Here’s how KC Royals pitcher Brady Singer turned early struggles into pivotal changes

The Kansas City Royals fast-tracked Brady Singer to the majors in 2020, but the former first-round draft pick was decidedly off-track by the time the club broke camp in Arizona this spring.

Despite having been viewed as the leader of the pack of young pitchers by virtue of his draft position, how fast he progressed through the minors and when he broke into the majors, Singer’s progress had stalled to the point that he became the odd man out in the competition starting rotation spots.

After a detour that included stops in the bullpen and a demotion back to the minor leagues, Singer finished this season looking like a potential front-of-the-rotation starting pitcher and a potential linchpin for the pitching staff’s future.

Asked to look back on his season with the benefit of perspective, Singer described the start of this year as “weird” in an interview with The Star during the final homestand of the year.

That “weird” beginning set the table for perhaps the most important individual success stories of the season for the Royals.

“The big thing I’ve talked about is attacking the zone,” Singer said. “I think that’s something I can hang my hat on the whole season. It’s what I’ve tried to do, stay in the zone as much as possible and go right at these hitters.”

In 24 starts this season, Singer posted a record of 10-5 with a 3.11 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, 8.8 strikeouts per 9 innings, a 4.24-to-1 strikeout to walk ratio and an opponent’s slash line of .244/.300/.374.

Diagnosing the problems

Coming off of an offseason where the MLB lockout prevented organizations’ coaches, analysts and staff from having contact with their players, Singer still entered spring training feeling strong and ready to hit the ground running in his third season in the big leagues (his second full-length season).

But there was something holding him back in spring training.

His fastball was too often falling into one of two categories, and neither was encouraging.

Either, one, he could put the ball where he wanted it. Or, two, he could get it where he wanted but without the typical movement or “life” he’d come to expect.

That’s when the combination analyzing the metrics, mechanical tweaks suggested by pitching coach Cal Eldred and Singer’s ability to make adjustments turned his season around.

“I knew the ball wasn’t coming out of my hand the way it usually does,” Singer said. “I knew the metrics on it weren’t the same. Then Cal mentioned it.

“After he mentioned it, I went right to it and I could start seeing the ball moving the way I wanted it to and I could start to see a lot more strikes. Command was back, and it was a lot more natural.”

Two mechanical tweaks that worked in tandem helped restore Singer’s fastball, and simultaneously built confidence in his third pitch, the changeup.

“My lower half mechanics were off, and that changed (the hand placement),” Singer said. “Once I got that all figured out, it was pretty easy to get my hand where it was.”

Singer explained that the way his foot had been landing caused him to fire across his body.

When he got his foot moved over consistently, that led to better extension on his fastball. That, along with fixing his hand placement on the baseball, restored that pitch to the form he demonstrated as a dominant college pitcher at the University of Florida.

Changeup becomes a factor

This season, opposing hitters batted .254 with a .386 slugging percentage against Singer’s two-seam fastball. That’s after last season, when opponents batted .325 and slugged .459 against that same pitch.

Once the cross-firing/landing issues were diagnosed and corrected, the hand placement adjustment came “quickly,” with the added bonus that it mimicked the hand placement needed on his changeup.

“It was just an absolute godsend that these guys picked up hand position on the changeup perfectly matches hand position for right spin efficiency,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said of the coaching staff.

This season, Singer threw his changeup 181 times or on 7.6 percent of his pitches — predominantly against left-handed hitters.

Last season, he threw his changeup just 88 times and 3.8 percent of the time last season.

In the early innings of his final home start of the season last week against the Mariners, Singer struggled to find the feel for his slider.

In his postgame comments, Singer said that he and rookie catcher MJ Melendez used his changeup in different situations than usual. That usage helped him navigate seven innings, strike out eight and hold the Mariners to just one run.

When told that Singer credited the changeup, a pitch that had been much discussed in regard to Singer for several years, Matheny half jokingly raised both hands to the sky as if he were hearing the gospel.

“That’s a big part of it,” Matheny said of Singer’s changeup. “The other is we’re watching impeccable command. We’re watching impeccable edge percentage.

“When he’s making that many good pitches late in the count, they can stack as many lefties as they want. (His fastball is) just a different-looking pitch that they are trained to give up on — from where it starts to where it finishes.”

Singer certainly seems to have reached a different level of confidence with his mechanics, approach and his pitches than he has shown previously in his brief major-league career.

He’s in such a good place that he even raised the possibility of expanding his repertoire.

“I think the fastball and the command and where I am mentally with how I’m attacking hitters is great,” Singer said. “I think it’s, now, just building off what I can improve on with the changeup and the slider. Maybe even another pitch of some sort.

“I think that’s what I’m going to go into the offseason looking for, looking to throw the changeup more, have more action on it, be able to throw it in some different counts.”