Royals aim to be raiders of the lost strike zone

Waters is an early injury casualty but the focus remains on the pitchers, charged with pounding the strike zone and how their catchers can help.

Well, that didn’t take long.

On Monday, the day when everyone was present and accounted for the Royals’ 2023 Spring Training, the club announced that Drew Waters had “tweaked” his oblique late last week. About 24 hours later, it was announced that it was just a little more serious than a “tweak” and he would be sidelined for around six weeks.

This is a major bummer, given that Waters was in the mix for a starting outfield spot. Just two years removed from being ranked the number 32 prospect in all of baseball per Baseball America, he had lost some of that prospect luster prior to moving from the Atlanta organization last summer. For me, he’s kind of “Patient Zero” in the Royals’ grand hitting project. They’ve shown success within their own organization…can they take a broken prospect and spin him into gold?

For Waters at least, the initial returns were incredibly encouraging late last year. He hit .295/.399/.541 in 143 plate appearances in Omaha before earning a call to the big leagues where he continued to show promise, hitting to the tune of .240/.324/.479 in 109 PAs. Keep in mind, that was after he stumbled to .246/.305/.393 in the first half of the year spent in Gwinnett, the Braves Triple-A affiliate.

Now Waters will presumably miss all of camp, which means he’ll most likely open the year back in Omaha. I’d bet he’d need at least a month there to get his reps in before he’d be ready for another call to The Show.

Well, one man’s oblique strain is another man’s opportunity. Kyle Isbel, who the organization has been dying to run out to center on the regular all winter, will almost certainly get the job outright. Obviously, there is still the entire Cactus League slate ahead, but the job is his to lose.

Waters can play right field as well, so his absence impacts that position battle as well. I would expect Edward Olivares to get a long look there, although I’m leaning toward him as more of a designated hitter if he’s going to stick around. Nate Eaton will get reps out there as well. We all know about the cannon he packs out there.

Yeah, that’s in left field, but the point stands. With his momentum taking him away from the play, he planted his feet and unleashed an absolute seed to Michael Massey at second. Nice that that’s a gif, isn’t it? I’ll watch that loop for awhile.

The question with Eaton, much like Isbel, is can he hit enough to lock down a spot in the lineup? I guess we’re going to find out.

Anne Rogers is doing all of the heavy lifting for you in Surprise. With The Athletic saving a few nickels by not having a full-time Royals beat writer and with The Star not even bothering to send someone currently on the staff down to Arizona, Rogers is your go-to for your on-the-ground Royals fix. (I think I’m going to keep pounding on The Athletic and The Star until they hire beats. The Athletic…fine, I get it. Sort of. But The Star barely covering the start of Spring Training? They used a college student as a stringer for a story in Sunday’s newspaper. That’s embarrassing.)

Anyway, Rogers has a couple of fantastic articles online about your favorite topic of the spring: How the Royals plan to develop all that pitching.

In one, she reports that the Royals’ philosophy this year, as distilled by assistant pitching coach Zach Bove is to “raid the zone.” It means exactly what you think it means:

“We want to be in better counts this year. First-pitch strikes, attack the zone. That’s not anything new. But it’s a mindset and mentality that we’re trying to create.”

This kind of got me thinking…This is pretty much the same mantra that was preached last spring. We all know how that worked. The Royals threw the fewest first-pitch strikes of any team in the majors at just 58 percent. They were so bad at throwing first-pitch strikes that the next closest team, the Colorado Rockies, were 1.6 percentage points better. That’s a massive gap. It’s safe to assume the “throw first-pitch strikes” talk last year was just that…talk. The coaches had no clue how to actually make that happen.

How about this…Tampa, where the Royals poached manager Matt Quatraro and bench coach Paul Hoover, threw a first-pitch strike 64 percent of the time last year, the best rate in the majors. Cleveland, where pitching coach Brian Sweeney worked last summer, was the seventh-best team at 62.5 percent. And Minnesota, Bove’s former employer, was ninth at 62.1 percent. So maybe, just maybe, these guys can back up all the talk with some results. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Also, they made “raid the zone” T-shirts. This is serious business.

Rogers also has a profile of Bove up at the mothership. You really need to read the entire article, but here’s how it starts.

During Daniel Lynch’s bullpen late last week, the Royals’ lefty and his coaches emphasized refining the shape of his curveball. It needs to be a pitch with depth, covering the bottom of the zone. What Lynch was throwing wasn’t getting the top spin he wanted, and assistant pitching coach Zach Bove thought it might have to do with Lynch’s middle finger coming off the ball earlier than the release.

Bove asked if he could move the Edgertronic video camera — which is usually set up behind a pitcher facing the plate — to the side.

Bove’s hunch about Lynch’s middle finger was confirmed through the high-speed camera that allows for a better view of grip, spin and motion. Lynch adopted the cue by keeping his middle finger on the ball longer and started to see better results.

I’ve read that passage a hundred times. It’s beautiful and amazing and wondrous.

You think you’ve been wanting the Royals to unleash analytics and technology in helping their pitchers develop? Imagine how the pitchers—the guys whose livelihood depends on getting out major league hitters—feel about this development.

“Guys have been super open so far. They want information,” Bove said. “Maybe it’s trying a different cue or a grip, knowing it’s not all going to work. We’re just playing the odds at the end of the day. But trying to do enough work on the front end through video and understanding how they move. I usually have three or four suggestions in the bank, so if one doesn’t work, I can pivot and go to the next one.”

Yeah, they’re hungry. This team has failed them for years when it has come to their development. They’re finally getting the instruction—and the tools—they’ve needed.

While the focus has been on Sweeney and Bove and the pitchers in the early part of camp, don’t sleep on Hoover and the catchers.

To that end, JJ Cooper has a fascinating study at Baseball America about how the Rays simplify what they ask their pitchers to do by having them aim for the heart of the plate. The feeling is their natural movement will cause the pitches to miss the nitro zone. In other words, instead of channeling Zack Greinke who is the rare pitcher who can actually paint the corner, go for the middle and let it ride.

They accomplish this by having their catchers set the target in the middle of the plate. Cooper has plenty of visual evidence for Tyler Glasnow and his last outings in Pittsburgh compared to his early days in Tampa. The pictures are striking, but the results…oh, mercy.

Glasnow bumped his strike rate from 54 percent in his final eight appearances as a Pirate to 63 percent in his first six outings with the Rays.

Drew Rasmussen experienced similar successful results following a midseason trade to Tampa from Milwaukee. With the Brewers, he was throwing strikes 59 percent of the time. After his move to the Rays, it jumped to 68 percent.

Last year, the Royals were last in the majors, throwing a strike just 62.5 percent of the time. The Rays? The best in the majors at 66.4 percent.

Hoover has been working with the catchers in camp and you know he’s been preaching setting up in the middle. They are also closer to the hitter, to receive the pitch just a little earlier. That presumably will help with framing.

Hoover talked to Rogers about how catchers setting up in the middle will help the pitchers.

“It’s something we’ve seen work in Tampa, power arms throwing to the bigger areas instead of moving to the corners and smaller areas. When they miss, they’re still missing in the strike zone. We see similar pitchers over here that have power, that have stuff, but maybe not the best accuracy and pinpoint control.

“If we give them the whole plate, instead of corners, they’re more apt to throw strikes. That’s something that we need to help the pitchers do in this organization is fill up the zone and try to get ahead of hitters.”

You’ve been asking how we can tell the new coaching has made an impact with these pitchers. It will be the first pitch strikes and the overall strike rate. While I’m not expecting a worst-to-first kind of swing, I do think that with the philosophies and, more importantly, the coaching and implementation of those philosophies, will pull this staff from the dregs of the majors when it comes to throwing strikes closer to league average. That alone has to be worth a handful of wins.

Turns out there’s hope for these young pitchers.