzana hit off a tee in the spartan Ku-Ring-Gai Stealers cages while his father tracked ball speed via a radar app on his smartphone.

He was Driveline-like before he ever stepped into our Kent, Wash., facility.

“I think it just stems from the fact that I always wanted to know the ‘Why’ behind things,” Bazzana said. “That was important to me. So, if there’s a number that gives me objective feedback or reasoning, I always look for that, and look for the edge.”

Bazzana developed a belief that he still holds: playing in games raises a player’s floor, but training skills raise a player’s ceiling.

“When you’re playing every day, it’s very hard to make the changes necessary to change your ceiling,” Bazzana said. “Changing your ceiling comes from changing power outputs, and larger swing adjustments. There are approach adjustments that change your ceiling, too, which can happen from game assessment, and playing in games, and realizing, ‘Oh, I just need to change where I’m looking for pitches.’

“But I think quality offseason training is where people change how good they can be, or, how great they can be, especially at a young age.”

That foundational belief was forged in Australia, but he still believed it when he weighed what to do with his summer before his sophomore year.

“I remember talking to my hitting coach at Oregon State, Ryan Gipson, in an airport during my freshman year,” Bazzana recalled. “I had this opportunity to play in the Cape. I had two summers before I was draft-eligible, so it was like, ‘Do I really want to go possibly play twice?’ I felt like I had room for improvement and an opportunity to take advantage of that time. I brought up what I thought I could work on, and what the training would look like. (Oregon State) trusted what I was planning to do because I had conviction.”

So, instead of doing what every other freshman All-American had done when handed a ticket to the Cape, Bazzana went to Driveline.

For 10 weeks, and six days a week that summer, he worked with Stokey, Aydt — now with the Nationals — and others.

“We spent that offseason wanting to increase his bat speed and improve his ball flight to the pull side of the field,” Stokey said. “But what we really ended up doing on the front end was cleaning up his bat path, and his posture, with all the biomechanics data.”

When he returned to Corvallis as a sophomore, his production jumped across the board.

His home run total nearly doubled from 6 to 11. His OPS increased from .903 to 1.222, with his on-base mark jumping to .500.

The posture changes helped not just his swing characteristics but his selectivity at the plate, which is now a signature trait. He owns an elite 13% walk rate in the majors.

“The biggest changes were setup, a postural (issue), that affected my path,” Bazzana said. “So, my speeds rapidly jumped once I could do that, because, I was actually using the strength I had, the power I had. It also helped my swing decisions because I was taller… I felt like I could see (pitches) better early on, which meant I did not chase as much in the dirt. That’s when my swing decisions started to really evolve as well. There were a lot of things that came with that summer. It was just good, quality work, and it put me on the path to being a better offensive player.”

In his first summer with Driveline, he created a better foundation for his swing.