I know it feels like the 2021 MLB season is just getting underway, but we're much closer to the trade deadline (six weeks and two days) than we are Opening Day (10 weeks and six days). That happened fast, huh? The All-Star break is only four weeks away. Our weekly series examining various trends acro s the league continues with a look at two hitters who have rebounded from poor 2020 seasons, and a young pitcher who had to scrap a new pitch. . ATL 1B #28 A year ago the won 36 games ( Yasmani Grandal Jersey in a 60-game season) and their first AL West title since 2013. They did that despite a poor year from first baseman , who slugged 36 home runs with a .267/.351.545 batting line in 2019, but slipped to .195/.310/.424 in 2020. He went from MVP vote-getter to one of the least productive first basemen in the game. "To put it bluntly, I stunk last year, in my opinion," Olson told reporters, , in spring training. "There were definitely things wrong with the swing that I was going out there with every day. I don't think that represents in any way the caliber of player that I think that I am." Two months into 2021, Olson has not only bounced back from his poor 2020 season, he's better than ever. The 27-year-old took a .290/.375/.606 batting line and 18 home runs into Tuesday night's game, good for a 175 OPS+. That means that, once adjusted for ballpark Corey Seager Jersey and other run-scoring environment factors, Olson has been 75 percent better than an average hitter this year. The most striking number: 17.0 percent. That is Olson's strikeout rate. Last year he struck out in 31.4 percent of his plate appearances, and even in 2019, he struck out a healthy 25.2 percent of the time. That's not horrible, but it is high. This year Olson is striking out well below the 24.0 percent league average. He's upped his contact considerably. Among the 199 players with at least 200 plate appearances this year and last, no one has improved their strikeout rate and swing and mi s rate more than Olson. Here are the biggest year-to-year changes: Strikeout rateSwing and mi s rate1. Matt Olson, Athletics: -14.4 percentage points 1. Matt Olson, Athletics: -3.1 percentage points 2. , : -9.4 percentage points 2. , : -2.4 percentage points 3. , : -8.9 percentage points 3. , : -2.4 percentage points 4. , : -8.2 percentage points 4. , : -2.1 percentage points 5. , : -8.1 percentage points 5. , : -2.0 percentage points Olson struck out 77 times in 245 plate appearances last year. This year he's struck out only 44 times in 259 plate appearances. Given his tendency to hit the snot out of the ball -- Olson is an elite exit velocity hitter, both in terms of average exit velocity (93.2 mph) and max exit velocity (115.3 mph) -- all that additional contact has equaled a lot of hits. 23 more than last year, already. "I just feel like the quality of at-bat that I've been having is a lot better than previous years," Olson recently told reporters, . "I feel that I'm using the whole field better, and I don't feel like I need to force anything to go the other way or have to cheat to get to inside pitches. I just feel like I'm up there competing and hitting the ball where it's pitched. I don't know what the numbers are, but I feel like that's something I'm happy with." Olson's succe s can be attributed, at least partly, to something the Athletics call their Kenley Jansen Jersey "little red machine," . The "little red machine" is an undisclosed pitching machine that can apparently be bought at sporting goods stores, and was introduced to Olson (and the rest of the A's) by last year. Olson bought one and worked with it over the winter. Here's what A's a sistant hitting coach Eric Martins told Coffey about Olson and the "little red machine." "The machine has some ride to it," Martins said. "It feels like the ball is rising on you, and you can't make contact if you're working underneath the baseball if you're not in a good position to hit. So I just think the muscle memory of getting on top of the ball has created some good habits for him and reinforced some other stuff that he's done in the past. "It's cleaned up his bat path, helped him keep his barrel on the baseball as he gets into Andre Ethier Jersey the zone, so those are the habits that he creates while using it. You can't be lazy with this thing. You have to be direct to the baseball." Whatever the reason, Olson has rebounded from a poor 2020 season to become one of the game's most fearsome all-around hitters. He's striking out le s, he's hitting for a higher average, and he's among the league leaders in home runs. Olson has been the best player on a first place team, and that usually equals a trip to the All-Star Game in July. "Look, if anybody was sitting here and said they didn't want to be an All-Star, I think they'd be lying," . There's a lot of baseball left this season ... So I'm focused on us still playing winning baseball and having good at-bats and us keep rolling here as a team." NYY LF #18 From 2017-18, was one of the top young outfielders in the game. He authored a .280/.359/.444 batting line with plus defense that made him worth 7.6 WAR in only 299 games those two years, his age 22-23 seasons. Benintendi was instrumental in the Red Sox's run to the 2018 World Series title, and looked like a long-term building block in Boston. Fast forward to 2021, and Benintendi is now with the , having been dealt to Kansas City in a change of scenery trade over the winter. His production slipping in the second half in 2019, including a .141/.243/.219 batting line that September, and last year he went Sandy Koufax Jersey 4 for 39 (.103) in 14 games before going down with a season-ending rib injury. The Royals bought low on a talented player and, early on this year, they were getting the late 2019 and 2020 version of Benintendi. His batting line bottomed out at .180/.254/.230 on April 21, and he'd struck out 17 times in 67 plate appearances, or 25.4 percent. That was well above the 16.5 percent strikeout rate he posted from 2017-18. "I feel like I'm so close. It's so frustrating because it's so close," Benintendi told reporters, , in April. "... Sometimes you just have to slow it down and be like, 'Look we still have 150-something games left. It's going to come eventually.' Then in the meantime, just do anything I can to help the team win." Since bottoming out on April 21, Benintendi has been a force, hitting .323/.374/.506 with eight homers and a 15.8 percent strikeout rate in 44 games. He's gone deep four times in eight games in June, and has 12 multi-hit games in his last 38 contests after having 12 multi-hit games in his previous 74 games dating back to 2019. "Benny has just really put on a show for the last month," . "It's so good to see because he's not trying to do Kenta Maeda Jersey what he did (on June 1, when he hit his second career grand slam). He's ju