Royals add Brewers hitting coach Dawson to staff

KANSAS CITY – The Royals’ search to fill out their Major League hitting staff is making headway, with the club announcing Friday that it has hired Connor Dawson to serve as a hitting coach on the Major League staff. He will work closely with senior director of hitting performance/hitting coach Alec Zumwalt.

Dawson, 32, is a Kansas City-area native and has been a hitting coach with the Brewers since the 2022 season.

Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold told reporters on Thursday that Dawson is joining the Royals’ staff.

“It’s a tough loss for us, but it’s home for him,” Arnold said.

The Royals’ search is not yet complete, however, with the club expected to hire another coach to the hitting department soon.

After a frustrating 2025 season, the Royals are revamping their offensive strategy and personnel this offseason. Zumwalt will remain at the helm, but the Royals moved on from assistant hitting coaches Keoni DeRenne and Joe Dillon, as well as Minor League hitting director Drew Saylor.

Dawson attended Olathe North High School in Kansas, about 30 minutes southwest of Kansas City and then played baseball for Neosho County (Kansas) Community College. He transitioned to coaching in 2015, when he coached for the KC Bullets college prep baseball program and was the hitting coach and strength coach at St. Thomas Aquinas (Kansas) High School from 2015-18. In 2019, Dawson was the hitting coach and pitching coach at Marshalltown (Iowa) Community College.

Dawson got his entry into professional baseball with the Mariners, hired as the hitting coach at the rookie level in 2019 before spending the 2020 COVID-shortened season as hitting strategist at the team’s alternate training site. He was the Mariners’ Minor League hitting coordinator in 2021 before the Brewers hired him after that season.

Dawson has a reputation for being extremely analytically minded with a new-school approach, something the Royals sought for throughout their search. The Brewers are one of the teams that consistently find production up and down their lineup, getting the most out of a roster that does not consist of a ton of superstars nor rank high in payroll.

What it does do is win games: Milwaukee led MLB with 97 wins in 2025. As a team, the Brewers hit .258 ( third-best in MLB) and posted a .332 on-base percentage (second) and .403 slugging percentage (12th). Their 107 wRC+ ranked ninth, while their 9.1 walk percentage and 20.3 strikeout percentage ranked sixth and fifth, respectively.

Milwaukee scored 4.98 runs per game this past season – third best in MLB – and during Dawson’s four years with the team, the Brewers offense ranked seventh in MLB with an average of 4.69 runs per game. The Royals’ 4.02 runs per game in 2025 ranked 26th in MLB. Kansas City slashed .247/.309/.397 in 2025, and its 93 wRC+ was tied for 22nd.

Dawson is still very much tied to Kansas City – one of his dogs is named Chief because of his love for the Kansas City Chiefs, according to the Brewers’ media guide – and now he’ll join his hometown team as part of the staff hoping to elevate the offense in ‘26 and beyond.

The Royals are also still working to finalize the rest of their coaching staff. Assistant pitching coach Zach Bove was hired by the White Sox this week as their pitching coach, so the Royals will have to fill that important role as well. Bove spent three years with Kansas City, working in tandem with pitching coach Brian Sweeney, bullpen coach Mitch Stetter and the rest of the staff to turn pitching into a strength for the organization.