School is now in session for the Kansas City Royals.
First-base coach Rusty Kuntz is in his first season with the Royals. Little did the players know when they showed up for spring training there would be written tests on the fundamentals of baserunning and playing the outfield.
This isn’t the first year Kuntz has done this. In Pittsburgh a couple of years ago, the first player Kuntz quizzed didn’t fare so well.
“Out of 50 questions, the guy got five correct,” Kuntz told The Associated Press. “And this was a starting player in the major leagues, a very well-known guy. I thought: ‘Oh, my gosh. Oh, my goodness.’ ”
So Kuntz came up with a detailed list of written questions and tried them out on a number of players. The results were encouraging.
“By the end of spring training, I gave the same player the same test, along with a bunch of other guys, and he got every one of them right,” Kuntz said. “And I noticed that during the year, he responded quicker to certain situations.”
Kuntz’s written quizzes are beneficial even to first-year Royals manager Trey Hillman.
“We talk about wanting this to be a learning situation,” the manager said. “There’s always things you can learn. I’ve learned from Rusty about things that were considered my areas of expertise.”
