The Royals announced a handful of changes to the coaching staff Monday, most notably firing hitting coach Terry Bradshaw. Senior director of player development and hitting performance Alec Zumwalt will now oversee the team’s hitters and serve as a uniformed member of the team’s big league coaching staff. Special assignment hitting coach Mike Tosar is also joining the big league coaching staff. Assistant hitting coach Keoni DeRenne will remain on the staff and keep the same title.
It’s been a brutal season for the Kansas City lineup as a whole. Hitting just .224/.289/.336 as a collective unit, Royals hitters rank among the game’s bottom-five teams in runs scored, homers, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and wRC+. Kansas City hitters do have the game’s lowest strikeout rate (19.2%), but that hasn’t translated into offensive production and the club’s 7.8% walk rate is the fourth-lowest mark in Major League Baseball.
“Baseball is constantly shifting and we have to continue to self-evaluate to make sure we’re giving our players everything they need to be successful at the highest levels of baseball,” said Royals general manager JJ Picollo in a statement announcing the move. “Our results so far haven’t matched what we’re capable of, and w all share accountability in that. We look forward to Alec, Keoni and Mike helping us provide the best possible processes for our players.”
Certainly, as Picollo alluded to, the blame for the team’s offensive struggles is not Bradshaw’s alone. The Royals ranked 24th in the Majors in runs scored last year and 25th in wRC+, yet the team did nothing to address the lineup over the winter. Rather, the hope was that top prospect Bobby Witt Jr. — and, eventually, Nick Pratto and MJ Melendez — would inject some life into what had been a fairly punchless lineup. Kansas City was also hopeful of getting Adalberto Mondesi healthy and of getting bounceback efforts from Hunter Dozier and Carlos Santana.
Witt’s bat has begun to come alive after a slow start, and Dozier indeed is in the midst of what looks like a pronounced rebound at the plate. Mondesi, however, is out for the year following an ACL tear. Santana has been even less productive in 2022 than he was in 2021. Pratto and Melendez, meanwhile, were sent to Triple-A to begin the season. Melendez has since made his MLB debut but has scuffled through 27 plate appearances. Pratto was hitting .253/.320/.483 in Triple-A before falling into his current stretch of 20 hitless plate appearances.
Zumwalt, though his work in the organization’s minor league system, already has a strong rapport with several of the Royals’ up-and-coming hitters. He’s been with the Royals for nine seasons, originally coming aboard as a scout before moving into an advance scouting role for five years. Zumwalt was the team’s director of baseball operations and player development from 2018-19. He’d been in the first season of his current role, which will now shift once again. It marks the continued overhaul of a hitting infrastructure that has had Zumwalt as a key figure, as chronicled by The Athletic’s Alec Lewis last summer.
I wish Fox would fire Terry Bradshaw also
Well at least he’s still got his NFL broadcasting gig, Ahahahahahaha!
The real headline here is that there was another Terry Bradshaw in sports
Ah, it’s his fault.
And they just had a weekend series at Coors Field. So you know these numbers are bad
They need to get rid of Cal Eldred!
Their pitching from this rebuild is awful It was supposed to be what they were building the team around.
I believe it’s their pitching philosophy. Dayton Moore is my favorite Baseball Ops guy. But along with Matheny and Eldred I don’t think the 3 of them understand how to handle pitchers in the current MLB environment. The rebuild was centered on drafting college pitchers high with the thought that they would get to the majors quicker. Yet they haven’t developed one starting pitcher over the past 4 years (the closest being Keller, however he’s gotten progressively worse) – but they sure have worked with a lot of guys.
So you love a guy while admittedly saying he doesn’t know how to draft, develop pitching, or sign meaningful free agents? Is this like fan Stockholm Syndrome? Sorry if there hasn’t been a lot of MLBTR Yankees posts lately for your nonsensical rants.
And conveniently he says it’s pitching, while their offense is as near dead-last as you can get in both runs & OPS. Typical uninformed take. Amazing he has voluminous amounts of {inaccurate} information, criticizing other clubs & their GMs, but his KC Royals? Nope, Dayton Moore is A-okay. It’s the pitching, really. Just ignore the team’s .500 OPS… because that’s *not* why they’re losing – Lol.
I know what you mean. A couple years ago, Dayton Moore’s handling of KCRs’s rebuild seemed impressive. Quality position players were coming up every year and you could see the makings of a solid pitching staff advancing through the system. The completed team was due to arrive 2022-23. It all seemed to collapse in 2021 with injuries and player regression. KCR has to be trying to understand what happened.
Who were these position players?
Hunter Dozier? Dayton Moore never looked like he was doing a great job rebuilding this to me. He let all his past (Moose, Cain,Hoz) etc. go for nothing. Same thing he did w Merrifield.
He hasn’t gotten the best out of anybody and made some Horrivle signings. IE Dozier extension/Santana signing.
Stick to football Terry
If Trade Rumors provided a link for him, it would be to the other Terry Bradshaw. At least, NFLTR would do that.
They need to get rid of everyone from Dayton Moore on down. Including Mathenaloser.
It’s not a Bradshaw problem; it’s a Royals problem.
Bradshaw is a bit of a scapegoat here for players who aren’t performing. Been in the Royals organization since 2000, and at the ML team since 2018 (the year of the teardown). But clearly need a charge — though just firing the hitting coach and leaving the rest of the staff intact doesn’t seem to offer much improvement.
Good baseball guy, though. Should land somewhere. Feel bad for the guy because he also never got much chance as a player with the Cardinals, blocked by deep and experienced outfield talent in the 90s. baseball-reference.com/players/b/bradste01.shtml
I remember that. I was hoping he or Allen Battle would become a productive player as they had similar skillset but neither was going to get much playing time with Brian Jordan, Gilkey, Mark Whiten,and Lankford in their prime.
Allen Battle. I was so sure he was going to make it. So much fun to watch in AAA. Thanks for mentioning him.
Going to the Reds.
Memo to Royals brass: offense is down across the board in MLB this season. New dead ball era.
Partly the ball. Partly the shifts. Mostly the fact that quality pitching coaches are working with multiple analysts that look at video and analytics on both their pitchers and opposing hitters to find what does and doesn’t work for their individual pitchers. The Royals are light years behind.
Yes, but they’re undefeated outside the Milky Way.
It’s no wonder he was fired. He’s coaching the WRONG sport !!
Now he has plenty of time to relax until the next season of the NFL on Fox.
“Our results so far haven’t matched what we’re capable of, and w all share accountability in that. …”
It seems Bradshaw was held a little more accountable than others
Fire the hitting coach….yeah, that’ll fix it.
Guess he won’t be giving away any more money.
Oakland’s Tommy Everidge will be the next batting coach to sleep with the fishes.
Their hitting woes couldn’t possibly come from their cheapskate owner’s mandate to trade away half their tradable players every year before he has to pay them what they’re worth.
Work for the Fisher, sleep with the fishes.
And in other Royals “news”:
“Last week, The Athletic’s Jim Bowden pitched a potential blockbuster trade, with the New York Yankees acquiring catcher MJ Melendez from the Kansas City Royals for outfielder Jasson Dominguez and infielder Oswaldo Cabrera.”
nj.com/yankees/2022/05/potential-yankees-trade-tar…
Does any “insider” propose more unlikely trade proposals than Mr. Bowden?
No. His trade proposals are:
1) Most ridiculous; and,
2) as likely to happen as the Royals winning the WS
The whole premise of Bowden’s trade proposal is that Melendez is blocked by Perez and it’s not really fair to him. So yeah let’s trade him to the Yankees where he may not or may not hit at the big league level. Bowden is Joel Sherman on steroids.
Jeez, you take a few bad sacks….
2022 Royals are trying to emulate the 2014-2016 Royals – low strikeouts, low walks, low home runs. Unfortunately this team is also producing low hits, low stolen bases, low runs. Royals thrive when they hit doubles and steal bases. They need movement on the basepaths, they need more groundballs and line drives.
PUT IT IN REVERSE TERRY!
Carlos Santana is an interesting case. He’s always had an elite eye and good power. But he’s losing *a lot* to the shift (at one point this season he was the most shifted-against hitter in baseball, just 5 ABs this year not vs shift). Probably as a result of some of the coaching he’s gotten in Kansas City, he has been expanding his zone far more than before in his career. So two things can help him.
A robot ump would likely encourage him to once again take more pitches (also possibly a change of teams as the Royals don’t value walks as much). Santana’s elite eye works a lot better when the strike zone is more consistent.
A ban of shifts would theoretically help him more than any other big leaguer.
Great stat on Terry Bradshaw the MLB player…he managed just three extra base hits in his brief career–two doubles and one triple. ALL THREE extra base hits came at Three Rivers Stadium….
Must be something about that stadium and guys named Terry Bradshaw. He even had a 4-hit game against the Bucs there once.