One day after the Cincinnati Reds hired Joel McKeithan as their assistant hitting coach, McKeithan was in Florida with hitting coach Alan Zinter to visit with shortstop Jose Barrero.
It was a chance for McKeithan to meet Barrero, one of the franchise’s best young players, and the Reds wanted their hitting coaches to work on Barrero’s swing before Major League Baseball’s lockout prevented contact between coaches and players.
Barrero was scheduled to begin playing in the Dominican Winter League in a couple of weeks, but it’s unclear if the lockout will affect whether Barrero is permitted to play in the league.
“Just wanted to make sure that in (Barrero’s) prep we’re all on the same page, he’s working to relax a little bit more in his setup,” Zinter said in a Tuesday interview on 700-WLW’s “Hot Stove League” show. “He’s working on his timing and he’s making a few mechanical adjustments and fine tuning that kind of thing. Having us all together rather than trying to do it on a phone call or over Zoom, it’s really hard, so we thought it’d be really necessary to come together for two or three days and it’s been awesome. He looks really good.”
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Barrero was named the Reds’ minor league player of the year after his breakout season at Double-A Chattanooga and Triple-A Louisville. He hit .303 in 85 games at the two levels with 19 doubles, 19 homers and 66 RBI.
He’s struggled in limited at-bats at the big-league level with a .197 batting average and 43 strikeouts in 124 career plate appearances. He should have an opportunity to start every day in the Majors next season and he will compete with Kyle Farmer for the starting shortstop gig.
“Extreme athleticism, high-end exit velo and everything that you would put together on a PlayStation baseball game, he has,” Zinter said of Barrero.
McKeithan, 30, was hired after one season as the Detroit Tigers’ minor-league hitting coordinator. He replaced Joe Mather, who was hired as the Arizona Diamondbacks’ lead hitting coach after two seasons with the Reds.
Zinter said McKeithan was recommended by several people this offseason. In addition to assistant hitting coach, the Reds are hiring two minor-league hitting coordinators, which mirrors the way the organization structured player development on the pitching side.
“(McKeithan) blew us away in that interview process,” Zinter said. “It was really simple. All of us that were involved, people in the front office, coaching staff, people that were able to see the Zoom calls, it was a no-brainer that this is a guy we need to offer the job to.”
The Reds saw major improvements offensively from the 2020 season to 2021 with largely the same group. The club ranked second in the National League in batting average (.249), third in slugging percentage (.431), fourth in on-base percentage (.328) and fourth in runs (4.85 per game).
“The way guys went about their business, they bought into our philosophy going into the season of really training on a lower launch angle, really train to get down through the baseball and hitting balls all over the field,” Zinter said. “Not just trying to see how far we can hit it and kind of get pigeonholed into trying to do too much.
“I think in 2020, our guys are already built for power. They were excited. Short season. We just tried to do too much. Our innings were really quick. We hit too many fly balls. We were in the air way too much.”
The Reds used Rapsodo devices in batting practice throughout the season to measure launch angle in real time, and coaches emphasized hitters wouldn’t lose power if they hit the ball on a line.
Joey Votto, Nick Castellanos, Eugenio Suárez, Jesse Winker and Jonathan India all hit more than 20 homers.
“We had discipline,” Zinter said. “We had line drives. We had home runs. We had everything that we needed, and we need to continue to do that pushing forward. We need to get better off left-handed pitching – there is always something that we need to work on – but these guys are a true team. They work well together. They like each other and they picked up all year long. If one of our big guns would go down with an injury, somebody else stepped up. It was just like that all year.”
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