If Frenchy had made no changes in conditioning, swing, and approach, this would be a valid guess. As he did make changes, like Melky changed his conditioning and approach and Alex changed his swing and approach, Frenchy, like Alex and Melky, had a very good year. No reason to assume he chooses to change back to what didn’t work. I expect him to be working with Seitzer to get better at going opposite field.

What is more likely: from his age 22-26 seasons, after posting OPS+ figures of 87,102, 72, 93, and 85, he suddenly (miraculously?) ‘found it’ and racked up a solid 119 at age 27; or, as often happens with players around 27 years of age, he put up a ‘career year’ that he is unlikely to duplicate again?

Let’s just say that I’m more likely to think it was a one year, ‘small sample size’ aberration than some kind of lasting epiphany. And you might want to check with the Mets to see what a ‘good clubhouse guy’ Francoeur becomes when he starts losing at bats, so platooning him may not be such a great idea either.

Then we’ll be glad that we didn’t trade Myers for some pitcher this winter. My hope is that Monty is up and producing and that Duffy has taken the next step so next winter we don’t have to even consider over paying for a #1 starter or talk about trading top prospects for another team’s pitchers. Instead we’ll be wondering if we can get a good pitching prospect or decent UIF for Frenchy and be glad we got a decent AA arm for Sanchez.

Seitzer is one of my favorite all-time Royals. This shouldn’t cloud the fact that hitting coaches are given undue credit/blame. He’s getting the Frank White treatment from our fan base.

True, but they still need a coach able to find the fixes. Coaches don’t do it by themselves and the players often don’t do it either by themselves. If players did, teams wouldn’t need coaches.

“So, I guess I’m saying it is possible for the same guy to do a poor coaching job in one place and a good coaching job in another.”

True. Coaches can learn, too. And the pieces have to fit together.

“Now Seitzer has a roster full of young emerging talent and he gets the credit instead of them? Again, that’s insane.”

Frenchy, Alex, Billy, and Melky weren’t particularly young or emerging, rather were getting on in player years and three of them were about at the end of their career ropes. Seitzer did do a lot of work with Moose on adjustments and approach that prepared the Moose for his late-season take-off, as Moose himself has said. You have to start with talent, but a coach can help maximize production from the talent. That may be why Bob McClure is gone. Reasonable people can disagree on the value of coaching.

Now, certainly, part of being a good coach is figuring out a way to get the players to ‘buy in’ and Seitzer was not able to do so in Arizona (they did, by the way, have some very talented hitters when he was there). So, I guess I’m saying it is possible for the same guy to do a poor coaching job in one place and a good coaching job in another.

Coaches can only help the players willing to listen to them. Both Frenchy and Alex were in KC last winter working with Seitzer, Billy went to Seitz during the year for help, Hoch finally started pitching inside and stopped shaking off his catcher. Coaches have plenty of data and video technology now to analyze players and find areas of improvement, but not all players are willing or able to make the adjustments or have the talent to achieve high levels of production. Did the D’Backs have talent equal to Alex, Billy, Frenchy, Moose, Melky, and so on?