Much has changed since Kevin Seitzer’s days as a two-time All-Star who oftentimes saw a three at the front of his batting average.
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But the Seattle Mariners’ new hitting coach doesn’t need to go back to 1980s and 90s to illustrate just how much hitting differs in today’s game from the past. He can just point to the rapid changes in the analytics-driven baseball world since he landed his first job as a hitting coach with the Arizona Diamondbacks before the 2007 season.
“A lot (has changed) in 15 years – and when I say a lot, it’s a lot,” Seitzer said when he recently joined The Hot Stove Show on Seattle Sports, which airs each Tuesday night from 7-9 p.m. leading up to Mariners spring training. “I had no assistant (hitting coaches), I was the hitting coach. I was the only guy for probably my first, I don’t know, six years, seven years, something like that. And then I had my first assistant.
“Had no idea how I did it all by myself before that, but that was also when the analytics started to get introduced and people spent more time scouting that way.”
Not all from Seitzer’s generation have got on board with today’s analytics-driven game. He was skeptical about it himself.
“It ended up adding more time,” he said. “They kept telling me it’s going to take away how much time I have to prepare and I said, no, it’s going to add to it because I’m going to still do what I’ve always done, because this is how I know I’m ready and I can get the hitters ready.”
