Sources: Royals to Add Connor Dawson to Hitting Team

[Kevin O'Brien]

On Wednesday, rumors circulated that the Royals were adding a new hitting coach to their staff for the 2026 season. At the conclusion of the 2025 season, Kansas City parted ways with assistant hitting coaches Keoni DeRenne and Joe Dillon. Hitting coach Alec Zumwalt remains in his current role. 

Royals insider David Lesky of Inside the Crown and the Kauffman Corner podcast first reported that Brewers assistant hitting coach Connor Dawson would be joining as part of the hitting coaching staff under manager Matt Quatraro. 

Later this evening, Robert Murray of Fansided confirmed the rumor via his sources. 

Dawson has been part of the Milwaukee coaching staff since 2021. Over the past two seasons, the Brewers rank ninth in wRC+ and fourth in runs scored, according to FanGraphs. Conversely, over the past two years, the Royals rank 21st in wRC+ and 19th in runs scored.

Dawson is a local product who attended Olathe North High School in Kansas and played college baseball at Neosho Community College, which is 2 hours from Kansas City. He coached high school baseball at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Overland Park, Kansas, from 2015 to 2018 and at Marshalltown Community College in Iowa in 2019.

He made the jump to professional ball with the Mariners in 2019, where he served as a Minor League Hitting Coach until the Brewers hired him. No official announcement has been made about Dawson by the Royals or about anyone else joining the coaching staff.

In addition to parting ways with DeRenne and Dillon, the Royals let go of Minor League Hitting Coordinator Drew Saylor and lost assistant pitching coach Zach Bove to the White Sox, where he will be the pitching coach. 

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