Kevin Seitzer of Royals as Jays' batting coach?

[dagger]

Shi Davidi ‏@ShiDavidi 2m
Told last wk he was "good name" MT @Royals_Report: Hearing former #Royals hitting coach Kevin Seitzer close to taking that job in Toronto.

[James_Raptors]

I mentioned it here viewtopic.php?f=123&t=1276800&start=30 30 minutes ago, and it definitely looks like a strong possibility.

[BigLeagueChew]

Meh.

[PJTucker]

No idea what he brings to the table as a hitting coach.

As a hitter I remember him to be the kind of guy to spray the ball all over the field. A contact hitting corner infielder.

Can't help but think he might have a Walt Hrnak (sp?) type of approach?

[Duffman100]

Meh.

Do you really have any idea?

[BigLeagueChew]

Meh.

Do you really have any idea?

I know that he had difficulty getting Royals players to hit to their potential and George Brett was brought in to help them instead. Also know that he has worked with Gibby so their is some familiarity there but can we really say , at this point, if he's a better hitting coach than Mottola or Murphy was? Meh!

[Lateral Quicks]

I like the approach, but I'm not sure it's a great fit for our personnel. I can't imagine Bautista or Encarnacion looking centre-right first.

[Wo1verine]

I like the approach, but I'm not sure it's a great fit for our personnel. I can't imagine Bautista or Encarnacion looking centre-right first.

He shouldn't even coach those guys! Just leave them be

Anyways, it would had been nice to bring in a guy from a winning team.

[MikeM]

Is this the guy who was coaching Hosmer and then they brought in Brett and Hosmer immediately started to hit?

[Michael Bradley]

Here is a more optimistic view of Seitzer: http://www.ranyontheroyals.com/2013/08/ ... t.html?m=0

I'm not sure what to think. I have said in the past, I think a hitting/pitching coach makes way more of a difference to a team than a manager does, and if Seitzer is not a pull-happy coach, then the Jays better start changing the types of hitters they go after.

I remember the Jays brought in Gary Denbo in 2008 to change the hitting philosophy, and Matt Stairs went off on him after he (along with Gibbons) was let go, blaming him (Denbo) for the team's bad hitting prior to Cito/Tenace coming in. Here are the quotes from Stairs about Denbo:

“I’m a pull hitter,” said Stairs, who leads the club with a mere eight homers. “I always will be. But right now, I don’t know how to pull the ball.”

“As soon as Alex (Rios) learns how to pull the ball again properly, he’ll be on fire,” Stairs said. “He’s got that swing now to hit the ball to right field and that’s not him. He should be a pull hitter. What was wrong with the year he had last year? Not a thing. So why change and make him go to right-centre? That’s just the way I see it.”

“I honestly think that this team has forgotten how to pull baseballs,” Stairs said Sunday. “That’s why our home runs are down. You get into batting practice and you’re hitting balls to right-centre, left-centre, instead of working on the proper way of pulling baseballs, and elevating baseballs.”

Who knows. Maybe his type of style will help the non-power hitters on the team (Lawrie, Cabrera, Reyes etc), but it might backfire on guys like Rasmus. Hopefully he won't mess with Bautista and Edwin.

[Randle McMurphy]

I think we should bring Stairs in as the hitting coach.

[Schad]

Is this the guy who was coaching Hosmer and then they brought in Brett and Hosmer immediately started to hit?

There was another tandem between Seitzer and Brett...Seitzer left at the end of 2012, Brett was brought in at the end of May. The team saw its OPS drop by 22 points this season, for what it's worth.

As for the home runs, Kaufman is pretty cavernous, and after Seitzer was fired for not getting hitters to produce enough dingers, they actually hit fewer of them.

Edit: the money quote from Jazayerli (quoting Russell Carleton; both guys are tremendously well-respected):

Back in May, Russell Carleton published a study at Baseball Prospectus that evaluated hitting coaches based on whether the hitters under their tutelage improved or declined. By his methodology – and it’s only one way of looking at things – Kevin Seitzer was worth about 58 runs over an average hitting coach over the course of a season. Among every hitting coach of the last 20 years who had held the job for more than two seasons, the only hitting coach worth more was Clint Hurdle – who coached for the Rockies from 1997 to 2001, before the humidor, when Coors Field was maybe the best hitters' park in world history. Carleton admits that the extreme conditions may have affected the numbers in a way he could not control for, and made Hurdle look better than he was.

So basically, Carleton came to the conclusion that Seitzer was, if not the best hitting coach of the last 20 years, certainly close. And that was before this season, when practically every hitter he coached last season has declined to varying degrees. I imagine the same study performed today would rank Seitzer even higher.

[Ado05]

^^^Well that makes me excited.

[Schad]

Should say a couple things: despite espousing the belief that hitting/pitching coaches are actually more important than managers, I'm dubious that hitting coaching can be generalized such that a guy can be expected to repeat results anywhere, and I'm really dubious that they could be expected to have an effect of 58 runs above average. That is a jeezly great pile of runs.

Also, apropos of nothing, I'm surprised that teams still have one (or increasingly, two) hitting coaches. That the methods used for one guy frequently have adverse affects on others on the same team is pretty well documented at this point. With players making an absolute fortune, many will in time have personal, full-time swing coaches as golfers do, and it's actually something of a surprise that they do not...as much as teams love keeping things as they've been for the past 120 years, that's one thing you'd think that they would let slide if it got more consistent results.

[s e n s i]

When asked about the daunting task of turning Jays' catcher J.P. Arencibia into a major league-calibre hitter, Seitzer scoffed saying "I like to think I'm good at what I do, but I sure as hell ain't Jesus Christ, I can tell you that much"

[Michael Bradley]

Should say a couple things: despite espousing the belief that hitting/pitching coaches are actually more important than managers, I'm dubious that hitting coaching can be generalized such that a guy can be expected to repeat results anywhere, and I'm really dubious that they could be expected to have an effect of 58 runs above average. That is a jeezly great pile of runs.

Agreed. A good hitting coach should be a positive difference, but he is not going to turn John McDonald into Derek Jeter. Ultimately the talent has to be there, and the hitting coach has to recognize flaws, help correct them, etc. A bad hitting coach can mess hitters up (as Stairs alluded to in the quotes above) by making hitters do things that go against their strengths.

Ultimately, you can't expect Seitzer's success in KC to translate to success here, but if he did make a positive difference to the Royals (and it appears he did), then he has a chance to do similar things to hitters here. But again, it has to be the right fit for the talent. If he starts telling Bautista to hit the ball to right center, then there might be issues.

[dagger]

Bob Dutton ‏@Royals_Report 47m
Not so fast on Kevin Seitzer to Toronto as hitting coach. Hear the White Sox are also showing interest.

[Graham's Cracker]

Interesting in Shi's article he also noted that Brian King had been replaced as team Strength & Conditioning Coordinator as the first step in addressing the spate of injuries to the club.

The other news was that Assistant GM Jay Sartori has left to join Apple as manager of the App Store's Sports and Entertainment product line.

[Graham's Cracker]

Apparently, DeMarlo Hale interviewed very well for the Nationals manager position.

[satyr9]

So is this happening? Schad and Rany got me all worked up, I want my 6WAR hitting coach goddammit.