The initial round of candidates totaled roughly a dozen, a pool of phone interviews to fill two coaching vacancies on the Royals’ hitting staff.
The team advanced nearly half of them to Kansas City for in-person conversations, where they settled on two announcements in the last four days: 32-year-old Connor Dawson and MLB veteran player and coach Marcus Thames.
We can analyze the qualities that separated them from the pack, whether it be Dawson’s creativity, grasp of hitter movements and the accompanying technology, or Thames’ decades-long experience working with some of the best hitters in the game.
But something else popped during the extensive interview process — something that most of the candidates themselves brought up.
Pitch selection.
“Candidates,” Royals general manager J.J. Picollo quipped, “do their homework.”
They knew.
Their preparation for a job interview with the Royals prompted the same conclusions the Royals reached long ago: They have to make better decisions in the batter’s box.
Kansas City has revised its hitting coaching staff this offseason, though with the same man at the top in Alec Zumwalt. But whoever was running the show, pitch selection is always where the offseason talk would land.
Well, where it would continue to land.
The Royals finished 26th in runs scored, 20th in OPS and 18th in slugging percentage in 2025, but it’s not as though Picollo talked about swing decisions for the first time Tuesday as he promoted the new-look staff in a Zoom call from baseball’s GM meetings. They didn’t need the interviews to reveal it.
In fact, when asked by The Star’s Pete Grathoff where he hoped the offense would improve next year, Picollo mentioned there are a lot of areas they can enhance, “whether you go to on-base or you go to slugging (percentage), but it really is all predicated off your pitch selection.”
They get it. They have long understood it, before and after these hires. You’ve long known it matters, too.
But that conversation with Picollo on Tuesday morning got me thinking: How much does it matter?
The Royals actually had two of the best hitters in baseball when swinging at pitches outside the strike zone, which seems contradictory to the point that I’m trying to make here, but work with me. Maikel Garcia led baseball in slugging percentage on chase pitches. Bobby Witt was fourth, per Statcast data.
You’ll take that, right?
Well, not exactly.
There is still a Kauffman Stadium-sized gap between the damage they do on those pitches and the damage they do on strikes. Maikel Garcia might be better than any hitter in baseball at turning balls outside the zone into hits. But you know which hitter he is still worse than?
Maikel Garcia when swinging at strikes.
The same holds true for Witt — it especially holds true for him. His expected slugging percentage — judged primarily by exit velocity and launch angle — is .304 points higher when a pitch thrown in the strike zone concludes a plate appearance.
Three hundred points higher.
He is of course not alone. The most common heart of the Royals’ order last year — Witt, Vinnie Pasquantino and Salvador Perez — all had expected slugging percentages at least .300 points higher on pitches in the zone versus pitches outside the zone. Pasquantino’s batting average was .162 points higher when working with strikes than when swinging at pitches off the plate.
There are players across baseball with even bigger gaps. But here’s the relevant thing about the Royals: They chased bad pitches. A lot.
And here’s another thing about the Royals: They made contact on chase pitches. A lot.
In other words, this all affected them at a greater frequency because they could not turn chase pitches into waste pitches.
The Royals had the ninth-highest chase percentage in baseball a year ago, and they also made contact on the third-highest percentage of those offerings. It helps explain why, at the onset of the offseason, Picollo wondered out loud if the Royals are striking out enough. There are some pitches you’d probably rather swing through, so long as there are fewer than two strikes.
How will they attack all this? Or better yet: How will they attack it differently?
Picollo mentioned looking at positioning in the box — things that allow a batter to pick up the ball better or more quickly. That might be the hands. It might be the legs.
Or that might be where the change they made this week does factor in — the messenger.
“We’ve talked about this before, but it doesn’t mean different ideas (can’t) resonate different with hitters,” Picollo said. “You know, the messaging or the goal may have been the same all along, but sometimes just a little different message may unlock that thing that any particular hitter is looking for.”
It’s all placed under the easier-said-than-done file. There are reasons that teams spend considerable time evaluating which prospects make good swing decisions before adding them to the organization. These habits can be tough to break.
But the takeaway from the numbers is that the changes don’t need to be drastic to make an impact. If the Royals chase even 3% less often, that’s 3% less often they’re letting a bad pitch determine the outcome of an at-bat and 3% more often they’re working into a better count to see a pitch they actually do hit well.
And the Royals need to find themselves in more hitters’ counts. They saw the second fewest 3-1 counts in the league in 2025 — a count in which the worst team in baseball still posted a .913 OPS.
Consider this relationship: The Yankees, Dodgers and Brewers led baseball in runs. Oh, and the Yankees, Dodgers and Brewers finished with the three lowest chase percentages in baseball.
That’s what this is all about, incrementally putting yourself in the best position. It’s oversimplifying the entire art, sure. There’s a heck of a lot more to hitting a baseball than pitch selection. The pair of hitting coach staff additions are brought in to work on that heck of a lot more.
But that’s the point. There’s a lot to it.
What could make it incrementally easier? If it all starts with a good decision in the batter’s box.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.kansascity.com ’
