Alec Zumwalt has been running the hitting show in Kansas City for a long time. The Royal’s hitting results have not been very good. It is probably time to discuss a new voice.
Going into the 2022 season, the Royals decided to hire Alec Zumwalt as their director of player development and hitting performance. Hitting coaches come and go with some level of regularity, but this one felt different. He was coming off a year where he had been given a lot of credit for getting two big prospects back on track, MJ Melendez and Nick Pratto. A little over three years later, it is probably time to start talking about whether he is the right person to be running the hitting development in Kansas City.
It’s easy the day after the Royals make Carlos Carrasco look like a Cy Young contender to overreact to the beginning of the season. There are three Royals with an OPS over .700 right now; Bobby Witt Jr., Maikel Garcia, and Mark Canha. In fourth place is Kyle Isbel. If Kyle Isbel is the fourth-best hitter on the team this year, this is going to be a very long season. That is not why I am writing this article. It’s still too early for me to write this offense off entirely. I am writing this because we have several years without much development in hitting across the organization.
The 2021 season was not just a small turnaround for Melendez and Pratto, though it is a little hard to parse what happened in the weird 2020 season since we have no minor league stats. Melendez went from a 67 wRC+ in High A ball in 2019 to hitting 41 home runs across AA and AAA in 2021. That is a stark difference that has, I think, carried him through several seasons of pro ball that he maybe shouldn’t be getting. Similarly, Pratto went from a 73 wRC+ in High A to 156 in Northwest Arkansas and Omaha. Both became top 100 prospects and hopes were high that the catcher and first baseman of the future had been found. Zumwalt was given a lot of the credit and installed as the hitting coach at the big league level. And then the hitting improvements across the whole organization seemed to disappear.
That last sentence is a bit too dramatic. Bobby Witt Jr. has risen to be one of the best players in baseball over the last three seasons, so there have been some positive stories on the hitting development side. I am reticent to give anyone credit for him though. Bobby is a generational talent the likes of which I have never seen before and I think he would have thrived in any organization.
Other possible bright spots have been Vinnie Pasquantino, Michael Massey, and now maybe Maikel Garcia. However, all of them come with caveats. Vinnie came up in 2022 and looked like he was going to be a monster bat, top 30 in baseball sort. Since then he has had injury issues and gotten worse with his walk rate deteriorating each season. Massey is inconsistent but was generally productive last year mostly due to his power. Not a bad bat, but not anything more than league average to be expected at this point. Finally, Garcia has shown promise, though has failed to fulfill it for a full season yet. The early returns in 2025 make me optimistic, but Garcia started hot last year and then went on to a very bad overall season at the plate.
How much of the problem is drafting/scouting versus development? It is hard to say, and this is why I am almost always reticent to yell for someone’s head. Ending up with an above-league-average bat out of an 11th-round pick like Pasquantino is a really nice get. I don’t expect some miracle where John Rave and Tyler Gentry are suddenly putting up Juan Soto numbers in the corners. But if they are not productive, Gavin Cross needs to be as he was a top pick and a pretty well-thought-of one at that. The minors have had some bright spots like Carter Jensen, Blake Mitchell, and now Jac Caglianone of course. On the other hand, the Royals consistently rank near the bottom of baseball in farm system rankings. Rankings that each year become more and more dominated by hitters due to TINSTAAPP thinking taking over.
The two bats that really got Zumwalt into the position of hitting coach are now looking like complete failures and the likelihood of an above-league-average outfielder (think 2 WAR+) coming from this farm system seems bleak to me. That, as much as anything, is an indictment of the hitting development process. A Sal Frelick or Mike Yastrzemski would be a huge addition to this team currently. I don’t think it is asking too much for the team to develop a meh left fielder, and yet, here we are.
I want to be clear that I do not know Zumwalt in particular is the problem, but we have hit a point where there definitely is a problem somewhere. The Royals cannot continue to bring up players like Pasquantino and Melendez with track records as patient hitters and then have them turn into free swingers with low walk rates. It is incredibly frustrating that the team was 28th in walk rate last year and is 24th in the early going this year. And that has been the case for decades at this point.
So, I do not know that it is time to fire any one person in particular. But it is definitely time for something to change. This team can and will be better at hitting this year, but I want more than last year too. The organization has found a way to make pitching development better across the organization in a very short time. it is time to try and find the same on the hitting side.