Royals on the search for offense
Terry Bradshaw is out as hitting coach and Alec Zumwalt and Mike Tosar are in as the Royals try to get the offense on track. Will they address pitching next?
Based on how the Royals offense has performed this year, the move wasn’t surprising. It was announced in an early morning release just after the club returned from their recent nine-game road trip.
KANSAS CITY, Mo.—The Kansas City Royals announced changes to their coaching staff today, effective immediately.
Alec Zumwalt, Senior Director for Player Development and Hitting Performance, will join the big league staff full-time and oversee all hitting efforts. Keoni DeRenne remains the Assistant Hitting Coach and Mike Tosar, Special Assignment Hitting Coach, will also be in uniform with the Major League team. As part of the changes, Hitting Coach Terry Bradshaw will no longer be with the team.
Through their first 32 games of the season, the Royals rank 25th in the majors in batting average (.224), 26th in on base percentage (.289) and 28th in slugging (.336). Their 84 OPS+ ranks 28th and their 85 wRC+ is 22nd. That’s a lot of words and numbers to tell you what you already know—The Royals do not have a good offense.
So hitting coach Terry Bradshaw is the casualty of the underperformance.
The Royals made this move because they had a quality in-house candidate available in Alec Zumwalt, who was the club’s Senior Director of Player Development and Hitting Performance. He’s the guy who spearheaded the organizational hitting philosophy that turned around the minor league careers of guys like MJ Melendez and Nick Pratto and put them back on the prospect path. Alec Lewis of The Athletic wrote a comprehensive profile last August of the change in organizational approach.
The numbers tell the story. As of Aug. 2, no Major League Baseball organization had upped its minor-league system-wide OPS more than the Royals from 2019 to 2021 (.693 to .770). This season, only the Los Angeles Dodgers’ system-wide OPS (.783) hovers above the Royals.
Maybe more than any other Royals player, Pratto knows these numbers aren’t a coincidence. Instead, he said, the stats are a byproduct of what happens when brainpower forms a nexus linking the Royals’ hitting coaches, their research and development department, their performance scientists and their behavioral science group.
Zumwalt is a rising star in the Royals organization. He was hired as a scout about a decade ago and was the advance scout during the championship seasons. As Jeffery Flanagan pointed out on Twitter, the Royals recognize Zumwalt possesses myriad talents, they just have to figure out how best to maximize those talents.
For now, that means he’s in the dugout working with the major league hitters. Zumwalt obviously has familiarity with the younger players like Melendez, Kyle Isbel and Bobby Witt Jr.. He will be there when Nick Pratto (and maybe Vinnie Pasquantino) arrives in Kansas City. That has to help the young players as they acclimate to the big leagues to see the guy who helped them find success in the minors in the big league dugout. The familiarity and comfort has to be a plus.
The addition of Mike Tosar to the gameday staff is another solid move. He’s the guy who built up Jorge Soler ahead of his record-breaking 48 home run season. And then there’s the work he’s done with Salvador Perez ahead of the 2020 season. Tosar is a hitting guru who should help the lineup.
Obviously, this isn’t some sort of miracle cure or a switch that’s flipped with immediate results. The changes—and improvements, if any—will take time. It is a positive that the Royals’ front office recognized a problem and took quick steps to rectify it.
Speaking of problems, if the Royals are looking to change up the coaching staff on the offensive side, it’s only fair to ask the same question of Cal Eldred.
Those numbers mirror the offense and where it ranks in the majors. In fact, that’s probably being generous to the pitching staff. Let’s not sugarcoat it—the pitching is collectively performing worse than the hitting.
So how does Eldred keep his job? The evidence feels overwhelming.
Kris Bubic has seen his strikeout rate decline in each of the two seasons following his 2020 debut. Meanwhile, his walk and home run rates have increased. Brady Singer was BABIP’d in 2021, but his walks increased and his ground ball rate declined while we all waited for an increase in the usage of a third pitch that has yet to come. Jackson Kowar, who was successful at every stop along his minor league career, has been a disaster pitching in the majors.
This is how the Royals ERA and ERA- have ranked since Eldred became the Royals’ pitching coach.
To be fair, it’s not as if Eldred has a staff full of Cy Young candidates or front-line aces he’s working with. For me, the marker was set in 2020 when the first wave of the 2018 draft class that was heavy on collegiate pitching arrived in Kansas City. That Covid-shortened year was the best season of his tenure.
Since then, the entire staff has collectively taken two steps back. They’ve gone from the middle of the pack and slightly above average to the bottom of the pile, well below the league average.
Pitching prospects are more volatile than their hitting counterparts. Still, the Royals need to hit on as many of these young pitchers they can. Is Eldred the guy to get the most out of these young arms? The evidence says no. Meanwhile, Dayton Moore provided something of a vote of confidence for his embattled pitching coach. The full clip in the embedded tweet is worth listening to.
Lynch has been exceptional this year, but I’m not sure about giving credit to Eldred on that count. The lefty was long thought to be the top prospect from this crop of pitchers. In other words, he had the best mix of stuff and command to go along with the potential that he’s realizing at the moment at the major league level. It’s not something that Eldred necessarily unlocked. I would be much more impressed if we saw the evolution of Singer and his embrace of a third pitch or Bubic and his command.
Moore insists he still believes in Eldred. That may be the case but you have to think the pressure is building. At least in this results-based business, as Moore himself is so fond of reminding us they’re in, it should be.
As Moore also reminds us, there is the accountability factor as well. If 2022 was the year when great strides in the latest lower-case “r” rebuild we’re supposed to take place (and that was the plan), and if Moore stays true to his belief in accountability, you have to expect more moves soon like the one we saw on Monday on the pitching front. The shuffling of the hitting coaching staff was necessary, overdue and, one would have to think, a welcome move.
The moment for patience is over. Five seasons into a rebuild without any kind of tangible traction is too long. I applaud Monday’s move by the Royals. And I expect more moves soon.
The problem is Dayton and Matheny, throwing up the roadblocks to keep Pratto and Vinny from coming up and getting regular at bats, because they (sadly or laughingly or grossly incompetently?) favor Santana and O'Hearn and because, on the pitching side, they continue to enable Eldred. We have all the great young hitters and pitchers we need, but need the coaches for them. Thank God we now have that for the hitters, but need it for the pitchers as well. Please step in, Mr. Sherman, give the reins to JJ, making it clear that he needs to do as good of a job with the pitching coaches as the hitters, and turn him loose with orders to get it done soon. There are plenty of good pitching coaches out there, just not on our team. How about getting the one that stop blocking Jacob Junis from being a consistently good pitcher with us, but turned him loose to do that with San Francisco.
I have wondered for a while if the hitting coaches that turned things around in the minors would make their way to the majors. Question answered.
So the next question: who are the disciples of these 3 hitting gurus that are now working in the minor leagues day to day to keep the message consistent and the pipeline of hitters continuing?