Royals Hire Hunter Mense As Hitting Coach

The Royals are hiring Hunter Mense as their hitting coach, per reporting from Mark Feinsand and Maria I. Guardado of MLB.com. Mense had been in that same role with the Giants. It was reported in September that the Royals would be moving on from hitting coach Alec Zumwalt.

Mense, 42, makes a quick pivot. It was less than a year ago that he got his first hitting coach job when the Giants hired him. He worked under first-time big league manager Tony Vitello, who had just been hired about a month earlier out of the college rangs. Now Mense is packing his bags for Kansas City.

Teams normally allow their staff members to pursue promotions but aren’t as open to letting them chase lateral moves like this one. It’s unclear why the Giants allowed the Royals to poach Mense. Speculatively speaking, Mense is a Missouri guy. He was born in Liberty and later played college ball at the University of Missouri. Perhaps the Giants allowed Mense to explore the opportunity with the Royals because it would be closer to home but that’s entirely a guess. It’s also possible the Giants just weren’t planning to bring him back. Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area suggests that won’t be the only change on Vitello’s staff.

After his time playing at Missouri, Mense was drafted by the Marlins in 2006. He played minor league ball in Miami’s system for several years but never cracked the majors. He spent some time in independent ball before pivoting to coaching, working for the Blue Jays in the minor leagues. He got promoted to Toronto’s big league staff in 2022 as assistant hitting coach

His one season in San Francisco doesn’t give too much to judge. The team had a combined .245/.306/.400 line and 97 wRC+. That’s subpar production but the club had a number of injuries throughout the year and the results were also subpar in 2025, when they hit .235/.311/.386 for a 98 wRC+.

The Royals have been coming up short offensively for many years now. The 2026 club hit .248/.316/.402 for a 98 wRC+. They will hope that adding Mense to the staff in place of Zumwalt can help them find a new gear. The Giants will have now have to find a replacement for Mense. As mentioned, they might look for more than that.