For Cubs hitting coach Dustin Kelly, one of his main areas of focus is helping young players adjust to pitching at the MLB level.

He accomplished just that with Pete Crow-Armstrong and Miguel Amaya last season as that young duo showed improvements in both their swings and mechanics in the batter’s box as the 2024 season wore on.

“The incredible part about Pete and ‘Miggy’ is we come to them with these ideas, they have to do it. They’re the ones that have to actually go out and put in the work,” Kelly told Elise Menaker in spring training. “Both of them are very coachable; they were able to take the changes quickly but they went out and performed. It’s ideas from us, but they take all the credit for actually getting it done.”

Both Crow-Armstrong and Amaya had some struggles in the first half of last season. As Kelly worked with Crow-Armstrong, adding the leg kick improved the outfielder’s offensive output in 2024.

“What we were seeing with Pete [Crow-Armstrong] was the game was speeding up on him a little bit. He wasn’t able to really control the batter’s box or control the zone, so what we did was we took away the leg kick or took away the no stride that he had an added a little bit of a leg kick,” Kelly said. “It started out as a drill when we were in Kansas City. It was a drill that he had done before and it really just helped kind of ground his backside, slow it down and back the baseball up a little bit.

“Pete is probably one of the most athletic players that I’ve been around. When you give him athletic moves and feels, he’s able to translate them really quick.”

Amaya’s offense in the first half was the opposite of Crow-Armstrong in terms of the leg kick – he actually added one midway through the season. After working with Kelly, Amaya saw vast improvement where he went from .201/.266/.288 in the first half to .271/.316/.444 in the second half.

“Obviously with Miggy, he was a little more narrow and he had kind of a bigger leg kick. And we were just noticing that balls were getting on him a little bit. He wasn’t able to turn behind it, he wasn’t catching them out in front, the velocity was just getting to him,” Kelly said.

“When we widened him out, it just really put like an emphasis on him with just staying in his legs and he just lifts his heel just a little bit…when we took away that leg kick, it really cleaned up the hand pump that he had and it was really quiet, and he took off.”

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