Despite demotion, the Phillies’ Scott Kingery stands by his work with an independent hitting coach

Kingery has no regrets about the changes that he made to his swing in 2017 at the suggestion of a St. Louis-based instructor.

Scott Kingery will open the season at the Phillies' alternate training site.Read moreJOSE F. MORENO / Staff Photographer

by Scott Lauber

Published March 29, 2021, 2:29 p.m. ET

As Scott Kingery contemplated making changes to his swing in the offseason, he didn’t seek advice from the independent hitting coach with whom he worked before his big 2017 season in the minor leagues.

“I saw him a couple times and I talked to him a few times,” Kingery said in a March 17 interview. “But I didn’t work with him.”

In hindsight, after struggling to find a consistent swing for most of the last three seasons with the Phillies and being demoted Sunday to minor-league camp, it’s worth wondering if Kingery’s problems were rooted in those sessions with Richard Schenck, a St. Louis-based hitting instructor whose philosophy was once described by Kingery as “the opposite of what you’ve always been taught.”

Kingery, however, doesn’t have any regrets.

“He’s the one that helped me get my swing where it was in 2017,” said Kingery, who struck out in nearly 40% of his spring-training at-bats and lost the center-field job. “It’s tough to go away from stuff like that.”

Kingery was introduced to Schenck by his agent, David Matranga, before the 2017 season. Schenck, who played at Division II Northeast Missouri State in the ‘70s, spent years studying video of Barry Bonds’ swing and trying to essentially mass-produce it in young hitters. He has worked with other Matranga clients, most notably New York Yankees star slugger Aaron Judge before his breakthrough rookie of the year season in 2017.

Schenck, who hasn’t responded to several requests for comment in recent years, has more than 12,000 followers on Twitter. He also has numerous critics who don’t believe in his methods.

Kingery hit 36 doubles but only five home runs and a .723 OPS in the minor leagues in 2016, the season before he started working with Schenck. In 2017, he batted .304 with 29 doubles, eight triples, 26 homers, and an .889 OPS between double-A Reading and triple-A Lehigh Valley.

But the Phillies believe Kingery has fallen into bad habits over the years as his obsession with hitting home runs has grown. As Kingery described it, he began “scooping under the ball” in an attempt to hit more balls in the air and over the fence.

Hitting coach Joe Dillon worked with Kingery throughout spring training to level his swing. That work will continue at the alternate training site in Lehigh Valley, where Kingery will try to return to the big leagues.

“It’s about getting back to finding the flat path and the one that allows me to stay in the zone long,” Kingery said. “It’s trying to not be so perfect and really just be able to hit line drives all over the field.”