With the Kansas City Royals season now over, it’s time to look back at the season behind us and determine some of the opportunities within the roster. Unsurprisingly, one of those opportunities falls in left field with MJ Melendez. It wasn’t a great season for Melendez in most aspects. The former top 100 prospect slashed just .206/.273/.400 with an 85 wRC+. The power remains evident and he hit 15 home runs despite struggling to make enough contact for much of the season.
For Melendez, it’s not the first time we’ve been here. Melendez posted a 97 wRC+ in his rookie season with 18 home runs but followed that up with worse production in 2023. Despite a serious second-half breakout, Melendez finished the year with a 91 wRC+. That only got worse in 2024. Melendez has long been a curious case. He’s generated healthy amounts of hard contact for his entire career thus far but it is yet to translate into actual production. Even this season he graded in the 80th percentile for average exit velocity. Sadly, that doesn’t impact as much if there isn’t enough contact on the baseball. With three years now behind us, what does Melendez need to do with his swing to improve?
Many fans point to his awkward swing as the root of all problems. Melendez often takes odd hacks at the baseball. It works when it works, but far more often it results in weak contact if any at all. Let’s look at some key elements of his swing that need retooling this offseason.
Long swings from Melendez resulted in a drop in barrel rate for 2024
Year-over-year changes saw the barrel rate for Melendez drop three percent in 2024 compared to the year prior. His 8.4% barrel rate in itself isn’t terrible — it ranks just behind Jose Ramirez of the Guardians — but for a player like Melendez who leans so heavily on hard contact and pulling the ball, that drop hurt him. That drop in barrel rate was noticeable, but alongside a serious drop in Launch Angle Sweet Spot%, it became a recipe for struggles in 2024.
Baseball Savant calls Launch Angle Sweet Spot a “batted-ball event with a launch angle between eight and 32 degrees.” Even the hardest hit baseballs hit with a 7-degree launch angle or less result in a home run zero percent of the time. Anything above a 32-degree launch angle starts to see the home run rate fall as well. For Melendez, in 2024, the LA Sweet Spot% fell by 5.5% compared to the year prior. That marked the ninth-largest drop in the entire major leagues, according to Baseball Savant.
Melendez simply didn’t make enough good contact in 2024 for the hard-hit rate to bleed through into success. The root of that problem comes back to his swing mechanics, timing, and the length of his swing. Melendez has a long swing. His swing length is an average of 7.7 feet, ranking 36th in all of baseball. That long swing itself isn’t a problem — Salvador Perez was at 7.9 feet this year. Instead, timing and inconsistent mechanics seemed to cause a larger issue because of how long the swing is for Melendez.
Numerous times this season, there were swings from Melendez that saw a good chunk of his barrel come through outside the strike zone. He’d make hard contact with the bad part of the bat, resulting in pop-outs or groundouts. As Melendez “steps” into his swing, it creates far too much chance for inconsistency. Sometimes his front foot lands square with his back foot. Other times it lands behind it in a slightly open stance. Then other times it plants in front of his back foot in a closed stance. This small difference can create larger impacts on timing and balance in the upper half of Melendez’s swing.
His barrel seemed to land outside the zone at times simply because Melendez was off balance. His upper half would get behind his upper half, and he’d get stuck reaching with his swing. As close as he is to the plate by the time he swings, any reach at all is going to put the barrel of the bat off the plate when he tries to catch up to outside pitches.
You could see some of that in the gameplan pitchers used against Melendez in 2024. He simply doesn’t perform well in the lower half of the strikezone or away from him in the zone. The majority of pitches against him this season came in those zones. Melendez will have to do better damage against those pitches away. To do so, some reworked mechanics and better timing will be key.
Melendez’s swing mechanics need a serious tweak ahead of 2025 to find success
Timing is everything for a hitter and Melendez doesn’t seem to have it right now. His swing offers a lot of moving parts. Melendez begins each appearance with an incredibly open stance. He then steps into a more squared look as part of his swing mechanics which is where the root of most issues arises. Timing is difficult for Melendez because of so many moving parts. Although the current swing allows him to generate hard contact and power, he’s left all out of whack between his upper and bottom half.
Instead of swinging with his hips, Melendez’s upper half is often behind his lower half. To catch up, he rushes his swing at times resulting in upper-cut hacks. His swing plane can become extremely focused on lift when it simply doesn’t need to. With the hard contact Melendez makes, upper-cut swings aren’t necessary. He can swing down to the ball and hit it out of the park.
This offseason, Melendez would do well to close his stance. Starting with an open stance and stepping into his swing isn’t working. Instead of using that step to time his swing, a squared wide stance would keep him more in balance. Easier said than done, and it’s not always simple for batters to completely change what they do at the plate. What he’s doing now isn’t even all that different from his 2021 season when he led the Minor Leagues in home runs.
Despite that, it’s probably time to stop holding onto minor league home run crowns from three years ago and find changes that will make Melendez a successful big league hitter. Simplified mechanics would go a long way. If Melendez can use a wide, squared stance it should help him to find more consistency in his load mechanics and timing. He can still use a slight leg kick to generate some power. From there, it should allow him to finally let his hard-hit rate impact the game far more often. With a more balanced upper half, he’d be able to take the ball to all fields more often and cover more of the plate.
The issues with Melendez aren’t in his ability. His power is excellent and his chase rate is right around league average. Great power with good enough swing decisions is a great place to start. None of that can matter enough without better timing, however. Twins outfielder Trevor Larnach made a similar tweak ahead of 2024 and it worked wonders in his production this season.
Just because it worked for Larnach doesn’t mean it will work for anyone, but it’s exactly where I’d start in hopes of getting Melendez on track as a big-league hitter. 2025 will likely be sink or swim when it comes to Melendez’s big-league future. Kansas City’s lineup needs his power behind Bobby Witt Jr. and Vinnie Pasquantino. He still offers a high-ceiling and making Melendez successful would be perhaps the best offseason move the Royals can make.