New hitting coach Kevin Seitzer has high hopes for Blue Jays’ offence

DUNEDIN, Fla. – According to Kevin Seitzer, with a few minor adjustments, and some luck, the Toronto Blue Jays can meet 2013’s world championship expectations in 2014. The new Blue Jays hitting coach has been tasked with turning an above average hitting team into a great one, along with helping erase the disappointment of last season.

Even during 2013’s disastrous last-place finish, the Blue Jays were among the best offensive teams in the majors. They were in the Top 10 in runs scored and total bases, and fourth in home runs. But they were 14^th in hits, and 15^th in both average and on-base percentage. That’s one area Seitzer would like to see improvement.

“They were a little bit too much home run happy [last season] and we needed to be able to make some adjustments,” Seitzer said of the Blue Jays’ reliance on the long ball. In order to compete in 2014, Toronto needs to manufacture extra runs without just home runs.

While Seitzer may not be a household name, he knows a thing or two about hitting.

Seitzer was a two-time All Star over a 12-year playing career. In 1987 with the Kansas City Royals, he was an All Star and finished second in rookie-of-the-year voting to Mark McGwire. That season he hit .323/.399/.470 and led the American League in hits with 207. He was an All Star again in 1995 with the Milwaukee Brewers after hitting .311/.395/.421 and finished his career in 1997 as a career .295 hitter.

Seitzer got into coaching with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2006 then spent four seasons as the hitting coach with his hometown Royals. It was in Kansas City that he first worked with Blue Jays manager John Gibbons, who was a bench coach with the Royals in between Blue Jays gigs.

After two years away from the game he leapt at the opportunity to work with Gibbons again in Toronto.

“I wanted to get back into baseball. I wanted to be a big-league hitting coach again,” Seitzer said. “Thankfully they were looking for a guy. Gibby and I go back to Kansas City days so I was excited to get the chance.

“I knew him really well and he knew me. It allows me to go do the things I did when I was working with him. He saw the results and adjustments I made and that I was able to help some guys [in Kansas City].”

One of the players he helped in Kansas City was current Blue Jays outfielder Melky Cabrera. Seitzer was at the helm of the Royals when Cabrera had one of his best seasons. In 2011, his lone season in Kansas City, Cabrera hit .305/.339/.470 with 201 hits, 18 home runs and 87 runs-batted in. He followed that up with an even better season in San Francisco – albeit one shortened by a PED suspension – and parlayed that into a two-year, $16-million contract with the Blue Jays.

Cabrera’s first season in Toronto was a disappointment at the plate and shortened to just 88 games due to injuries. But Seitzer thinks Cabrera is capable of finding his 2011 form again.

“His swing, it looks exactly the same as it did in Kansas City,” Seitzer said. “The first few days we made a couple little adjustments and he’s been dialed in ever since. We’re only two weeks in and he’s dialed right in, he’s in a good place right now.”

The Blue Jays are a mix of established, veteran offensive players, and some young players. Seitzer therefore has to handle differently players like Jose Bautista and Ryan Goins.

“Bautista, [Edwin] Encarnacion, [Adam] Lind – they’ve been around a long time and they’ve been very successful,” Seitzer said. “They do 99 percent of everything I’m asking already. So that’s something you don’t have to worry about.

“When you’ve got quick hands and you’re a big man you

can put balls out of the ballpark more often than smaller guys. But it’s really the same swing and the same mindset every hitter has to have at different points of the game, different counts, different pitchers. Those are the adjustments everybody wants to make.”

When Seitzer speaks about the art of hitting, it sounds like buzzwords and clichés but it’s actually a thoughtful approach to a difficult task. And at the major-league level even the slightest adjustment can have a huge impact.

“Hitter don’t want to have holes in their swing, they don’t want to be vulnerable to certain pitches or certain places,” Seitzer said. “So that’s basically what I try to do – give them a good approach and help them to be able to repeat their swing path they need to have in order to be on time, stay short and inside the ball, stay gap to gap.

“Pitchers do a really good job of disrupting hitters’ timing. So hitters’ timing, it’s very hard to be consistent with that. . . Bottom line for me is to be able to make little tiny tweaks with their swing path, their hands. It’s something all hitters want to feel. They want to feel like they can get to any pitch, any count, any speed and give themselves a chance.”

Seitzer’s predecessor was Chat Mottola who was the Blue Jays’ hitting coach for just one year. Seitzer brings more experience to the position but not an entirely different philosophy on hitting.

“I have my program that we do in batting practice. Whatever their pregame work is, what they like to do in the cage, I try to work with their routines, whatever they have – as long as you can create some consistency with the swing to where they’re able to repeat it and it becomes muscle memory,” Setizer said. “I’m not sure what they did in the past, I didn’t ask too many questions. [My program] is something that I feel is important for us to be able to click as an offence to where everybody is able to utilize their strengths and contribute up and down the lineup.

“Everybody wants to be great, that’s the bottom line. You have conversations, I see swings and it promotes conversations.”

A year after the Blue Jays were pegged as the early World Series favourites by Las Vegas bettors, the expectations are decidedly lower in 2014. Despite a quiet offseason and few changes from the 2013 squad, the Blue Jays clubhouse still sees themselves as contenders.

“That’s what everybody’s focus is and mindset and that’s what we’re going for,” Seitzer said about 2014 expectations. “We want to get to the postseason, we want to advance through the postseason and get a chance to play for a World Series and then go win it. Any team in spring training, if that’s not their goal then there needs to be some adjustments made to the expectations.

“We’ve got the talent here that we feel like, if we stay healthy, and guys do what they do then we’ll be okay.”