The Sunday Ramble

The Royals have made a couple of additions to their non-playing staff. First up: They announced the final coach of their major league hitting lab. It's local guy Hunter Mense, who is officially a hitting coach. He will join a staff that includes Connor Dawson as offensive coordinator and Marcus Thames as a hitting coach.

Mense arrives in Kansas City after major league stops in Toronto and San Francisco. A local guy, he grew up in Liberty and went to school at the University of Missouri. Missouri is also where he began his coaching career. He was an assistant coach from 2011 to 2016 and was their hitting coach in 2015 and 2016.

Mense then moved on to the professional ranks and was the assistant hitting coach for the Jays from 2022 to 2025, a time which culminated in their run to the World Series. Working with Toronto’s hitting coach David Popkins, he was originally tabbed to work on swing mechanics and drill design. The 2025 Blue Jays led the majors in batting average (.265), on base percentage (.333) and contact rate (78.5%). They also posted the lowest strikeout rate in the majors at 17.8 percent.

He was brought to San Francisco for 2026 as part of first-year manager Tony Vitello’s staff. Their connection goes back to Mense’s playing days at Missouri. He didn’t have as much to work with in San Francisco as he did in Toronto. Several key Giants got off to a slow start offensively (gee, that sounds familiar!), and there were fingers pointed in Mense’s direction (again, familiar!). They did turn things around as guys like Rafael Devers, Bryce Eldridge and Drew Gilbert all had productive second halves of the year to varying degrees.

He spoke to David Laurilla at FanGraphs back in 2022 about how he focused on improving decisions at the plate and what that did to a plate appearance.

"You’ve always heard about the professionalism of the at-bats, and that’s what you see here (in Toronto). Guys aren’t anxious to swing at every single pitch, because they know that 1) the stuff up here is really good, and 2) they have confidence to hit in every sort of count, in any situation, so they’re willing to take a pitch if it’s not one that they want to drive. They’re willing to wait, wait, wait, wait until they get the pitch they want. What that filters down to is the swing-decision aspect of hitting.

"Decision-making is so key at this level, in part because, again, the stuff is so good. They can expose you so fast, especially if you’re not a good decision-maker. They will find holes really, really fast, and are going to keep exploiting them. If you keep making bad decisions, they’re going to keep going there and expose you."

I'm going to pause right there and say this feels like a fantastic hire for the organization. How many times did it seem like we were watching a hitter over the last couple of years who was just up there hacking? This isn't about what the broadcast loves to harp on in things like "a 75 percent swing" or giving kudos for going the opposite way to move a runner. It's about having a plan to find that pitch you can do damage on. That may be about going the opposite way, which is fine. But again...it's about having a plan and finding the right pitch.

There's more...

“The one thing that we have to make sure of as coaches, and as an organization, is that when you’re teaching swing decisions, it’s not about taking the balls. It’s about being aggressive on the pitches you want to hit. I think that’s how good coaches teach it. They give guys the freedom to swing at every single pitch that’s in the zone where they can drive the ball. They’re working in areas where they can hit home runs and produce extra-base hits.

“A good decision is just as much swinging at the pitch that you can drive as it is taking the breaking ball that’s out of the zone. Both weigh heavily, and you could even say that swinging at a pitch that you should drive out of the yard is more important. One will get you deeper in the count and might get you a walk. The other one is going to give you a run if you square it up.”

How about that? Make the right swing decisions and you can find a pitch you can rip. So simple, yet kind of complex. I'm excited to see what Mense can do with the hitters on this club.

Also on the hiring front, the Royals poached veteran scout Dana LeVangie from the Boston Red Sox. LeVangie had been in that organization for over 35 years.

As Speier recounts in his story, LeVangie has been a part of just about every aspect of the Red Sox organization during his time with the team. He was an advance scout for the Sox from 2006 to 2012 and was given credit for preparation work that culminated in Boston's 2007 World Series title. He then moved to the major league staff, first as a bullpen coach (2013-2019, picking up another ring in '13) and then as a pitching coach in 2018 and 2019. When the Red Sox won a title in 2018, pitcher Rick Porcello called LeVangie "the heart and soul of our staff."

LeVangie shifted over to the pro scouting staff after the 2019 season.

From 2018, a story about how LeVangie was making an impact with the Red Sox's pitching staff:

LeVangie's role with the Red Sox exceeded that of a conventional bullpen coach. Almost any adjustment made by a Boston pitcher in recent years came with some input from LeVangie. He's the one who suggested that Drew Pomeranz switch sides of the rubber — right before Pomeranz submitted the best prolonged stretch of his career. He's the one who was on top of Craig Kimbrel all last season, making sure he kept his mechanics in order. He's the one who back in 2016 helped straighten out Clay Buchholz during his stints in the bullpen.

In fact, if there's one caveat to LeVangie's promotion, one complaint emerging from Boston pitchers, it's this one, from Kimbrel: "I'm going to miss hanging out with him in the bullpen. … He has a game plan every day and understands each guy. As a pitching coach, that’s the number-one thing: understanding everyone has something different and how to work with that."

The story also included praise for LeVangie from guys like Chris Sale and Pedro Martinez. Seems like a couple of good guys to vouch for your pitching bona fides.

No clue what's going on in Boston as they've had something of a brain drain from their front office and field staff over the last couple of seasons. It's wild that someone who has spent over 35 years in an organization in various capacities, how is massively respected, would just pick up and move on. Sure feels like the Red Sox's loss is the Royals gain.

The annual GM meetings open this week in Las Vegas. The buzzword around this yearly confab is “groundwork.” As in, there are never any expectations around this gathering when it comes to moves and signings, but its where the genesis of such deals take shape. There is a slightly different tilt to this year’s edition, given commissioner Rob Manfred and his lockout lust.

Will moves come together quicker than usual? Will this be the week that free agents start to migrate to new clubs? Difficult to tell, but you know what they say about old habits. The current crop of general managers give off a cautious vibe (although there are certainly some exceptions). Given the amount of groundwork (there’s that buzzword!) often necessary to pull off anything these days, I sort of doubt anything seismic develops. The acceleration that everyone is predicting when it comes to the free agent frenzy will come probably in the last week of November.

The Silver Slugger finalists were announced this week. Like with the Gold Gloves earlier, there is a solid Royals contingent among the potential winners.

Bobby Witt Jr. is seeking his third consecutive Silver Slugger at shortstop. I would like to think he’s a shoo-in, but there’s going to be some competition from Detroit’s Kevin McGonigle. McGonigle, who split time between second and short finished ahead of Witt in OBP (.376 to .359), but Witt came out ahead in slugging percentage (.441 to .430). It could swing either way, but I’d bet on McGonigle given he’s pulling up to this honor as the presumptive AL Rookie of the Year. Congrats to the other shortstop finalist Zach Neto of the Angels on his third-place finish.

At catcher, Carter Jensen is a finalist with Detroit’s Dillon Dingler. Feels like there are some good bats up the middle in the AL Central. I make Jensen to be the favorite given he topped Dingler in just about every offensive metric you can pull up. If Jensen does in fact win the award, he will be the sixth rookie catcher to do so. The others? Benito Santiago and Matt Nokes in 1987, Craig Biggio in 1989 and Mike Piazza in 1993. Nice company.

The Royals third finalist is Jac Caglianone. A year ago, did you think we would be talking about Cags being up for any award, let alone this one? While I always believed he would turn things around, I couldn’t say I was expecting anything like what we saw last summer. Caglianone is up against Wilyer Abreu, Randy Arozarena, Cody Bellinger, Cahse DeLauter, Riley Greene, Tristian Peters and Mike Trout. Caglianone’s .494 slugging percentage does top the list of finalists so it’s not like he’s an outsider. I think he has a legit shot.

When you see the Royals having four Gold Glove finalists and three for the Silver Slugger, it only serves to underscore how dreadful the pitching—particularly the bullpen—was this season.

In a blink and you missed it transaction, the Chicago White Sox signed Alec Marsh to a minor league deal. The Royals released Marsh at the end of last month as they were getting their 40-man roster tidied up. He last pitched for the Royals in 2024, having missed time with shoulder soreness that became a shoulder impingement that became labrum surgery.

When the Royals optioned him off the roster, I thought there was a chance he could return on a minor league deal, like the one he signed with the White Sox. Good luck to Marsh going forward. It has to be incredibly frustrating to miss two full seasons due to injury. I hope he can find a way to get back on the field in 2027.

If you have an itch to watch live baseball, you can scratch it with the Arizona Fall League "Fall Stars Game" tonight on MLB Network. The Royals will be well represented with outfielders Angeibel Gomez and Zion Rose and with left-hander Justin Lamkin suiting up to represent the American League.

Gomez, as you know is the second-youngest player in AFL history, has played mostly right field for the Surprise Saguros and hit .306/.390/.444 over 10 games. Just an exciting talent.

Rose has hit .327/.493/.519 with two homers, two triples, 14 walks and 12 steals in 13 games for Surprise.

Lamkin is in Surprise to make up innings he missed after dealing with shoulder issues this year. According to the write-up at MLB.com:

(Lamkin) has been exceptional at getting ahead of hitters early with his fastball while showing two good breakers in his curveball (a relatively new pitch) and slider, leading to a 3.52 ERA and a 0.78 WHIP in four starts (15 1/3 innings).

The game is scheduled to start tonight at 7 CST.