theathleticuk
When agents at VaynerSports began monitoring Kevin McGonigle, they sought insight from a former major leaguer. Vernon Wells, whose 15-year MLB career included stints with the Blue Jays, Angels, and Yankees, had joined Vayner after retiring. Wells brought the perspective of someone who had excelled at the highest level. Asked about McGonigle, Wells pulled up footage of a short high schooler with a compact swing. He watched one at-bat, then another. Soon, he was captivated by the quick hands and savvy approach. Like many others, Wells's main takeaway was striking: McGonigle was so advanced, so mature as a hitter, that it was almost unsettling.
"It jumped out at me," Wells said earlier this year. "I immediately knew that everything he did from when his process started, from the swing to his discipline, was going to put himself in a good position to be a really good hitter." Through Vayner agent Eric Izen, McGonigle connected with Wells, mostly via text. Their relationship deepened as McGonigle was drafted No. 37 overall by the Detroit Tigers and climbed the minor leagues. By the time McGonigle signed with Vayner as a pro, Wells was still in awe of his at-bats. As McGonigle tore up the minors—hitting .315 in his first 21 professional games—Wells occasionally sent messages. At one point, he recalled writing: "I knew you could hit, but I didn't know you were this good."
On Monday night, McGonigle was named American League Rookie of the Year, capturing 28 of 30 first-place votes after a season in which he hit .278 with 18 home runs and led all AL position players with 7.1 bWAR. Throughout his rookie campaign, there were the usual caveats and questions: He's just a rookie. Everyone goes through a slump. He can't possibly keep playing this well, can he? But for the most part, McGonigle was nearly slump-proof. He walked almost as much as he struck out (100 Ks to 95 BBs). He played plus defense, grading out at plus-8 Defensive Runs Saved. He hit .283 in the first half and .271 in the second half. Sure, there were moments when McGonigle would pop up an early-count pitch or have a handful of games in which he didn't look his best. But watching McGonigle as a rookie meant expecting him to impact the game, somehow, some way, nearly every day.
That's always been the thing with McGonigle. His stellar numbers stem from a quieter, more understated consistency. "Even the way that he approaches his work shows that he's committed to the process," Wells said. "I think that process is what keeps him consistent, and that's what you would see in Albert Pujols, those are things you would see in guys that added to their approach and repeated their best swing and battled at-bats. That's something that obviously he's doing every day in the big leagues, and I don't see that changing any time soon."
Early Impressions and Auburn Recruitment
Karl Nonemaker, an assistant coach at Auburn, hails from Roxbury, N.J., and maintains deep ties in the Northeast. One day in 2020, a coach from the South Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania travel-ball scene called. "Hey," the coach said. "There's a guy you should know about. This is probably the best player we have ever seen at this age." The player was still a high school freshman. He wasn't a travel-ball prima donna. His only hitting coach at the time was his father, swinging day after day in a cage set up in a friend's backyard. McGonigle was the type of hitter whose ability pops most if you close your eyes during batting practice, wait, and listen for the ping or crack. "Every time one of us would go watch him play, it was like he would just hit rockets all over the field," Nonemaker said.
One of the first videos Nonemaker saw of McGonigle was a hitting session during the coronavirus pandemic. McGonigle was taking swings off a local player several years older, a pro pitcher in the early minors. McGonigle faced high velocity, lacing line drives into the opposite-field gap. Recruiting in the Southeastern Conference is a tricky balance. You want the best players you can find, but sometimes you want to avoid picking the ones who are too good—you don't want them forgoing their commitment, getting drafted high, and signing with an MLB club. For a while, Nonemaker thought McGonigle might be the perfect type of player: preternaturally gifted but not the type of physical specimen destined for a first-round draft grade. But by the time McGonigle was nearing his senior year of high school—after he just kept hitting and hitting and hitting—the Auburn coaches got the sense McGonigle was unlikely to ever step foot on their campus. "His performance was so loud that people just couldn't ignore it," Nonemaker said. "That's a credit to him. He's just a competitor. A gamer."
What the Auburn coaches remember most about McGonigle is not only his sheer ability but also something else about his demeanor: the dirtbag mentality, the pure determination, the deep love for the game. "As they get more recognition, as scouts start coming, as the draft potential grows, you do sometimes see kids that lose their innocence and at times forget why they play," Nonemaker said. "Kevin has not lost his innocence." In another universe, McGonigle would have spent 2026 as a junior at Auburn. Instead, he was taking the major leagues by storm, posting the ninth-best season ever by a rookie position player in terms of bWAR. So much about McGonigle ventures into the realm of cliché—gritty, hardworking, focused—and that's only because much of it is true. "He's been that way since he was a sophomore in high school," Auburn coach Butch Thompson said. "I know there's some different things that sweep you off your feet and things you couldn't imagine. But he's been visualizing where he's at right now for a long time. I know it's moving fast. But it would be moving faster if he hadn't been visualizing this for the last four or five years."
Training and Swing Mechanics
One day this summer, Alex Kramer sat in an office at Ascent Athlete, the Pennsylvania facility where McGonigle trains in the offseason. Kramer is Ascent's director of hitting development and has worked with McGonigle since 2022. He was thrilled to see him make the Tigers' Opening Day roster and overjoyed when he went 4-for-5 in his MLB debut. But even Kramer tried to stay realistic about the challenges McGonigle's rookie season would present. "Time goes by, and it's, OK, he's not going to do that every single time he goes out there," Kramer said. "It's the big leagues. He's going to have his ups, his downs. And then every time I go look up how he's doing it's, Oh, those are the numbers he was putting up last year in Double A."
Few know the 22-year-old and his swing better than Kramer. And though even the coach was stunned by some of McGonigle's rookie results, Kramer's overall review echoes what so many others say. Other major-leaguers train at Ascent. McGonigle has always stood out from the pack. "Whatever it is about hitting, he just has a different grasp on it than other guys that are here, and that's no knock on anybody else," Kramer said. "We have a couple big leaguers here. He was an 18-year-old kid, and even they are like, Yeah, this guy is different. The ball comes off his bat different than everybody else. The way he goes about his business is a little bit different than everybody else."
On the surface, McGonigle can appear to have an easy, minimalist swing. But the toe-tap he uses as a timing mechanism actually results in an uncommon amount of movement in the batter's box. The way McGonigle glides, moving his lower body but keeping his head still and his hands steady, is part of what makes his swing so fascinating. McGonigle was also raised from an early age to rip the ball to the pull-side corner of the batting cage. As he matured, he learned to use the opposite field. He has so many traits of a well-rounded hitter. But Kramer notes how he learned to be aggressive first. "That's very similar to the philosophy that we take here," Kramer said, "because there are so many kids that are brought up the other way. It's very traditional. No hate, but it's a little daddy-ball kind of coaching where it's like, Hey you got to let the ball travel, you got to go backside. Then this 17-, 18-year-old kid who's finally getting physical doesn't know how to get his swing off, doesn't know how to be aggressive. That was never the issue for him."
Looking Ahead
On Monday night, McGonigle gathered at Barnaby's Restaurant & Pub in Havertown, Pa., with more than 50 friends and family members to watch the rookie of the year announcement. He took two weeks to decompress after a grueling season. He lamented watching the playoffs from home. He is already back in the gym. He said he will pick up a bat again starting next week. He's spending the offseason focusing more on his arm strength and his defense, anything to keep raising the ceiling. Handling the spoils of success might be his next great test. It was an incredible year built on a foundation of restraint and repeatability. For so much of McGonigle's rookie season, he did not seem like a rookie at all. "To an extent, this has been the plan for him," Kramer said. "When he was young, he was going to be the best kid in the area, best high school player, he was going to be a professional baseball player, he was going to make his debut, and he was going to be a really good baseball player at the MLB level. I think that's what will help him in the long run maintain a level head about things. I don't think he looks at this with the beginner's eye."
Originally reported by theathleticuk.