"Just sit back and watch our BP. If you can drive balls out of the park in BP, you can surely do it in the game."
I feel like this Yost quote says a lot about the Royals power struggles. Not that it means Yost or the rest of the management, coaches and developmental staff have are willing to do what it takes to get that power on track. They aren't cracking 70 mph tosses out of the park because of the pitch velocity. It's because the damn ball is pumped right down the chute every time. Yet the Royals seem unable to see the correlation between waiting for your pitch and knocking the crap out of the ball.
Since 2012 the Royals swing at more pitches out of the strike zone than any team in the AL, which is fine if you've got a roster full of Vlad Guerreros.
But the Royals don't.
They have quite a few guys who should have plus power Butler, Hosmer, Gordon, Moose, but when "Country Breakfast" literally has an O-Swing% that's increased every single year of his career you're going to get these guys committing bad strikeouts and rolling grounders to shortstops and second basemen for double plays all the time.
What really sucks is that it's probably not something that they can change over night, and it seems to be ingrained in the Royals system-wide. Hell, Butler's 29.6 O-Swing% is actually one of the better marks. The only guys on the current roster better are Gordon, Aoki and Dyson. Recently retired stud Chris Getz was pretty selective, but hey you can't win 'em all (@slobber).
Sure, these guys can't all foul it off time after time until they get their pitch to drive like Jason Varitek, but they can watch balls after ball go by without hacking away. They can start to hack at first pitch strikes pitcher pump down the middle. They can let less desirable strikes pass through the zone, especially with less than two strikes. Even then is potentially drawing a walk, but sometimes striking out looking really that much worse than rolling into a 6-4-3. Not when that next pitch is one you can drive.
If their discipline outside of the zone is that bad, then you know they aren't any better at being choosey when it comes to strikes. Not to pile on Butler, but when he was younger the dude would wait and wait and his eyes would get big as saucers when he saw the drivable pitch. That needs to happen again, and soon, but I'm not sure it can.
We listen to and watch Royals games and hear Denny, and Hud, and Ryan preach about being aggressive and getting after pitchers. What has it gotten them? One of the worst offenses in years. This team wastes quality start after quality start because the offense is broken. Five hitting coaches in three seasons?
Whatever, I'm ranting. They could be so much better though. These guys weren't stud prospects for no reason.
