MJ's got a brand new swing

In what will be a make or break season for the Royals' outfielder, MJ Melendez is making some adjustments.

In what was a lost season at the plate, MJ Melendez continuously tinkered with his swing through the latter stages of 2024. Sometimes, his hands would be higher. Sometimes, he would start his load a bit earlier. Always, he was a bit of a mess at the plate.

Since going off for 41 home runs in 2021 in a season split between Double and Triple-A, Melendez has failed to meet his power expectations in the big leagues. In fact, Melendez has regressed each season he’s been in the majors. In 2024, he posted career-worst rates for batting average and on-base percentage. His strikeout rate hovered around a quarter of all plate appearances which was right in line with how he’s done in his career, but his walk rate took quite a tumble. Although his .400 slugging percentage was the highest of his career by a couple of points, his OPS+ has dropped in each of his two seasons since his rookie campaign in 2022. His overall batting numbers have been rather pedestrian.

It’s been clear to everyone who’s watched Melendez take his hacks: Something has to change.

Apparently, something has changed. Going by social media, this winter, Melendez has altered nearly his entire approach at the plate. He’s been posting videos of his revamped swing to Instagram. I’m not on that platform, but Jacob Milham posted a video with a side-by-side comparison of the new and the old approach on Bluesky a couple of weeks ago.

It’s a potential game-changer for Melendez and for the Royals. Entering his age 26 season, Melendez is at a crossroads and needs to improve to continue to get regular playing time. The Royals need more production from their outfield. Will this work? I have absolutely no idea, but at this point, Melendez has to do something.

As such, Melendez’s entirely new approach is worth breaking down and contrasting to how he was swinging the bat at the end of the 2024 season.

Let’s begin with the setup courtesy of the video Milham posted on Bluesky.

Just from looking at these still frames, it’s almost as if there are two different hitters. (The compression on the screengrab is so heavy that I suppose it could be two different hitters!) Melendez’s new stance is closed. His hands are elevated. It appears he is a bit more upright in his new stance, with a little less bend in the knees. His front foot still has a bit of supination, but it’s no longer as exaggerated. And it looks like he’s standing a couple of inches further off the plate as opposed to where he set up last season. I’m no hitting guru, but this seems potentially seismic.

When Melendez began tinkering with his setup and his swing last season, I wasn’t necessarily in favor of him doing that at that moment. I think this side-by-side comparison of new versus old validates my concern at the time. (Besides, we all know the changes did not work and did not stick.) It’s a total rethink on how to set up in the box as the pitcher begins his windup. It’s so radical that it is not something that should be attempted during the regular season. The entire process needs to be broken down and reconstructed. Old muscle memory has to be erased. New memories have to be instilled. The time to do something this radical—and the difference in these two photos is most definitely radical—is now: In the offseason.

I really like the next photo.

The leg left looks identical, doesn’t it? Except in the one on the left, that front leg travels quite a distance from first base to home plate. A lot of movement there. Now, the leg kick is a simple lift. It’s a much quieter load.

That quieter load goes for what’s happening with his hands as well. Melendez has featured a ton of movement when he’s getting set to uncoil a swing. The hands will dip. They will slide. And they will ultimately lift up and cock well behind his head before going toward the pitch. Old Melendez moves like a caffeine addict on his 10th espresso of the morning. Again, I’m just a guy with a laptop and an opinion, but I have to think that a reduction of so many moving parts can only help as Melendez starts to attack.

As for the swing itself, I’m not a huge fan of using the pitch that was used in the side-by-side comparison. The pitch in the game on the left was on the season’s final day in Atlanta. It was an 85 mph curve from Grant Holmes that didn’t really feature a ton of break and ended up pretty much in the middle of the zone. It was a 1-2 pitch.

It’s obviously not the same as a batting practice fastball, and Melendez is a bit out in front of this offering. He really drops his hands as he’s adjusting to the curve and appears to lunge at the ball. Although he does frequently do that on other pitches.

Instead, I’ll use a swing on a 97 mph center-cut 2-2 fastball from earlier in the series. Melendez takes a rip but ultimately swings and misses.

Whew. That’s kind of difficult to watch.

Here’s the moment in Melendez’s swing where the bat failed to make contact with the ball.

Contrast the above swing with how Melendez looks this winter.

My goodness. The New Melendez is so much more linear with his swing. His arms, hands and bat are all aligned. What’s much more obvious is how his torso is in sync with his hips and legs. He’s not flying open on his attack. I drew lines to show how much more upright Melendez is when he unleashes his swing.

That’s quite a striking difference.

The position of his hands looks different to me and where they are in relation to the bat. In the swing from last September, Melendez doesn’t just drop the barrel, he’s dropping the entire piece of lumber. Now, the bat is a proper extension of his hands.

Now that we’ve looked at his revamped swing, it’s time to discuss Melendez’s approach at the plate. In 2024, he swung at more pitches low and away than any other zone besides right down the chute.

It’s not surprising to see those raw numbers, especially in the chase zone. We watched him all season, after all.

Knowing that in 2024 Melendez swung at more pitches middle-middle and low and away than any other zone, this next chart will bend your brain. It’s the number of batted balls in each zone.

Just 33 percent of Melendez’s swing on pitches down the heart of the plate were put into play. It was 38 percent on pitches low and away. That’s not what you want. As you would expect, the results on those batted balls on pitches down and out of the zone were not exactly stellar.

It’s difficult to read the text in those boxes, but Melendez hit just .089 on the 40 balls he put in play when swinging at pitches low and away. The number wasn’t much better on pitches in the lower and away part of the strike zone with Melendez hitting a paltry .157 on those balls he put in play. Which, by the way, he was doing at a rate of 55 percent of when he swung the bat.

I mention all of this because I’ve long maintained with all the moving parts to Melendez’s old swing and how he’s bailing out and pulling off pitches in general, he’s especially poorly equipped to go after anything on the outer half of the plate, especially when it’s low and away. This isn’t exactly a stretch as Melendez’s overall poor performance at the plate means when you break it down zone by zone there are going to be some ugly numbers. But it’s clear he can’t exactly resist those pitches, despite possessing a swing that is ill-suited for any kind of success in those zones. Now, armed with a new swing, these are the pitches I’ll be focusing on for the coming season.

This is Melendez’s spray charts when putting the ball in play on pitches down and away in the zone and just off the plate low and away.

He can, on occasion, take that pitch to the opposite field, but it’s almost always without any kind of authority. Most often, it’s rolled over (you might call it The Hosmer Approach) and grounded to the second baseman. It almost never results in a productive at bat.

Keep in mind, the locations I’ve focused on here aren’t where hitters are going to be making their living. Vinnie Pasquantino hit a collective .211 on pitches in those zones. That’s about what the better left-handed hitters do on those pitches—Shohei Ohtani excluded. Rather, it’s about overall approach and discipline and having a swing that doesn’t work against you when going after a pitch low and away. But if Melendez’s new stance and swing can unlock some improved discipline on those pitches, along with just slightly better results when he makes contact, we’re talking about an asset in the lineup rather than a liability.

The Statcast metrics for Melendez show what I think we could consider to be a very solid foundation.

His Average Exit Velocity and Hard-Hit % are both around the upper quartile. His xSLG (expected slugging percentage on batted balls) is solid. The one line that really stands out to me from the rankings above is his LA Sweet-Spot % which is just in the sixth percentile. This is the measure of the rate where Melendez makes contact with a launch angle between eight and 32 degrees. Stated another way, Melendez’s Sweet-Spot % of 29.1 percent ranks him 235th out of 252 batters.

That’s a lot of ground balls and a lot of harmless fly balls. So while the metrics like Hard-Hit % and Average Exit Velocity look good, the overall quality of contact doesn’t serve Melendez well. His xSLG was 25 points below his real slugging percentage. The old Melendez swing doesn’t help him properly tap into his power. A revamp might.

Success is far from assured, but credit to Melendez, who is clearly putting in the necessary work this winter. If he carries his new swing north when the regular season starts, I would imagine that would help him cover the outer half, realize his power potential and turn himself into an asset in the lineup.