Milwaukee Brewers catcher Omar Narvaez tags out the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Erik Gonzalez after being caught in a rundown during the first inning on Aug. 29 in Milwaukee. (AP file photo)

Milwaukee Brewers catcher Omar Narvaez refuses to blame his hitting struggles last year on the unusual circumstances of the pandemic-delayed 2020 season.

“Everything got out of control,” Narvaez said Sunday from the Brewers’ spring training complex in Phoenix. “To me, it feels like there’s no excuses. It was a short season. Everyone talks about that. I feel like as a professional, I cannot have excuses. It didn’t go well.”

Narvaez, 29, arrived in Milwaukee with a reputation as a quality hitter and not so skilled defensively. He was just the opposite in his first season in the National League after the Brewers acquired him from the Seattle Mariners in December 2019.

His batting average plunged from .278 in 2019 to .176 last year. His on-base percentage sank from .353 to .294. His OPS fell from .813 to .562.

After homering 22 times in 132 games in 2019, he had two homers in 40 games last year.

This is a 2020 photo of Omar Narvaez of the Milwaukee Brewers. (AP file photo)

Hitting coach Andy Haines says Narvaez was one of many batters putting too much pressure on themselves because of the shortened season.

“You could see him trying to do way too much,” Haines said. “I said it not (just) about Omar, but about a lot of hitters I was watching, they’re literally trying to have a good season with every swing they took. You can see it. And baseball cannot be played that way. It can’t. If the game’s ever sent us a reminder that it can’t be played that way, it sent us a pretty strong one in 2020.”

Narvaez agrees he didn’t have the right approach at the plate last season.

“I was just swinging at everything,” Narvaez said. “I was putting myself in bad position to try to hit the ball. That’s one of the adjustments I’m trying to make this offseason. I’m going to stick with it during the season.”

His hitting woes overshadowed the tremendous strides he made behind the plate to upgrade what had been his biggest weakness.

Narvaez improved his pitch-framing abilities to such an extent that he led all catches in converting non-swing pitches bordering the strike zone into called strikes, according to metrics compiled by the Baseball Savant website. He had never ranked higher than 39th in that category before last season.

He also didn’t allow any passed balls and threw 30% of potential base stealers, up from 18% in 2019.

“Everybody says it was a bad year for me,” Narva

The Brewers are confident his hitting struggles last year represented an outlier while his progress on defense was something he can sustain.

Although his 2019 season in Seattle was his best year as a hitter, Narvaez also was a relatively productive batter his three seasons with the Chicago White Sox before going to Seattle.