Royals hitting coordinator Drew Saylor talks prospects Michael Massey, Nick Loftin and others

The numbers tell the story.

In 2019, the Royals’ minor-league system posted a .693 OPS and a 2.53 strikeout-to-walk ratio. In 2021, the Royals’ minor-league system posted a .750 OPS with a 2.21 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

What changed? In short, Royals president of baseball operations Dayton Moore envisioned revamping the club’s hitting development department. General manager J.J. Picollo, charged with carrying out that task, shifted longtime Royals staffer Alec Zumwalt into a role as the director of hitting performance. From there, the club hired Drew Saylor as hitting coordinator, Keoni DeRenne as assistant hitting coordinator and Mike Tosar as its special assignment hitting coach.

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Their collective knowledge began to flow throughout the club’s hitting coaches and also to the players. The results confirmed their approach.

Saylor had been a minor-league manager in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ system before becoming an assistant hitting coordinator with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2018. Recently, he talked with The Athletic about the Royals’ strides since he joined the club’s hitting development department in 2019. He also touched on some prospects who have impressed in minor-league camp.

Note: This interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Michael Massey, a fourth-round pick in 2019, had an incredible season in 2021: An .882 OPS with 21 home runs and 87 RBIs at High-A Quad Cities. What stands out to you about what he’s been able to accomplish since he entered the Royals’ system?

I think the first thing is he’s put in a ton of effort and work. Similar to what we talked about with Erick Peña, he had to go through a bit of repatterning process with how he moves. (For us), it was about putting him in an optimal position to allow his pelvis and hips to be able to work more consistently.

He has a lower back injury history, so he has to be really specific with how his movements are. We have tried to be prudent with work volume and to be understanding that this guy’s body is in a position where we don’t want to piss off his back. He’s done a tremendous job with the strength-and-conditioning team, being able to strengthen the muscles around and the back. It starts there. Similar to Erick, Massey had a hip slide, and he’s done a great job making sure he’s moving from the center out. That’s the first thing.

I think there are other parts, too. He’s very curious. He’s a guy who really understands how to game plan opposing pitchers. He understands how we like to train in a similar vein of Bobby Witt Jr., MJ Melendez, Nick Pratto, Kyle Isbel. He champions what we do, and he very much is like Vinnie Pasquantino and Jake Means. They’re the leaders, the ones driving the process and initiative of what we want out of our hitting space. What’s been cool is seeing him make a physical change but also take ownership of our process and be one of the cornerstones to help educate and onboard all of our young players. There’s a laundry list of other guys who fall into that category, but he’s one of those guys that stands out as one of those natural leaders.

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In that answer, you mentioned the pelvis and repatterning from a movement perspective. How old is that type of thought for you as it relates to hitting?

It’s not as far back as you’d think. A lot of the way I’ve learned about hitting was more just passed down — sage wisdom. In 2018, I was kind of having some of the sage wisdom that I thought was gospel being chipped away. That was the year I just started brand new with my hitting philosophy. I’ll never forget it. I had a running document with things and ideas, and I started a brand new document. From 2018 forward, we were going to operate under the laws of motion and constraints and build outwards. That’s what started to form. Understanding the planes of motion. How energy is transferred kinetically. And more importantly, being able to disassociate the cues we offer to hitters versus the actual movements of the human body under the constant constraint of gravity. That was my seminal moment in understanding that.

And by cues, you’re mentioning the specific comments you offer to the hitter, right?

Mike Trout thinks he swings down. J.D. Martinez thinks he swings up. They’re both completely contrasting cues, but both allow them to be in the right field of motion to be very productive players. That’s how I reconcile those two areas. Any cue on any given day can unlock somebody’s potential. But how their body moves, that is constant. There are laws they cannot violate to be able to do that.

What seems wild is how complex this process is, how deep it goes.

We can talk about human movement, but then you have to learn skill acquisition. You have to know how to teach human beings to execute that task. And we know from how our brain operates that if we externally cue, meaning if I’m telling you that I want your back elbow to feel like it connects to your torso before you turn, if I give you two of those while you’re trying to hit, it’s like opening 17 windows on your computer. The processing speed of the brain can’t execute that in the time that is allotted to us to hit in the game.

So it’s very much, like, we want the human movements to be this way. But can we design a player plan for them to be able to execute that move without us talking their ear off about what they should be doing or shouldn’t be doing?

We want to take into account every variable of our people to make sure we’re helping them have the best opportunity to have success. What’s tough about hitting? Well, there’s a million different solutions to what we do. And with every single person, that path is completely different. That’s really difficult to do, but that’s the way. If you want to reach your players, you have to pay that on the front side of teaching.

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Let’s move to another player: Nick Loftin. The Royals selected him with the No. 32 pick in the 2020 MLB Draft. Some people were surprised by it. But last season, playing for High-A Quad Cities, he posted a .836 OPS and impressed defensively. What have your observations of his performance been?

Nick is incredible. Has a curious mind. Loves to try to put together the puzzle pieces. We talk a lot about intellectual curiosity. That’s one of the foundational pieces to us here. But he has it in buckets.

He, for me, is one of those glue guys, leadership guys, who champions our process. One of the things that helps out Nick, and I’m biased, but I think Nick was one of the best bats in his draft class, regardless of it being a COVID-19 draft. I thought he was one of the best bats anywhere.

The numbers seem to back that up, but when you say that, what comes to mind?

He has all the right ingredients. He rotates well. He gets onto plane with his path. He has a lot of room for success with his swing, and he does it very naturally.

Some guys try to artificially manufacture that ability. Or, they’ve been cued so much that their body is inefficient in how they’re moving. He’s just naturally had that from Day 1.

He’s a guy who, for me, came in with a lot of really cool ingredients. There’s more pop in that tank as he continues to get stronger, and that’s not to say he’s not strong now. But as he continues to evolve as a human being, I think there’s more pop in the tank. He’ll do anything for the team. He’s a tremendous leader. An A+ person. And you add in all the baseball stuff, it allows you to go ‘Damn, that’s a great, great pickup by us.'”

A guy I haven’t written about much is Jake Means, who is the brother of Baltimore Orioles pitcher John, and who is an Olathe, Kan., native. Jake was a 22nd-round pick in 2019. Last year, he moved from Low-A Columbia to High-A Quad Cities, then played in the Arizona Fall League, and had varying levels of success and struggle as he faced more intense competition. How would you assess his 2021 season?

I thought Jake had a really good year, him being able to bump up a level, go from Low A to High A and get with a club that was performing well. He assimilated into that clubhouse and was one of the centerpieces of that championship-winning club, so he did a tremendous job for us.

I think the tale of two seasons for him centers around expectations that he puts on himself. He’s a high performer. A guy who wants to do well. And he’s never one of those guys that you have to say, ‘Hey, we need you to work harder.’ We’re always trying to pull back on the reins to make sure he’s efficient with what he does.

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I thought he did a really good job being able to learn through some of those growth moments. That jump from Low A to High A is pretty darn big. You might see similar fastball velocities, but then you’re seeing the movement profile be a little different in High-A, and you’re seeing the spin profiles be a little sharper, and the separation between those two is greater. So there’s a little learning curve for him, making that jump up there. But really, the thing I loved about that and we loved is, he’s a grinder. People overuse that term. But from what you want in an intangible standpoint, Jake has that tenfold.

Who else has caught your eyes in minor-league camp?

There’s a handful of guys. Luca Tresh, a 17th-round pick in 2021, has done a really good job coming up here in camp so far — lots of really hard contact, even off of some of our lives. Parker Bates is a guy who is standing out. Guillermo Quintana, a 20-year-old from Colombia, has done a really good job. I’ve liked the way he’s shown up and taken swings. Wilmin Candelario, a 20-year-old switch-hitting shortstop, made some small modifications. He doesn’t have a tap anymore; it’s more of a function-forward ease to the swing. He’s making some really solid contact.

Carter Jensen, a Kansas City native and 18-year-old whom the Royals selected last year in the third round, has done a great job. Ryan Cepero, a 19-year-old shortstop from Puerto Rico who was an eighth-rounder last year, has put on some really good size and strength, and the ball is starting to take off a little bit more off the bat. Brennon McNair, an 11th-round pick from last year, and Low-A hitting coach Jesus Azuaje made a little adjustment to his routine, where Brennon is able to get into his hip a little better. He’s making some really good contact.

And Diego Hernandez, a 21-year-old left-handed-hitting outfielder. Oh, my gosh. He made a small path adjustment, and he’s lighting balls up all over the field. The power is starting to come out. It’s a pretty fun guy to watch in batting practice. It’s going to sound succinct, but he runs well, so we talked to him: ‘Let’s work on hitting more line drives.’ That small adjustment allowed him to be able to get the ball off the ground and get more hard contact in the middle of the field. It’s been fun to see. I’m oversimplifying it, but it was, ‘Let’s get the ball on a line more consistently.’ All the sudden, he’s hitting balls on field No. 3, he’s making people on the road be concerned about the safety of their windshields. He’s done a really good job.

Those are the ones that pop out.

(Photo of Massey from Aug. 20, 2021: Mike Janes / Four Seam Images via Associated Press)

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